The Seven Hills

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Surely this thing can never float," Zeno said, shouting over the clangor.

"Yet they assure us it can," Izates said. "They quoted all sorts of Archimedean arcana about weights and volumes and displacement and buoyancy. They insisted that the substance itself was immaterial."

"But ships should be made of wood!" Zeno said.

The thing that drew their incredulous attention was a ship such as no one had ever seen or envisioned. The underwater craft had been mind-boggling enough, but this was even more unnatural. It was a ship made entirely of bronze. Its long keel and arching ribs were made of the ruddy metal, and even now long planks of the same material were being affixed to the ribs with rivets. The din was like all the armories in the world working full blast in one place.

They walked around the thing, which seemed to be at least three times as long as a conventional galley. The insane-looking designer of this prodigy had explained that wooden ships were limited in length by the size of trees available to make their keels. There was no practical limit to the size of a ship with a metal keel.

"It can't be rammed, can't be set afire and it won't rot," cried the designer. "No galley can stand against it. Once in motion, it will plow right through a wooden ship without even slowing down!"

Upon its prow, instead of the conventional ram, it had a huge, concave saw-toothed beak. Its lower, forward-thrusting end would be far beneath the water when it was at sea, and the upper end would tower twenty feet above the surface. It was indeed designed to cut enemy galleys clean in two instead of merely punching holes in them.

"Maybe it will float," Zeno conceded, "but will it move or merely wallow there?"

The radical vessel had no provision for oars. Instead, it had a pair of the huge paddle wheels on its sides, also made of bronze. These would be worked by hundreds of slaves scrambling on treadmills and hollow wheels within the hull.

"Well," Izates said, "if it won't move, someone even crazier will find a way to do it. That madman from Corinth, maybe." The Corinthian had an apparatus of tubs and pipes in which he boiled water and experimented with the steam that resulted. He was not discouraged, even though more than once a boiler had exploded, killing a number of slaves each time. He said it just proved that steam was powerful and swore that he would harness that power. What he would do with it was a mystery.

"Does it occur to you," Zeno asked his friend, "that these Archimedeans tend to overdo things?"

"I suppose that is the way to test the limits," said Izates. "Kings and nations overdo things. Look at the Colossus of Rhodes, or the Pyramids, or that great huge lighthouse out there in the harbor. At least these men are learning something by their overambitious mistakes. It's not all just to glorify some inconsequential king."

"Still," Zeno said, scratching his head, "wood floats. Metal doesn't. It just seems unnatural."

"We are learning that many things we thought we knew about nature were unwarranted assumptions." Izates was already speaking in the jargon of the Archimedean school with its terms such as "evidence," "observation," "experimentation" and "proof." At one time he would have thought these concepts unworthy of a philosopher. Seeing a man fly was enough to unsettle one's old beliefs about such things.

In the palace, Marcus Scipio found that he could no longer take his customary delight in the work of the Museum. For more than two years it had consumed his days and he was fascinated by every new discovery, every new invention. He had taken endless pleasure in finding new applications, most of them warlike, for the outlandish devices the philosophers of the Archimedean school dreamed up.

But now it was different. Now Rome had suffered a defeat.

Flaccus tried to jolly him out of it. "A trifling defeat!" he insisted. "Rome suffered far worse defeats in the past. How about Cannae and Trebbia and Lake Trasimene? How about the Caudine Forks? Entire consular armies were lost in those disasters. You knew Aemilius as well as I did: a plodding, uninspired commander. That's why they gave him green legions and sent him north where they never expected him to tangle with a first-rate Carthaginian general with an army twice the size of his. As it turned out, he was the first Roman commander to have that experience. It was just bad luck."

"We've been sitting here amid incredible luxury, playing with our toys, while real Roman soldiers have been dying by the thousands," Marcus said glumly.

"You don't sound like yourself. You've told everyone else that it's going to be a long war and everyone will have a chance at winning glory. Why all of a sudden do you not believe it yourself?"

"Glory? I don't care about glory!" He shrugged. "Not much, anyway. No more than most Romans. But I've been a soldier all my life, from a long line of soldiers, and it galls me to be sitting here in Alexandria wearing gilded armor and a helmet with ram's horns while Roman armies are being defeated and Sicily is being overrun and Hamilcar is preparing to strike back. And Norbanus!" He threw a handful of papyri toward the ceiling and watched them drift back down.

This was more like it. "Ah, our old friend and colleague Titus Norbanus, now bruited about as the greatest thing since Alexander. That bothers you, does it?"

"Do you think I'm jealous of the likes of Titus Norbanus?" He slammed a hard palm onto his desk. "Did you hear that they're thinking of allowing him to stand for consul? At his age and without having held an aedileship, much less a praetorship?"

"I heard. I read the same dispatches that you do. In order to do that he has to get back to Rome first. Last we heard he was preparing to cross over from Ephesus to Greece."

Marcus made a rude noise. "Greeks! What are they going to do about someone like Norbanus and his four legions? Can you imagine what those soldiers must be like by now? They were first-rate when they were here in Egypt. Now they've made a march like something from an ancient hero tale, fighting much of the way. Those have to be the toughest, saltiest legionaries Rome has ever fielded by now, and they clearly worship Norbanus."

"Envy ill becomes you, Marcus. But up to now they've faced only the disorganized Judeans and the tottering, decadent Seleucids and primitive pirates and tribesmen, the sort of trash a Roman legion brushes from its path. Forget the Greeks. When he enters Greece, he's in Macedonian territory, and they're a different proposition entirely, as you well know."

"I don't mean that I want to see another Roman army defeated!" Marcus protested.

"But it would be nice to see Titus Norbanus humbled just a little, wouldn't it?"

"He needs some taking down. A proconsular command, a whole army and now even a navy! Plus he's making his own foreign policy in the East, building up a clientage among foreign kings; it's outrageous!"

"Marcus, Marcus," Flaccus said crooningly, "there are people back in Rome who say exactly the same thing about you, and you know it. They say you are making yourself de facto king of Egypt, that Selene never makes a move that you don't direct, that you have imperial ambitions."

"I wish Selene was that biddable. The woman has been getting damned independent lately. She forgets who put her shapely backside on that throne." He glowered at the gaudy helmet on its stand upon his desk. "She's the one who manipulates me, if truth were known. Dressing me up like one of her strutting guardsmen, making me a centerpiece at her endless banquets."

"And you are complaining? Oh, come now, Marcus. She's making everyone grant you divine honors, and your presence at her banquets tells all those foreign dignitaries where her power lies." He spread his hands expansively. "You are the greatest man in Egypt, and here you are feeling sorry for yourself because you've missed a couple of brawls."

"Brawls! Aulus, you are not a military man!"

Flaccus grinned. "I admit it freely."

Scipio leaned back in his chair, musing. "Hamilcar must have his fleet restored and reprovisioned by now. Why is he waiting?"

Flaccus nodded. This was better. His friend was thinking strategically again. "Does it occur to you, as it does to me, that perhaps Hamilcar has a new advisor?"

"Selene's spies in Carthage say that the shofet spends a lot of time with a foreign queen, an Illyrian named Teuta. Is it conceivable that Hamilcar is actually listening to a woman? When we saw him, he would scarcely listen to any of his own generals. He was not a man inclined to taking advice."

"Since we last saw him, he has been defeated before the walls of Alexandria, forced to retreat, had Italy and Sicily taken from beneath his nose, and had much of his fleet and most of his invasion materiel destroyed by fire. It's enough to make most men change their ways." He paused. "And this Teuta may be an extraordinary woman. What do we know about her?"

"Nothing. Illyria is just across the Adriatic from Italy, but we know more about Spain. It's as remote as Britannia and Hibernia."

"How can we find out about the woman and her country?" Marcus asked.

Flaccus's eyebrows went up. "Find out? The Museum and Library contain all the knowledge in the world."

"That will take too long and involve talking with a lot of dusty old scholars who have no grasp of military matters or politics. I have a better idea." He seized his helmet from its stand.

Flaccus got up. "Where are we going?"

Minutes later they were at the queen's apartments. Selene, as usual, was closeted with her scholars and ministers. At the Romans' entrance, all but Selene rose and bowed.

"We are discussing the Nile floods," Selene told the Romans. "Will you join us?"

"When Your Majesty has a moment, there is a matter we would like to discuss with you," Marcus said.

"Gentlemen, give us leave," she said. The. men rose, made their obeisances and left.

"You are gracious to set aside business of state to give us an audience," Flaccus said.

She gave them a crooked smile. "Do you think I relish listening to accounts of water level and mud deposit? What is it?"

They told her of their concerns.

"Queen Teuta? Yes, I met her a few years ago. She accompanied an embassy here after she'd secured her power in her homeland. An extraordinary creature: half-savage, more tattoos than a Sarmatian slave. It made her difficult to take seriously. But I spoke with her at some length, and she proved to have wit and intelligence. She also possessed what you Romans would consider an inappropriately masculine force: strength, courage, dominance, aggressiveness, that sort of thing."

"Virtus," Marcus said. "Those qualities becoming a man. So this woman is an Amazon?"

"Of sorts. She is also quite adept at using her feminine allure. I noticed that many men here found her bizarre aspect stimulating, and she took advantage of that."

"Do you think she's capable of manipulating Hamilcar?" Flaccus asked.

"I don't know Hamilcar," she said. "But from what I've heard of him, from you and from others, he sounds like a weak man masquerading as a strong one. He surrounds himself with forceful men, but can't bring himself to dispose of his troublesome sister. I think he is secretly in awe of women. He is easily bored and has a taste for the outlandish. Yes, I think he is exactly the type that a woman like Teuta could bend to her will. He will tell himself that it is fitting that he listen to her, because she is a reigning queen."

"He is vain," Flaccus said. "How can this sit well with his vanity?"

"She is both clever and subtle," she said. "By the time her ideas have lodged in his head, he will think that they were his ideas originally."

"I see," Marcus murmured, wondering if this was exactly what Selene had been doing with him.

They were distracted by a series of unearthly shrieks coming from the direction of the Museum. The sound was so hideous as to make the hair stand and teeth grind together.

"What is that?" Flaccus gasped.

"Someone at the Museum," Selene said through tight-clenched teeth, "has succeeded in drilling a path to the underworld and has let all the tormenting demons out."

They hurried from the royal apartments and across the courtyard that separated them from the Museum. They were not alone in doing so. A knot of philosophers from the respectable schools stormed toward the source of the noise, hands over their ears.

"Majesty, this is intolerable!" shouted Bacchylides the mathematician. "The incessant hammering and clanging is bad enough! How are philosophers to go calmly about their work with this cacophony?"

Now the noise began to vary. Instead of a single, eerie, wailing note, other notes, just as loud, joined in an almost musical progression, rising and falling, until it was making a recognizable tune.

Following the noise, they entered one of the smaller courtyards. In its center towered an arrangement of vertical pipes of varying length, like the pipes of Pan upended, made of metal and of a godlike size. From the pipes shot streamers of white steam. Marcus recognized the thing. It was the great water organ from the Hippodrome. Ordinarily, teams of men worked pumps to maintain the pressure of the water in its reservoir. When the organist pushed its keys, water pressure forced air through the pipes. In the Hippodrome, its music was clear and mellow. Here it bellowed like an ox in a mud hole, only a hundred times louder.

Now there were no men working pumps. Instead, the thing was connected to one of the bronze boilers by a long pipe. A slave shoveled wood chips into the furnace beneath the boiler, watching the color of the coals closely, all too aware of the fate of his predecessors. The inventor himself danced excitedly before his creation, punching his fists in the air, hair and beard swirling like some ecstatic priest of a mysterious Eastern god. The organist-a woman, as was the custom-was just as enthusiastic, swaying her bottom from side to side as she smashed down upon the keys with hammered fists and sang along with her incredibly amplified instrument.

"Stop this!" Selene shouted, but no one could hear her. The philosophers were waving their arms, wailing in protest. Guards and slaves were gathering from all over the Museum, Library and palace to find out what the noise portended. Some caught the organist's enthusiasm, and impromptu dances broke out over the courtyard.

Selene pointed at the man shoveling wood under the boiler. "Marcus, you have your sword, don't you? Go kill that man. Maybe that will make it stop."

Instead, Scipio went and spoke to the slave, who nodded and began to shovel hot coals out of the furnace. Gradually, the hooting of the pipes grew less intense, then faded quickly. When she could be heard, Selene shouted to the crowd.

"This is not a festival day! All of you return to your duties!" Disappointed, the soldiers and servants filtered back into the buildings, leaving the philosophers, the Romans and, she now saw, those itinerant Greeks, Zeno and Izates.

Half-dazed, the inventor turned around to see who was spoiling his fun. He seemed amazed to find that he had attracted a crowd that included Queen Selene. "Er, Majesty," he said. "What brings you here?"

She stared at him, astonished. "What brings me here? The most hellish racket ever heard in Alexandria, that's what! What's your name?"

The man gathered his wits together and bowed. "Euphenes of Caria, Majesty. And today I stand before you as the discoverer of the most important principle ever known to mankind!" He drew himself up, eyes blazing with a demented light.

"And what have you discovered?" Selene demanded. "A new way to make people go deaf?"

"Steam!" he shouted. "I have learned to harness steam!"

"Majesty," Flaccus said, leaning close to her, "we have so many philosophers here. I think we can hang this one without suffering any great loss. It might encourage the rest to keep the noise level down."

"No, let's hear what he has to say first," Scipio cautioned.

"Steam," Euphenes began, "is simply water in another form. Raise its temperature high enough and water, which is matter in a liquid state, is transformed into a gaseous state."

"Every housewife knows that water will boil away," Selene said impatiently.

"Yes, but since this occurs in open vessels, those housewives, and everyone else prior to my own researches, did not realize that a given volume of water, once heated sufficiently, is transformed to a much larger volume of steam!" Blank looks greeted this ringing pronouncement. He waved his hands, seeking the right words to get his concept across to these clearly nonphilosophical people. "It is like harnessing the wind! Wind is powerful, is it not? Wind drives ships. In great tempests, it uproots trees, tears the roofs from temples, drives the sea up onto dry land. What I have done is to confine the power of Boreas and Zephyrus within closed vessels, from which I may direct it in any direction I desire by means of pipes and valves."

"What can you do with it?" Marcus asked.

"Do with it? I shall develop innumerable uses for this power, of course. I have only just now proved the truth of my theory."

"You had better come up with something better than a loud noise," Selene said ominously.

"Majesty," said Zeno. "Might I speak?"

She looked at him. "Zeno, isn't it? Of course you may. You struck me as a man of good sense, and I could use some just now."

"Majesty, this, great instrument makes an intolerable noise here in this small courtyard that is almost adjacent to your palace. But it strikes me that, in the immense space of the Hippodrome, its volume will match the scale of the greatest building in the world. Huge as it is, when it employs conventional water power it can barely be heard by distant spectators. I think if you let it be played there with the new steam power, it could prove a great hit with the crowds."

"What?" said Euphenes indignantly. "I did not do this to produce some trivial toy to please the mob! I simply found it an elegant way to prove my theory of the ratio between the volumes of water and steam-ow!"

The organist had joined them and now she trod on the philosopher's toes to shut him up. She bowed almost double. "Majesty, I am Chrysis, chief organist of the Hippodrome. If you will permit me to play my organ at the next games with the new steam power, I can promise that it will be a sensation! The crowds will adore you as never before. Nothing like it has ever been heard before."

"That is certainly true," Selene allowed.

"And you could use a bit of popularity just now," Flaccus said, practical as always. "The enthusiasm over turning back Hamilcar's invasion has worn off. The Alexandrian mob is famously fickle, and now they grumble about high prices for corn and the new taxes to pay for renewed hostilities. This might be just the thing to put them back in a good mood."

"But this trivializes my momentous discoveries!" Euphenes cried.

Selene turned on him with a basilisk gaze. "Sir, I am still displeased with you for disturbing the peace of my morning. I grant permission to install your steam-tooter in the Hippodrome. The first races of the season begin in ten days. As always, I will be there for opening day. If, as Chrysis predicts, the crowd reacts favorably and I benefit from this, then I will fund your further researches. But you must find a place away from the palace and Museum to carry out your work-somewhere where the noise will not offend my ears, and where your exploding boilers will only endanger yourself and your slaves."

Euphenes bowed low. "Your Majesty is too generous. My steam organ will be the hit of the games."

The queen and the Romans swept out of the courtyard, leaving Euphenes, the organist and the wandering Greeks alone.

"Euphenes," Izates asked, "I believe I grasp the principle you propose: that water transformed by heat into steam creates great pressure that may be intelligently directed."

"Succinctly put," Euphenes said, nodding.

"But," Izates went on, "how do you propose to harness it to useful work?"

With an audience of like-minded persons, Euphenes lost much of his impatient demeanor and explained patiently: "The applications must be limitless. What can one not do with the power of the very wind harnessed to the human will? This great toy merely proved my thesis. I believe it to be the greatest discovery since the principle of the lever was first articulated. Look at how much has resulted from that!"

"But you have no specific applications with which to please Her Majesty and the Romans?" Zeno asked.

"Ah-no, not really," Euphenes admitted. "I deal more in the realm of pure theory. The water organ occurred to me immediately, because the common flute is nothing but a pipe through which one blows breath, which is a form of wind. It seemed natural to apply the matchless power of steam to the biggest set of flutes in the world."

"Very sagacious," Zeno commended. "Might I suggest, now that you have proven your theory, that you speak with Chilo and convene a meeting of all the natural philosophers and mechanics of the Museum. If you explain to them the principles you have discovered, it may be that some of them will find applications for your work within their own disciplines."

Euphenes combed his fingers through his scruffy beard. "That is a possibility. Of course, it must be understood that discovery of the principle belongs to me."

"The glory will be all yours, Euphenes," Izates assured him. "You will lecture and publish your theories. After all, it is Archimedes everyone remembers, not the generations of mechanics who have made use of his principles of leverage, of buoyancy and displacement."

Euphenes nodded his grizzled head. "Yes, yes, that is true. This bears thinking about, my friends. But first, I must make a favorable impression upon the queen and the Hippodrome crowds." Now the head shook. "Imagine! I, a philosopher, reduced to pleasing a silly woman and an ignorant mob. Oh, the things we must do for the advancement of philosophy!" He turned to,the organist and they discussed moving the huge organ back to its accustomed location.

Zeno and Izates stepped aside. "What kind of Cynic are you, Izates?" Zeno asked, grinning. "I've never known you to flatter a man's vanity like that."

Izates shrugged. "Of late, I find myself becoming less of a Cynic and more-what shall I call it? A utilitarian? It's the atmosphere of this place. It encourages a less rigid, more flexible frame of mind. One does what is necessary to produce a desirable result."

"And this place was once your very model of hidebound, inflexible conservatism," Zeno noted.

"We live in a new age, my friend," Izates said. "Come on, let's go find some lunch. That is a necessity as well."