“No, but we have a published schedule. Is there some place you want to go that we won’t reach?”
“Assuming I’m allowed…”
Dag pointed at Roxane.
Cleopatra shook her head. “It looks good, but those bullets of your steam guns could reach her even here, were you to call them in.”
“They could, but I won’t. Ask her.”
“I can speak for myself, Dag,” Roxane said. “Cleopatra, I am here of my own free will. And when I go back to the ship, that too will be my free choice. I like hot tubs and lobster thermidor.”
“With Spam,” Dag said, and Roxane gave him a dirty look while Cleopatra wondered what the look was about.
Roxane looked back at Cleopatra. “The ship people have some entertainment that I don’t find all that entertaining. It’s not important. I was simply saying that the Queen of the Sea is still a luxury cruise ship, even if it does have a factory complex and a university in it now.”
Cleopatra and Eumenes exchanged glances. Eumenes said, “We have discussed the possibility. I would actually prefer that she stay here. Her presence has helped provide me with some sorely needed legitimacy. But I know that Cleopatra is concerned, now more than ever, about her safety.” He pointed at the rather dog-eared copy of the butterfly book.
Dag looked at it and smiled. “We have a new edition, you know. It includes little new about what would have happened in our timeline, but rather more about what is different in this one. Marie and Roxane consulted about it off and on while we were in Trinidad.”
CHAPTER 22
Izmir
May 22
Eumenes read through the new butterfly book. This one was different. Dag said it was printed using print plates. And they had over ten thousand copies of it printed, and had been selling them at every stop on their trip. They sold three hundred copies to the new Library at Alexandria, most of which were to be resold, but some of which would be kept in the library. This copy was a gift and, as valuable as he thought it was, he considered it a poor exchange for Cleopatra. She had finally decided to go, and was moving her property onto the ship. Some of it, anyway.
Cleopatra had considerable wealth in Sardis, wealth that she had not wanted to risk on the trip to Izmir. Captain Floden had been unwilling to wait, so the Queen sailed for Amphipolis. They would be coming back in four days, though. The purser managed to convince the captain to make the trip to pick up the gold, silver, and jewels Cleopatra was having shipped from Sardis.
He turned back to the book. It had a page in Greek, then a page in the ship people tongue, English they called it. It was also longer and had an extensive section of maps and a warning that while the maps were accurate in their time, the ship people knew that there were inaccuracies in this time. But those were in the details.
The scope of the thing, the size of the world…that was accurate. And it made Alexander’s empire a tiny thing, and his dream for ruling the world a fantasy.
The world was an enormous place—full of wonders. And the ship people offered access to all of them.
Queen of the Sea, Off Amphipolis
May 22
“Captain,” Rolf Olmstead, the comm watch rating, said, “we have a signal from the Reliance. They are on their way to Alexandria and want to confirm arrangements.”
“What’s their location, Rolf?”
Rolf gave the coordinates and pulled up a map. The Reliance was about a hundred miles southwest of Crete, staying well away from land. The Queen was working diligently on radios, and was getting close to making some reasonably powerful ground-based radio stations, but a lot of draw on the time of the skilled techs and the equipment meant that the radio project was getting pushed back. So there was no radio of any strength in Alexandria, Tyre or Rhodes. There was no way to warn Alexandria that the Reliance was on the way, or that the Queen would be going back to Alexandria to refuel before continuing its circuit.
“Here, let me have the mike,” Lars Floden said. He took the mike and said, “We made arrangements and Atum is setting up a wooden fuel barge that will be in Alexandria when you get there. At least, it should be. What took you so long?”
“There was less oil than we thought in Aripero number five. They started pumping up salt water a week after you left. They have a producing well near Guayaguayare, but the delay slowed things a lot.”
“What else do you have?”
“Latex, Captain. Tons and tons of the stuff. They have a regular industry back up the Amacuro. They produce rubber shoes for half the natives in Venezuela.”
Lars Floden had known that, vaguely. The native technique for making shoes was to heat the sap of the rubber trees and dunk their feet in it. The sap would cool to rubber, then you had a flexible pair of shoes till they wore out in about six months. That didn’t take very much latex per pair of feet, but there were a lot of feet in northern South America.
“Well, we have the sulfur processing system worked out, so we ought to be able to produce some good hard rubber. What else?”
“Some food, not all that much, and the oil. That’s about it, Captain.”
“We’re here for another few days.” Floden wanted to tell Adrian to wait out at sea till they could meet. To do all the transfers in mid-ocean to keep the Reliance safe and away from the barbarians that populated the world, but he couldn’t. More importantly, he shouldn’t. It was Adrian’s ship. “We have no reason to question Atum, but no reason to trust Ptolemy. Use your own judgment, Captain.”
“We’ll be careful, Mama. Besides, we have our own steam cannons now,” Anders said. “You’ll be refueling at Alexandria after we leave?”
“No. Unless you’re in a hurry to get back to Trinidad, we’ll meet you at Alexandria.”
“Well, there is this little wahini…We’ll wait for you in Alexandria.”
Floden put down the mike. He hoped Cleopatra was having better luck with Olympias.
Amphipolis
May 22
“What happened to your mind?” Olympias said.
Cleopatra of Macedonia noted that her mother had a furry voice. There was a soft roughness, often at odds with what she said. Her mother had been raised in Macedonian politics, as had Cleopatra, and Olympias had used her presumed magical abilities as a threat for most of her career. When Philip III developed his problems as a small boy, Olympias encouraged the belief that she was the cause. Just part of the ongoing war between her parents that had only ended with her father’s death.
No. It hadn’t even ended there. Olympias was still trying to kill off any of Philip II’s children by other women. Cleopatra bit her tongue and said nothing. She didn’t want a fight with Olympias. Mother knew drugs and poisons.
“Well?”
Olympias wasn’t going to let it go. It was only a faint hope, after all. “It allows safety and transport while I negotiate.”
“You can’t trust the ship people. They don’t respect the gods.”
Cleopatra blinked in surprise.
“They are Jews. And the Jews worship a bastard god from Tyre’s old pantheon.”
Cleopatra looked around the room for a distraction. The floor was white marble pieces in red cement. The walls were hung with tapestries, mostly tapestries of Alexander. Cleopatra loved her little brother, but Mother had taken Alexander worship to an obsession.
Unfortunately, nothing in the room offered any change of subject. “She won’t come, Mother, and she won’t send Alexander’s son, either.”
“I will order out—” Olympias started, then stopped.
Cleopatra knew that her mother had started to threaten to order out the army of Macedonia to arrest her daughter-in-law, but she didn’t have the authority to do so. And even if she had, what could the army of Macedonia do against the Queen of the Sea? Cleopatra looked at her mother and waited.
“She must. I am Alexander’s mother.”
“No,” Cleopatra said. “Roxane is Alexander’s mother. You can visit the ship, but be aware they have r
ules.”
“What sort of rules?”
“No slavery, no human sacrifice.”
“The gods will have their due,” Olympias said.
“The gods have put the ship people here!” Cleopatra shouted, then cursed herself for the shouting. She had intended to keep her temper, but Olympias always seemed to know how to get inside her armor. “Will you visit the ship?”
“I will not. And you are forbidden to return to it.”
“If you try to keep me here, Mother, the ship people will knock down the palace.”
“Then it’s true. The ship people hold you prisoner. I knew it.”
“No. But as a paying passenger, I am under the ship’s protection.”
“How would they know?” There was a clear threat in the furry voice now.
Cleopatra looked over at Evgenij and nodded. She’d borrowed Roxane’s Silver Shields for this visit. Not all of them. One eight-man contingent, headed by the former commander of Roxane’s personal guards, who was also one of Alexander IV’s bodyguards. More importantly in this case, Evgenij was equipped with Roxane’s phone.
Evgenij pulled the phone from the pocket he’d had sewn onto his tunic and pushed a button, then another. Suddenly, from the phone, came a voice.
Cleopatra had seen it before and had it explained to her, but still the voice emanating from the little handheld slate sent a chill down her back. Olympias went pale as the blood drained from her face.
Evgenij looked at Cleopatra and lifted an eyebrow.
Cleopatra looked at her mother, and saw the shock congeal into anger. She nodded at Evgenij again.
“Proceed with the demonstration,” Evgenij said to the phone in Greek. It had to be Greek. They needed Olympias to understand.
☆ ☆ ☆
The city on the hill surrounded by the river was about a nautical mile from the shore, about a mile and a quarter from the Queen of the Sea, which was barely within the effective range of the steam cannon. But there was an empty spot—well, a field—in sight of the palace, about a quarter-mile down the hillside. The sighting had been done and Evgenij’s order sent a fusillade of a hundred rounds at the field.
A round from a steam cannon—or at least these steam cannons—left the muzzle of the gun at just under the speed of sound and it slowed as it went. So it took the rounds about seven seconds to go from the muzzle of the gun to the field. The steam cannons were not silent, not even close. They resembled any other cannon in sound. In fact, the four steam cannons on the Queen, when fired on full automatic, sounded a lot like an antiaircraft gun from a World War II movie.
They were, however, far enough away that they were at best barely heard in the palace. What was much more obvious was the effect of a hundred one-pound lead bullets on the hard-packed earth of the field. It wasn’t smoke. It was pulverized earth, but it billowed in the air above the field.
☆ ☆ ☆
Cleopatra pointed dramatically at the field visible from the window, and Olympias followed her pointing hand, just in time to see the field billow up. Olympias wasn’t the only one watching. Many of her guards were, as well.
When Cleopatra turned and walked out of the palace, surrounded by her bodyguards, no one tried to stop them.
Queen of the Sea, off Amphipolis
May 22
Aristotle Edfu of Alexandria muttered darkly as the Queen of the Sea left the harbor. He had been about to seal a deal to buy five tons of Greek wool, and word of the conflict between Cleopatra and Olympias and the early departure of the Queen spoiled the deal. It was not a big trade, but a few tons of wool delivered in Rome or Carthage might well have paid for the trip. Now they were making a short stop back at Izmir, then back to Alexandria. He didn’t have anything to sell in Alexandria. Almost all of his stock had been bought there and how was he ever going to show his father that he was up to the job if they kept going back to Alexandria? Well, at least he had the contracts from Tyre and Rhodes for shipments of wheat and linen. He turned back to the Hoypoloi Lounge and ordered a beer.
☆ ☆ ☆
Cleopatra wasn’t any better pleased than Aristotle. She’d been hoping to get Olympias’ support for Eumenes, and even more she had been hoping to get Olympias to rescind the order to have Philip killed. “Well, at least we have your order to Eumenes and his generals that you don’t want Philip or Eurydice harmed.”
“Do you think he will obey it?” Marie Easley asked. “He didn’t seem pleased by it.”
“Eumenes will obey it,” Roxane said. “I am less certain of his generals. Having Philip and Eurydice gives Antigonus too much legitimacy.”
“Do you really think your healers can help Philip?” Cleopatra asked.
“I have no idea,” Marie admitted. “It sounds like a spectrum disorder and from what Strom Borman has told me after looking at his squiggles, he does have some mathematical ability. So it’s not likely that he’s clinically defective. From your descriptions, the real question is whether he’s Temple Grandin or Rainman.”
Having seen both movies—though she understood the language in neither—Cleopatra nodded.
Mugla
May 22
“We go to Athens,” Eurydice told Trajan.
“Why?”
“Because the Queen of the Sea is going to be there and they let Roxane leave the ship.”
“After blowing a big hole in a mountain and threatening another if she didn’t come back,” Trajan said.
But by now Eurydice was good at reading the man. He didn’t really believe his protests. “You know that Evgenij went ashore and I got word from her that she is safe. I believe her.”
“Just because she is safe doesn’t mean you will be.”
“You’re just arguing to be arguing. You don’t believe that.” Still, he had a point. Whether he believed it or not, it could be that the ship people had taken Roxane’s side and that she and Philip would be executed as soon as they went aboard. The fact that the Queen of the Sea was making port in Amphipolis suggested just that. “No, I don’t think so. I…” Eurydice stopped in surprise at the realization. “I trust Roxane. I don’t think she will murder me if she has another safe choice.”
Trajan snorted.
“We go to Athens. We need a galley. Can your men row?”
Trajan considered. There were one hundred twenty-eight men, plus their wives and servants. Also as many children, though it had been a bad winter. A little over three hundred altogether, perhaps a hundred of whom were slaves of one sort or another. War captives, usually. “What about the ship people rules?”
“Sell your slaves in Athens, or free them and see if they are loyal.”
“What will you do?”
Eurydice had two maids, and Philip had four sitters, who were as much guards in case he went into a rage as servants. “I will free them all when we get to Athens and offer them jobs.
“Find us a galley.”
“We’ll need two for the numbers we have, and crews to do most of the rowing.”
“Two, then. And, Trajan, when we get to Athens and I can talk to Roxane, I will be able to pay you and the men more.”
Trajan tilted his head and watched while Eurydice got more and more nervous. Then he snorted and turned away. Eurydice hoped that she would be able to pay them more once she got to Roxane, but that was only a hope.
☆ ☆ ☆
Trajan looked at Elysia, his wife in all but name. His woman for the last thirty years. “She’s going to try it.”
“I told you she would,” Elysia said. “She can’t stay under Antigonus’ thumb. It’s against her nature. In another month she will be making speeches against him and he’ll have her killed.”
“Probably pay us to do it,” Trajan said, with some real regret. “She wants to go to Athens.”
“That’s crazy. They’ll just grab her and sell her to the highest bidder.”
“She says the ship people will be in Athens. And with them there, the Athenians won’t try anything.”
> “Well, I’m not giving up Octavia.”
“Eurydice says to either free them and hire them, or sell them in Athens before we go aboard the ship.”
“I’ve had Octavia for years. You don’t think they’re serious, do you?”
“Yes, strangely enough, I do. I got a letter from Evgenij. He said…”
“I know what he said. You told me when you got the letter. You don’t think he was exaggerating? You can’t get anything done without slaves.”
Trajan shook his head. “No, I don’t. Soft as the ship people are, they will kill to enforce their rules against slavery.” If it had been Macedonians, they would have killed all those involved in the piracy attempt. But that didn’t change the basic calculation. Insane as it was, the ship people would kill over preventing slavery.
Finally, the real question came.
“Are you going to do it?”
Until that moment, Trajan hadn’t been sure. Surprisingly, the decision didn’t rest that much on Eurydice or Philip, or even Alexander the Great. It really came down to Antigonus. Trajan had always respected Antigonus as a general, but in the past few months, he had gotten a better look at what was behind One-eye’s eye patch.
Antigonus One-eye would indeed betray the Silver Shields, just like he had in that other history. He would betray anyone in his attempt at the throne. He was getting ready to kill Eurydice and Philip. Antigonus would have killed Alexander if he had thought he could get away with it.
All of that played a part in Trajan’s decision, but it wasn’t the controlling part. The real deciding factor was that he no longer thought Antigonus would win. “Yes. We will take our chances with Eurydice and Philip. We may die, either way, but I would rather bet on the girl than Antigonus.”
He got up and went to tell the others.
☆ ☆ ☆
Karanos hit the slave again, almost casually. It was what he did when he was angry or frustrated. He hit his slaves, his wife, his children, his concubines. It was his business and no one else’s. That, in a way, was why he was frustrated right now. Karanos was a commander of sixty-four, only one step lower in rank than Trajan, and one of those briefed on the plans. He hit the slave again. Then, with an effort, he stopped himself. If he was going to have to sell his slaves in Athens, he needed to let the bruises heal to get the best price.