Athene's Prophecy (Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy) (28 page)

Then came the news Gaius dreaded: as Athene had predicted, Gaius Caesar had annulled all Tiberius' late appointments, including his military appointment. For several minutes, Gaius stared at nothing; unless Athene's further prediction came to be, his career was over before it began.

He continued reading. Little Boots had then announced a return to the Augustan ideals, which included the promise of much better cooperation with the Senate and the lowering of taxes and of tithes, all of which was extremely popular with both the masses and the upper classes. But there was more good news. Little Boots had made him, Claudius, co-consul. While Gaius Caesar was in good spirits, he, Claudius, had mentioned his, Gaius', name. Gaius Caesar had nodded, and said he had not forgotten, but before you get a military position you must remain in Alexandria and prove you are worth supporting. According to Little Boots, Tiberius was correct in one respect: Rome needed leaders who could do something else besides blindly wield a sword.

So, with an imperial command, albeit an indirect one, there was little alternative but to remain. The problem was, when Little Boots told Claudius that, he would have known about that other letter. He had to hope that his letter would convince Caesar he was not involved in such plots, otherwise his future was bleak.

* * *

Because of his rank, he was sometimes invited to certain social events. Flaccus, the most powerful man in Egypt, had tried probing him, but Gaius remained obtusely indifferent to the hints. Finally, Flaccus tried the more direct approach, in front of several other members of society.

"You should be in the army!"

"I seem to recall that Caesar makes those appointments," Gaius replied dryly.

"Perhaps he needs reminding that you're still interested," came the broad hint.

"I thank you for your interest. I am sure Caesar will let me know of your concern."

Later, he admitted this was not the most politic of responses, but it had a strange effect for as many other Romans in the room knew, Flaccus had no contact with Caesar at all. Under Tiberius' instructions, Flaccus had prosecuted Agrippina, Little Boots' mother. With little choice, Little Boots accepted this while Tiberius was alive, but that did not mean he had forgotten or forgiven. Caesar's ignoring Flaccus might be the best Flaccus could hope for.

Finally a letter came, with Caesar's seal. At least this would give that wretched Flaccus something to think about! Gaius held it up and stared at it, his hands trembling. This was his career! However, when he opened it, he found it was not. Caesar thanked him for his letter, but he suspected Gaius realized that Caesar was well aware of these pathetic efforts. He should recall what he had once swore to Caesar, and fulfil his pledge. He should remain in Alexandria, and contemplate other ways to serve Rome in line with Tiberius' orders. Other ways! Gaius stared at the letter, and realized he had no option but to accept Caesar's orders. He would acknowledge the letter immediately, then . . .

To take his mind off his problems, he devoted so much of his energies to his machine that Timothy believed it was becoming an obsession. As time progressed Gaius' mood became darker, he ate less, he slept less, and his failure to make progress seemed to make his mood even darker. All he knew was that he would continue until he succeeded. The Gods, or so it was believed, had imparted power to metal objects to do things that men could not. That must be his task and if the prophecy was correct, he must succeed.

Of course, he sometimes reflected when in a more than usually depressed mood, the prophecy also predicted military victories, and so far there was little sign that he would even make it to the army.

Succeeding with the invention was also easier said than done. Nobody else could do it, there was nothing like this anywhere. He should give up, and enjoy life. Why did he think it could be done?

Nobody else had succeeded because nobody else had tried hard enough.

All of which was irrelevant. He would not stop until he had succeeded. He did not believe in Gods, but that was more than a dream. Athene may or may not have been a goddess, but she was like nothing he had experienced. Her message had to mean something, and he felt strangely convinced by her assertion that he would die miserably if he did not succeed.

What would success look like? What was the most basic thing it could do? Presumably move up and down, or turn a wheel, which were essentially the same thing, as a hinged lever attached to the circumference of a wheel would convert one to the other. So the little toy that turned a paddlewheel was an engine. The problem was, it was not powerful enough to do anything.

How to make it more powerful? Use more steam! To do that, he needed a bigger fire, and a bigger tank of water. That meant that everything would be bigger.

What were the problems? The little machine was soldered together, but that might not be strong enough for a larger machine. So he needed a better way of joining large pieces of metal together. Now, in principle, he knew there were at least three answers. The first was the bolt. Nobody else had seemed to appreciate what a bolt could do, probably because nobody knew how to make them strong enough. The second way was fire-welding: pieces to be joined were heated in a forge until the edges became almost liquid, sometimes with a thin piece of another metal in between, then the two pieces could be fused/hammered together. Provided the temperature was correct, and an appropriate flux was used to stop the metal from forming corrosion products, the metal would join. Even iron could be welded, if you could find someone skilled enough to do it. The third was the rivet. If you left holes, and if you fire-welded, the joints could be strengthened with rivets, hammered down over copper washers to make a seal. So he had made progress. All he had to do was to keep at it. Persistence! That was the way to success!

Then suppose he had steam going into something and he could turn a wheel. If such a machine were to be useful, there would be huge forces on the joints. Surfaces that should move had to slip, not graunch. Perhaps metal that had to slide over another piece, such as where a rod joined a wheel, should have a lining of soft metal, like solder. Maybe a bit stronger than solder, perhaps more like a soft bronze, but with something to make them slippery. It was then he recalled that there was something made from fat and lime that was put around the axles of heavy cartwheels. Yes, there was a solution to that problem.

So, once the wheel turned, this task was completed. So, back to the beginning! A boiler, and pipes to take steam to the machine, whatever that was, and maybe a pipe to bring the hot water back? Suppose you did that, how would you get it back in? Perhaps that was not so important; water was easily available, except . . . If you had to stop the machine when you ran out of water, that would negate much of its value, and if there was a way to put water in while the machine was running, you might as well return the . . . the what? The water would come out of the machine as steam. So, condense the steam, after it had done whatever work it was going to do! Then it could stay in the machine, without exerting backpressure.

And get the water back by forcing the water to a tank above the steam generator, close the access, let in steam from the boiler, and all the water would fall in when the pressure equalized.

In principle, this looked like it could be done! The first thing to do was to draw a diagram of what it might look like, drawing boxes for the parts he was not so sure of, and see what he could get made.

Even pipes were not that easy. Pipes were made of lead, but that would be too soft. What he needed was someone to make pipes for him, out of . . . Out of what? Copper? Bronze? It had to be something from which he could make long pieces of pipe. How long could pipe sections be made? He should find out, because that might determine how the layout of this device would be. There could be no point in drawing something that could not be made, simply because available pipes were too short.

Then there was the question of how much pressure the system could take, safely, and how to control it. There was only one answer to that. He must get a boiler made, and gradually add weights to the valve and see what happened. And, remembering the problems of other scalded workers, watch from behind protection at a safe distance. Perhaps first get a bigger version of the little machine made. See how big they could make it?

He would hire some workers.

* * *

Timothy began serving the meal. He had taken upon himself the task of overseeing food preparation because, as he pointed out, Gaius seemed to be too busy to take a proper interest in food. Gaius smiled at this: he felt the real reason was that Timothy wanted to eat as well as he could while Gaius was paying, but he accepted the situation because Timothy did seem to have a knack of finding sources of really interesting food, and also he had to admit that Timothy seemed to be able to acquire this food more cheaply than Gaius would ever have managed. Timothy certainly had this ability to find bargains. Timothy placed the plate in front of Gaius and asked, "So, have you finally decided to admit that Aristarchus was wrong?"

Gaius looked up, grinned, and replied, "No!"

"Hoping I'll die of old age before you'll admit it?"

"I'm certainly not hoping you'll die in the reasonably near future," Gaius said. "I'm still thinking."

"So where have you got to?"

"This business of things coming to be and passing away. I think Aristotle, the Greek, was wrong, and I'm going to take the Roman view."

"There is one?" Timothy gave a look of forced puzzlement.

"According to Lucretius, no thing is ever produced by divine agency out of nothing," Gaius offered.

"That view, of course, came from Democritus, a Greek," Timothy pointed out.

"So, in a sense, I win a bet," Gaius said, and turned over a wax tablet on which was written, 'Timothy will point out that Democritus was a Greek.'

"Glad to make your day," Timothy added sourly.

"And you didn't offer to show anything coming from nothing, nor have you ever seen anything totally destroyed either."

"How about wood burning?" Timothy asked.

"As Aristotle correctly said," Gaius smiled, "the fire is an agent of change. I think Democritus was correct. Everything is made of atoms, and as Lucretius noted, what you see is how they are arranged. Air is presumably atoms with a lot of space in between them, so the atoms of wood are split apart by the fire and end up as air."

"So?"

"Suppose you say the same thing for energy? When you throw the stone in the air, suppose the energy doesn't pass away, but goes somewhere."

"Well?"

"If you think of lifting something, and the energy being stored somehow, then it must take so much more energy to lift the Sun from the Earth-centre than the Earth from the Sun-centre. That gives at least two problems."

"Two?" Timothy asked in surprise.

"Yes, two. The first is why doesn't Aristotle's system revert to the Aristarchus system, which seemingly needs less energy, and secondly, why does the amount of energy depend on how you look at the problem? That can't be right."

"So," Timothy pointed out, "logic says your analysis must be wrong."

"Not at all," Gaius countered. "The alternative is a premise might be wrong. The problem only arises because in Aristotle's system, the Earth is in a very special place for no good reason."

"Aristarchus has the Sun in the centre," Timothy pointed out.

"For the good reason that it's the biggest," Gaius pointed out. "Small falls around large, because with the same energy, light moves faster than heavy. The stars are so far away they're irrelevant to this discussion, and for all I know, they may have their own planets. The main point is, there's no reason for the Earth to be at the centre of anything, except it just seems so because we're on it. And there's more. The sun is so much more massive, and so far away, to give us our heat, it must be extremely hot."

"So?"

"Why doesn't it melt whatever its sphere is made of, or, if the spheres have holes, as you put it, why doesn't it melt and flow through those holes, or, if the spheres have no holes, why doesn't it just smear itself out along the sphere?"

"I don't know," Timothy shrugged. "It just doesn't."

"It just doesn't because everything's falling to the centre of it," Gaius pointed out, "and as Aristotle noted, it then has to be a sphere, which as far as we can tell, it is. No, Timothy, I do not concede. Everything I think of points to your being wrong. The only trouble is, I still can't see what's wrong with your one point."

"You're taking this very seriously," Timothy said. "Maybe I shouldn't have . . ."

"Not at all," Gaius slapped him on the shoulder. "This is much better than dealing with some of these Roman snobs around here, and I can't wait to see your face when I solve it! Now, how about a cup of wine?"

Chapter 23

His next move was to hire the staff of a metal workshop. He was fortunate to find one such foundry in temporary financial trouble. A quick bailout acquired willing and skilled workers, and, he found that by arranging for more of the local legion's work to be done there, he quickly recovered his investment. However, somehow nothing progressed the way it should. They built what they thought he wanted, but usually it was not. It was then he realized that to make progress he had to be around to explain what he wanted.

He soon found that foundries were messy dirty places, and soon he began to dress more like the workers, at least on the site. He also needed somewhere else to assemble what he made, because while that was being done the foundry could be doing useful work, earning money, and keeping the workers employed.

Progress seemed to take forever. It took over two months to make a small steam turbine with greater size, and another six months to make one that did not fly to pieces when extra weights were put on the safety valve. If nothing else, he learned a little about safety precautions, and the value of a safety wall. During this period Gaius also managed to have some bronze bearings made, and he assembled a wheel attached to a stationary axle through his new bearings, the wheel being turned through gears from a windmill, and made to lift a heavy weight. He tried various mixtures of olive oil, lime and fat until eventually he came up with a mixture that seemed to allow the bearings to last. Mixing oil, fat and lime made him really filthy, and to his general annoyance, it took a long time to clean up.