by Eric Flint
July 25, 320 BCE
Stella watched as Carthalo shoved the big spoon into the melt. The spoon was a brass bowl with a long wooden handle and must weigh twenty pounds empty. Full, it was closer to forty, and as he walked with it, Carthalo jiggled it, tossing the glass blob up out of the bowl with every step until he got to the stone table, where he plopped it down. It was glowing red orange and still very flexible as he used a pair of shears to cut off a smaller blob, and put it in a ceramic mold. Then he pressed the other half of the mold onto it. If this worked, they would get a lens-shaped piece of clear glass.
Carthalo then took a handpress made of iron and pressed the rest of the blob into a roughly flat sheet about two feet across. He used a knife to cut the glass into a square about a foot across.
* * *
It didn’t work. The glass was Coke-bottle green. The lens shape was rough and the lens had a dozen little bubbles in it. Carthalo was quite happy with it, though, insisting that with reheating and smoothing it would make a lovely ornament that would fetch a good price.
They weren’t where they wanted to be, but they were in the glassmaking business.
CHAPTER 1
A War to Fight
Queen of the Sea, forward radio room
November 2, 320 BCE
The radio printer clacked and Joshua Varner jerked in his office chair. He couldn’t get used to it. The Queen had arrived in this time equipped with top-of-the-line laser printers, and they still had them. But to keep that happy state as long as possible, they had, over the past year, built printers, using chips from anything they could scavenge. Dot matrix printers, which were slow and noisy. The radios sent digitally. That meant they could send anything from picture to voice to text, but text used the least bandwidth, and so was the most common. He was from the twenty-first century and here he was in the fourth century BCE, using mid-twentieth-century tech to receive what amounted to radio teletype from Rome about the Senate’s response to Antigonus holding Babylon against Attalus.
He rotated in his chair and scooted over to the printer. The roll of paper was held on the rubber cylinder with a serrated blade. He tore off the sheet. It was locally made rag paper. The words were in Latin and Joshua couldn’t read Latin. But the address was clear. He folded it, sealed it with wax and a stamp made by the machine shop, then called a new hire. “Delivery for the Romans. Titus Venturis Calvinus.”
* * *
Titus took the sheet from the messenger and gave him a ship people dollar as a tip. Once the door to his cabin was closed, he used a fingernail to pop the wax seal and opened the letter.
He sat at the small desk in his room and read.
From the Office of the Consuls
Rome will take no action regarding the conflict of the diadochi.
Make no promises to either side.
“Any side, they should say,” Titus muttered.
You will endeavor to obtain the designs for an electrical battery.
“A battery of cannons would be easier.” Titus tossed the cable on the desk and picked up the phone. “Who do I see about a battery?” he muttered to himself again. Then, making up his mind, dialed a number.
When the phone was answered, he said, “Capot, I have some scoop for you and I need a favor.”
“What sort of a favor?”
“Rome wants batteries. The electrical kind. Who do you know and what are your suggestions?”
“Hm,” Capot Barca said, and Titus could imagine him playing with his fancy beard. “I think lead acid is probably your best bet. I’ll have some names for you by lunch. Meanwhile, I’m going to send Carthage Rome’s plans, once you give me the scoop.”
* * *
Two hours later, Capot lay on his bed and read the Carthaginian response to his message. It was longer and more detailed, but amounted to much the same thing Titus got from Rome. The people back home were confident that with Alexander dead and the generals fighting each other, Carthage remained safe.
Then Capot got to the next section.
Do all in your power to prevent the Romans from seeing the work going on in the military harbor. In this history, Carthage will not wait for the Romans to sow our city with salt.
Insane, Capot thought. Rome wouldn’t be a threat for another hundred years, and by that time the world would have changed beyond all recognition. Capot stopped himself. No, that wasn’t right. Rome had read the butterfly book too. They would know about the three Punic wars, and would see Carthage as a threat, no matter what Carthage did or didn’t do. As much as he hated the thought, the government might well be right. The effect of the butterfly book was to rush things, to push the world in decades into wars that would have happened over centuries.
Had it not been for the Queen of the Sea.
Queen of the Sea, Piraeus, Port of Athens
November 3, 320 BCE
Marie Easley looked around the conference room. Eumenes, Dag Jakobsen, and Daniel Lang were talking together, pointing at a map on the table. Eleanor Kinney, the chief purser for the ship, and Roxane and Eurydice, the queens-regent of Alexander the Great’s empire, were a couple of seats away. And all the way across the room, Olympias was scowling at all and sundry. She was greatly displeased that her stock of hallucinogens and other drugs had been taken. They were under lock and key in the pharmacy. Captain Lars Floden wasn’t going to let the fourth century BCE’s most famous poisoner keep her stock of poison while she was on the Queen, even if she was the mother of Alexander the Great.
For the past few days, Eumenes had attempted to get the Queen of the Sea to take a force of his soldiers around the Horn of Africa, because he had two fires to put out: Cassander in Macedon, and Antigonus in Babylon.
There were radios in Rome, Carthage, Alexandria and other places around the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. But they didn’t have any radios in Babylon or anywhere in the eastern stretches of the empire.
Eumenes couldn’t let Cassander consolidate in Macedonia, because Macedonia was the tail that wagged the dog of Alexander the Great’s empire. But if Eumenes concentrated on Cassander, it would give Antigonus One-eye time to cut the empire in half. To counter that threat, he wanted to remind the eastern satraps that they weren’t safe, even if Antigonus held Babylon, for the Queen of the Sea could reach them anyway.
Eumenes wasn’t going to get what he wanted.
The delegates from Antigonus One-eye were lobbying just as hard against Eumenes, insisting that it was an internal matter. And, for that matter, that Attalus’ attack on Antigonus in Babylon had not been an authorized action, but little more than an act of banditry. They also argued that even if the queens-regent Roxane and Eurydice were to rule against Antigonus, it was still an internal matter, and for the Queen of the Sea to interfere would destroy its neutrality.
It was a good argument, as much as Marie might sympathize with Roxane and Eurydice. Lars wasn’t going to let the Queen be dragged into the politics of the diadochi, Alexander the Great’s surviving generals, any more than could be avoided.
Lars came in with Staff Captain Anders Dahl, and took the seat at the head of the long oval table right next to Marie’s seat. Anders took the next seat over. The position of staff captain was analogous to that of executive officer on a navy ship or a cargo ship. But the way it was working out since the twenty-first-century cruise ship Queen of the Sea arrived in the year 321 BCE, “staff captain” was going to be the title for executive officer in the future and “exec” was going to be ignored except by dusty old scholars like Marie. Marie felt her lips twitch at the thought.
Lars gave Anders a look, and Anders said, “If everyone will be seated, we’ll get started.”
Eumenes, Dag, and Daniel took their seats quickly, as did Eleanor, Roxane and Eurydice as well. Olympias went around the table to take the seat opposite to Lars, as though that were the head of the table. It was an obvious powerplay, and Marie looked at Lars. Lars let it pass. Whatever the changes over the last year and a bit, Lars had been a cru
ise ship captain for almost ten years and an officer on a cruise ship for even longer. He was a polite man and willing to let others appear to score points…as long as they didn’t actually interfere with the running of the Queen. That was one of the things Marie liked about Lars, even though she occasionally found herself wishing he would rip someone’s head off—metaphorically speaking—when the situation required it. Lars had proven his willingness to do it literally. He had washed the decks of the Reliance in blood when pirates seized her, and used the Queen to turn a fleet of triremes into kindling.
Once everyone was in the proper place, or close enough, Lars again let Anders say it.
“I’m sorry, General Eumenes, but the Queen of the Sea can’t involve itself in the internal politics of the United Satrapies and States of the Empire. Quite aside from logistical concerns, which are real and serious, we have to maintain our neutrality…at least officially.”
“Officially?” Roxane asked, lifting a sculpted eyebrow. She very much reminded Marie of Sophia Loren. Since the arrival of the Queen, she had added golden highlights to her black hair and now wore artfully applied makeup. Roxane’s lush but athletic figure was much the same as before her arrival, save perhaps a bit healthier. Roxane liked to listen to audiobooks while she worked out in the cruise ship gymnasium.
“Officially,” Lars agreed. “I’ve been in contact with President Wiley by radio, and New America expresses a willingness to ally with the USSE. On the basis of that, we will help where we can, within the limits of our situation. That doesn’t mean using the Queen very much, I’m afraid, but we should be able to supply you with some gunpowder.”
“Gunpowder,” Eumenes said studiously, “is a flash in the pan.”
Marie Easley looked at the general in something partaking of both disgust and admiration. Disgust because the statement was patently ridiculous. Admiration because the expression “flash in the pan” was utterly unknown in 321 BCE, since it was based on a gunpowder misfire—the priming powder flashing in the pan but not igniting the charge. A bright flash, then gone with no effect. For Eumenes to use it here indicated that the man had managed to understand and internalize the concepts involved in a very short time.
“It will remain so till we get pans for it to flash in.” Eumenes shook his head. “And barrels to hold the charge and shot with touch holes to transfer the fire from the pan to the charge. It’s like so much of what you brought—of great potential use but needing an industry built before it can be used effectively. For now what we can build will make a great display, but no real difference. We don’t have cannons and we don’t have the means to make cannons in any numbers.”
The Queen of the Sea was the only facility that was yet able to make the sort of cannons that were used in their time. Also the only facility that could make cannons of any sort quickly. But aside from the steam cannons on the Queen and the Reliance and some black powder cannons for Fort Plymouth, the Queen wasn’t making cannons. It was making the tools to make the tools to make cannon. And most of those were made for and sold to New America. Cannons for Eumenes’ army would be made by Greek craftsmen, hand-carved from bronze. Neither cheap nor fast.
“What about rockets?” Dag asked.
“A flash in the pan, as I said. Pretty fireworks, signifying nothing.”
“Not necessarily,” said Daniel Lang. “First, because we can make good rockets using venturi and fins to provide spin. We know how and we have the basic technology here on the Queen. We even have a stock of venturi, though a limited one. That will give you rockets almost as good as you might have found in World War I, or even World War II.”
Eumenes was looking interested, but Olympias interrupted. “What is world war? The only world-spanning war was my son’s. There—”
“Olympias,” Roxane said, “you insisted on being here and promised to listen, not interrupt.”
“I will have my say. I am Alexander’s mother, and Philip’s wife.”
“No,” said Marie, as pedantically as she could manage. “You were Alexander’s mother and Philip’s wife. But your Philip and your Alexander are gone. Now, Roxane is Alexander’s mother and regent, and Eurydice is Philip’s wife and regent. You have paid your fare, but you are simply a passenger on the Queen of the Sea. Not a ruling monarch.”
Olympias stood and spoke in a version of Greek that was even more archaic than that spoken in the fourth century BCE, something that went back to Agamemnon or maybe Hercules. Assuming that there had at some point been actual men that Agamemnon and Hercules were based upon. She also waved her hands in obscure and spooky gestures.
Marie stared at her. Then, quite unable to help herself, she started to laugh.
Olympias stopped gesturing and speaking. She sat back down, not as though she had intended to, but simply as though shock left her legs unable to hold her up.
“I’m sorry,” Marie said, trying to get her laughter under control. “Your error is in assuming that everyone shares your mythology. In the time we come from, essentially no one shares it. We have our own. I didn’t mean to denigrate your beliefs, honestly I didn’t. But the gestures you were making looked like something that a carnival fortune-teller might use.”
Marie snapped her mouth closed about a paragraph too late, as she finally realized just how demeaning and infuriating her response would seem to Olympias. She looked into the woman’s eyes and knew that she had just made a mortal enemy.
Considering Olympias’ history, mortal enemy wasn’t hyperbole. Not in the least.
“To get back to the point,” Anders said, “we can provide you some black powder rockets and you have the formula and techniques to make black powder.”
Anders didn’t sound thrilled about that last. The secret of black powder hadn’t stayed a secret. It was listed in Wikipedia and by now copies of the formula were available from Venezuela to Babylon. Nor was black powder the only ship people secret that was no longer secret.
“What about cargo?” Eumenes asked.
“What do you mean?” Anders asked.
“I mean I would like to buy wheat and rye here and have it delivered to Iskenderun, so that Pharnabazus can keep the pressure on Antigonus while I go after Cassander.”
“The Queen is not a cargo ship, and we have a schedule we need to get back to,” Lars said before Anders could.
“Also, if we deliver fifty tons or so of provender to the Mediterranean coast when your army isn’t there to protect it, it’s likely not going to be there by the time your army gets there,” Dag said. “You’d be better off hiring a local ship and maybe seeing if you can get a steam engine to move it. That way Pharnabazus can move his cavalry to meet the provision ship. It still means going to Izmir first.”
The discussion continued and Eumenes didn’t get what he wanted, but did get considerably more than Antigonus’ representatives would have approved. Arrhidaeus would be livid if he knew how much Eumenes was getting in terms of ship credit. The Queen of the Sea had a great deal of silver and gold by this time. Part of it from trading in Europe, but much of it from South America, where the locals used it as decoration. Gold was a soft, malleable metal, often with a pleasing color, and it was shiny, unlike lead. So masks and bracelets were made from it in South and Central America. The natives were happy to trade the yellow metal for steel knives on a pound-for-pound basis…at least at first.
Eumenes would be getting some of that gold, but he would also be getting a drawing account that would be recognized throughout the Mediterranean. That was half of what the radio teams that the Queen was sending about the Med were for.
“The amount in the account will be known?” Eumenes asked as he looked at the paper.
“Not unless someone gets bribed,” Eleanor Kinney said. “Which could happen.”
“How much is it?” Olympias asked.
Eleanor looked at Eumenes, Eumenes looked at Roxane, and so did Eurydice.
“It’s a drawing account and it takes Eumenes to access it,” Roxane said.
“That,” Eurydice said coldly, “is a government matter and you are not a member of the government.” She turned to Roxane. “I told you it was a mistake to let her in here.”
“Please, everyone, calm down,” Roxane said. But from the looks Olympias and Eurydice gave each other, it was too late.
Roxane’s suite
One hour later
Roxane sat on the couch and said, “That was a mistake.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Eurydice shrugged. “You know what happened in that other history and you know how Olympias felt about Philip’s mother. There is nothing I can do to keep safe from her, not as long as we are both on this ship.” She glanced at Philip.
Philip and Alexander were across the room. Philip was writing out equations in a combination of Greek and ship people English notation, while little Alexander sat across from him, drawing nonsense on a small chalkboard.
Roxane leaned back. “You have decided then?”
“There was never any choice. Not once Captain Floden let that woman on the ship. I will go with Eumenes.”
“I will go too,” said Philip.
“No. You stay on the ship,” Eurydice said, “where you’ll be safe.”
“If it’s not safe for you, it’s not safe for me.”
“But the treatments!” Eurydice complained. “You’re much better than before and I don’t want you to lose that.”
Philip considered. “I will miss the computers more. We can take the squeeze box with us and I can do maths for the army. I won’t have the drugs, but the doctor says that she wants to wean me off those as soon as possible.” The drugs were antianxiety drugs, basically low-dose morphine, designed to let Philip interact with the world without going into hysterics. “Besides, we can get weed if I need it. The doctor says it’s been in use in Egypt for centuries and made its way to Greece as well.”
