by Eric Flint
“Stomach still bothering you, Skipper?”
“Never mind my stomach, Tubanic,” Yabac growled. “How’s the cargo? With this amount of heeling, I don’t want those amphorae of wine shifting.”
Carthage strawberry red wine was going for a stater a bottle in New America. At least that’s what the radio said.
“It’s fine, Skipper.” Tubanic turned and waved at the hold but still held the railing with his left hand. Then he looked up at the sails. “Catao, you lazy ox. You tighten that line, or I’ll stripe your back, shoulder to arse!”
Yabac looked. The aft lugger was a bit loose, but not bad. “I think the wind is shifting a bit, Tubanic.” Captain Yabac moved along the rail, hand over hand. It was demeaning for a captain to move so, but he’d rather look silly than go swimming. They ought to reach Fort Plymouth in three weeks, a month at the outside.
Argos, Mediterranean Sea
January 7, 319 BCE
The Argos, out of Isola Grande on the Isle of Sicily, had never had rowers, but that didn’t bother Captain Onasus at all. It did have a new sailing rig that had cost almost a hundred drachma and it was carrying wool and flax rather than wine. Onasus looked at the clock, a clock that had cost almost as much as the new rig. They made them in a factory on the Queen of the Sea and, for now at least, that was the only place in the world that could make them.
In fact, there were a whole raft load of things that only the Queen of the Sea could make and Onasus’ backers had spent the cost of the Argos on clocks, sextants, compasses, and charts.
People were trying to make steam engines now and had been since the Queen had first showed them the designs shortly after they arrived in Alexandria. But the engines and, especially, the tube boilers that the Queen of the Sea made in their factories were still much, much better. Unfortunately, there were less than twenty of the things in the world. most of them in Fort Plymouth.
“The wind is falling off, Skipper,” Pontius said. “I wish we had one of those new steam engines.”
“If we have to, we can open the ports and row,” Onasus shouted back. “That damn fantasy of yours would cost more than the rest of the ship.” Pontius was in love with the idea of steam, and forgot that the charcoal to power would come out of their budget if they had one. And besides, the thought of fire on a ship made Onasus nervous. He looked at the sails then at the wake and shouted to the steersman, “Shift us a little to port, Cincinnatus.”
As a ship from Sicily, the Argos had a mixed crew. Some Italian, some Greek, and a couple of Carthaginians. That was especially true now, when the Argos was making the first Atlantic crossing of any ship from Sicily, though there were rumors that Tyre and Carthage had sent ships. There was no reason Onasus could see to let the Queen of the Sea make all the profit from the Atlantic crossing.
Queen of the Sea, Royal Sports Bar
January 7, 319 BCE
The big-screen TVs were showing a rerun of the debate over the Olympic Games, but neither man was paying it much attention. For the first time in centuries, the religious games at the city of Olympia had been canceled last year. Partly due to the war and the new government, partly over religious issues and the differences between local Olympics and ship people Olympics.
“There are secrets,” Gorloc told Mathis.
The commentators, one Greek and one ship person, continued to argue.
Mathis snorted and the Carthaginian shrugged back at him. “Don’t believe me then. When Carthage has good steel while Rome is still struggling with carbon content, you’ll regret your parsimonious ways.”
* * *
A table away, Calix listened and fumed. You just couldn’t trust a ship person.
Queen of the Sea, Carthage
January 9, 319 BCE
Eric Bryant leaned against the rail and looked out at Carthage. The port of Carthage was still not deep enough for the Queen to dock, so instead they would be using one of the converted lifeboats—repurposed might be a better way of putting it. They had wood frame tie-downs on the roof, but mostly they were just lifeboats that were being used to ship passengers and goods from the Queen to her various ports of call. He looked over at his boss, Quitzko, the god king of the Suthic, a northern Venezuela native tribe from the interior.
The little cannibal wasn’t actually a bad guy, once you got past how he was raised. But he needed a native guide, and not just to places like Carthage, but to the ship people. Even the ones in New America. Quitzko was a standard South Central American native. Black hair, black eyes, brown skin. He was five foot two, stocky, with a round face and scars on both cheeks from blood sacrifices that the royal houses of his tribe were expected to make to appease the gods and make the rains come on schedule. He had buckteeth, but not bad, and not overly crooked.
Eric shook his head again. To think that he would ever meet a real, honest-to-God cannibal! And, even weirder, get along with him. Eric wouldn’t have believed it before The Event. But cannibalism as part of religious rights was almost common in Central America at this time. And besides, Quitzko insisted that he was happy to give up cannibalism and the god part of his rank.
“Ssoche ta zi wi tek?” Quitzko said, and Eric answered, “Dask zi wi Socke.”
The first was Quitzko asking if the Carthaginians had really built that harbor, and the second was Eric assuring him they had. Eric, it turned out, had a real knack for languages. Weirdly enough, especially the languages of eastern Venezuela three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Not something anyone back in Alabama would believe, even if they were here. But full immersion had a profound effect on Eric’s ability to learn languages, and he was just back from six months living with the Suthic as the New America assistant ambassador.
“The Carthaginians are one of the groups in Europe with the highest tech base. Major traders. They pick up technology from just about everyone. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians. Everyone. In fact, word is they are headed for the Horn of Africa since the Queen arrived with stuff like sextants, clocks, and maps.”
“What about steam engines?” Quitzko asked. The Queen made steam engines which were in use in New America, both to provide electricity and direct engine power for factories, and Quitzko wanted them for his tribe.
“Yes, probably. But I’m not entirely sure that I would trust them. I’ve heard they’ve had boiler explosions.”
“You ship people…” Quitzko stopped, but Eric could fill in the “are soft” that Quitzko didn’t say. It was true, at least by local standards. But, by ship people standards, the locals on both sides of the Atlantic were suffering from PTSD. Not just individuals. Whole nations. All the symptomology, paranoia, hypervigilance, flashbacks, and uncontrolled violence were not just present, but were so common as to be considered normal. They were trying, at least some of them. People like Quitzko were trying very fucking hard to civilize themselves, and Eric wanted to do all he could to encourage that. There were way too many locals and way too few ship people to depend on tech to make up the difference.
“Come on, boss,” Eric said. “The radio says we have a meeting with House Hamil and the ship people radio crew in the city.”
Quitzko nodded. He was wearing a leather shirt and a patterned llama wool dress, and locally made imitation tennis shoes. They were rubber soled. The Suthic had a small latex processing operation. Old women with wooden paddles stirred plant juice, ipomoea alba, into heated latex from rubber trees. They had been doing the same thing for centuries before the ship arrived. In fact, the name “Olmecs” meant rubber people, or latex people. The Suthic were descendants of the people that archeologists would call Olmecs, who had moved south after what was probably a series of natural disasters. They had a lot of legends of volcanoes and droughts and other natural disasters, proving that the gods were displeased by their failure to provide adequate sacrifices. It wasn’t until the ship people showed up that they began to question those legends. And not all of them did yet.
Quitzko was a leading liberal light in the royal fa
mily of the Suthic royal house and also the closest thing the locals had to an environmental nut job. He believed that the end of the Olmecs was caused by over-farming and a lack of environmental awareness. Which made him a supporter of Anna Comfort, and made him want to have other sources of food and trade, in case that sort of thing happened again.
One of the big legends that his family had was that the ancestor kings were sacrificed to the last babe in an attempt to appease the angry gods, which was how his family got their rank.
Carthage, compound of House Hamil
Three hours later
“Hey there,” Eric said, holding out his hand. Oddly enough, in spite of the new languages he now spoke, he still had an Alabama accent, complete with a nasal twang that made banjos envious. “I’m Eric Bryant, from Gadsden, Alabama, and this is Quitzko, who hails from a bit further south.”
“Hey there,” responded Tina Johnson, and Eric found himself feeling more at home than he had since The Event. “We”—she waved at two older ship people, her parents, Eric knew from reports—“hail from Hokes Bluff, not too far from Gadsden, and this is Borka Hamil, the owner of the steam-engine shop you’re interested in.” Borka was a middle-aged Carthaginian woman in a sheer linen gown dyed a purple red, and held in at the waist by a belt of small gold face masks fixed together with small links.
They got down to it. The Hamil wanted rubber. Wanted it very badly. Mostly for seals, but for other things as well. And they were willing to sell them steam engines, slaves, strawberries, grapes, wine, wool, cattle, and—apparently—their children, to get it.
As they talked, Eric and Tina translating, he kept looking at Tina and finding her looking back at him. He was uncomfortable about the mention of slaves and he could tell Tina was even more unhappy, but they translated it honestly. That was part of the deal.
Quitzko apparently saw their expressions. He looked at them, then at Borka. Then he said, “Please translate this as accurately as you can manage. Our ship people friends have sensitive digestions. The very notion of slaves makes them quiver in the belly. So, for their sake, I suggest that we work out a deal. Have you ever heard of a contract of indenture?”
Eric translated just as accurately as he could, and was happy to do so. Because this was a compromise he and Quitzko had worked out. The Suthic weren’t part of New America, in part because they refused to give up slavery. They, under threat of the Reliance, had officially given up human sacrifice, but that was as far as they were willing to go. They did lose slaves escaping to Trinidad on a regular basis, but the Reliance was still out there, so they didn’t make an issue of the runaways.
Indentured servitude was still slavery, but it was limited, and at least nominally legal on Trinidad. At least the version that he and Quitzko had agreed to was. The Suthic had five forms of slavery, each with its own name: war slaves, debt slaves, crime slaves, land slaves, and sacrifice slaves. Debt slaves were slaves until the debt was paid off, war slaves were slaves for life, crime slaves had a specific time of slavery, depending on the crime and the judge. Land slaves were close to serfs. They had more rights than other slaves, but their condition was permanent. They were tied to a particular farm or grove. Sacrifice slaves were taken from war slaves or crime slaves, and sometimes from debt slaves, and given over to the church. They were then treated well for several months and then given to the gods, and eaten by the priesthood. That was the practice that was officially stopped, but which Eric suspected still happened, on a smaller scale, in private.
However, the ship people were having an effect. The fact that there was a place to run was causing some of the tribes to treat their slaves better. Others, of course, treated them worse. The Suthic were one of the tribes, or tribal groups, that were treating their slaves better. They were also more advanced than expected from the archaeological record, because it turned out that buildings, even wooden pyramids, that are built on wood stilts in river floodplains don’t leave a lot in the way of archeological records.
“Anyway,” Eric continued, “the slaves the Carthaginians sell to Quitzko will become debt slaves, indentured servants, with a set term of service and legal protections in the Suthic lands. And after their term is finished, they will be accepted as members of the Suthic people. Not exactly citizens—more like peasants, but free to get up and move if they want to. The Suthic aren’t any sort of democracy.”
Negotiations continued, and after another couple of hours it was decided that Quitzko would stay in Carthage for a few days and catch the Queen on its way back. Eric, of course, was staying with him. Which Eric thought was just fine. He couldn’t get his mind off of Tina Johnson.
CHAPTER 5
Murder on the Queen
Queen of the Sea, Alexandria Harbor
January 10, 319 BCE
Olympias looked at the screen on the computer in the Princess Computer Center on Deck 9 of the Queen of the Sea. Use of the computers was an expensive luxury even on the Queen, and there was always someone watching you. No food or drink was allowed in the room, and the staff enforced the prohibition vigorously.
That didn’t bother Olympias. What bothered her was that the Queen of the Sea had computers at all. Of all the magic that the Queen of the Sea practiced routinely, the computers impressed and demeaned her the most. All her life Olympias had based her personal power on secret knowledge. Knowledge of plants and their properties, knowledge of tools and devices, knowledge of spirits, demons, and gods. Knowledge that only she and a very few others had.
Now she sat in front of a screen and looked at the properties of a plant that she had never heard of. A plant that grew in northeast Africa and produced a concentrated form of caffeine. Caffeine, a drug that could keep you awake. And a drug that she had never heard of. It was insulting that they should know so much and share it so freely with anyone who had the money to access their computer library. Such knowledge should be kept to royalty and the priesthood. Else how could they maintain their power? And without that power, the world would sink into barbarism.
Olympias had known that since she was a little girl. And it was still true, in spite of the insanity of the ship people. It had to be.
But the computer screen would not argue with her. It just sat there, displaying a coffee plant and describing the effects of caffeine on the human body and mind.
* * *
Dag pulled up a chair at the table in the break room, and Travis Siegel looked up and scratched his beard. Travis was sixty and was a passenger before The Event. Now he was the foreman of the crucible-refining shop on the Queen. It used induction to heat metal in the crucibles, which allowed them to get very fine control over the chemical mix, making high-quality steel. They couldn’t make a lot, not in comparison to a Bessemer, or even some of the crucible rigs they had back in the twenty-first century, but given the raw materials they could make really good steel.
“How they hanging, Dag?” Travis asked.
“Same as always,” Dag said. He handed a bottle to Travis. “It’s not coffee, but it’s bitter as an old girlfriend’s heart.”
“What would you know about that, kid?” Travis complained with gusto, and got up to go to the cabinet. He got two mugs and poured the dark green mixture of cocoa and yerba maté that was the most potent coffee substitute available. He stuck both mugs in the microwave and set the timer for one minute. For the next minute, Travis leaned against the counter and discussed the latest load of steel to come out of the crucibles. It was to be used in springs for wind-up clocks.
The microwave pinged and Travis pulled the mugs out. He passed one to Dag, who filled the mug the rest of the way with cream. Dag didn’t take cream in his coffee, but this stuff was a different matter. It was in severe need of softening and sweetening, so after the cream he added two spoonfuls of granulated honey. He then sipped cautiously.
Travis emptied his mug with three chugs in quick succession. “That’s the stuff,” he said as Dag shuddered.
They talked for another few minutes w
hile Dag sipped and Travis had another mug. Dag was starting to feel strange. His stomach was upset and his vision was getting blurry, with halos around the lights.
Travis rubbed his head and muttered about caffeine withdrawal headaches. Then he poured another cup and drank it cold. Then, he grabbed his chest and Dag knew something was wrong. Travis having a heart attack was bad enough, but him having a heart attack while Dag was seeing halos around the light fixtures was too much of a coincidence. Dag was an environmental officer before The Event and his first thought was that some sort of industrial pollutant had gotten into the air. He was still thinking that as he pulled his phone from the case on his belt and called 9-1-1. It was the same number on the Queen as it had been back in the twenty-first century before The Event.
“Poison,” Dag got out. “Travis is down and I’m gonna be soon.” Then he lost consciousness.
* * *
“We were lucky not to lose Dag,” Doctor Laura Miles said. “Dag said poison, but he didn’t specify airborne, which turned out to be a blessing because it wasn’t airborne. It was in that damn caffeine drink, cocoamat.”
“Cocoamat is poisonous?” Lars Floden asked, looking at the mug on the table with sudden suspicion.
“It is if you flavor it with digitalis,” Laura said. “The lab identified it. There was enough in that carafe to kill a dozen people. It did kill Travis Siegel.”
“Olympias?”
“That’s what I think,” Daniel Lang said, “but there is no proof. If she did it, I don’t know how. She didn’t have access to the carafe that I can find. And that’s a problem, sir, because we can’t lock her up on suspicion. It’s against the law and we absolutely have to be seen as obeying our laws. Half our status as neutral ground would go away if we violate our own laws.”
