Hannibal's Children (31 page)

"Well, that's that, then," Flaccus said finally. "The poor buggers have all drowned."

"There!" Selene shouted, jumping to her feet in her excitement. She was pointing to the east and everyone looked in that direction. Perhaps three hundred yards away the boat had surfaced. The hatch flew open and Tyrophanes leaped out and clasped his hands overhead like an Olympic victor. The crowd cheered as if they were at a chariot race.

"You see?" Chilo said. "I told you!" But sweat streamed from his brow and he looked as if he hadn't breathed the whole time the vessel was beneath the water.

The boat returned to the slip, running on the surface this time. Tyrophanes and the brave scholars who had taken the ride with him were cheered and congratulated. Even the slave rowers received applause.

"All right, it works," Flaccus said with poor grace. "Now how do you propose to sink an enemy ship with it?"

"That will take some work," Chilo said, beaming. "This is merely an experimental vessel, not a warship. That would have to be much larger. A ram would be the most efficient weapon."

"Ramming makes even a galley spring leaks," Marcus pointed out.

"We've been thinking more along the lines of a great iron saw on top of the vessel," Chilo said, "to rip the enemy ship open."

Marcus turned to Selene. "See if you can get the shipyards to build a diving warship to Chilo's design," Marcus said.

"I think I can do it," she said. "I have my resources."

"Excellent," Marcus said. "Now, Chilo, how about one of those flying machines you've been telling me about?"

Flaccus rolled his eyes and groaned but no one paid him any attention. Marcus, Chilo and Selene had their heads together in earnest discussion.

Marcus Scipio spent every hour he could spare at the Museum, in the newly expanded facilities of the Archimedean School. He had prevailed upon Selene to divert all the funds she could to advance the school's research into new weapons for use in the upcoming war with Carthage. She exerted herself splendidly for the best of reasons: Marcus assured her that, when the time came and Carthage was destroyed, Rome would make her true Queen of Egypt. Life was a high-stakes gamble in the Ptolemaic family and she deemed the prize worth the risk.

He no longer had to explain things or justify his actions to the rest of the Roman delegation because all had left save Flaccus. They were eager to take part in the upcoming wars and had no taste for pseudo-diplomatic service in Egypt. Pleading that they had done all the useful reconnaissance they were going to do, they had taken their leave, some for Carthage, others for Italy. They wanted in on the reconquest they knew was to come and considered Marcus Scipio and Flaccus utter fools for plodding along at this civilian work.

Marcus was certain that his work here was far more important to the future of Rome than any service he could perform as a commander of legions. He knew himself to be a fine soldier, but the legions were full of fine soldiers. Here, he could alter the course of history for all time to come.

As for Flaccus, he cared nothing at all for glory, but he liked the easy life and luxury of Egypt very much indeed. "I don't care if I never see Noricum again," he told Marcus. "As for Italy, it won't be a fit place to live in for a good many years to come. So if you like, I'll stay here and write up your dispatches for you. Just don't expect me to go back with you when you leave."

An endless stream of designs poured from the school, some of them logical, some clearly impractical, all of them intriguing. The improved catapults and ship-killers were the most prosaic. The chemical weapons were as dangerous to the experimenter as to any enemy. Chilo did not like them anyway as they did not involve his beloved principles of Archimedes.

"Mere apothecary work," he sniffed when a young man named Chares demonstrated an astonishing new explosive. Marcus was not so contemptuous. Quietly, he told Chares to continue his researches.

Work proceeded on the submersible vessel. Tyrophanes reported that the maiden voyage had not proceeded as perfectly as it had appeared to observers. When the ballast skins were filled, the vessel had descended as predicted and there was no serious leakage. The oars had worked well as propulsion. Other things had not gone so well. Controlling depth had been a problem. The plan had been to cruise at no more than a few feet beneath the surface, but more than once the vessel dived and struck the mud of the lake's bottom. Direction had been a difficulty as well. Visibility through the small port had been no more than a few feet in the murky water and steering had turned to guesswork. It had transpired that men working oars used up the air far faster than men at rest. Foul air had forced Tyrophanes to surface when he did and he then found that he was nowhere near where he had thought himself to be.

The scholars were already at work on these problems. Marcus admired their near-Roman ability to define problems and seek solutions. Most foreigners simply didn't think that way.

The man responsible for designing the oars thought he had a solution for the depth control problem: If vertical steering oars could make a ship move right or left, might horizontal steering oars not move it up or down? Chilo set him to designing such oars.

A young man from Cyprus who loved to experiment with mirrors and lenses said he could design a device that would allow the steersman to see above the water while the vessel was submerged. Marcus thought this sounded like magic, but Chilo told the boy to proceed with his experiments. This was a problem that would have to be solved if the submersible vessel was to be of any use.

"I'm not satisfied with the oars," Chilo said one day when they broke for lunch. "They work, but not well enough."

"What else is there?" Marcus asked. "Under water you don't have wind to move you, so how can you move without oars?"

"I keep thinking about the Archimedes screw," Chilo said. "The master devised it more than a hundred years ago to raise water. I think there must be some way to adapt it to move the boat. My thought is this ..." He moved his hands in characteristically Greek gestures as he tried to articulate his thoughts. "As it is used, the screw is fixed in one place. When it is turned, water is forced to rise along the screw's channels until it drains from the upper end."

"That is clear enough," Marcus said. "I've seen them at work many times."

"Well, if we could fix one or more such screws onto the boat and turn them, they would exert the same force against the water. Perhaps by forcing the water backward in relation to the boat, the boat itself would be propelled forward."

"Work on it," Marcus told him.

A few days later they stood before the workshop where the young Cypriote carried out his experiments. His name was Agathocles and he had the high-strung enthusiasm Marcus had come to associate with Museum researchers, especially the younger ones. He had also noticed that it was almost invariably the young ones who came up with the most outrageous concepts, and it was they who were not afraid to question long-held beliefs.

"You see," the Cypriote said, "a mirror will reflect an image before it faithfully. Everyone knows that."

"Such is the nature of mirrors," Flaccus agreed.

"Quite so. Well, a mirror will also reflect another mirror." At his gesture two slaves each took a plate of polished silver. One stood before the two Romans, one behind them. They saw their faces reflected and also the backs of their own heads, these two images repeated endlessly until they curved off into the distance.

"An amusing sight," Flaccus commented.

"But observe what happens when the mirrors are tilted in opposite directions."

Their reflections slid away and they saw a distorted view of the courtyard. It was disorienting and they looked away, slightly dizzy.

"How do you intend to apply this principle?" Marcus asked.

"By angling the mirrors very precisely," Agathocles said, "I have invented a device for seeing around corners or over walls and, I believe, to see the surface of the water from below it."

"This I don't understand," Marcus said. "I will have to see it demonstrated."

"Then come this way." He led them to a corner of the courtyard where a wing of the Museum complex ended. Here stood a framework of wood, one end of it protruding just beyond the end of the wing. Agathocles indicated a small mirror of silver set behind a bronze plate at eye level. There was a slot cut into the plate. "Look through this slot. It is important that the viewer's eyes be at optimum distance from the reflector."

Marcus stepped up to the contraption and put his eyes to the slot. In the mirror he could see a small fountain in the image of a dolphin with water gushing from its mouth. He had the disconcerting feeling that he was seeing through the wall before him. He stepped to the corner and looked around it. There stood the fountain. He went back to the bronze plate and gazed once more through the slot. "Amazing," he said. Just two angled mirrors, he thought. Like so many of the wonderful things he had seen here, it was so simple that it seemed somebody should have thought of it before.

Flaccus and Chilo had their turn at the slot. "Of course, the principle works just as well vertically," Agathocles informed them. He led them to a low wall at the far end of the courtyard. Another such device had been erected against the wall, which was a foot or two taller than head height. This time they could see men exercising in the palaestra on the other side. A ladder was provided to demonstrate that what they were seeing in the mirror was real.

"An excellent application of logic," Chilo commended. "Adapting it to the submersible boat may prove challenging."

"The mirrors will have to be fixed into a waterproof casing," Agathocles said. "Preferably, it should be of bronze. The upper mirror will have to be set behind a window. This must be made of highly polished glass or purest crystal."

"Can glass be made so transparent?" Marcus said. "All the glass I've seen distorts what you see through it."

"I have the finest glass from Babylon," Agathocles said. "It's quite pure and can be polished so that there is very little distortion. However, it is brittle. Crystal is more expensive and is difficult to find in large pieces, but it can be polished until it is as transparent as air, with no distortion."

"Keep working on it," Marcus told him.

Titus Norbanus sat in a curule chair atop the walls of Carthage. Behind him stood a line of lictors dressed in their military uniform of red tunic belted with bronze-studded black leather. They leaned on their fasces as they gazed out onto the waters of the harbor. The Senate had conferred upon him the dignity of a propraetor, despite the fact that he had held only the offices of quaestor and aedile. This breach of custom was part of the price the Old Families had to pay for his father's support, and it would last only for the first phase of operations, while the legions operated as part of the Carthaginian army. The legions marching into Italy were to be commanded by proconsuls and men of consular rank would command the legions in the real war to follow, the war against Carthage.

Still, Norbanus reflected, it felt good to have true imperium. And the reconquest and future wars would last a long time; plenty of time for him to return to Noricum, or Rome itself, and win election to the offices of praetor and consul. Then he could return to command the legions as proconsul. The offices would be his for the asking, as Rome's newest hero. The future was bright.

And where was Marcus Scipio? Dallying among the decadent Egyptians and, if reports were accurate, taking an almost traitorous interest in the defense of Alexandria. The fool's career was over and if he dared to return, he would be lucky to get exiled. Beheading was more likely. Not for the first time, Norbanus regretted that citizens could not be flogged and crucified, however serious their offense. It was the only blot upon his otherwise flawless happiness.

"I think we are ready to begin," Zarabel said. A ship was being rowed into the center of the harbor. She was finally going to demonstrate the burning-mirrors she had shown them on the first tour of the walls.

The rest of the Roman advance party stood along the parapet. The demonstration was for their benefit, Hamilcar wishing to impress the Romans with the invincible might of Carthage. They conversed in low voices, most of them highly skeptical of the upcoming show. The other machines were impressive, but this sounded ridiculous to them.

The ship was an old galley past its useful years. Its black-tarred hull was scarred with the marks of old battles and old storms. It had been stripped of anything useful and even its paint was long faded. It was worked into position by no more than a dozen oars, and when its anchor was dropped, the oarsmen jumped into the water and swam for shore. This did not leave the ship uninhabited, however. On the deck were chained at least a hundred men and women: felons condemned to death for varying offenses. Carthaginian law listed a great many crimes meriting death.

Zarabel signaled with her fan and the great reflectors ranged atop the wall, shining with new polish, began to swing toward the ship like the heads of malevolent gods. The Romans watched in fascination as great disks of light moved across the water like runaway suns. One by one they converged on the old galley. The wretches in chains screamed and winced and averted their eyes from the glare.

Slowly, the tarred wood began to smoke. Amid frantic screaming from the condemned and wild cheering from the Carthaginian crowd gathered on the wall, the smoke grew dense. Abruptly, the whole ship was enveloped in flame from one end to the other, as if ignited by the fiery breath of a monster from myth. The screams stopped within seconds and there was no sound louder than the crackling flames and the still-cheering mob. With amazing speed the vessel burned to the waterline and soon was nothing more than bits of blackened, smoldering wood floating upon the water. Of the condemned criminals there was no sign at all.

"It works after all," said one of the Romans.

"I don't believe it," said someone else.

"You just saw it!" Norbanus said. "Don't deny the evidence of your own eyes."