The Seven Hills (6 page)

He remembered reports he had heard that a Roman delegation had already visited that city.
They've been sending re
ports to the Senate,
he thought.
This Roman already knows all he needs to know about Alexandria.
The scope of Roman prepara
tions was something far beyond his experience.
They have
just retaken Italy and already they are laying plans for world conquest. They will know exactly what they are doing and whom they
will face when they start. Even Alexander made no such plans. He
just bulled his way through with luck, charisma and a confidence
in his enemy's weakness.

"Perhaps you can answer something for me," Zeno said hesitantly.

"You have but to ask," Gabinius told him.

"The world knows that you Romans are in the process of
taking Sicily."

"We are taking it
back,"
Gabinius corrected. "It was ours
after the first war with Carthage, when we fought Hannibal's father there."

"To be sure. Yet, travelers hear many things and there is a story on the ships and in the taverns all around the sea that a Roman force, a rather large one, accompanied the Shofet Hamilcar's expedition to Egypt. Yet now you are at war with Carthage. What has happened to that Roman army, last heard.of some distance down the Nile from Alexandria?"

Gabinius leaned back in his chair and seemed to consider
this for a while. He gestured with his cup and a slave refilled
it, then the others.

"Ah. This very question is getting to be something of a
sore point in the Senate lately. You see, our two consuls for
the year are Titus Norbanus and Quintus Scipio; one old family, one new. Each has a son. If you would understand the new Rome that has arisen here, then I must tell you about these two remarkable young men."

And so he began to speak to them of the younger Marcus
Scipio, and of the younger Titus Norbanus.

The place was called Sinai. it might as well
have been the realm of Dis or Pluto. To the Romans, ac
customed 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 Carthagin
ian 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 with
out ships screening us and providing us with supplies as we go up the coast"—he made a gesture of futility—"it's court
ing 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 subordi
nates 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 wag
ons 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 resem
bled 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 some
thing 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 our
bodies 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 with
out 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, do
you consider an aerial view of your enemy's dispositions, his route of march, the approach of his fleet, to be useless? Con
sider 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. Intelli
gence 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 sim
ple to perfect."

The Greek shrugged eloquently. "We shall see. But I be
lieve 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 work
men. 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. Ro
mans 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.