Hannibal's Children (32 page)

"The rowers probably set the fire before they jumped overboard," said Lentulus Niger. "The rest is just mummery to gull us."

"Do you think the Carthaginians consider us worth an elaborate charade?" Norbanus demanded. They were speaking in Latin. "The thing works, and it's just one of their weapons."

Niger made a rude and contemptuous noise. "So what? When the time comes, we'll just attack before dawn." The rest laughed.

"Or on a cloudy day!" said another.

Zarabel frowned. She did not understand their words, but their tone was clear enough. These Romans were hard to impress.

“This situation must not be allowed to continue,” said Bacchylides of Samos, the mathematician. "The Museum's reputation has been glorious for more than two centuries, since the time of Ptolemy Soter, as a seat of purest learning, of philosophy unsullied by the work of mere mechanics. This expansion of the Archimedean School will make us the laughingstock of the Greek world. Philosophers at Athens and Rhodes, at Pergamum and even Syracuse will say that the Museum has become a
mete factory!"

"I agree," said Polycrates, chief of the academic philosophers of the Museum. "But do try to restrain your agitation. As philosophers, calm, dispassion and detachment are enjoined upon us no less than avoidance of the physical manipulation of matter."

"I apologize to you all," Bacchylides said. "It is just that I perceive this matter as an assault upon the Museum no less destructive than the Carthaginian attack soon to be borne by our beloved Alexandria."

"Quite understandable," said Doson, head of the school of physicians and priest of Asklepios. "This disruption of our accustomed serenity can cause overproduction of bile even in the system of a philosopher. But is their physical research truly so scandalous? Hippocrates had little objection to his students actually touching, even manipulating his patients."

The rest brooded. In truth, some of them secretly thought that physicians, concerned as they were with the everyday world and the problems of the body, should not be classified as true philosophers at all. At least, since the days of Plato, no physician who valued his reputation actually laid hands on a patient. He simply directed his slaves to do all the necessary manipulation.

"They may be somewhat disreputable," said Memnon, the astronomer, "but that school has devised many wonderful instruments for measuring and calculating the angles of the heavenly bodies, and for timing their movements. There is a young man at work there now who believes that an arrangement of lenses and mirrors can actually magnify the bodies of the night sky and make their details ponderable."

"A good pair of human eyes has always been enough for astronomers before now," Bacchylides sniffed.

"And as a result we have learned very little that is new in the last five hundred years," Memnon pointed out.

"The duty of a philosopher is not to discover new things," Polycrates said. "It is to ponder upon that which is known, or thought to be known. We should leave exploration to ship's captains and caravan masters."

The heads of the various schools sat at the high table of the great dining hall. It was midday and they could speak freely because the Archimedeans hardly ever came here at such an hour, preferring to work through their meal.

"Artificers," said an aged Sophist, "have their place. But is their place here, in our beloved Museum? Rather, they should be contractors like other artisans. It is absurd to class them among true philosophers just because they sprang from the School of Archimedes. That man would never have acknowledged them. He only undertook to construct his engines because his city was at war and needed the defenses. He regarded himself as a pure mathematician. Should bloody-fingered surgeons be classed as physicians just because they follow the healer's calling?"

From one end of the table came a nasty laugh. All of them winced. Archelaus the Cynic was going to speak.

"The Archimedeans are going to keep expanding and using more of the Museum's resources and there isn't a thing you can do about it. You know why?" He didn't bother to wait for an answer. "Because they're backed by Queen Selene. She's taken a fancy to that Roman and he wants these grotesque machines. Does anybody here want to get afoul of the queen?"

There was an uncomfortable silence before Eunus the Librarian, the overseer of the Museum and Library, answered. "Queen Selene, of course, is our most generous and revered patroness. None here, I am sure, would ever speak a word of disapproval concerning her."

"By no means," said Bacchylides, all too aware that the Museum and Library existed at the sufferance of the Ptolemies. The Library was in effect a huge book factory that earned great revenues for the government, but the Museum proper, where teachers and philosophers lived at public expense and produced little of monetary value, was a luxury the court might dispense with at any time. The king's court had little interest in it and the scholars depended heavily upon the queen's beneficence, as they had in the past upon many another of her queenly ancestors.

"But might we not speak with the king?" Bacchylides said.

"You mean the king's ministers surely?" said Archelaus, reminding them all of the boy-king's incompetence, a thing no one dared voice. The Cynics were tolerated, although they were by far the most disreputable school. Their founder, Diogenes, had been a philosopher of undoubted merit, as unpleasant a man as he was. The Cynics' devotion to truth and virtue could not be denied, although their sneering way of admonishing their fellow men and their unkempt appearance made them hated. They were tolerated at the Museum in the same manner fools and freaks were tolerated at royal courts.

"Perhaps we might speak with the Prime Minister and the First Eunuch," said the Librarian. "They are not—how shall I say?—not inclined to scholarly pursuits. Yet they cannot be indifferent to the prestige of the Museum, one of the glories of Alexandria. Perhaps, once informed of this outrage, they might gently dissuade the queen from this unseemly course of action."

At these words Archelaus the Cynic laughed out loud.

Alexandros the Prime Minister sat in council with the First Eunuch and Parmenion, the marshal of the royal armies. These three men or rather, as Parmenion thought of them, these two and one-half men, were the de facto rulers of Egypt. The king was a boy and the queen could not lead in time of war, so power fell naturally to these three. The Prime Minister headed the government bureaucracy, the eunuch represented the court, and the marshal controlled military power. The three sat at a long table in a spacious room occupying a wing of the palace devoted to government work. Like many such rooms, this one had three walls, the fourth side being open to a broad terrace and shaded by a portico without. Its curtains were open to admit a cooling breeze from the sea.

Alexandras was a small, fine-featured man who had worked himself up from the lowly post of Grain Office scribe to chief bureaucrat through superior ability and boundless ambition. Vain and arrogant though he was, he had the self-made man's inevitable insecurity. He knew that, without noble birth and the protection of a pedigreed family, he could be cast down with far greater swiftness than he rose, and none would stir a finger to aid him.

"The armies are assembled at the Libyan border now," Parmenion said. He shoved a handful of tablets and scrolls down the table toward the other two. "Here are the latest reports, just in today by fast messenger. I will go to join them tomorrow or the day after."

Parmenion was not an Alexandrian like the other two. He was a Macedonian who had served in the royal forces since his days as a junior officer. Since the time of Alexander, young Macedonians had gone out to serve in the armies of the Successors throughout the Greek-speaking world. Like the Spartans they had gone from being a nation of conquerors to being a nation of mercenaries. He was wealthy and had estates and titles granted to him by the king and queen's father, but the years and luxury had not softened him. He was hard-featured, scarred and burned dark by the desert sun.

"You have made sufficient provision against incursions from Syria?" asked Eutychus in his piping voice.

"Two myriads under that Spartan bastard Ariston. No fat Syrian army is going to get past him. The Parthians almost have Antiochus eliminated anyway. One more push and they're in control of most of the old Persian Empire. They are going to be our big problem, and soon. We must deal with Hamilcar, and swiftly, so I can take my forces back east to face them."

"Are they really so formidable?" the eunuch wanted to know.

"They're real men," Parmenion told him. "They fight on horseback, so they move far faster than any land army. If they decide on an attack and manage to keep quiet about it, they can be on top of us before we have any warning. They use bows from horseback. It could be hard on any foot-army caught in the open. You can't come to grips with them and you just have to endure their arrows. It can break a man's spirit."

"Let them take care of Antiochus first," Alexandras said. "They will be occupied for some time gorging on the Syrian carcass. While they are doing that, we will treat with them. Primitive barbarians are always amenable to the corruptions of wealth. We will send rich presents to their leaders. The process of softening is easily begun and it spreads quickly."

"That will be the best course," Parmenion admitted. "But they might also decide that the easiest way to secure more of that gold is to come to Egypt and take it by force. I want to build a chain of new forts in the Sinai, and subsequent lines of them all the way back to the Delta: defense in depth. You can't take fortified positions with mounted, missile-armed troops. For that, you need infantry and engineers. It will blunt the force of a Parthian incursion and rob them of their most formidable weapon."

"Very sagacious," said the eunuch. "And the idea has economy. Forts cost little, and we will have at our disposal the forces already raised for the coming war with Carthage."

A secretary entered the room and told them that a delegation from the Museum awaited without.

"What do they want?" Alexandras wanted to know.

"They told me they have already spoken to the First Eunuch and he has permitted them an audience."

"I spoke with Eunus the Librarian yesterday," Eutychus informed them. "They are upset by certain activities in the Museum."

"I'll be on my way, then," Parmenion said. "I have preparations to make."

"And I as well," said Alexandras. "The Library and Museum are court business, not state."

"I believe their complaints may be of some interest to us all," the eunuch said. Something in his tone caused the others to settle back down.

Three men in the robes of philosophers came onto the terrace, passed beneath the portico and entered the room. Two were men of great dignity and fine demeanor, their clothing simple but immaculate, their hair and beards dressed with care. The third shambled barefooted like a rustic come to town. His robe and tunic were old, shabby and stained, his beard and hair a frightful tangle.

"Allow me to introduce Eunus the Librarian," said Eutychus. The eldest of the three bowed very slightly and very solemnly. "And Polycrates the academic." The other fine-looking man bowed likewise. "And this is Archelaus the Cynic." The unkempt one gave them a crooked-toothed grin and nodded insolently.

"Good day, gentlemen," said Alexandras. "How may we be of service to the distinguished scholars of our revered institution?" His tone was dry but not sarcastic.

"My lords," Eunus began. "Recently, certain developments have taken place that have upset the tranquil life of the Museum. Under the urging of an interloping Roman visitor, Marcus Cornelius Scipio, the Archimedean School has expanded its activities enormously and given our Museum the aspect of an arsenal. We find this most disconcerting."

"The visitor to whom you refer is not a Roman," Alexandras commented. "He represents the nation of Noricum."

"Of course, Excellency," Eunus said. "The modalities of diplomacy sometimes escape us. Let it suffice that he calls himself a Roman and claims to represent that extinct nation."

"I have heard something of these activities," Alexandras said. "I believe they demonstrated a boat capable of navigating under water. While I can imagine no use for such a thing, surely these dabblings in mechanical curiosities are harmless?"

"Hardly harmless, my lords," said Polycrates, all but quivering with suppressed, unphilosophical wrath. "They ignore the basic strictures laid down by divine Plato more than two and one-half centuries, ago: Philosophers are not to sully their hands by manipulation of physical matter, but are to devote themselves only to pure thought."

"I believe I remember something of this," said Alexandras, his tone growing even more arid. "He hoped that, by doing no useful work, philosophers would be classed as aristocrats. His rival, Socrates, was not ashamed to make his living as a stonecutter, I believe."

"Your Excellency is pleased to make light of the issue," said Eunus. "Yet it is—"

"The queen's behind it," Archelaus interrupted rudely.

"I beg your pardon," Alexandras said. The eunuch kept a bland expression and twiddled his fingers. Parmenion did not hide his boredom.

Eunus winced. He had wished to approach this matter obliquely. He had definitely not wanted the crude Cynic along on this mission. He had come anyway and the others had been able to find no way to stop him.

"The queen has taken a fancy to the Roman and he's got her to put her support behind the Archimedeans," Archelaus told them. "These two will take all day getting around to telling you and I think your time is more valuable than that."

"For that I thank you," said Alexandras. "And just why do you believe the queen's little hobbies, of which we have all been long aware, should be of any concern to us?"

"They devise great, outlandish new weapons of war," said Polycrates. "All day long the Museum rings with the noise of hammers and the terrible clatter as they test these machines."