The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  Queen of the Sea, off Fort Plymouth

  December 10, 320 BCE

  “We’ll be going to Mexico first,” Eleanor Kinney said. “Or at least that part of the world that will become Mexico in a few hundred more years.” She lifted a spoon full of chocolate ice cream. “It’s this that ultimately decided the matter. We can get chocolate here, but we think we will be able to get it cheaper up north.”

  Roxane nodded. She didn’t have chocolate ice cream. She was eating apple pie with whipped cream for dessert. They were in the Royal Buffet. “After that?”

  “It depends on how long it takes, but back here, then if we can be sure that Ptolemy will have oil for us, we may head directly for the Horn of Africa and up to the Red Sea.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Sugar cane. It’s probably to be found in India or New Guinea, and a load of cuttings that we could plant here or in the Caribbean could develop into a lucrative industry.”

  Roxane looked at Eleanor with a raised eyebrow, and Eleanor tried not to bristle. “The production of sugar doesn’t need to involve slavery. We can create processing machines. And if cutting cane is going to be a labor-intensive chore, it can be done by sugarcane farmers who own their own land.”

  “But will it?” Roxane asked, then held up a hand that was still holding a fork full of apple pie to stop Eleanor’s response. “I’m not condemning you.” Then, with a sardonic twist of her lips, she added, “I’m honestly starting to think you are right about slavery, at least in the long term. But the circumstances that led to your history’s extensive use of slavery in sugar production are present in the here and now.”

  Eleanor nodded, even as she noted the strange accent that Roxane’s English had developed through her extensive use of text-to-speech software. She sounded a bit mechanical and mispronounced certain words. Roxane spent at least an hour every day on the exercise machines in the gym, and for all of that time she was listening to Wikipedia articles that Dag had used text-to-speech software to turn into audio files. It wasn’t that Roxane couldn’t read. She could get by quite well reading Greek, but reading English in Latin script was going to take a bit longer. However, she did have an excellent ear for languages and in the past months had learned to understand English quite well. Even to speak it well, if with a computer accent. The computer accent wasn’t unique to Roxane. It was becoming quite common among the people from this time.

  “It’s not only sugar,” Eleanor said. “There is also Indian cotton, which may be different in fiber length or color, as well as a host of other products.” Eleanor stopped, because cotton, like sugar, had made extensive use of slavery in its history. “Darn it. Is there anything that didn’t use slavery to produce?”

  Roxane laughed. “Well, furs from hunters, but other than that, I can’t think of anything off the top of my head. What honestly concerns me more is that these delays mean that Eumenes, as well as Eurydice and Philip, are going to be on their own longer.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Not much. It takes time to set up the radio and Eumenes seems to be moving fast.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The War in Europe

  Lydia, east of the Bosphorus Straits

  December 10, 320 BCE

  Eumenes looked west across the Bosphorus. In theory, he owned this side as satrap of Lydia, and Lysimachus owned Thrace on the other. Lydia was south of the Black Sea and east of the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean Sea. Thrace was north of the Aegean and the Marmara and west of the Black Sea. The Bosphorus ran north to south from the Black Sea to the Marmara. Given his preferences, Eumenes would move his army across the Bosphorus, pass through Thrace doing as little harm as possible, and march on Cassander in Macedonia with his army in good order.

  Eumenes still hoped that might happen, but Lysimachus wasn’t a fan of Eumenes. He had been cordial when Alexander was alive, but that had been out of personal loyalty to Alexander. With Alexander dead, that cordiality was getting a little frayed, especially since the queen with Eumenes was Eurydice, not Roxane. And the emperor with Eumenes was Philip, not Alexander IV.

  “What do you think?” Eurydice asked.

  “I think he doesn’t want to get in the middle of a war between a wagoneer’s son and the son of Antipater who never killed a boar.”

  “A plague on both our houses,” Eurydice said.

  Eumenes wondered where she’d heard the phrase she’d just rendered in Greek. Probably from the ship people, he imagined, but he put the question aside and agreed. “Something very much like that. However, from our point of view, he might as well be on Cassander’s side. Because to get our army into Macedonia, we are going to have to cross the Bosphorus and travel through Thrace.”

  “If we get a message from Roxane, would that help?”

  “It just might. I think Lysimachus was a little in love with Roxane from the beginning.”

  Eurydice sniffed and Eumenes stifled a smile. In spite of the reconciliation, and even the start of a friendship between the two queens of Alexander’s heirs, mention of Roxane’s beauty was still sure to get a sniff from Eurydice, if not a comment on the stupidity of men.

  “What about Seuthes?” Eurydice asked, and Eumenes lost his urge to smile.

  Thrace had been conquered by Macedonia in Philip II’s time and rebelled at Philip II’s death, and again at Alexander’s. The last Eumenes had heard, Seuthes III, the present king of Thrace, was in a military stalemate with Lysimachus. “I would rather not support a rebellion in your husband’s empire, Your Majesty.”

  “If you don’t, Cassander will!” Eurydice shook her head. “If Lysimachus will see reason, fine. If not, we should form an alliance with Seuthes and use him to guard a section of the Bosphorus while we build a pontoon bridge like Darius the Great did.”

  “What would you offer him?” Eumenes asked.

  “Statehood for Thrace,” Eurydice said quickly. “Thrace would switch from a satrapy to a state. Seuthes would have the title of king of Thrace, and be able to appoint the representative to the House of States.” The biggest difference between the status of state and that of satrapy in the new Alexandrian Empire was that the government of a state got to choose the heir. But the government of a satrapy was chosen by the central government and could, at least in theory, be recalled and removed by the central government at its whim.

  Eumenes looked across the Bosphorus again. This was one of the three narrowest sections of the Bosphorus and it was still more than a hippikon, four stadia, wide. An idle thought struck him and he waved over the ship person who was in charge of the radio. Her name was Erica Mirzadeh and like so many of the ship people she had hair that was dark brown nearly half its length and the other half blond like a Gaul.

  “How far is it to the far shore in your ship people’s measurements?”

  “Just by eye, I’d say around a half a mile. Let me see. Tacaran!” she shouted. “You want to bring me the rangefinder?”

  She turned back to Eumenes. “The ship didn’t have that many rangefinders, but the machine shop worked up an old-fashioned substitute so we could do surveying if you folks needed it.”

  It took a few minutes and Eumenes would have called a halt, but he was interested in how they would do the measuring.

  Tacaran, who—if Eumenes understood correctly—had been a Muslim before The Event and was now “reconsidering his options,” brought over a large case, long and made of stiffened leather. From that he pulled a tripod and a rod. The rod was attached to a rotating section atop the tripod and a weight attached to the bottom of the rod. Clever. They now had a rod sticking straight up and it would be straight up, even if the ground was uneven.

  Another rod was attached to the first at a right angle, balanced over the first rod. And then another device, one with a bubble of air in a glass tube of liquid, was laid on top of the first. Tacaran Bayot examined it and said, “Good.” Then he tightened some knobs.

  Erica Mirzadeh explained. “What Tacaran Bayot di
d first was use the weighted rod to level the crosspiece. Then he used a bubble level to be sure. Once he confirmed it, he tightened the screw clamps to lock it in place. And now we have a level rod. Now we rotate the rod so that we can see a terrain feature on the other side of the channel.”

  Erica Mirzadeh took over, rotating the rod so that it was almost perfectly parallel to the Bosphorus and the eyepiece looked directly across the channel. She looked into the eyepiece. “Yep.” She muttered and mumbled in the ship people’s tongue.

  One of the Silver Shields translated. “A funny-shaped rock. That’ll do for a reference point.”

  She tightened another knob, then she started to twist another one delicately, still talking in their language.

  The Silver Shield said, “What she’s doing now is adjusting the angle of a mirror on the far end of the rod. When the angle is right, she will be able to see the rock, both directly and through the mirror. Then—”

  “Thar she blows,” Erica said. She lifted her eye from the eyepiece. She looked at a dial that was painted white, with little black lines and numbers on it. Then she pulled out her phone and opened the wooden case that held it. She used it for a minute, then said, “I make it seven hundred and thirty-seven point three meters. About three quarters of a klick. We could hit the far side with rockets if we needed to.”

  Eumenes looked across the Bosphorus yet again. He wasn’t entirely sure what a meter was, but if seven hundred of them took you to the far shore, then they were about the length of a pace, perhaps a bit more. And that meant that over a distance that long, the ship people could measure to half a pace and less. And that’s an old-fashioned device. “Is it the rod or the phone?” Eumenes knew what a phone was. He had used one. They were, in subtle ways, some of the most powerful magic of the ship people. That was why Erica kept hers in a padded wooden box except when she was using it.

  “Mostly, it’s the rod-and-mirrors rig. The calculations are nothing you couldn’t do. Well, nothing that Philip couldn’t do. There are some sines and cosines in there. But if you had a reference book, which is for sale in the Queen of the Sea bookstore, you could do the calculations.”

  “Perhaps we should buy the book you mentioned and another of those devices, then,” Eumenes offered, mostly because he wanted to see how Erica would respond.

  “That would be a good idea,” she said. “Once we get the radio set up, we can put in the order and it will be on the Queen the next time she gets to a local port.”

  Eumenes gave her a slow nod as he thought about the implications of the ship people’s willingness to share their magic. What they called science or technology.

  Byzantium, Thrace

  December 14, 320 BCE

  Lysimachus read the letter. It was written in Greek and was purportedly from Roxane. But Lysimachus wasn’t convinced. Maybe things would have been different if he was sure, but no. He had read the book of future history and in a world without Alexander, a man had to look after himself. Besides, he had another letter, this one from Cassander. Cassander called him king of Thrace and offered him alliance against the traitor, Eumenes.

  He called a scribe over and began to dictate.

  Eumenes may cross with his army, but only after I have received documentation of my ownership as an independent king of both Thrace and Lydia.

  He scratched his jaw, and continued.

  The age of Alexander has passed away, and the age of the successors is upon us, whether we would have it so or not. So much we can see from the ship people book of the future, no matter what they claim of the effect of butterflies on future events.

  Look to your own fortunes, Eumenes.

  No. I guess you are already doing so. Just hiding behind the supposed heirs and their queens.

  Lysimachus, King of Thrace

  Lydia, east of the Bosphorus Straits

  December 16, 320 BCE

  Sitting at a table in the inn they were using as headquarters, Eumenes read the letter and passed it to Eurydice. Then with a sigh, he said, “I thought better of him but it doesn’t matter now. It is Seuthes. It must be.”

  “If Seuthes hasn’t gone crazy too,” Eurydice said bitterly.

  Eumenes looked at her and she looked back. “I didn’t want it to be this way, Eumenes. I was just afraid it would be.”

  Eumenes nodded sadly. “Cassander must have offered him kingship.”

  Fortress of Pydna, Macedonia

  December 17, 320 BCE

  Cassander looked at the young woman, Thessalonike. She was healthy, he had to give her that. Thessalonike spent at least an hour a day swimming in the tile-lined artificial pond. Unfortunately, she also had her father’s nose, which looked well enough on a Greek king, but not well at all on a woman. “Do you agree then, Queen of Macedonia?”

  “I don’t know, Cassander. My nephew, Alexander IV, is still alive. I don’t think Olympias would like it If I tried to displace her grandson.”

  “Olympias is on the ship with the ship people. Granted, we cannot reach her there, or Alexander’s brat, but the truth is there is little they can do to affect things. We face Eumenes the Carter’s son, and that’s all.”

  Seuthopolis, Northern Thrace

  December 20, 320 BCE

  Seuthes III, king of Thrace, sat in the private chamber of his new-built palace and read the letter. It was a respectful letter, but at the same time it did not offer him what he truly wanted. Freedom for Thrace, his kingdom independent of the Macedonians.

  To Seuthes III, king of Thrace, if you accept this proposal, Thrace will be a kingdom within the Macedonian Empire. It will have all the rights accorded to a state by the constitution of the United Satrapies and States of the Empire. See attached.

  Seuthes had seen the attachment. It was widely published. He didn’t think such a ramshackle system could work, with some parts of government placed in the hands of the empire and other parts placed under the control of the states and satrapies. With rights given to citizens of the empire, as though the empire was Athens.

  But he wasn’t sure it would fail, either.

  He leaned back in the chair and considered, staring blindly at the wall hangings. What if it did fail? Would he be worse off? No. He would have the legitimacy that the USSE could bestow. But what if it didn’t fail? He would be locked in, a lesser king who must bow to a babe and a lunatic. He tossed the letter on the table and stood. He had other work to do.

  He thought it over for two more days as he did the rites, saw petitioners, and settled disputes among his people, but he finally decided to ally with Eumenes. Eumenes, who, according to the ship people’s future history, was the only one of Alexander’s generals to remain loyal. Perhaps Eumenes would be honorable.

  That left the very large issue of whether he could do it or not. He and Lysimachus had fought each other to a standstill, but that was before Eumenes and Eurydice entered the game.

  Two and a half days after receiving the letter, he stood. Decision made. Beard bristling, he bellowed, “Bring me a horse! And arrange a boat! I travel to Lydia!”

  Thrace, north of the Sea of Marmara

  December 30, 320 BCE

  The scout slipped quietly into the camp, and waved to King Seuthes. The camp was about four miles from the coast, near a fishing village. He walked over and squatted down next to where the king was sitting cross-legged on the ground. “Lysimachus, or at least raiders claiming to be Lysimachus’ men, came through the village a few weeks ago and took their catch. But nothing since then.”

  “Good. Do they have a boat?”

  “If you can call them that. Tie six of them together and a man has room to stand up.”

  “Telos, you’re a snob.” Seuthes laughed quietly.

  “I have been on triremes in battle, my king. These things are emptied-out washtubs.”

  “Then let us go wash.” King Seuthes held out a hand. Telos took it and pulled his king to his feet.

  * * *

  Two hours later, King Seuthes was less s
cornful of Telos’ pronouncements. The boats were round, about five feet across, with no sail and not much in the way of oars, just enough room to give a man a place to sit while he cast nets into the sea in hopes of catching a meal for his family.

  It meant that Seuthes had a decision to make. Lydia, across the Bosphorus, was a hundred miles from here. A hundred and fifty if they hugged the coast. There was no way that the horses could make the trip in those boats. He’d been expecting that, but these boats weren’t safe for men more than a mile or so from shore.

  He turned to the village headman, Banyous, who was bowing like an idiot, more in fear than out of respect. It gave Seuthes pause. This was one of the people that the ship people would make citizens of the USSE?

  “I need to get to Lydia to talk with Eurydice and gain the support of the ship people.”

  “Are they real?” Banyous asked, surprise for a moment overriding his fear.

  Seuthes nodded his bearded head gravely. “Yes. There is ample evidence from many sources.” In a way, the man’s doubt was reassuring. Seuthes was more than a little skeptical when he first heard about the ship people, but since then he had talked to merchants who had actually seen the great ship. “They are quite real and have powerful magic.”

  “They say they know the future?”

  Seuthes tried to answer the man honestly, but he wasn’t entirely sure how it worked. “They know the broad strokes of history, but not the details.” Seuthes was beginning to wonder just a little bit if perhaps the ship people might have a point. As the village headman got more comfortable around Seuthes, he seemed to gain in understanding of the world.