Harry Turtledove - Salamis

Menedemos laughed, more uneasily than he’d thought he would. “You know, my dear, that sounds a lot likelier than I wish it did.”

“I was just spinning a yarn, but the same thing went through my mind, too,” Sostratos said. “It would explain quite a bit, wouldn’t it?”

“Too much,” Menedemos answered. “Much too much.” Sostratos got off his couch, walked over, and solemnly set a hand on his shoulder.

Like everyone else on the island of Rhodes, Sostratos wondered when fresh news of Antigonos and Demetrios’ invasion of Egypt would come in. He wondered all the more after the first storm of the season dropped rain on the polis. His house had a new cistern, to catch and save as much water as possible in case the two new kings, victorious over Ptolemaios or not, besieged Rhodes next.

His cousin’s house across the street had a new cistern, too, nicely lined in stone and brick to retain as much water as possible. Many people who could afford such precautions took them. Maybe the brickmakers and stonemasons made extra silver because men needlessly feared a war that might not come. Sostratos didn’t think so, though. He hoped some of the artisans spent some of their profits building cisterns of their own.

For a while, he wondered whether news of the fighting in Egypt would stay hidden till spring. Bad weather on the Inner Sea curtailed sailing. But then he realized this news would also travel by land, up through Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria into Antigonos and Demetrios’ Anatolian heartland. And a rowboat could get to Rhodes from a town like Loryma. It was only 150 stadia, maybe a few more, across the strait separating the island from the Karian mainland.

So he kept up his new habit of haunting the harbor. He often saw Menedemos there, too. He worried that Menedemos might be squabbling with his father again. Uncle Philodemos, it seemed to him, often squabbled for the sport of it. They didn’t quarrel loudly enough for him to hear them shouting from across the street, but that proved nothing. Quiet quarrels were often the deadliest.

He wanted to ask his cousin if everything was all right, but remembered too well how cold and silent Menedemos had gone when he tried that before. So he greeted him whenever he saw him and talked about things like how Antigonos and Demetrios’ war against Ptolemaios was likely to be going. Since they had no facts yet, they could guess to their hearts’ content.

“It’s awfully late in the year to try a naval campaign. I mean, it’s awfully late. I wouldn’t care to do it myself, by the gods. You’re just asking for shipwreck if you put to sea now, especially in a place where you don’t have any friendly harbors close by,” Menedemos said.

He was a skipper himself, of course. By the standards of older men, he was a bold one, too, putting to sea earlier in springtime and staying out later in the fall than they might. If he said he didn’t care to go sailing this far past the autumnal equinox, that carried weight.

But Sostratos had about as much seafaring experience as his cousin, even if he hadn’t held command. And simply agreeing with Menedemos would have cut the conversation short, which he didn’t want to do. So he said, “I don’t know, my dear. If you were talking about the waters around here, I’d have to say you were right. But Egypt is a different world—we saw as much for ourselves. The seas and the winds in those parts may stay calm enough to let Demetrios do whatever his father needs him to.”

“There are storms on that coast after the setting of the Pleiades, and Demetrios couldn’t very well have moved before then,” Menedemos replied. “Hellenes have known about them for as long as we’ve been going into that part of the world. Are you pretending to be ignorant, O marvelous one? That’s not like you.”

The epithet made Sostratos’ ears burn. It sounded flattering; it was anything but. Sokrates had used it to tag people who he thought were marvelously stupid.

Sostratos did his best to hold his own: “Don’t you think the chance to seize Egypt is worth running a few risks for? How many times were you lucky to come back alive after you slept with somebody’s wife?”

“That wasn’t at sea,” Menedemos said. “At sea, you have more than yourself to worry about.”

“Well, all right.” Sostratos left it there. He didn’t really feel like arguing. And Menedemos was better about looking out for others and not thinking so much about himself and his restless prong than he had been a few years before. The river of time wears away even the hardest stone , Sostratos thought.

The sun slid down the sky towards its low point at the winter solstice. The twelve hours of daylight each felt short and cramped, while those of the night stretched like warm wax. The difference between winter and summer was more pronounced in northerly Macedonia, as it was less so down in Alexandria.

If one could work out how much the hours changed in different seasons at different places, one might learn something interesting, or so it seemed to Sostratos. He pulled out a wooden sphere with which he’d studied geometry when he was younger, but soon put it away again. He didn’t remember enough to work out exactly what he wanted to calculate.

And then he forgot spheres and geometry and the sun’s motions, for news from the edges of Egypt finally did start trickling into Rhodes. The next time he saw Menedemos heading down to the harbor, he hailed him and said, “By the gods, my dear, are you sure you’re not Teiresias in disguise?”

“I don’t think I am.” Menedemos looked down at himself. “Of course, the old seer was a man of parts, and some of the parts were pretty strange. Didn’t he spend seven years as a woman?”

“So they say. They aren’t around for me to question now, so I can’t be sure. But if he could be a woman, he shouldn’t find being a Rhodian too far beneath him. And you were a seer yourself when you said Demetrios’ fleet would run into trouble off the coast east of the Delta.”

“I didn’t need to be a seer for that, only a seafaring man,” Menedemos said. “I’d bet Demetrios’ captains tried to warn him but he didn’t want to listen to them. His loss, and his father’s.”

“Antigonos didn’t cover himself with glory coming at Egypt by land, either,” Sostratos said. “He didn’t move fast enough—I don’t suppose he could have, in that desert country—and Ptolemaios had all the approaches to the Delta well garrisoned before the invaders got to them.”

“Ptolemaios had more than soldiers fighting for him, too,” Menedemos said. “Have you heard how much he was offering Antigonos’ soldiers to go over to him?”

“No. Tell me!”

“Two minai of silver a head for ordinary fighting men, and a whole talent apiece for commanders.”

“By the dog!” Sostratos said softly. “Egypt is so rich, the Ptolemaios can spend money as if he shat it into his chamber pot every morning. After all, it worked with us, didn’t it?”

His cousin looked sour as wine that had gone over to vinegar. “Too right, it did. But what choice did I have? If I’d told him no when he wanted to hire the Aphrodite , he would have taken it anyway and we’d still be stuck in Alexandria—if he didn’t knock us over the head and toss us into a canal for the crocodiles to get rid of.”

“I wasn’t criticizing. You did what you had to do, no question about it,” Sostratos said. “And just in case there were any doubts, putting a crown on your head and calling yourself a king doesn’t turn you into a kind man.”

“I didn’t have any doubts, but why do you put it that way? Ptolemaios wasn’t officially a king yet when he made us go along with him,” Menedemos said.