Celestial Matters (15 page)

“Cripple?” he said. “I wonder how many Spartan generals, how many Archons have made that same claim during the course of this futile war.”

“Futile?” Yellow Hare gripped the hilt of her sword at the insult to Sparta. “Are you accusing the general staff of incompetence?”

Ramonojon ignored this burst of heat from Yellow Hare. He seemed to draw calmness from some well deep within him as he steepled his hands together. “No, I am accusing them of ignoring the history of this war.”

I was about to speak, but Kleio grabbed my throat and stilled my voice.

“Nine hundred years ago,” Ramonojon said, “Alexander took the province of Xin from the Middle Kingdom. In response, the Middlers promptly ended the civil war they’d been fighting for some two centuries and put the first ’An emperor on the throne. He in turn forced the independent Taoist alchemists to become state scientists, and ordered them to provide his armies with weapons to counter the ones Aristotle had made for Alexander’s troops. After Alexander’s death, the Middle Kingdom armies used their new armament to push the League out of Xin back to their earlier border of India.”

Yellow Hare looked at me for confirmation. I nodded, still unable to speak.

“Since that time,” Ramonojon continued, “the Middle Kingdom has captured and in turn lost India and north Persia; the Spartan army has captured and lost Tibet and Xin. At this very moment, the armies of the League and the Kingdom are battling on the outskirts of Xin. Some soldier is fighting on the exact spot where Alexander himself stood nine centuries ago. How has any of this served the Good?”

Kleio released me and I answered. “It spurred us to expand and add Africa, the lands of the Russoi, and half of Atlantea to the League,” I said. “Furthermore, the war forced the Delian League to become a strong, stable government rather than a group of arguing city-states.”

“Was the stability worth the bloodshed?” Ramonojon challenged.

“How can you ask that?” I said. “Remember the history of your own country. When Alexander first reached India, he found a mass of warring kingdoms; each Raza had marshaled his own armies in order to try and to conquer his neighbors. Thanks to the League, India is united. A mere handful of your people die in battle each year compared to the vast numbers that used to fall in the internecine warfare.”

Yellow Hare broke in at that moment. “And more of our warriors have died defending the League against Indian rebellions than India has lost in the war against the Middlers.”

At that moment, I decided to change the line of discussion. Yellow Hare is one of the purest warriors ever born on Earth, but even she was not free of the Spartan grudge against the Indians for the ancient cow rebellion and the more recent Buddhist pacifist rebellion.

“Is there anything more?” I asked.

“What about the corruption of science and philosophy?” Ramonojon said.

I blushed out of shame. How could I deny that the war had been responsible for that? Yellow Hare too fell silent; I could feel her golden eyes upon me waiting for an answer, but I had none to give.

“Well?” Ramonojon asked.

“The war did not do that,” I said. “Alexander and Aristotle did. Had Alexander conquered all of the Middle Kingdom in his lifetime and ended the war there and then, the Akademe would not have been turned back into the school it was under Plato.”

Ramonojon shook his head sadly, stood up, and walked uncaring past Captain Yellow Hare.

He opened the door, but turned to face me just before leaving. “Remember Sokrates’ final words in the
Apology,
” he said; then he walked out.

I lapsed into silence, unsure of what to think about that strange discussion. After a few minutes, Yellow Hare cleared her throat and said, “What is the
Apology?
”

“Plato’s final dialogue, published posthumously.” She still looked interested, which surprised me. “I assume you have not read Plato,” I said.

She shook her head; hardly surprising—few Akademics ever read him, let alone Spartans.

I felt a sudden wave of tiredness, so I walked over and lay down on my couch, staring up at the steel beams that reinforced my office’s granite ceiling. “
The Apology
is a fictional trial, in which Sokrates is charged with being hopelessly old-fashioned and unable to appreciate modern philosophy; his accusers are those Plato called the ‘younger generation of philosophers,’ in other words, scientists.

“The trial as presented could hardly be called a model of justice; the jury plugs their ears or pounds the floor whenever Sokrates speaks. His questions are left unanswered, the judge refuses to let him call witnesses, and when the guilty verdict and sentence of death or exile is delivered, they blindfold the statue of Dike.

“At the end Sokrates drinks hemlock, preferring to die rather than live in the world the scientists are making. But there’s no truth in it. Sokrates died of old age, respected throughout Athens. The whole work is just an embittered polemic, Plato showing his anger at Aristotle and the scientists for taking control of the Akademe and surpassing him in fame.”

She nodded slowly. “And Sokrates’ last words?”

I smiled and ate a fig. “His real last words were, ‘I owe a chicken to Asklepios.’ Apparently, he’d forgotten a sacrifice to the god of healing. In the
Apology
he said, ‘I cannot live in a world where philosophers have forgotten how to doubt.’”

She cocked an eyebrow. “A strange thing to say.”

“Sokrates believed doubt was vital to philosophy. Plato believed that Aristotle’s confidence in science was a betrayal of this ideal. Plato never understood that the scientific method is fundamentally based on doubt.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That was very useful.”

I took a sip of wine. “I wish I knew why Ramonojon mentioned it.”

“It was a warning,” Captain Yellow Hare said.

“If he’s a spy, why would he warn me?”

“Even spies have friends,” she said, and she looked out through the doorway to make sure he was gone.

I wish I could say that I had heard Ramonojon’s words and understood what he was trying to tell me, but I did not. All I could see was the work of Sunthief and the simple understanding of my duty. For my ignorance and my hubris I ask no pardon, for I do not deserve one.

*   *   *

Mihradarius’s demonstration was held a few days later. Kleon flew us to a point over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and by judicious manipulation of the lift and ballast balls kept us stationary above the ocean. Both the sun and moon were on the other side of the earth, but the outer planets and the fixed stars looked down in judgment upon our works.

My Persian subordinate had organized a huge dinner party in the commissary before he showed off his net. Pigs and sheep were roasted. Chickens were baked in herb wrappings. Fresh fruits and fried vegetables filled dozens of serving bowls. There was a table laden with cheeses from all over the League accompanied by dozens of loaves of barley, wheat, and maize bread. To keep our heads clear the slaves served only fresh fruit juices and very dilute wines.

Mihradarius presented himself in his scholar’s robes and even combed his hair in the Athenian style. He went through the crowd of junior scientists, thanking them for their assistance and praising them for guaranteeing the success of our venture. I would never have had the hubris to celebrate before a test, but Mihradarius had never lacked for confidence.

Kleon walked up and down the tables accompanied by a muscular female slave who was carrying a large silver tray. When he saw a bread or vegetable or fruit he liked, Kleon would grab it and put it on the platter. After a quarter hour of this, the tray was laden with enough food for three men. Satisfied, my chief navigator left for his tower to feast in private and prepare for his part of the test.

Ramonojon ate and drank nothing, keeping himself aloof in order to watch Mihradarius’s performance.

I ate very little, trying to settle my stomach with bread and sheep’s milk cheese. It was concern about the outcome of the test, and the decisions I would have to make if it failed, that suppressed my appetite.

After we had dined, Mihradarius directed us sternward over the gaming field, through the hill country above the laboratories to the groove that held the net trolley. It had been two years since Ramonojon’s dynamicists had carved the trench in the body of
Chandra’s Tear.
They had cut it with water and polished it with fire and air until it was as smooth as celestial matter that had been touched by the hands of man could be. Then they laid aluminum tracks in the moonstone gully and affixed the copper trolley to them by its air-silver wheels. And there it had sat, waiting with celestial patience for us mere humans to use it.

Mihradarius directed us to the starboard edge of the groove, where the ten-foot-long, spherical trolley lay waiting. Glimmering green strands of Aphroditean matter trailed away from the wheeled ball to the box that held the model net. The box in turn was connected by a thick tube to a specially designed evac cannon; the net itself had been threaded through the firing tube and packed into the belly of the gun, waiting to be shot out.

Just off
Chandra’s Tear
’s starboard side one of Kleon’s junior navigators sat on a moon sled, a ten-foot-across disk of gleaming Selenean matter; its round edge was studded with the fire-gold knobs of retracted impellers, which could be extended one by one by pulling on guide wires. Mounted on the sled behind the pilot’s seat was a six-foot cubic fire box that held the simulated sun fragment.

Mihradarius walked over to the evac cannon and waved us to silence. “Commander Aias, Commander Aeson, and you, my colleagues. Let me say at the outset that I did not plan on doing this test. Some of you know why it was necessary; the rest do not need to know. But though I was initially reluctant, over the last three weeks I have become enthusiastic. You are about to witness the actual usage of the device we have all been working for. This will be a foretaste of what we will accomplish when we reach the sun and steal the true fire of ’Elios.”

He looked over at me. “May I proceed, Commander?”

My voice carried clearly through the crisp night air. “Proceed, Senior Ouranologist.”

Mihradarius picked up a torch and waved it toward the moon sled. The navigator raised his hand in an acknowledging salute and pulled on a handful of his control wires. Six impellers came out from the starboard edge of the disk. The air on that side rarefied, brightening the silver glow of the sled. There was a momentary pause, and then the moon sled flew away from us, skipping over the rarefied air like a silver coin across a choppy lake.

We watched it as it receded from us, bouncing through the sky; it did not stop until it had flown two miles from the ship.

One minute later, a red-and-gold orb of flame emerged from atop the disk, flying skyward in a graceful arc, and expanding as it rose. The fireball momentarily washed the sled’s silver light into the darkness of a new moon. The burning globe passed away from the moon sled and over us. Mihradarius waited until the now hundred-yard-wide ball was half a mile above the stern of
Chandra’s Tear,
granting us a taste of daylight. Then he pulled the lever that fired the cannon. The sun net whooshed out spinning two parallel lines of gleaming filament into the sky.

The strands of brown, green, and silver celestial matter spiraled upward through space until they flanked the blob of simulated sun fire. Then they twisted together, braiding themselves around the sphere. The orb continued to fly, but its motion was now chained in an orbit around
Chandra’s Tear.
The trolley jerked to port, pulled along its track by the false fireball.

The pseudo sun fragment circled once, twice, thrice around us taking a minute for each orbit. I held my breath, waiting for the keening scream of injury to rise up from my ship, but there was nary a murmur, and not even the slightest tremble in our flight.

Mihradarius signaled the navigation tower to start us moving. Kleon pulled in the ballast and lift balls and deployed the small tertiary forward impellers. Freed from this midair anchoring, my ship sailed gracefully toward Atlantea. We flew smoothly, almost as if we were not dragging around a ball of fire that had its own ideas about the natural path it should follow.

Applause rang out from the scientists and soldiers; libations were poured to Athena and Aristotle. I myself picked up a bowl of wine and carried it to Mihradarius. “Well done, Senior Ouranologist,” I said, giving him wine to drink with my own hands. “You may proceed with sun net Delta.”

“Thank you, Commander,” he said, and drained the bowl.

I walked over to Ramonojon and raised an eyebrow. “Well?” I said.

“It’s Maia,” he murmured. “It’s all illusion.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I mean what you have just seen is impossible.”

He turned from me and plunged into the crowd.

The sun net was reeled in after an hour; the celestial matter was extracted from the fireball and the terrestrial fire dispersed into the sky. The dangerous work was done, and the party became even more festive, with the slaves now handing around bowls of undiluted wine.

Four hours of celebration later we were leisurely chasing nighttime across North Atlantea. Aeson, Yellow Hare, and I had drifted away from the crowd and were camping on the sternward slope of the hill. Aeson and I were sitting and drinking. Yellow Hare stood guard, smoking her long pipe.

Not a word passed between us until a spot of silver appeared in the sky, flying toward us from the north. “Get down!” my bodyguard yelled, and I ducked behind her.

Yellow Hare and Aeson drew their throwers and waited. They relaxed a few minutes later, when the spot resolved itself into a moon sled. It descended, skimming twenty feet above the surface of my ship, flying directly toward the hill. As it approached I saw that the gleaming disk was manned not only by a celestial navigator but by a dozen soldiers as well. Crowded flying conditions to say the least.

The moon sled landed a few feet from us. The curtain of guards parted, and the navigator stepped off and came toward us carrying a scroll sealed in a bronze tube. She was dressed in a dark red, open-shouldered tunic with iron disks on her shoulders, the uniform of the Archons’ personal messengers.