The Seven Hills (30 page)

Flaccus got up. "Where are we going?"

Minutes later they were at the queen's apartments. Se
lene, 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 accom
panied 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 al
lure. 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 com
ing 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 por
tended. 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," Se
lene 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 suffi
ciently, 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 harness
ing 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 pre
dicts, 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 cre
ates 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 lever
age, 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 philoso
pher, 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.