Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar-Apr 2013 (17 page)

Crassus winked. I laughed. By now we were being pulled along so fast that my hair was swept back by the wind. No oars were in use and the sail was furled.

"Such speed," I said. "And you say it can, er, gallop?"

Crassus nodded, then called, "Caller, galloping speed."

This was indeed like being on a huge chariot, and I felt as if we were flying over the tops of clouds rather than the waves of the sea. I cannot remember what I said, or even if I said anything. After all too little time, Crassus ordered walking speed, then had the slave on the left rein turn us around. As we began to change direction, I was astounded to see that we were miles out from the shore.

"Only four slaves and their master are needed to operate the vessel and its navitar," said Crassus. "Fifty legionaries could have been put aboard with us. Think of it. Ten legionaries could be transported for every crewman."

"But the navitar could just as easily pull a ship with four hundred men aboard."

"That is the whole point, Marcus. Use navitars, and there is no need for slaves with oars or sailors to tend sails and rigging. Remember, too, that it's quite independent of winds and currents."

"How did the beast get so big?" I asked.

"Feed it a moderate amount, and it is merely sustained. Feed it more than that, and it grows. Work it hard, and it stops growing. The navitar is simplicity itself, it's just a slab of muscle, gills and stomach. It has no mind, it does not even have a head."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Not at all, it's harmless. Too harmless…but Father will explain about that."

Once ashore again, Maximus supervised as the navitar was unharnessed and guided into a stone pool with a sea gate of mesh and bars. I watched, amazed at how docile the huge, headless beast appeared to be. With his precious monster safely locked away, Maximus and I set off for the atrium.

"I intend to voice it about that I devised the navitars, with help from my son," Maximus said as we walked. "The truth is that the slave woman was entirely responsible. She's from the very distant east."

"You mean Aegypt?"

"Farther than that, much farther. India. Do you know of India?"

I shrugged. "It will take you forty days to cross the great eastern ocean and reach India if you catch the Hippalus wind at Ocelis, on the Red Sea. Most ships go to a city called Muziris."

"Amazing!" exclaimed Maximus. "Few Romans have even heard of the Red Sea, let alone somewhere as remote and wondrous as Ocelis."

"Wondrous? Ocelis is a fleapit, just an anchorage for watering ships and a market full of wild Berber merchants. I once chased an absconder there, all the length of the Red Sea. I only stayed long enough to open his guts and take an ear."

"You chased a slave so very far?"

"It was for reputation, Gaius. Nobody has ever escaped the eye of Marcus Foldor, before or since. Back in Alexandria, Lapidus Querinta paid me five thousand sesterces for his slave's ear, pickled in vinegar. He had a reputation to protect, too."

"Querinta! I have bought thousands of slaves from his market. Is it true what happened to him last year?"

"Yes, I was in Alexandria at the time, hunting. He lost the entire length of his enjoyment to some pox."

"Poor man, what a fate. He had great carnal appetites."

"Now he's like a glutton who can't taste anything."

"How can he bear to live?"

"Fear of death must weigh more heavily than the relief death brings."

"Enough, enough. So, you have been to Ocelis but not Muziris?"

"Muziris, no."

"Pity. If one slave from Muziris can fashion such a wonder as the navitar, imagine what other secrets a traveler might note down and bring back to Rome. I must arrange to send someone there. Might you be interested?"

"My delight is in catching slaves, Gaius. When I travel, it is for no other reason."

We returned to the atrium with its long pool. The little navitar was still floating there, harnessed to the toy boat and pulsing gently.

"The fashioning and use of navitars is not easy," said Maximus. "The method of turning fish hatchlings into navitars is complex in the extreme, but Crassus has mastered that art. One last problem remains, however. Horo! Set the fish free."

The slave Horo tipped a pail of fish into the pool. They were small and unremarkable, sardines perhaps, and no longer than a finger. Once in the pool they milled around for a moment, then made straight for the navitar. I watched, astonished, as they tore into its unresisting flesh, churning the water as if it were boiling.

"It does not resist or try to flee," I said, putting my hands on my knees and peering down as the navitar was shredded and eaten.

"Navitars do not feel pain or fear, Marcus. They do, however, taste exceptionally good."

"But this doesn't make sense," I protested. "The giant navitar was at sea for at least an hour while it towed the boat, yet no fish swarmed about to feast on it."

"A type of oil must be mixed in with a navitar's food, a very bitter oil. This oil is exuded like sweat through its skin and repels the fish that might otherwise feed upon it. We don't know how to make the oil. Only the slave woman, Vishesti, can do that, and there is very little left. Find her. Please."

That was not as easy as it sounded. I attended the slave markets and noted the faces and names of every slave. My memory was exceptional. Once I had a face, I had it forever. My head had in excess of a hundred thousand faces. When a slave absconded, I only needed to know the name to spot the face. Maximus had given me a name, but not a face.

"You know my talent, Gaius," I said, shaking my head. "I don't have her face."

"I can describe her."

"No. I need to have seen her face."

"She has children. They are also slaves."

"Children? There might be enough resemblance in their faces to give me her essentials. What do you know of them?"

"There's a boy, twelve years old, named Ravindra. A girl of seventeen, Marhavi. The eldest is Takshar, a youth of nineteen summers. They were captured in Muziris eight years ago, by privateers."

"As far away as that? The allure of Roman wealth reaches a lot farther than its legions and warships."

"Querinta bought them in Alexandria, but all are now in or near Rome. This scroll has the names of their masters."

I scanned the list. They were all important men.

"Was Vishesti captured with her children?"

"I…I don't believe I ever asked her!" he said, scratching his head. "When I fell ill, the physician Titus Rofula had her sent after he failed to help me."

"Where did he buy her?"

"We'll never know. Poor Titus, he fell from a bridge and drowned while I was recovering. I bought Vishesti from his widow."

"Can you show me where Vishesti slept and worked? This may sound like fancy, but the essence of slaves can linger in their workplaces and suchlike. I once caught a slave in the Sabura after only seeing the kitchen where she had cooked. The stall where she was selling food smelled just like the kitchen."

"Vishesti's chamber is filled with secrets," said Gaius, suddenly frowning. "Only Crassus and myself may enter."

"Then my work will be harder."

"Oh, very well! Come with me."

Gaius had built a large room for Vishesti's use, although Crassus worked there now. The walls were lined with shelves bearing little jars of green, blue, and red glass, spiral glass tubes, pottery lamps, and finely wrought tools such as physicians might use to operate upon eyes. There were three stone pools where navitars no bigger than frogs were pulsing in the clear water, each with a little sac tied to its back. Resting against one wall was an amphora with OIL OF BITTERNESS painted on it in black ink. There were three work benches of oak, all bearing glass spiral tubes, little braziers, glazed pottery urns, and clear glass jars filled with curdled, milky fluids. She had an impressive collection of dried herbs, and the jars were labeled with some flowing script that I had never seen before.

Gaius left me at the door, after telling Crassus not to leave me alone in the place. Crassus was a thin and amiable youth who had been educated by the very best tutors in Rome, and was a lot more intelligent than Maximus. I thought that even if Maximus failed to become a senator, he might well be remembered as the father of an outstanding philosopher.

"Your father says you have mastered the art of fashioning navitars," I said as I looked around.

"That is true, but I'm not really sure what I am doing," he admitted, as if embarrassed.

"Ugly thing," I said, looking at one in a pail of water.

"But useful."

"What's the manner of its feeding?" I asked. "It has no head."

"It has a stomach and gullet. We just pour food down the gullet."

"Ridiculous! How does it eat when there are no humans about?"

"It doesn't. Without humans to tend them, navitars die."

Vishesti had made tools of the strangest kind, and Crassus now showed some of them to me. One was just a droplet of water on a plate of glass, but it would magnify the image of anything below it. Two such glass plates placed one above the other would magnify all the more. Aided by enlarging devices like these, he reshaped the bodies of tiny fish. I looked through the enlarger at little fish that had no heads or fins. To the unaided eye they were barely visible.

I watched as Crassus grew tiny whiskers of metal in glass beakers, then used them to hold and reshape the little fish. Cut the head from a fish and the fish dies, but Crassus used oils, extracts of seeds, and sharply scented philters to keep the headless bodies alive. He could make cuts upon their flanks that would grow to become gill slits. Such cuts would kill any normal fish, yet these deformed, mangled things thrived.

The electral jar was beyond my comprehension. The juice of that bitter eastern fruit called the lemon was within, as were strips of copper and iron. Very fine silver wires coated with wax led away from it to a vat filled with clear water. I finally began to grow suspicious of this chamber of wonders.

"Vishesti reminds me of a priestess in her temple," I said. "Priests and priestesses hide behind scrolls, amulets, oils, and holy daggers. They have nothing of substance to offer those who come to pray."

"The gods would be angry to hear that," said Crassus uneasily.

"Our gods need no more than the prayers and offerings of the pious. I think that the secrets of Vishesti's navitars are very simple, and that all these jars are a hunter's blind to fool the unwary."

"May I have your knife for a moment?" asked Crassus.

"My knife? Why?"

"To show you something real."

I handed my knife to him. It was a good knife, nicely balanced and made from some eastern steel that held its edge well. Crassus dipped the blade in a beaker of clear fluid. After a few moments he drew it out again.

"Nothing has changed," I said.

"Correct. I wanted to show that Vishesti's mechanism is the wonder, not the fluid."

He attached silver wires from Vishesti's electral to my knife and to a copper bar. As he lowered them into the beaker they began to bubble.

"That's nothing magical," I said, although I felt strangely apprehensive.

"This will take some moments," he replied. "Come here, learn other secrets."

He showed me a jar containing very small navitars, then tipped what smelled like fish meal into their water.

"When the navitars are very small, they can only be nourished by swimming in broth. Now see here, in the pool. These navitars are as big as my fist, and each has a sac tied to its body. The sacs are fashioned from the bladders of rabbits, and the rabbit urethras have been inserted into the gullets of the navitars. By this means food is passed directly into their stomachs."

"Why not continue to add their food to the water?"

"This way, much more food can be crammed into them, making them grow faster. Besides, they must eventually swim in water where no food is suspended."

"And is the oil of bitterness mixed with their food?"

"Very sharp of you, Marcus Foldor. Were I a slave, I would not want you chasing me."

 
I WATCHED AS CRASSUS removed a bladder from an unresisting navitar, filled it with soup by means of a glass tube, then reattached it to the little fish-machine. If there was any trickery, I could not see it. Now we returned to the beaker where my knife continued to bubble. He detached the wire and drew it out. The blade had turned to bright, gleaming copper. I gaped at it, utterly astonished.

"Your blade now has the guise of copper, yet it remains steel," said Crassus, folding his arms and looking very smug.

"Another wondrous trick. No wonder your father wants Vishesti back."

"Just as she can disguise steel as copper, so too can she disguise herself. What did Father offer you for her return?"

"Ten thousand sesterces."

"A million would be a bargain for her."

"A million!" I exclaimed, then laughed.

Crassus did not even smile. Instead he gently lifted a navitar out of its pail and held it before me in both hands.

"This is but one type of navitar, Marcus Foldor. Vishesti told me of many others while I worked as her apprentice. One of them can enclose a man's body in its flesh and dive deep to where sunken ships lie. Just imagine what treasures there are on the sea floor, ready for the taking. Another type of navitar can enclose ten legionaries and carry them long distances underwater. With a hundred of those you could land an entire legion on the shores of, say, Britannia with no warning at all."

"Nonsense," I said uneasily. "How would the men breathe?"

"I asked her that very question. Navitars can purify foul air beneath the water."

"Astounding."

"Vishesti can make a multitude of different navitars. I can only make one."

"I don't understand why she fled. Surely your father would have kept her in greater luxury than the emperor's sisters."

"That he did, but it was not enough. She left a message chalked on that wall. Father had a slave clean it off, but I copied it down first."