John Roberts - The Seven Hills

The place was called Sinai. it might as well have been the realm of Dis or Pluto. To the Romans, accustomed to the verdant North, to beautiful Italy, it seemed like a place cursed by the gods. Their march from Carthage to Egypt, then down the Nile, had taken them only through cultivated land. The Nile Valley had been bordered by desert, but few of them had ridden out to see it. Now they had to cross this.

From horseback, Titus Norbanus surveyed the prospect. Despite the heat, he wore his lion-mask helmet. Beneath the fanged upper jaw his face was fair, straight-lined and handsome. His eyes were intensely blue. The desert was daunting, but Alexander and his soldiers had faced worse. He felt that he and Alexander had much in common.

"Fighting is one thing," Lentulus Niger said, "but this? Roman soldiers expect to fight. It's what they're best at. Not marching across sand and rock where the lizards have to take shelter from the sun."

"We've never faced anything like this," Cato agreed.

"Roman soldiers can do anything," Norbanus assured his subordinates. "Barbarians have lived here for generations. Can Romans not do anything barbarians can do?"

"Little bands of wretched nomads scurrying from waterhole to waterhole with a few goats may be able to live here, after a fashion," Cato allowed. "But we have more than forty thousand men, plus all their animals. How are we going to make it through to the cultivated lands?"

"We should have gone by sea," Niger said. "We could have commandeered the ships at Pelusium."

"Carthage controls the sea," Norbanus said patiently. "Even preoccupied with Sicily, there are enough Carthaginian warships prowling about to deal with some wallowing transports full of Roman soldiers. We would have to trust Greeks to handle the ships, and who can trust Greeks?"

"Still," Niger said, "to undertake a march like this without ships screening us and providing us with supplies as we go up the coast"-he made a gesture of futility-"it's courting disaster."

"Had we been able to march westward," Norbanus pointed out, "we would have done so. We discussed all this at our councils. Did you miss those discussions, Lentulus?"

Niger fumed. "That was before we had a look at this place."

Norbanus leaned on his saddle pommels. His subordinates lacked vision. That was why some men led and others followed. Men who would lead must have vision. Men who would be truly great must have great vision. That was what separated men like Alexander and him from the common run of men.

"For many centuries," he explained, "armies have crossed this desert to make war. Greeks, Syrians, Persians-they have all come this way to invade Egypt. The pharaohs crossed it the other way to take war to their enemies. None of them found this desert impassable."

"Maybe it rained more then," Cato said.

"And they went along the coast, supported by their ships," Niger maintained.

"We are no one's inferior when it comes to planning and preparation," Norbanus said. "Before we begin, we will gather all the forage we can cut and bring it along on wagons and on the backs of those smelly camels. We will bring water the same way, in bags. The men can carry all the rations they will require on their own backs. We can do this, and we will reach the other side in excellent shape. And we will march inland, away from the coast. I do not want to be observed by ships or seen from the coastal towns. I don't want anyone reporting to the shofet or to Queen Selene where we are."

"Why the secrecy?" Niger wanted to know.

"I like surprises," Norbanus said, smiling.

Marcus Scipio studied the model with a critical eye. It looked like nothing he had ever seen before. He doubted that anyone had ever seen such a thing. If it resembled anything else, it would have to be a bat, he decided. Its long, slender body was a framework of reeds thinner than arrow shafts, covered with a skin of parchment. Stretching from both sides were wings made of even thinner reeds, also covered with a skin of thinnest parchment. At its rear was a tail somewhat like a bird's.

"Where are the feathers?" Marcus asked.

"I tried attaching feathers," the young man said, "fancying that these somehow made birds lighter and facilitated their flight. But they did not improve things. But we know that bats have no feathers, yet they fly admirably. Insects have no feathers, yet many have wings, and some of these, particularly the dragonfly, are more agile in the air than even birds or bats." His name was Timonides and he spoke of his passion with single-minded intensity.

"I determined that the structure of the wings gave the power of flight. Wings take many forms, but those of birds and bats, whether made of feathers or skin and bone, share a common cross-section: semi-lenticular with a very fine, thin trailing edge. I experimented with this shape until I had a structure that would provide flight, but learned that it could not be controlled without a tail." He pointed at the triangular structure at the rear.

"This stabilized flight somewhat in the vertical plane, but flight was still very irregular in the horizontal. Finally I added this." He indicated a vertical fin protruding above the tail. "Birds do not have this structure, but it is very common in fish."

"You looked to fish for lessons in flight?" Marcus said, astonished.

"When you think of it, the swimming of fish shares many things in common with the flight of birds. Fish move through water instead of air, but propulsion and steering are much the same. This vertical fin also acts rather as a rudder does on a watercraft."

"I know how the underwater boats use those little wings to dive and surface," Marcus told him. "But when I heard you had plans for making men fly, I confess I pictured something like Icarus, with great, feathered wings that they could flap."

The young man shook his head. "That is a silly myth. Men are not built for such effort. Most of the strength of ourbodies is below the waist, which is why men can run better than most animals, and soldiers can march bearing heavy burdens. By contrast, our upper bodies are weak. Look at how a bird is built. Its legs are scrawny, puny things. Even its wings have very little muscle. But the greater part of its body is composed of pectpral muscle, what we call the breast." For emphasis he rapped his knuckles on Marcus's breastplate, upon which the muscles in question had been sculpted in great detail and somewhat exaggerated size.

"Picture a man whose body is three-quarters pectoral muscle. Then you would have a human fit to fly like a bird."

"So how do the wings of this thing flap?" Marcus asked. "I see no mechanism for the purpose."

"They don't," Timonides admitted. "It will not fly in that way. It will glide and soar, as gulls and eagles do."

"Oh," Marcus said, disappointed. "I believe that will limit its usefulness. I'd had visions of winged soldiers descending upon the enemy like a great swarm of hawks swooping upon helpless chickens."

"Disappointed?" Timonides cried, outraged. "But this is marvelous! For the first time, a man will fly in the air without falling. It is something no one save a god has been able to do before!" He looked about apprehensively, then crossed the room to touch a statue of Hephaestus, god of inventors. "Not," he amended hastily, "that I in any way compare myself to the immortal gods."

"Of course, of course," Marcus said. "I did not mean to denigrate your research. It is indeed wonderful. But spectacle and novelty are the things of peacetime. These times call for warlike applications." Peacetime was something he knew only in theory. War had been his whole life.

Timonides, in the fashion of Greeks, assumed a cunning look. "No military application? My dear General Scipio, doyou consider an aerial view of your enemy's dispositions, his route of march, the approach of his fleet, to be useless? Consider that, with such devices, widely separated elements of your forces can stay in contact and the enemy cannot intercept your messengers."