The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  Eurydice laughed because she knew perfectly well that Greek soldiers had been using cannabis for recreational purposes since they first passed through Egypt over a decade ago.

  Captain’s suite, Queen of the Sea

  “I don’t trust that woman,” Lars Floden said to Marie Easley as they sat on his couch.

  “I know. And I shouldn’t have laughed.” Marie took a sip of wine. “But she looked ridiculous.”

  “I don’t disagree, but that doesn’t change the fact that we have a mass murderess on board.”

  By now word had reached them about the sack of Amphipolis and what Olympias had done. It fit together all too well with her previous reputation. Whether she had used drugs, magic, or the power of suggestion, her slaves and servants had run amok and died to the last man, all the while setting the city on fire even before Cassander breached the walls.

  “Mass murderers are not uncommon in this time, Lars,” Marie said. “I think I’ve mentioned that before. In fact, I’m almost sure I have.”

  “It may have come up in the occasional offhand comment,” Lars agreed. Then muttered, “About a million times.”

  “The problem is, Lars, that you too are a mass murderer now. Remember the steam guns turned on the Reliance and running over the galleys in Alexandria Harbor?”

  “That was war—” Lars stopped.

  “Yes, it was. And you were right to do it, in both cases. But by Olympias’ standards, she was right too.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Lars said. “I’m as willing to accept cultural differences as the next screaming liberal, but drugging your slaves to go on a rampage is not the same thing as shooting people who are engaged in an act of piracy.”

  “No, it’s not. Not to you and not to me. But to Olympias, it was simply a tactical maneuver to cover her escape and the slaves were collateral damage.” Marie held up the wineglass in a “wait” gesture. “I’m not justifying it, or approving of it, or excusing it. None of those things. All I am saying is that it’s the way most of the people we are going to be dealing with think, here and in Trinidad. All around the world. And just calling someone like Olympias a nut job is not nearly precise enough. And that will lead us into tactical errors in dealing with her and the others like her.”

  “So what am I missing?”

  “She is an incredibly smart nut job. One who has survived a snake pit for decades by being the most venomous snake in the pit. The question is: can she adapt to a world that isn’t all a snake pit? If she can, she could be very useful. And even if she can’t, she has connections and alliances enough that killing her would be incredibly dangerous. Not to mention wrong in the same way her poisoning all those people was wrong.”

  “She hates you now. I want you to promise me that you’ll be careful around her.” Lars hugged Marie tightly. “I don’t want to be without you.”

  “Oh, I will. I think I’ll see about borrowing one of Roxane’s Silver Shields.”

  Queen of the Sea, Port of Izmir/Smyrna

  Nursery in Roxane’s suite

  Dawn, November 5, 320 BCE

  Eumenes reached down and tickled his son Sardisius in his crib. “Daddy has to go away for awhile, but you get to stay on the ship with the ship people and learn their magic. And you will have baby Alexander to play with and all the other children. Not bad for the grandson of a wagoneer. Grow well, my son, grow strong.”

  Then, not letting himself cry, Eumenes turned away and went to board the lifeboat, now used as a ship’s boat, that would take him to shore.

  * * *

  Eumenes, Eurydice, Philip, a small company of personal guards, and the radio crew boarded the ship’s boat for the trip into shore. The bay of Izmir was not nearly deep enough for the Queen to navigate safely.

  It took only five minutes for the boat to get to the dock, but an hour to unload. Erica Mirzadeh was supervising the unloading with the help of several Silver Shields, the veteran elite infantry of Alexander’s army. With them was another ship person named Tacaran Bayot. Tacaran was five foot seven, thin faced, with a goatee and curly black hair, black eyes, and skin that fell between olive and light brown. He had straight white teeth and an engaging smile. He wore khaki pants with pockets on the sides of the legs and a khaki shirt with big button-down pockets, all of which were full. There was the radio system and the generator to charge the batteries that ran it. The system was owned by the ship people, but assigned to Eumenes’ army under the direct control of Erica.

  However, the rest belonged to Eumenes. Five hundred steel crossbows and a thousand venturi. They would build the rockets later, on the road, using designs worked out on the Queen. They would also be making black powder, which wasn’t a mystery to Eumenes anymore. They could do ninety percent of making goods that the ship people made, but the ten percent they couldn’t was often the crucial ten percent. Like the venturi, which needed to be an exact shape and of good metal. But the rest of the black powder rocket was well within their means. They could use rocks or small cast-iron shards for the shrapnel. They knew sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal, and they knew now how to mix them. They could make the rockets from light wood turned on a lathe. So far they were pedal-powered lathes, but they were still lathes. They had designs for steam-powered lathes, as well, although they hadn’t been able to make any yet.

  The thing that increasingly bothered Eumenes was that even now Ptolemy’s agents on the Queen were getting ready to give him the same knowledge, and the Carthaginians would have it in another week, if they didn’t have it already. Even the barbarous Romans would have it soon. It wouldn’t be long before Cassander and Antigonus got hold of it. Likely as not, Ptolemy would sell it to them.

  Warfare was about to change in this part of the world and all their experience as generals was going to be almost useless. Sometimes worse than useless. A phalanx of Greek hoplites facing a rocket barrage was dead meat. At least, that’s what Daniel Lang said, and Eumenes didn’t doubt him.

  Suddenly, Eumenes felt a smile twitch his lips. That was all true, but Antigonus wouldn’t believe it any more than he would believe that a wagoneer’s son could be an effective general. Antigonus knew what he knew, and even if he realized that tactics had to change—which was by no means certain—that didn’t mean that he would be able to change himself.

  Eumenes’ smile died as his mind turned to Cassander. Cassander was no general, but he was smart and had a flexible mind, and that might well be more important in this new sort of warfare than personal courage.

  Finally the unloading was finished, and another ship’s boat pulled in and started unloading supplies and equipment. The Queen would be heading for Alexandria as soon as the boats were back aboard.

  Queen of the Sea, Alexandria Harbor

  November 10, 320 BCE

  Ptolemy sat in the Royal Lounge, reading the constitution of the United Satrapies and States of the Empire. The USSE constitution was interesting, and it was going to require him to reconsider his options. He looked up at Thaïs and waved the document. “What do you think?”

  Thaïs tilted her head in a gesture that Ptolemy knew well. It wasn’t quite a nod nor a head shake. Thaïs wasn’t sure or, more exactly, liked part of it and disliked other parts. “What do you like about it?”

  “It’s a good framework,” Thaïs said. “For the most part, it will leave you as ruler of Egypt and give you a level of legitimacy that even the agreements at Babylon didn’t.”

  “And what part of it do you dislike?”

  “You are probably going to have to give back Syria, Israel and Judea. And you may well be called on to contribute troops to Eumenes. If the constitution is valid, so is the appointment of Eumenes as strategos for the empire.”

  “Frankly, that bothers me less than giving up Syria. I bought that territory with good silver and quite a lot of it. What bothers me isn’t the specific of having to send troops to Eumenes. It’s the general principle of placing the defense of the realm under the over-government that they establish.”
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  “Federal government,” Thaïs said, using a ship people word. “You will be able to appoint a representative to the upper house, the one they are calling the House of States.”

  “What about the elections?”

  “That’s mostly ship people influence, but the Greek city-states piled on in a hurry. Especially Athens. Representation will be allocated by population and elected by the citizenry. That includes free women as well as all free men, no matter their wealth. But not slaves. We went round and round on that and I am not sure we made the right choice. The compromise that we finally agreed on was that slaves didn’t count for representatives. Not even war captives, much less two-footed livestock. That at least encourages manumission in order to increase a state’s or satrapy’s representatives, in the House of the People.”

  Thaïs used the Greek words. The world of fourth century BCE had lots of types of slaves and each had their own word, most of which didn’t translate to twenty-first-century English. Not directly. They had words for chattel, slaves, serfs, and war captives—who were in some ways more like chattel, but had higher status.

  Ptolemy looked at his longtime lover and—given the new situation—possible future wife, with a sardonic lift of an eyebrow. He knew her background. Born a slave, she’d been sold to a school for hetaera as a child and then required to work off her debt. She had every reason in the world to dislike the institution of slavery. But at the same time, she had managed to go from slave to only one short step down from a queen through her abilities. “What do you really think? Are the ship people right about slavery?”

  Thaïs stood up and walked to the window, then turned back to face him. “No, but they will be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The way the world is now, we couldn’t survive the abolition of slavery. There isn’t enough wealth to pay all the freed slaves for their labor and with everyone weeding their own garden, we would fall into barbarism. But that’s right now. It will change as the ship people’s machines magnify the productivity of individual workers. In a hundred years, perhaps less, they will be right about slavery. We need to be ready for that day, or our children and grandchildren will live in a world even more soaked in blood than this one.”

  “So, do you think I should sign it? Commit to this new nation?”

  “No.” Thaïs frowned. “Not yet. Don’t commit either way. See how Eumenes does against Cassander, at least. Perhaps even wait to see how he does against Antigonus and the eastern satraps. Don’t tie yourself to this new ship of state until you know whether it will float. Stay neutral as long as you can.”

  Ptolemy nodded. One of the things he liked best about Thaïs was that she gave good advice. Even when it wasn’t entirely in her best interest. “You’re right, as usual, my very dear. And I have missed you.”

  When the Queen of the Sea left again, it would leave Thaïs and the children here.

  “I do want to send someone to keep an eye on the ship people. Whom do you recommend? I considered Dinocrates or Crates or one of the fellows of the library, but I am concerned that they will be seduced by ship people knowledge.”

  “It’s not just the ship people on the Queen of the Sea that matter. We need relations with New America too. You would be shocked at how much they accomplished in a year and I suspect they are just getting started. We will be able to buy impossible devices from them soon.” She paused a moment in thought. “The Queen will visit New America regularly and we will have the radio to keep in contact so perhaps we only need one watcher. Menelaus?” Thaïs’ voice made the name a question. She wasn’t fond of Ptolemy’s little brother and aide.

  Ptolemy grinned at her. “It will get him out of the palace, but he’s not going to like giving up his slaves.”

  “My heart bleeds for him,” Thaïs said, using a ship people expression directly translated into Greek.

  224–226 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, New America

  November 10, 320 BCE

  Crack! The sound jerked Daoud Khoury around. He looked at the red-hot door of the furnace. He moved up and, using a long, heavy wooden pole, opened the small door. Holding up his hand, he tried to look into the fire. He couldn’t. It was much too bright to see anything, and it made him feel like his eyeballs were going to boil.

  He went back to the table and got the tinted glasses from the Queen of the Sea and looked again. The cracking sound was what he was afraid of. The crucible was cracked, and the molten iron was pouring down into the bottom of the furnace.

  Quickly he went to the shutoff valve and shut the oil feed. It took five minutes for the fire to go out and an hour for the furnace to cool to merely scorching hot.

  Cool enough for him, using tongs, to lift out what was left of the crucible. It took another day for the furnace to cool enough for him and his crew of locals to remove bricks to make an opening to pry out the melted iron. Then it was brick the whole thing up and start over with a new crucible, as his money got lower and lower and he got deeper and deeper in debt to the Bank of New America.

  It didn’t help that he couldn’t keep a trained crew. The locals came and worked long enough to get the money to buy what they wanted. Then they went back home. Some few locals stayed, but far more of them just wanted what they wanted, then back to their own ways. Daoud couldn’t really blame them either. He’d give anything on this earth or another if only he could go back to his own ways. Accounting might have been boring except at tax time, but trying to make steel with primitive tools was one hell of a lot worse. He wondered when the Queen would get back. At least somewhere still had air-conditioning.

  CHAPTER 2

  Negotiations

  Queen of the Sea, Alexandria Harbor

  November 12, 320 BCE

  Menelaus looked around the small stateroom. There was a door to his left and next to it two drawings, each captioned in Greek, Punic, and Latin, as well as the ship people English. “Shower for Bathing,” and the picture was of a man with little lines coming down on him. The other said “Toilet for Elimination,” and the same man was seated on the toilet with his robe up. That one was obvious and the shower almost made sense. He opened the door and stepped inside. He looked at the shower and saw knobs with the words HOT and COLD. He turned the hot, and water came out in a fine spray, making sense of the drawing. Menelaus snorted. He much preferred a proper bath with a slave to oil him up and scrape his body down afterward.

  After examining the “bathroom,” he walked across the room to another door and opened it. It led out to a balcony with a painted iron railing. He stepped out onto the balcony and looked down…and down, and down. The water was far below him. He’d never liked heights. He gripped the iron railing and squeezed his eyes shut.

  Gradually, the world stopped spinning and his stomach settled a little. He tried to open his eyes and couldn’t do it. He knew what he would see. With an effort of will, he removed his right hand from the railing and reached behind him until he found the door. Found the handle, and grasped it, then he turned his head and, being very careful not to look at the water, he squinted his eyes open. He focused his attention on the door with all the concentrated will of a drowning man focusing on the log that might save him. He got the door opened and almost fell into his room.

  It was a very nice room with a big bed and a desk and chair. It had a peculiar thick piece of glass that they called a “television” and even a closet of sorts. Compared to any ship he had ever been on, this was magical luxury. But it was luxury that was too many feet above the sea.

  Finally, after his breathing was back under control, he looked out the window afraid that the terror would assault him again. But it didn’t, as long as he wasn’t close to the edge. As long as he didn’t look down, he was fine.

  Menelaus took a deep breath and another, then he went back out the door of his stateroom. He took the lifting box up still farther, to the Royal Buffet restaurant. He would get something to eat and settle his stomach. After discussing the situation with Thaïs an
d Epicurus, Menelaus decided not to bring any of his slaves with him. On the upside, however, one of his favorite hetaera, Bethania, had booked passage. He didn’t have to be lonely, depending on her other engagements.

  He reach the Royal Buffet on the deck with the swimming pools and went through the line. That was another irritating thing. He had to wait in line as though he were some minor scholar, not the brother of Ptolemy. There was a tuna steak, cooked rare, with a mustard sauce. It looked good and he took a plate to put it on the tray. Then he got a serving of the tuber that was labeled in Latin as well as Greek script as “nut potatoes.” And something called “squash in butter sauce.” He took it to a table away from the large window that looked out and down on the ocean, sat, and then realized that he had not gotten anything to drink.

  He went back to the line and looked at the strange device that delivered liquids. It was interesting. There was a wire frame and when you set the plastic drinking vessels on the grate and pushed it against the frame, liquid came out and filled the drinking vessel. He read the labels as he watched a Carthaginian filling his drinking vessel. There was Egyptian beer, yerba maté, wine, and pasteurized milk.

  The Carthaginian was getting the pasteurized milk. “What is that?” Menelaus asked.

  “It’s processed cow’s milk,” the Carthaginian said. “They boil it in a special way to keep it from going bad. It’s quite good, but it doesn’t mix well with wine. I am Capot Barca. And you are?”