by Eric Flint
What terrified him was the light. It wasn’t coming from fires. Instead they had little bits of the sun locked into the ceiling of the room they were in. They led him through a door, then down a hallway to where a set of doors opened, sliding out of the way, and leading into a small room. One of the guards—he was almost sure they were guards—preceded him into the small room and the other gestured for him to enter.
Terror had given way to a curious fatalism, and Atum shrugged and went in. The guard pressed a finger against a circle with a character of some sort on it. As the dot was pressed, it lit up, and a moment later the doors closed. A moment after that, the room moved. Up, he thought. Atum stood still for just a moment, then he started to smile. He understood. He had been lifted up on a platform before. It had been an open platform, not a room like this one, but it had moved, powered by a slave in a wheel. It had been used to lift heavy loads gradually to higher places, so that they might be used in making walls. Somewhere on this massive ship, Atum was now convinced, was a slave in a wheel providing the motive power for the moving box. He would have one installed in his town house.
He looked where the guard was looking and saw symbols like the ones in the dots lighting up in order. Again, his quick mind figured it out. There was a light moving along behind the strip of symbols, lighting each in turn as they moved. He could almost see the gears. He was familiar with gears. They were all the rage in Athens for astrological calculating devices.
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That lasted till the doors opened and he was led into a room with leather-covered seats, more like thrones than the sort of stool Atum was used to. There he was introduced to an older woman named Marie Easley and a younger woman called Eleanor Kinney. The older woman spoke something approaching passable Macedonian Greek. She didn’t speak it well, and there was much too much of the Athenian about it to be proper Macedonian, but it was closer to understandable than the pidgin Greek he had heard up to now.
“Welcome. I am Marie Easley, a scholar of this time,” the woman said.
“Explain, please. You study the present? Recent history, perhaps?”
“We are not of this time. We on this ship come from far in the future. We have learned a great deal and I am a historian, one who studies Ptolemaic Egypt.”
Atum didn’t believe her, but he couldn’t say that. For now at least, he was in these people’s power. So he leaned back in the seat and considered her words as though they were true. Ptolemaic Egypt? That would mean that Ptolemy would become pharaoh. Alexander’s empire would collapse. Or would it? Would Ptolemy become the next king of Alexander’s empire and move the capital to Egypt? That seemed possible, certainly. Even though Ptolemy protested his loyalty to Alexander’s heirs in every second sentence. “What is Ptolemaic Egypt to be, then?”
The scholar pursed her lips and tilted her head slightly. “We aren’t sure. The truth is, we don’t know how it happened that we came here, or really even what happened. We have no record of a ship such as this arriving off Alexandria at this time. I assure you, there would be such a record. And there are causes and effects, so we must assume that history will take a different path in this time than it did in our history. If that is not too confusing.”
“I think I understand, at least in a general way,” Atum said. “What happened with Ptolemy and the generals in your history is not necessarily what will happen now.”
“Yes, that’s the conclusion we have at least tentatively drawn. But what brings you to brave this ship? You said something about trade?”
“Yes. I assume you will need food and provisions. If you have goods or money, we can deal. I am a wheat merchant, and I buy from the farmers up the Nile and sell to the construction crews. I can arrange for grain to feed your rowers.”
“Rowers?” she asked.
Atum shrugged. “You must have something to propel your ship.” Seeing the confusion on her face, he rephrased the question. “Something to push the ship through the water.”
She turned to the young woman and spoke. The young woman wore her hair short, but not shaved with a wig as was sometimes done by women in Egypt. She had a heart-shaped face, with brown eyes and hair. The hair had blond streaks, bleached by the sun, Atum thought. The woman was attractive and the style made her more exotic than her features did. The woman spoke back to the scholar, and they turned to a young man who seemed to be the chief of their guards. He took a device from his pocket and touched it, held it to the side of his head with one end next to his ear and the other near his mouth, then spoke and apparently listened. He pocketed the device and spoke to the women, all while Atum looked on and tried to understand what was going on.
Atum didn’t speak the language they were speaking, but he didn’t need to. He was good at reading people. It was a large part of his business. It was clear that the women were in charge in this room, but that the young Gaul was high in their trust. He had been asked about something and Atum, after his earlier experiences, guessed that the device he had used was some sort of a speaking horn. And he wanted one. As he watched, it seemed to Atum that they at least believed their tale of traveling through time. Either that, or they were much better liars than they seemed to be.
“We needed to speak to the captain of the ship,” the scholar explained. “The ship uses burning naphtha—or any liquid that will burn, for that matter—to push it through the water and to power many of our devices.” She pointed at the lights in the ceiling and then at the slates, like the one the young Gaul had presumably used to talk to the captain. “But we do need grain and other foodstuffs. Sheep, goats, pigs, cattle, fruits and vegetables.”
Then they got down to business. For the next hour, Atum dealt with Eleanor Kinney through the scholar. He guessed that Kinney was a skilled negotiator, and they had a series of goods brought in. Including account books, and a box of writing implements that the scribes in the royal palace would be lining up to buy at almost any price. Eleanor warned him that they would run out of ink eventually. It wouldn’t be soon, months of use, perhaps as long as a year. That would lower the price, but the “pens” would still be valuable, as would the very fine papyrus they used, neatly formed and lined.
Ten minutes in, Atum knew he wasn’t the only person in the room who could read people. The fact that the women were doing the dealing didn’t upset Atum. He was half-Egyptian after all. But it did make it clear these people weren’t Greeks. They appeared to be of every tribe imaginable—and some he had never imagined—but were all of one culture. Or seemed to be, at least.
He bought a backpack. What a useful device that! How odd that people who could come up with such devices would accept barbarian Gauls into their ranks! He sold, for a backpack full of pens and paper and five thousand “dollars” in ship’s credit, a ship’s boat full of wheat. This agreement was a bit of an experiment, both on his part and on theirs. It would take him a little time to find the resale price on the pens and paper, and they would need to examine the grain. It would give everyone a chance to judge the value of what they were buying and selling.
They showed him around the ship. He had a meal in one of the “restaurants,” and he looked around the shops. Then they reached the “casino.”
Atum didn’t lose his head. He was careful. But he did, gradually, gambling till dawn, lose three thousand of the five thousand “dollars” credit. He would win some, lose some, win some more. It was great fun and very exciting, if a little overwhelming with the noise and the lights. He realized that the wrong person could lose a kingdom in a night in this room. Or, if the gods were smiling, win one.
Alexandria
September 19
The next morning, as the sun came up, an exhausted Atum boarded the boat he had promised to fill with grain. It was a small ship almost the size of his family’s galley, and it escorted Atum’s galley back to the docks. The small ship had no rowers, but it was obvious to Atum that it could have made circles around his galley if it had chosen to. Atum was on the small ship and found i
t comfortable, if noisy.
“How is it powered?” he asked in Greek and got no response other than pointing at ears and shaking heads. He pulled out the tablet and pencil he had bought at one of the great ship’s “gift shops” and wrote in Greek.
He passed the tablet over to the young man in the white clothing and the peculiar hat that was called a “uniform,” and watched as that man pulled out one of the magical “electronic devices” they had and tapped it with his fingers. Atum was almost getting used to that, and this Dag seemed a nice enough lad for a barbarian Gaul.
Dag pushed a final button and the device spoke. It was Greek of the horribly accented, almost unintelligible version Atum had heard on the great ship. It said almost what he had written. Almost, but not quite. He corrected the missed word and Dag tapped some more. Again that voice from the magic slate, and this time Atum nodded. He was getting used to the horrible Greek by now, or at least starting the process of getting used to it. Now the translation to that strange speech, and Dag tapped again. By this point Atum had almost forgotten the question, but the funny Greek answer brought it back.
Atum had learned quite a lot in the last ten hours. He was shocked and amazed by what he had seen, but he had tentative agreements with the travelers from the future who occupied the great ship. It was named Queen of the Sea and it could well rule all the world’s oceans. And its coasts as well. Or it would have been able to if it were a warship, but it wasn’t. It was filled with people who had boarded it for a pleasure cruise, not soldiers.
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The slave, Abd Manaf, looked out at the big white ship sitting just outside of Alexandria harbor with his mouth agape. The overseer, also a slave but of higher status was gaping too, as were most of the rest of the slaves in the work crew. Partly it was just the size of the enormous ship, but partly it was the smaller ship that was moving toward shore with no oars or sails, as though being pulled along by an invisible team of horses. One of the brighter slaves got back to work and that got the attention of the overseer, who started shouting at the men in the work crew.
Abd Manaf wasn’t the smartest slave in the crew. He was still staring when the overseer’s eyes fell on him. The overseer hollered and laid into Abd Manaf with a reed whip. The whip, a piece of wood thin enough to bend in the swing and to leave welts or cuts, snapped against Abd Manaf’s back, leaving a welt. Not the first. There were a welter of them on Abd Manaf’s back. And the backs of the other slaves, if not as crisscrossed by red as Abd Manaf’s, were still marked. The cries of pain and the smell of blood added to the miasma of the port, along with the smell of dead fish and salt water.
Abd Manaf’s back wasn’t the only one laid open that morning. But, in spite of the whippings, there were a lot of people watching the strange boat approach the docks.
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On reaching the docks, Atum climbed out and waved away the guards that the arrival of the magical boat had brought out. He spoke to Ahmose, one of his foremen, giving orders that the boat be filled with sacks of unthreshed wheat till the Gaul said it was enough. Then he went home to bed.
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Dag watched as the Egyptian workers carried the bags of wheat to the boat. It was a lifeboat that had been modified to act as a tender for the Queen. It was limited in that it was restricted to fuel oil, not having the flex fuel engines that the Queen and the Reliance had.
Dag watched as naked men carried sacks of grain on their backs, up to the pier where the lifeboat was tied up. He was uncomfortable at first with the nudity, but that changed quickly. What bothered him more was the sacks on their backs. They seemed to weigh as much as the men themselves did. Wheelbarrows and dollies occurred to Dag as items of trade. He would have to talk to Romi about that. Still another first priority to add to the list.
For most of the day, they loaded grain onto the boat, and by the end of the day the ship had probably broken even on food. That is, they had added enough to equal what the passengers and crew had eaten. He was approached by people speaking to him in Egyptian and Greek and who knew what, but he couldn’t understand more than a word or two, which he had to make clear with gestures. Luckily, Atum’s guards were doing a pretty good job of keeping the riffraff back. Atum had given them instructions before he left.
By this time, Dag was pretty sure the men doing the loading were slaves and a part of him was ready to pull the pistol and make a point. At the same time, Dag had seen poverty before, and seen employment that was as close to outright slavery as made very little difference. Besides, this was likely the ship’s only source of enough food to keep the passengers and crew going. He couldn’t afford to do anything that might jeopardize that.
Around noon, two sources of lunch arrived. Another ship’s boat brought sandwiches, and some women brought up a cart with bowls, soup, and flat bread. The soup was vegetable and pretty good, but the bread was tough and grainy. Dag really preferred the ship’s bread to the Egyptian flat bread. He gave the chief guard a roast beef on rye with mustard and pickles. The guard tried it, and apparently found it good. The guard spoke Greek and yet another language that Dag didn’t know, but it sounded sort of like what you heard among the Arabs on the ship, or what you might hear in a synagogue. The guy was wearing a long dress, and he had a sword at his side. He also had purple tassels on his “dress.” Dag didn’t know what to call the thing, and didn’t think it represented anything effeminate, but it sure looked like a dress to him. He would learn later that the guard captain, Josephus, was a Jew, though a somewhat Hellenized one.
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Atum got back to the pier about the time they were finished loading, and he had brought his wife, Lateef, who was a black-haired lady of middle years with a long nose and sharp features. She had a pleasant smile, though, and a friendly manner, and Dag liked her. Also with them were two Greeks, one called Crates of Olynthus, the other Dinocrates of Rhodes.
Dag got the impression that they were important people. Then he made the connection. He remembered from Wikipedia that Dinocrates of Rhodes was the one whom Alexander the Great appointed to design Alexandria. It piqued Dag’s interest in the man. Dag was interested in how systems interacted. That was what had led him to his job as the Environmental Compliance Officer on the Queen. In spite of the job title sounding like a rulebook pain in the ass, it was actually about making sure that the ship worked and that it didn’t screw up the ocean it was traveling through. There was a lot of practical engineering, knowing where you could cut corners and where you couldn’t. Not that Dag was all that concerned about the environmental impact of a single cruise ship. Even if they dumped oil over the side by the ton, it wouldn’t have any significant effect on the oceans of the world. It was back in the future, where there were hundreds of cruise ships and thousands of cargo ships, that it had a cumulative effect. But the Greek guys were talking and Dag didn’t have a clue what they were saying. He looked to Atum.
Atum pulled out his pad and wrote. Dag pulled his comp-pad from its case and typed in the characters. What he got back was: they want to go to the ship.
“Right,” Dag said. “Let me call it in.” He used the phone function on his pad and called the ship. He got Adrian Scott. “Hey, Scotty. We have Dinocrates of Rhodes here and he wants to come by for a visit, along with a guy named Crates.”
“Who’s Dino of Rhodes and why should I care?”
“Ask Marie Easley. In the meantime, tell the captain that we have important company coming.”
CHAPTER 4
Royal Lounge, Queen of the Sea
September 19
Al Wiley had barely gotten invited to this little dinner in the Royal Lounge.
Every ship that belonged to Royal Cruise Lines had a Royal Lounge, and they were always reserved for private parties. This one was one deck up from the pool deck, and you could see the swimmers from the windows. The windows were massive picture windows that went from floor to ceiling. At the moment, they were transparent but Al knew that they coul
d be opaqued with the flip of a switch. There was a well-stocked bar next to the main doors and both a large conference table and a set of smaller tables where people could eat, drink or chat. The chairs were white naugahyde, but of good quality. The tables were plastic, but heavy and colored to resemble teak or other dark woods.
Al was miffed about the trouble he’d had getting this invitation. The captain was being unreasonable.
But he pulled himself up short. This situation was upsetting him more than he wanted to admit. The captain was being the captain. And, technically, at least until things got a bit more organized, the captain had a point. He was the one with a legal obligation to care for the passengers and crew. Al stood up as the locals in linen robes came sauntering into the room like a bunch of tribal chieftains decked out in native attire. Which, Al guessed, was what they were.
They were escorted by one of the ship’s officers…he thought it was Dan, no, something foreign…Dag, that was it. Right there on his nametag, Dag Jakobsen.
The guests were shown to seats and Captain Floden introduced everyone. Dinocrates of Rhodes was tall, a dignified-looking man, going a bit gray at the temples and around the beard. Crates was shorter, balding, with bad teeth. Al had seen the Egyptian, Atum, before, though he hadn’t been introduced. The woman, Lateef, was apparently Atum’s wife and Al wasn’t sure why she was here.
The captain finished the introductions, and Marie Easley translated. At every name, the Greeks nodded their understanding till they got to Al. He listened carefully, but couldn’t follow. Then she said, “tribune.”
“What’s the problem, Professor Easley?” Al asked.
“They don’t have an equivalent title to congressman. The closest I was able to come was the Latin ‘tribune.’”
Al nodded. It made sense. But it also brought some potential problems forward in his mind. Al was a Republican, and that wasn’t just his party. He believed in representative government, not the right of kings. And these people, even the Romans, didn’t get that. Not in the modern sense, anyway. That could produce errors in judgment among them, but there was a more insidious danger if they were stuck here permanently. Al had no desire to live in a world where the citizenry were lorded over by the kings and captains of antiquity.
