Harry Turtledove: Salamis

Sometimes he wasn’t so far wrong, either. “Why don’t you head for the market and come back with some of those squid?” Menedemos said. “As long as they’re as cheap as you think they are, I mean.”

“Of course, young master.” Sikon could have posed for a statue of innocence personified—one more trick every sly slave knew. If he kept a few oboloi out of the seafood budget, who’d ever heard of a slave that wouldn’t steal a bit? They only caused trouble when they got greedy.

Out the cook went, whistling a tune Menedemos had heard in a tavern in Athens the summer before. He didn’t remember hearing it here in Rhodes, but Sikon must have. It was probably a tavern tune here, too. Some masters wouldn’t have let their slaves have enough time or money to visit taverns. Some masters measured their slaves’ rations every day, and made sure their men and women didn’t get anything on top of what they were supposed to have.

Menedemos’ father wasn’t like that. Philodemos recognized that his slaves were human beings with human quirks and desires, not automata like the ones Homer had Hephaistos making. Menedemos’ mouth twisted. His father was easier on the slaves than on him. He had quirks and desires, too, but his father didn’t want to acknowledge them.

Since one of those desires was for his father’s wife …. His mouth twisted again, as if it were full of the sourest vinegar. He hoped the Aphrodite would sail for Alexandria soon. Alexandria was thousands of stadia, hundreds of parasangs, from Rhodes. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t think about—worry about—Baukis while at sea and down in Egypt. But, think and worry as he would, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. And physical distance gave emotional distance. It might, anyhowat any rate.

The political side of things, too …. He’d hashed that out with his father—who was cool and sensible about such things—and with Sostratos and his father. They all agreed Rhodes would be better off truly free and independent than under the muscular thumbs of Antigonos and Demetrios. Uncle Lysistratos had said, “Between you and Sostratos, you just about make one diplomat.” Menedemos rather liked that. He thought it might be true. He hoped it was.

His father stuck his head into the kitchen. “I just saw Sikon heading out,” Philodemos said.

“That’s right.” Menedemos dipped his head. “He says there’ve been lots of squid in the agora lately, so he can get them for a good price.”

“Whatever he really pays, he’ll swear to us it was more,” his father said. “The difference will go straight into his mouth.” He mimed sticking an obolos between his cheek and his teeth, the way people did when they stowed away small change. Then he laughed—sourly, but he did. “I’ve never known a cook who didn’t steal some. As long as it isn’t too much ….” He spread his hands.

“I was just thinking the same thing!” Menedemos exclaimed. “Isn’t that funny?”

“Maybe you’re growing up. Or maybe I’m slipping into my second childhood.” Philodemos couldn’t praise without adding a scorpion’s sting in the tail of what he said to Menedemos. He rubbed his chin as he eyed his son. “I really ought to get you married off. High time I had grandchildren.”

Maybe you do, or you will soon , Menedemos thought. Snow rarely fell on Rhodes, but ice walked up his back. He knew which woman he wanted to wed. He also knew how impossible that was. He rarely even got the chance to talk to Baukis, not about anything that mattered. You never could tell what a slave might overhear. Slaves were cursed nuisances in all kinds of ways. Living without them, though, meant doing all your own work. Life was easier with them.

Menedemos knew he didn’t change expression when his father brought up marriage. It wasn’t the first time, and he had practice holding his features still around the older man. After no more than a heartbeat’s pause, he answered, “Most of the time, Father, I’d say we should do it soon, too. But with the political situation the way it is—”

That worked better than he’d dreamt it would. His father clapped a hand to his forehead. “The political situation! Oimoi! I hunted you down to tell you what I just heard, and then we started talking about other things and I forgot. Maybe I really am losing my wits.”

“What did you hear?”

“When you take the Aphrodite to Egypt, I expect you plan to go by way of Cyprus. Am I right?”

“I meant to, certainly. It makes the passage across the Inner Sea as short as possible. Why? Are you saying I shouldn’t?”

“I’m afraid I am. That’s my news. Demetrios has a fleet in the waters there, and he’s landed an army near Karpaseia, at the tip of the peninsula in the northeast. The poleis on Cyprus mostly back Ptolemaios, and Antigonos’ son is attacking Menelaos, who’s holed up in Salamis. Where else on the island he may go, I can’t tell you.”

“ Oimoi! is right, then,” Menedemos said. The last thing a trader wanted was to sail into the middle of a war. He’d done that in Sicily and southern Italy, and he never wanted to do it again. After a moment, he continued, “So you think we should go straight from Rhodes?”

“Don’t you?” his father returned.

“Probably. But—” Menedemos muttered to himself and counted on his fingers. In that moment, full of thought and calculation, he might almost have been Sostratos, though Sostratos would have been offended to hear it. “It’s … what? Something like three thousand stadia from here to Alexandria?”

“About that, yes,” Philodemos said. “I don’t know that anyone’s reckoned it up exactly.”

“I don’t know how you would,” Menedemos agreed. “But we’d cut a quarter or a third off the distance over open water if we could stop for food and water and a rest at Paphos or one of the other towns on the west coast of Cyprus.”

“I know. You wouldn’t get supplies if Demetrios’ men are attacking those places, too, though. You’d get your ship seized, is what you’d get. And your whole crew would be sold into slavery or held for ransom—or as hostages to make Rhodes do whatever Antigonos and Demetrios tell us to.”

“You’re right, Father. I wish you were wrong, but you’re right.” Menedemos retreated into that brown study again. “Three thousand stadia … with a good wind behind us, we could do it in three days. It’ll take longer if we have to row most of the way. We won’t man all the oars all the time—we’d kill the crew if we did. That will slow us down. Five or six days, I’d guess.”

“That sounds about right,” his father agreed. Neither one of them said a word about storms. Out in the middle of the vast Inner Sea, the Aphrodite would bounce like a toy boat made from a wood chip, a stick, and a bit of rag when boys threw stones into the rain puddle where it floated.

“All part of the business,” Menedemos said, putting the best face he could on things. His father dipped his head. For once, they understood each other perfectly.

Damonax stood on the pier, watching the workmen he’d hired pass amphorai of olive oil down to the rowers who were stowing them in the Aphrodite . “Put them well back towards the stern,” he said importantly. “Make sure they’re well padded, too. Straw and whatever else you have.”

Sostratos tossed his head. “No, they go forward,” he said, his voice sharp and annoyed. “We have other cargo we’ll need the stern space for.” He rounded on his brother-in-law. “I don’t tell you how to run your farm, O best one. I’m toikharkhos on this ship, and I’ll thank you to remember it. Things go where I say they go, and nowhere else. Have you got that?”