The Seven Hills

CHAPTER THREE

The place was called Sinai. it might as well have been the realm of Dis or Pluto. To the Romans, accustomed to the verdant North, to beautiful Italy, it seemed like a place cursed by the gods. Their march from Carthage to Egypt, then down the Nile, had taken them only through cultivated land. The Nile Valley had been bordered by desert, but few of them had ridden out to see it. Now they had to cross this.

From horseback, Titus Norbanus surveyed the prospect. Despite the heat, he wore his lion-mask helmet. Beneath the fanged upper jaw his face was fair, straight-lined and handsome. His eyes were intensely blue. The desert was daunting, but Alexander and his soldiers had faced worse. He felt that he and Alexander had much in common.

"Fighting is one thing," Lentulus Niger said, "but this? Roman soldiers expect to fight. It's what they're best at. Not marching across sand and rock where the lizards have to take shelter from the sun."

"We've never faced anything like this," Cato agreed.

"Roman soldiers can do anything," Norbanus assured his subordinates. "Barbarians have lived here for generations. Can Romans not do anything barbarians can do?"

"Little bands of wretched nomads scurrying from waterhole to waterhole with a few goats may be able to live here, after a fashion," Cato allowed. "But we have more than forty thousand men, plus all their animals. How are we going to make it through to the cultivated lands?"

"We should have gone by sea," Niger said. "We could have commandeered the ships at Pelusium."

"Carthage controls the sea," Norbanus said patiently. "Even preoccupied with Sicily, there are enough Carthaginian warships prowling about to deal with some wallowing transports full of Roman soldiers. We would have to trust Greeks to handle the ships, and who can trust Greeks?"

"Still," Niger said, "to undertake a march like this without ships screening us and providing us with supplies as we go up the coast"-he made a gesture of futility-"it's courting disaster."

"Had we been able to march westward," Norbanus pointed out, "we would have done so. We discussed all this at our councils. Did you miss those discussions, Lentulus?"

Niger fumed. "That was before we had a look at this place."

Norbanus leaned on his saddle pommels. His subordinates lacked vision. That was why some men led and others followed. Men who would lead must have vision. Men who would be truly great must have great vision. That was what separated men like Alexander and him from the common run of men.

"For many centuries," he explained, "armies have crossed this desert to make war. Greeks, Syrians, Persians-they have all come this way to invade Egypt. The pharaohs crossed it the other way to take war to their enemies. None of them found this desert impassable."

"Maybe it rained more then," Cato said.

"And they went along the coast, supported by their ships," Niger maintained.

"We are no one's inferior when it comes to planning and preparation," Norbanus said. "Before we begin, we will gather all the forage we can cut and bring it along on wagons and on the backs of those smelly camels. We will bring water the same way, in bags. The men can carry all the rations they will require on their own backs. We can do this, and we will reach the other side in excellent shape. And we will march inland, away from the coast. I do not want to be observed by ships or seen from the coastal towns. I don't want anyone reporting to the shofet or to Queen Selene where we are."

"Why the secrecy?" Niger wanted to know.

"I like surprises," Norbanus said, smiling.

Marcus Scipio studied the model with a critical eye. It looked like nothing he had ever seen before. He doubted that anyone had ever seen such a thing. If it resembled anything else, it would have to be a bat, he decided. Its long, slender body was a framework of reeds thinner than arrow shafts, covered with a skin of parchment. Stretching from both sides were wings made of even thinner reeds, also covered with a skin of thinnest parchment. At its rear was a tail somewhat like a bird's.

"Where are the feathers?" Marcus asked.

"I tried attaching feathers," the young man said, "fancying that these somehow made birds lighter and facilitated their flight. But they did not improve things. But we know that bats have no feathers, yet they fly admirably. Insects have no feathers, yet many have wings, and some of these, particularly the dragonfly, are more agile in the air than even birds or bats." His name was Timonides and he spoke of his passion with single-minded intensity.

"I determined that the structure of the wings gave the power of flight. Wings take many forms, but those of birds and bats, whether made of feathers or skin and bone, share a common cross-section: semi-lenticular with a very fine, thin trailing edge. I experimented with this shape until I had a structure that would provide flight, but learned that it could not be controlled without a tail." He pointed at the triangular structure at the rear.

"This stabilized flight somewhat in the vertical plane, but flight was still very irregular in the horizontal. Finally I added this." He indicated a vertical fin protruding above the tail. "Birds do not have this structure, but it is very common in fish."

"You looked to fish for lessons in flight?" Marcus said, astonished.

"When you think of it, the swimming of fish shares many things in common with the flight of birds. Fish move through water instead of air, but propulsion and steering are much the same. This vertical fin also acts rather as a rudder does on a watercraft."

"I know how the underwater boats use those little wings to dive and surface," Marcus told him. "But when I heard you had plans for making men fly, I confess I pictured something like Icarus, with great, feathered wings that they could flap."

The young man shook his head. "That is a silly myth. Men are not built for such effort. Most of the strength of ourbodies is below the waist, which is why men can run better than most animals, and soldiers can march bearing heavy burdens. By contrast, our upper bodies are weak. Look at how a bird is built. Its legs are scrawny, puny things. Even its wings have very little muscle. But the greater part of its body is composed of pectpral muscle, what we call the breast." For emphasis he rapped his knuckles on Marcus's breastplate, upon which the muscles in question had been sculpted in great detail and somewhat exaggerated size.

"Picture a man whose body is three-quarters pectoral muscle. Then you would have a human fit to fly like a bird."

"So how do the wings of this thing flap?" Marcus asked. "I see no mechanism for the purpose."

"They don't," Timonides admitted. "It will not fly in that way. It will glide and soar, as gulls and eagles do."

"Oh," Marcus said, disappointed. "I believe that will limit its usefulness. I'd had visions of winged soldiers descending upon the enemy like a great swarm of hawks swooping upon helpless chickens."

"Disappointed?" Timonides cried, outraged. "But this is marvelous! For the first time, a man will fly in the air without falling. It is something no one save a god has been able to do before!" He looked about apprehensively, then crossed the room to touch a statue of Hephaestus, god of inventors. "Not," he amended hastily, "that I in any way compare myself to the immortal gods."

"Of course, of course," Marcus said. "I did not mean to denigrate your research. It is indeed wonderful. But spectacle and novelty are the things of peacetime. These times call for warlike applications." Peacetime was something he knew only in theory. War had been his whole life.

Timonides, in the fashion of Greeks, assumed a cunning look. "No military application? My dear General Scipio, doyou consider an aerial view of your enemy's dispositions, his route of march, the approach of his fleet, to be useless? Consider that, with such devices, widely separated elements of your forces can stay in contact and the enemy cannot intercept your messengers."

"Hadn't thought of that," Marcus admitted. "Of course you're right. Fighting is only one aspect of warfare. Intelligence and communication are also crucial. Will your device be capable of such things?"

"Eminently," Timonides assured him. "Once I have a prototype machine built to full scale and have worked out the minutiae of maneuvering, you can have a fleet of them."

"You speak as if this maneuvering business will be simple to perfect."

The Greek shrugged eloquently. "We shall see. But I believe the principles must be quite simple. After all, who would have believed that vessels could travel underwater under human guidance? Yet the philosophers of this school proved that it could be done and you put them to work defending the city, which they did to great effect."

"Quite true. Very well, I shall tell the queen that your project merits full support. Make up your request for funding, supplies and personnel and I shall present it to Her Majesty at the next planning conference."

Timonides went to a table and took a scroll from a chest. "Already done," he said, handing over the scroll with a smile. "Among other things, I shall need some intelligent slaves to test the first full-sized prototypes. At least a dozen. Attrition may be high at first."

"That should be no problem. We have plenty of prisoners taken in the recent fighting. They should be brave enough for the task and they needn't be purchased."

Marcus left the young Greek and continued with his inspection. From all directions he could hear the sounds of new construction. This part of the Museum was his personal project and he was expanding it enormously. He had moved out many of the philosophical schools to temporary housing around Alexandria in order to make room for the expanding School of Archimedes.

Philosophers throughout the Greek world were scandalized. The Archimedeans had been held in lowest esteem, scarcely to be considered philosophers at all, because they did things. They took matter and, often with their own hands, transformed it into articles of utility. This, to orthodox philosophers, lowered them to the status of mere workmen. Philosophers were not supposed to do anything. They were supposed only to think.

Marcus had no patience with such sophistry. Rome had arrived, and Rome had no use for men who did nothing. Romans were not philosophers but they were engineers. Archimedes, the mathematician of Syracuse, was nearly a god in the pantheon of engineers. Marcus had set the despised school to designing war machines, and they had delivered handsomely.

At first he had wanted them to devise improved war machines of the sort Archimedes had invented for the defense of Syracuse against the Carthaginians more than a hundred years before: catapults and ship-killing cranes and so forth. Instead, they had come up with machines he had never dreamed of, yet which had proven invaluable in the war with Hamilcar. They had made boats that could travel beneath the surface of the water and sink enemy ships in the harbor. There was a device of mirrors that could see around corners and over walls. There were chemicals that generated dense smoke or choking fumes and one compound that burned with such furious violence that the inventor insisted it must have some military application, if only it could be harnessed.

And now: a flying machine. It made his head whirl.

He walked down a broad corridor where artisans were still busy painting the walls and inlaying the mosaic floor with scenes from the life of Alexander and the early Ptolemies. He was still uncomfortable in the spectacular parade uniform Selene had had made for him and insisted that he wear, even when not engaged in military duties. The muscle-sculpted cuirass was overlaid with gold and silver leaf, its leatherwork studded with amber and coral. His helmet was embossed on the temples with curling ram's horns, the significance of which he could not guess. He knew he'd be laughed out of Rome should he ever show up there in such a rig, but the Alexandrians lacked all restraint when it came to display.

Thought of Rome darkened his mood. He knew that he had many enemies there. His family protected him, but to some his actions of late smacked of treason. If only he could make them understand that he held the key to Rome's future greatness! Romans were for the most part conservatives and traditionalists. The scions of the great old families like his own wanted only to reestablish Rome as it had been in the time of their ancestors. He knew this to be folly. The world was very different than it had been in the day of Fabius Cunctator.

Besides, he thought, their vaunted traditions and system hadn't done them much good when it came to dealing with Hannibal, had it? This new world would call for new methods and new ideas, as much as that might pain the ancestor worshippers of the Senate.

He went into a huge courtyard where men were erecting, employing or tearing down structures of wood and metal.

Some were catapults, some scaling devices and some objects of no function he could guess at. Once in a while a timber or rope would break under too much stress and there were shouts or laughter or the screams of injured men. Never before had Marcus seen men so frantically employed, yet seeming exhilarated at the task, strenuous, frustrating and dangerous though it might be. These "active philosophers," as someone had dubbed them, were a new breed of men.

He went to an especially strange structure that consisted of a platform between uprights, the platform suspended by a complicated armature of ropes, pulleys, gears and what appeared to be large boxes full of metal bars. "What might this be?" he asked the sweating supervisor.

"We aren't sure yet what to call it," said Chilo. He was the head of the Archimedean school, but he was as dusty and ill kempt as the slaves who assisted with the work. "The new falling-weight catapults got us thinking about the possibilities of falling weights. It seems such a simple thing, something we all tend to take for granted, yet there is a whole unknown field of study here: the dynamics of falling weights."

" 'Dynamics'?" Marcus said.

"It's an old word we've revived. It means the study of how matter moves. Remember when you first came here and I told you that we seek out fundamental principles? Well, this is one of them. Matter does not move about, at random and free from obedience to natural law. There are rules, and we intend to discover them. Watch this."

At Chilo's direction, a dozen slaves crowded onto the platform. A single slave seized a rope and began to haul back on it. There was a clacking of gear wheels and the platform began to rise, a few inches with each pull. At the same time, the boxes of metal bars descended at the same rate.

"You see?" Chilo said. "The strength of a single man is sufficient to raise many men. This can be used to raise soldiers above an enemy rampart, but more important to us is the demonstration of the properties of the counterweight."

He looked around and indicated a man who sat on the edge of a fountain, staring at the machine. "You see that sour-faced fellow observing over there?"

Marcus looked at him. "Isn't that the mathematician who just arrived from Crete? Nikolaus, is it?"

"The very one. He seeks to penetrate to the very essence of this question: the principle of why objects fall as they do."

"Why?" Marcus said. "Self-evident, isn't it? Things have always fallen."

"That's just it. It isn't self-evident at all. We just take it for granted. Why doesn't smoke fall? What holds clouds up? They may not have much mass, but they have some. Some of us think that Archimedes' principle of buoyancy is involved, but Nikolaus thinks that there is a fundamental, universal force involved and he wants to understand it."

"Too deep for me," Marcus admitted. "But I like this machine. It could have all sorts of uses. Can you make one high enough to take people all the way to the top of the lighthouse?" The lighthouse of Pharos, tallest structure in the world, stood only about a mile from them.

"It would require a lot of rope and wood," Chilo said, "but the principle will work no matter how tall the machine might be."

Marcus left him pondering.

An hour later he found Queen Selene in her council chamber. Technically she was not a true queen, merely the consort of the boy-king, her brother Ptolemy. In reality she was unquestioned queen and this position she owed to Marcus. Her immature husband now sulked in a wing of the palace, enduring education from formidable teachers instead of his previous indulgent and scheming eunuchs, courtiers and advisors.

The queen was seated at a delicate table and she looked up as he entered. "Your friends have disappeared," she said in her usual, abrupt fashion. She favored the Stoic philosophers and had little use for court formality or artificial manners.

"Which friends?" he asked, tossing his helmet to a nearby slave. The adroit functionary caught it without damaging the delicate plumes.

"Norbanus, of course. And his four legions." She was studying a map, and a weathered man stood behind her, pointing out something with an ivory wand.

"Rather a large body of men to simply disappear," Marcus answered, knowing where this was leading.

"This is Achates, an officer of the Sinai Scouts," she said, indicating the man behind her. His features were a mixture of Macedonian and Bedouin, not an uncommon combination in that part of the world. He spread the fingers of one hand upon his breast and bowed in the Eastern fashion. "He says that, instead of hugging the coast as expected, they plunged straight off into the desert, more or less in the direction of Judea."

"Are your men following them?" he asked the desert soldier.

"They will shadow the army as closely as possible," Achates said, "but you must understand the special difficulties posed by the great desert. There will be very little food or water in front of that army. There will be none at all left where it passes. My scouts may have to turn back."

"Norbanus continues to amaze me," Marcus said. "I always thought he was a smooth-tongued Forum politician and no soldier at all. But he takes to the life as if he was bornto it. Men follow him willingly, too. The gods have touched him somehow."

"Will his men continue to follow him as they turn to dried meat in that awful desert?" Selene asked.

The question had been sarcastic, but he treated it seriously. "That's to be seen. Soldiers are an odd lot. They'll turn on one officer for assigning an extra watch, and worship another who treats them like dogs. Alexander's men endured unbelievable hardships for him. Norbanus may have that touch with men."

"Or they may all die out there," she said, shrugging. "They certainly made extensive preparations. They denuded a whole district of forage to take along and they must have commandeered every water bag to be had. Still, it is a ruthless desert, and with so many men and animals to feed and water, they may leave their bones out there."

"They'll make it," Marcus asserted. "I won't bore you yet again with a description of my people's excellence, but rest assured that they will make it where they are going. The question js: Where is Norbanus leading them? I wouldn't put it past him to have a go at conquering India."

She smiled wryly. "He'd have to pass through a few nations before reaching there. I think he's headed for Judea, thence up the coast. He's going to Greece. From there it's just a short passage to Italy."

"That's the most likely course," Marcus agreed. "Is there anything in his path likely to stop him?"

"Judea is in a constant state of civil war," she said. "For some time the land has been ruled by the Hasmonean family, but they have split up into factions, so there are usually rival claimants. Religious differences come into it as well."

"Religious differences?" Marcus said. "I thought those were the people with only a single god."

"They differ on how that god should be worshipped," she said. "I cannot claim to understand the details."

"Norbanus will do well there," he murmured. Norbanus, he was certain, would select the weaker party, offer his services and put that claimant on the throne, and Rome would acquire a new client state. It was an old story.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. Don't the Seleucids of Syria claim Judea?"

"They claim a great deal of territory they no longer control. Until a few months ago they were planning a campaign to retake everything east of the Delta, hoping we would be too distracted with Hamilcar's aggression to do anything about it. Now it looks as if they are facing a new assault from Parthia."

"The Parthians sound like an interesting people," Marcus said.

"Too interesting for my liking," she agreed. She turned to Achates. "Leave us now. Come to me immediately when you know something of importance." Then, back to Marcus: "They are a soldierly people, very like you Romans. A very-how shall I put it? A very masculine people. But also very different."

"Different how?" Marcus asked, intrigued. He was always interested in warlike people, especially those Rome was likely to have to face someday.

"You are an agricultural people, tied to the soil. They are pastoralists, or were until a few generations ago. The ruling caste are descended from the Scythians. They are horsemen and archers of great repute. The common rabble are Medes. For foot soldiers they buy slaves or levy young men as tribute from their subjects."

"Slaves as soldiers? That makes no sense. Slaves don't fight. They have nothing worth fighting for."

"Perhaps the Roman system isn't the only one that works," she commented. "The Parthians seem to have done well with theirs. Apparently they take the boys when they are very young and train them hard in special camps. They know no other life and by all accounts are as brave and loyal as other soldiers."

"I find it hard to believe. Besides, we've made little use of cavalry or arehers. We like to get close and settle matters with javelin and sword."

"In those northern forests of yours that is hardly surprising. You'll find the eastern plains a different matter entirely. The horse and the bow are supreme there."

"And how did these centaurs come to be so powerful?" he asked.

"The usual. They took advantage of their enemies' weaknesses. When the successors of Alexander fell out and warred on each other, Parthia attacked whoever was most weakened by the fighting."

Marcus nodded. "We Romans are old hands at that game. Norbanus may have his hands full if he runs afoul of them. People who are both warlike and astute may be difficult to deal with. The Germans and Gauls we've done so much fighting with are just warlike."

"Welcome to civilization," she said.

Marcus gave her a report on the progress made by the Archimedean school, then retrieved his helmet and took his leave, pleading a multitude of duties. He strode out amid a swirl of Roman virtus.

Selene sighed. Dealing with Marcus was like wrestling with one of those absurd machines he was so fond of. He was ever full of plans and schemes, pumping for information, drafting and dispatching his everlasting reports to the Senate, inspecting and correcting and, above all, taking charge.

He had no gift for relaxing, for sitting back and enjoying the fruits of victory. She owed him much, including her life, but she found him exasperating.

The Romans were a disturbing lot and she harbored no illusions about them. They were bent upon reconquering the territory taken from them by Carthage, and they took a decided interest in the rest of the world. She was the descendant of many kings and she knew how power worked in the world. The Romans dreamed of revenge upon Carthage, but that was only the beginning. With Carthage destroyed, they would control all the territory now owned by Carthage. That meant everything west of Egypt, everything west of Italy, to the Pillars of Hercules. They would control half the world, and they were not the sort of people who would be content with half of anything.

She liked Marcus. She was grateful to him and she had conceived a genuine affection for him. Still, she gave occasional thought to having him done away with. Personal affection was one thing, politics another. When he had arrived, she had been an insecure princess, constantly threatened by her brother and his conniving courtiers. Now she was a queen. She owed it to Marcus, but now her first concern was Egypt and Egypt's security, not her Roman companion.

She had some decisions to make soon, but her situation was very precarious. She wanted the support of Rome, needed it, really, for without the Romans as allies she would soon be under siege again by the Carthaginians, or else the desperate Seleucids would have a try at Egypt, or the Parthians might take it into their heads to add the Nile to their expanding empire, as had the Persians in their day. As had Alexander.

It was wonderful being queen of the richest nation in the world. It was also perilous, owning the one thing coveted by all the grasping, rapacious powers on earth.