The Macedonian Hazard

by Eric Flint

  “If this is real,” Marie said cautiously, “we need to know a great deal more than that he was the one who did it. We need to know why he did it.” She leaned back in her swivel chair and tapped her finger on the formica table that held the computer. “Sean, are you sure that the person you saw was the person Cleopatra recognized?”

  “I think so, yes. There was only one guy with sideburns among the people I could see in the direction Cleo was looking. And we’ve discussed the rest of how he looked, the oiled, curled hair and so on. Her description matches the guy I saw.”

  “Fine. Tomorrow you’re getting up early and having breakfast in the Royal Buffet. Don’t be obvious about it. Don’t look for him, but just notice if he shows up.”

  “And if he does?”

  “If he does, wait a few minutes, have some cereal or something, then go to a phone and give me a call.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Cleopatra asked.

  “If he doesn’t, Sean is going to become a regular in the Royal Buffet for breakfast until he does show up. Was he with anyone?”

  “No. He was alone at the table,” Cleopatra said. “It was the way he was looking at me that caught my attention.”

  “Do you have a slate or a phone, Sean?” Marie asked.

  “Nope. I sold my phone to the ship before we hit Trinidad the first time.”

  That was disappointing, but not surprising. The Queen of the Sea offered three thousand dollars in ship credit for phones in the first months after The Event. By now, the going rate for a cell phone was fifteen thousand dollars ship money.

  “Cleopatra?”

  Cleopatra shook her head. “I considered one, and on a couple of occasions I have rented one from ship’s stores. But with the amount of investing we’ve been doing, it just never seemed necessary. The ship’s wired phones work well enough, and they come with the suite.”

  “Fine. Go to one of the phones and call me, but make sure it’s out of sight of Sideburns. Tell me where he’s sitting and I’ll come take a look and see if I can get a picture.”

  Queen of the Sea, Royal Buffet

  May 8, 319 BCE

  Sean Newton rubbed his eyes and yawned. He and Cleo didn’t normally get up this early. He looked down at his eggs and toast and wished he had some coffee. He took a swallow of milk and looked up to see Sideburns staring at him. He stared back, and Sideburns looked away. Sean went back to his breakfast and tried not to sneak peeks at Sideburns as he got his meal and passed out of Sean’s view. He had another bite of toast, and then stood up and headed for the hall off the Royal Buffet where there was a courtesy phone. On his way he gave a quick glance and saw Sideburns seated at a table behind his.

  He dialed Marie’s number, which was not her room number anymore. Firstly, because six months ago she’d moved into the captain’s suite, and secondly, because the numbers had been reorganized so that unlisted numbers were possible.

  The phone rang and a grumpy male voice said, “Yes?”

  “Sorry, Captain. I’m trying to reach Doctor Easley.”

  The phone was passed and an even more grumpy woman’s voice said, “Marie Easley.”

  “He’s here, Doctor Easley.” Somehow calling her Marie didn’t seem appropriate right now. “When you come in through the middle corridor, he’ll be at a table three to the left and two behind the one I’m sitting at.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll give you all the time you want, Doctor. But I can’t speak for Sideburns.”

  Marie grunted and hung up the phone.

  Sean set the phone back in its cradle and went back to breakfast. He was not the least bit sleepy anymore. On his way back to his table, he stopped and picked up a serving of sausages and hash browns.

  Sean didn’t care for hash-browned nut potatoes, but he wanted a reason to have gotten up.

  He left the hash browns on the table and finished his eggs, toast, sausage, and milk. He was polishing off his toast when Marie Easley came in and went to the egg station. She ordered eggs over easy and looked around while she waited. She didn’t seem to notice Sideburns, but nodded to Sean. After she got her eggs she came over, sat across from Sean, and asked him about the glass factory near Mount Ida in Lydia.

  They talked about the factory that was located where Akçay would be located in the twenty-first century. It was making glass panes now, though one side of them was still rough so they weren’t any good for looking through. They worked fine for letting light in, though, so there was an excellent market for them. About halfway through Marie’s breakfast, Sean noticed Sideburns walk past. He winked at Marie and she nodded slightly.

  Once Sideburns was gone, Sean said, quietly, “Do you recognize him?”

  “There is no need to whisper, Sean,” Marie said in a normal voice. “And no, I don’t recognize him, but he does look familiar. I think he is with one of the delegations.”

  So it proved. Over the next few days, Marie did a search of the passenger list. Every passenger on the Queen had been digitally photographed and a picture ID printed for them. They were dot matrix black and white pictures, printed on locally made rag paper, but having a Queen of the Sea ID card was a matter of significant status anywhere on the Mediterranean coast.

  Marie Easley was going through the digital photographs, as they had color and were better quality. One thing that hadn’t made it back was facial recognition software. The cruise line had it, but it was on the docks back in the world, where people’s passports were checked. Marie did a sort by gender, eliminating all the women. That helped, but in the fourth century BCE, most cultures were still very male dominated, so most of the passengers from around the Mediterranean were male, and that was even more true among the Greeks. She also, for the first pass, eliminated all the locals from New America and those from Carthage to Rome, guessing that he was probably Greek. That got the list down to about eight hundred names. The states and satrapies of the Alexandrian Empire were disproportionately represented in the students at the university, as well as in the political delegations and among the merchants.

  She had been going through the remaining photos for the last hour, when she saw him. He almost slipped past. In the picture, he had the sideburns but the hair was lank, not oiled and curled. So Marie clicked, glanced, clicked again, then stopped, went back, and examined the picture. Even if the printout would be black and white and pretty grainy, the image on her screen was clear and brightly colored.

  Calix, a member of Arrhidaeus’ delegation from Antigonus. Arrhidaeus was Antigonus’ representative to the Queen of the Sea, not to the government, because Arrhidaeus had refused to sign the constitution. That left his diplomatic immunity a bit frayed about the edges, but still there, as a necessary part of the neutrality of the Queen of the Sea.

  Marie leaned back in her chair and thought, Well, what do we do now? If Calix was arrested, or even questioned, things were going to get official very fast. And Arrhidaeus was going to start complaining that it was all a smear against Antigonus and the Queen’s neutrality was a sham.

  214–216 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad

  May 8, 319 BCE

  Carthalo lifted the pen and dipped it into the small bottle of ink. It was a glass bottle that he made, with considerably greater ease than he was having forming letters on the paper sheets. Blowing glass was a new skill, but not hard to learn if you had spent your life working with the stuff. Touching the metal tip to the side of the ink pot, he drained off the excess ink and carefully drew what he thought was a lower case b.

  “No, that’s a d. The b has the line on the other side of the circle,” Stella said. “B is for butt, and the line is behind the b.”

  He looked and she was right. Learning to read and write was hard enough. Learning to do it in English was much worse. But he was convinced that he needed the skill in this new world. Wikipedia was in English, so was the daily paper.

  He needed to learn how to make better lenses for glasses and for telescopes, micr
oscopes, and other devices. He needed to be able to discuss copper, bronze and steel wire with the craftsmen who made them and shaped them so that he could buy glass frames. And just so he could talk to people. People from Rome, Etrusca, Athens, Macedonia, and Thrace, as well as the tribes and nations along the coasts and rivers of Venezuela. Here in Fort Plymouth, it seemed that everyone was learning ship people English.

  By now there was a largeish contingent from Carthage here in Fort Plymouth. Iron makers, cloth makers, spinners, all sorts of people.

  There was a slap on the front door and Stella got up to see who it was. She came back a few moments later with the morning paper. She read him the headlines as he carefully drew the c, then the d, the e, and the f.

  “The Carthaginians have elected a new pair of shophetim for the year. What’s a shophetim?”

  “They…they’re sort of like judges and presidents rolled into one, but there are two of them elected each year. And if they can’t agree, it goes…Never mind. It’s a stupid system and I never got a vote anyway, being a slave.”

  “Gotcha.” She read on. “The election of the new shophetim was delayed by almost six months as the wrangling over the new developments in Alexander’s empire and Formentera Island seriously disrupted Carthage’s political balance.”

  Carthalo snorted. Then cursed as his pen slipped and ruined his e.

  Stella kept reading. “The investigation into the death of Travis Siegel is ongoing, but there are no new developments of note, and Congresswoman Comfort is asking why.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Melees

  Queen of the Sea, Cleopatra’s suite

  May 9, 319 BCE

  Marie Easley was brought in by Makis, one of Cleopatra’s personal guards. Even on the Queen, people of Cleopatra’s rank had to have guards as a matter of status. Makis was, in fact, Cleopatra’s personal assistant and was one of her top advisers when she had been the queen regent of Epirus. He saw that Marie was seated in the lounge and went to fetch Cleopatra.

  Marie had checked out a slate from stores. It was easy for her because she was both the captain’s paramour and because of her status as expert on local custom.

  Cleopatra came in. “Sean is in the drafting office.” The drafting office of the Queen of the Sea was a room near the front of Deck 5 inboard. It had been three staterooms. Now it was converted into a drafting shop that had five old-fashioned drafting tables and a plotter hooked up to the computer system, all built onboard ship since The Event, and all busy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with a long waiting list for their use.

  “That’s fine. We don’t need him for this.” Marie held up the slate as Cleopatra came over.

  Cleopatra looked at the picture and read the name. “I remember now. He was an acolyte among the Cabeiri. He was a bit younger than me, and I was only seventeen at the time. He didn’t have the sideburns, just little wisps of beard, but he looked at me with that same mix of lust and resentment that struck me when I saw him the other day. He…what’s the phrase…‘gave me the billys’ even then.”

  Marie grinned. “You mean ‘the willies’?”

  Cleopatra shrugged. “Whatever. But now I understand why my mother didn’t recognize him. She was high priestess and he was a minor acolyte from a middling family, barely a member of the nobility. She would have seen him as little more than a slave. Not seen him as a person at all.”

  “Another thing for him to resent,” Marie offered.

  “No,” Cleopatra disagreed, taking a seat at the table. “At least not then. The way Olympias treated him was the way she was supposed to treat him. He only resented me because he wanted me and couldn’t have me, not because of anything I did or didn’t do.”

  Marie shook her head, not in negation, just to try and clear it. She knew that Cleopatra was right, intellectually. But emotionally accepting it was a completely different matter. The mindset that accepted being treated as a thing was just too different from anything she had ever dealt with before The Event. “Do you think he could be our murderer?”

  “If he stayed with the Cabeiri, he would certainly have the ability,” Cleopatra said, rubbing her temple with her right hand. “But why would he?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? But that assumes that he actually did it. I think we need to try to confirm that part.”

  “Yes, surely. In the meantime, though, just for my own peace of mind—” Cleopatra turned and called, in a clear but not overly loud voice, “Makis, would you come in, please.”

  Cleopatra had been taking lessons from Sean in ship people etiquette, Marie noted, and was doing quite well at it.

  Once Makis came in, Cleopatra showed him the slate and read him the entry. “Find out what you can about him. Without letting him know anyone is asking.”

  “Of course, Your Highness.” The word he used was Greek and fell somewhere between highness and majesty. It was the appropriate title for the queen regent of Epirus.

  Once he left, Cleopatra turned back to Marie and asked, “How do we prove whether he did it or not?”

  “Fingerprints,” Marie said. “Leave that to me. Assuming that he’s the person we’re looking for, though, what does that mean? Do you think Arrhidaeus is giving him his orders, or is he doing it on his own?”

  “I don’t know. It could be Arrhidaeus, but he would be after Eurydice more than Roxane. After all, it was Eurydice who stole his army from him, not Roxane. For that matter, even for Antigonus, Eurydice is more of a threat than Roxane. She was the queen Antigonus had giving out those proclamations, and she is the one who ran away from him to the Queen, then revoked just about every proclamation she made while he had her.”

  “Not necessarily. If Roxane is killed, Eurydice becomes the only queen. And Antigonus has a much better chance of getting his hands on Eurydice than he does of getting them on Roxane.”

  Cleopatra nodded. “True, but the cocoamat wasn’t for Roxane, and it certainly wasn’t for my nephew. Dag drank some, but it was primarily for Travis. Why would Calix want Travis dead?”

  “The steelworks?” Marie asked. The steelworks started with surprisingly good iron bought mostly from Carthage, where they had been making iron for centuries, using additives that were lost until the invention of the Bessemer process.

  “You would know more than I would.”

  “I’m not sure. Travis was an architect before The Event, but he had taken classes in structural engineering and metallurgy in his training. He remembered the basic percentages and he knew how to judge and test. He was the best person for his job, but not the only person. Jennifer Stables took over for him and has been doing a fine job. I don’t think we lost more than a load or two, if that.”

  “Could it have been personal?”

  Could Jennifer Stables have ordered the hit? Jennifer was a potter before The Event. She had less knowledge of the formula of metals, but more of heating stuff. And she had been picking stuff up from Travis until the day he died. They hadn’t gotten along very well. Travis was an “old-school Neanderthal,” and Jennifer was an “artsy-fartsy liberal.”

  “No,” Marie finally said. “Not Jennifer Stables. She doesn’t have the temperament for something like that.” And it was true. Marie could see Jennifer following Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., but shooting someone or having them poisoned didn’t fit.

  “Perhaps someone else who disliked Travis or saw some advantage in his death?”

  “Not from what Daniel Lang has said. Travis could be irritable and irritating, but he didn’t have any serious enemies that Daniel could find.”

  “That seems to bring us back to Dag, but again I don’t understand the advantage,” said Cleopatra.

  “That’s the problem,” Marie said. “And the reason I don’t want to go through Daniel Lang for this. For one thing, it’s entirely possible that your mother is the target.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes. She has a reputation that has lasted for a couple of eons. If someone is poiso
ned, Olympias is the logical suspect in the mind of everyone from Babylon to New America. Assume for a moment that we operated the way, say, your father operated. A woman with Olympias’ reputation comes into Philip’s capital and suddenly someone is poisoned. What would Philip do?”

  “Have her killed, probably. Unless she was politically powerful. Even then, he would have her exiled.” Cleopatra nodded. “I see what you mean. But what would what’s his name…Calix gain?”

  “I don’t know. What’s your mother’s relationship with the Cabeiri these days? For that matter, what is Calix’s? Who would we contact to get information from the Cabeiri?”

  “Thessalonike?”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” Marie said.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s married to Cassander!”

  “So what? Thessalonike was raised by my mother, protected by my mother. She’s not in love with Cassander. It’s a practical, pragmatic relationship. And she’s clever, even if she is a sociopath.”

  Marie lifted an eyebrow.

  “I’ve heard my mother called that. And Alexander. And my father. Everyone in the family but my brother Philip. So I looked it up.”

  Marie nodded. “Can we trust her?”

  “Of course not. But we can use her.”

  Marie looked at Cleopatra and noted the complete lack of anything resembling conscience in that last statement. Cleopatra didn’t regret that she couldn’t trust Thessalonike. She didn’t feel guilty about using a young woman who was, in effect, her adoptive sister. Marie noted—for far from the first time—that Cleopatra was as cold and calculating as any of the rest of them. It’s a crying shame.

  Pella, radio station

  May 9, 319 BCE

  Malcolm Tanada yawned, took a sip of the watered retsina, and grimaced. He looked around the radio room. There was a hand-carved wooden desk specially built to protect the laptop computer with a built-in run for the charging cable. New, actual glass, windows let in light without letting in rain.