The old sculptor's eyes never left him.
"It is beautiful," said the visitor. "The years have not dimmed your hands, old friend. Your fingers grow even more skillful, if that is possible." He pulled a purse from his cloak and dropped it to the counter. "The balance."
Praphicles made no move toward the little leather bag. He said, "The commission was interesting, especially in what was not commissioned."
"You don't make sense."
"The Earth that Atlas will hold… where is it? Who will supply it?"
"I'll attend to that."
"And what shape will it be? He is positioned to hold a disc, or a cylinder, or a square. Or perhaps even a sphere."
Eratosthenes smiled. "How are the wagers running, good Praphicles?"
"Two to one that you will report to his majesty that the Earth is shaped like a disc. Even odds for a cylinder. Three to one against a square. Ten to one against a sphere." He pushed the bag of staters back to Eratosthenes. "Just give me a hint," he whispered. "And keep your purse."
The geometer chuckled, pushed the money back, and picked up the little statue. "I will pray to the gods to save your business, old friend."
Out again. Still walking west, and getting closer to the Eunostos harbor.
5. The Horoscope
He thought of one of the great Periclean speeches, as recalled (and probably polished up a bit) by Thucydides.
"Each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person, and do this, moreover, with exceptional grace and exceptional versatility."
Well, Pericles, perhaps that was the way it was with you and your Athenians, but that's not the way with me. When my career—nay, my very skin!—is at risk, I feel neither grace nor versatility. I feel afraid. For I have a fair idea already how my calculations are going to come out. When I make my report, a great many people will be very, very upset. Hor-ent-yotf had warned me not to make any measurements whatever involving the sun. "It is heresy," the priest had said. "Not even a Greek under royal protection may break our religious laws with impunity."
So why am I here, in this street, at this hour? I know very well why.
But I mustn't show my anxiety. What would Marcar think? He and I studied together under the Stoic Ariston, in Athens. After that, we went our separate ways. But now here we are again in Alexandria.
Ah, Marcar, thou man of Mesopotamia, part mystic, part mountebank. Which part dominates? No matter. We have always been able to talk together.
And now it was time to be careful. Not against robbers or pickpockets. That wasn't the problem at all. The problem was simply this: he was now in the Street of the Mathematici Chaldaei, and he would just as soon not be recognized. What would the good rabbi say if he saw the highly rational geometer walking into the shop of an astrologer? The holy man would indeed have his cherished laugh!
Eratosthenes pulled his cloak up around his face and began walking in an anonymous shuffle. He was barely halfway down the street when small dirty urchins began tugging at his tunic. "My lord! Beautiful pictures! Naked ladies! All differ-ent positions! Mine are best! Painted directly from Ptolemy's harem. No! Straight from Eratosthenes' secret scrolls at the Library! No pictures! Real live women! No waiting! Cheap! My virgin mother! Only twenty drachmas!"
By Zeus and Hera! He struck out at them, but they scattered nimbly, like a flock of water birds.
A strong hand grabbed his sleeve. "In here, you old lecher!"
"Marcar!" He stepped into the antecourt and his host slammed the great door behind them. "Thanks, old fellow. I was coming to see you, anyhow."
"I know." He motioned to the table and chairs.
"You always say that. Actually, you hadn't the faintest idea I would visit you today."
"Maybe not today, exactly. But soon. You say you don't believe in the stars, august Eratosthenes; yet you come here because you are not completely sure. You are curious." He poured two goblets of Persian wine. "So what do you want of me?"
"Nothing. Everything."
The astrologer smiled faintly. "Translating: Does your horoscope predict anything horrible in your immediate future?"
The geometer gave him a hard look. "Well?"
"But the answer would be meaningless to you, friend, because you do not believe in astrology, or horoscopes, or star-fates."
Eratosthenes sighed. "You're right, you know. I can't have it both ways. I can't denounce horoscopes in one breath and ask for mine in the next. But it's always good to see you, Marcar." He started to rise.
The Chaldean waved him back down. "Not so fast. Tarry a bit. Who requires total belief, old friend? Not I. And what is belief, anyway? A curious mix of tradition, garbled facts, superstitition, prejudice—and once in a great while, perhaps a little truth thrown in to thoroughly confuse the picture." He sipped at his cup. "Let us clear the air. I suspected you might come. So this morning I constructed your horoscope."
The Greek looked across the table in surprise, but was silent.
"You might at least ask," said Marcar. "You owe me that much."
The librarian smiled. "I ask."
"Well, then. At the outset, please understand that a horoscope makes no absolute predictions, at least of the type you are thinking about. No chart will ever say to you, Eratosthenes, you will die at sunup tomorrow. At most your chart will say, Eratosthenes, you will be presented with the possibility of dying on such and such a day, and perhaps at such and such an hour."
"Go on," said his visitor quietly.
The Mesopotamian shrugged. "You have given the gods much trouble in recent days, and I think that even now the matter is not fully decided. I see Gaea, the Earth goddess. You would strip her naked. You would say, her size and shape are thus and so. I see Cronos, the god of time. You would have lovely naked Gaea turning, turning, turning under the lascivious scrutiny of Cronos. Apollo stands still in the skies, and leers."
Eratosthenes laughed. "What a marvelous way of saying the Earth rotates and moves around the sun."
"Ah yes. The heliocentric hypothesis. But that's only part of the difficulty. The scientific pros and cons are quite beyond me, my esteemed colleague. All I can say is, that's the problem that brings the risk. May I be blunt?"
"It would be most refreshing."
"The wrong answer to your present geodetic research may well get you assassinated."
"By Ptolemy?"
"I don't read pharaoh… I see a woman… young, beautiful, dedicated."
"So you know about Ne-tiy. Placed in my house by the Horus-priest, Hor-ent-yotf."
"Everyone knows. The female cobra within the flower basket. Why don't you get rid of her?"
"Nonsense. He'd find someone else. Meanwhile, she's where I can keep an eye on her."
Marcar shrugged. "That's up to you, of course. But the risk to your life is not the only matter of significance. There's another thing."
"Oh?"
"You will have a visitor. A most remarkable visitor, from a place far away. I am tempted to say he is a god, but I know how you feel about the gods. Like you, Eratosthenes, he faces a great trouble. But you can help him, and he can help you."
The mathematician chuckled. "Now that, friend from the marshes, is a prediction. Years away, of course. It's always safe to predict things that happen ten years from now.''
Marcar smiled. "According to the signs, he arrives on the first day of the New Year.''
"There you go again. Which New Year? The New Year when Sirius is first seen in the dawn skies, announcing that the Nile will begin its rise? In fact, tomorrow, in the hour before sunrise? Or do you mean the New Year of the current Egyptian calendar, the first day of Thoth, which is actually two hundred days away? I remind you that the Egyptian calendar is based on 365 days, not 365 and a quarter, as shown by the stars, and that it loses one full year every 1,460 years. The last time the calendar was right was 1,171 years ago. It won't be right again until 289 years from now.
So—which New Year, most noble charlatan?''
Marcar's eyes gleamed. "Your sign is Cancer. And however you calculate it, O great geometer, Cancer begins at midnight tonight, and announces the first day of the summer solstice. In the dark morning skies Sirius will indeed be seen, heralding the New Year, and the awakening of Hapi, which you Greeks call the Nile, with great festivities beginning in all towns and villages the entire length of the river, and continuing for twenty-one days, with carousing, merriment, and consumption of seas of barley beer.''
Eratosthenes laughed heartily. "I take it, most astute astrologer, that buried in that Rhea-flood of rhetoric is an assertion that my relevant New Year is within the small hours of tomorrow morning, beginning with Sirius ascendant?"
"Thou seeest all, wise Eratosthenes."
"I see that you are a fraud, more colossal than any pyramid atGizeh."
"My lord overwhelms me with his flattery." He leaned forward. "Now that your stomach is weak with laughter and your defenses breached, may we talk of your sun-project?"
"It's a bit premature."
"In any case, presumably you have by now determined the shape of the Earth? Perhaps you could tell an old friend?"
"My report goes first to Ptolemy. You know that.'"
"Of course, of course. Nevertheless, what harm is a hint… in strictest confidence?"
The mapmaker grinned. "I hear the odds are disc, two to one; cylinder, even; three to one against a square; and ten to one against a sphere." He rose to leave. "Later, Marcar. Later. I promise."
"If you live," whispered the astrologer.
The visitor stopped. He turned around slowly. "Have you drawn the horoscope of Hor-ent-yotf?'' It was a stab in the dark, a flash—of what? Psychic insight? Stupidity?
Marcar peered at him most strangely. Finally he said, "Why do you ask?"
"Never mind. Really none of my affair." But he knew. The astrologer had lifted the veil on the sinister Egyptian, and he had not understood what he had seen. It was pointless to press the seer further. One thing was certain: the fates of Eratosthenes and Hor-ent-yotf were inextricably interwoven, like designs into a funerary shroud.
He bowed and left.
6. The Shadow
And so home again, away from smells and noises and dirty streets. Eratosthenes nodded to the gatekeeper and walked up the palm-lined entrance toward the central gardens. He paused under the colonnade and looked out toward the focus of the courtyard. There, as he had ordered, the scribe Bes-lek sat cross-legged in front of the shadow cast by the man-high gnomon, and he was chanting. Bes-lek had selected his own chant, a hymn, really, something addressed to Horus the sun god, a recital not too long, not too short. As the Greek watched, the clerk finished his mumbled litany, dipped his reed pen into the little pot of charcoal ink, and made a tiny dot at the tip of the gnomon shadow on the circular stone flagging. Then he commenced again. "Horus, giver of light, son of Osiris and Isis, shine down upon us in thy journey across the sky…" It was in Egyptian, and between the foreignness of the language and the garbled maundering, the sense was largely lost on the librarian.
Eratosthenes walked up the gravel path toward the chanter. Bes looked up and saw him coming, but his droning mumble did not waver. The geometer looked down at the white flagging with critical eye. Bes sat just outside a concave curve of dots. He had begun about an hour before noon, and now it was about an hour after noon. The dots showed longer shadows at the beginning, growing shorter as noon approached, then growing longer again as midday was passed. The dot closest to the gnomon base would be the one for noon. That was the one to measure. "Bes," he said, "my faithful friend, I can see from the marks that you have made a fine record of the god's overhead course. The matter is complete, except for measuring the noon angle. Get up now, stretch your legs, and then help me with the angle rod."
"Aye, thank you master." The little man groaned with great eloquence as he struggled to his feet. "Such strain, such care. My poor joints. I shall ache for days. For the pain, perhaps my lord could allot two extra puncheons of fine barley beer."
"Two?"
"One for my wife. The dear creature assumes all my pains. And considering that the festivities begin tonight."
"Two, then. Tell the steward. But first, hold the angle rod. Put the point on that inner dot, the one closest to the gnomon. Yes, that's it. Steady, while I rest the upper edge on the top of the gnomon. Fine, fine. A good angle. Now, let me take the precise measurement on the protractor arc. Yes. Seven degrees, twelve minutes, I'll take the rod."
"Is it done, master?"
"One more measurement. I need to know the distance of the dot to the base of the gnomon." He placed the rod at the base of the gnomon and alongside the noon dot. "Hm. Check me here, Bes. What number do you read?"
The scrivener squinted. "It is one and a quarter units, and yet it is a generous quarter.''
"We'll call it one and a quarter." He doesn't ask why, thought Eratosthenes. He doesn't wonder. He doesn't care. Not one hoot of the owl of Athena in Hades. He gets his daily bread, with an occasional extra ration of beer. He has his gods and his feast-days, and he's happy. A true son of the Nile. Well, why not? It seems to work for him. He said, "Tell the guard of the kitchen I said to give you three puncheons of good brown khes, suitable for Ptolemy's own table. One for you, one for your wife, and one to lay on the altar of Horus, the hawk-god of the sun, who has favored us today."
Bes bowed low. "The master overwhelms me."
He's not even being sarcastic, thought Eratosthenes. "Go," he said.
And now back to the calculations. The gnomon was ten units high. The leg measurement was one and a quarter. The tangent of the sun angle was therefore one hundred and twenty-five thousandths. What was the angle? It ought to check out pretty close to seven degrees, twelve minutes. He had trigonometric tables in the Library that would give the value. Check. Confirm. Recheck. Pile up the data. It's the only safe way.
Why was he doing this? Who cared whether the earth was a globe? Who cared what size that globe might be? Not Ptolemy Philadelphus, his lord and master, the pharaoh-god, who had brought him here to run the great Library. In fact, Ptolemy had made veiled references to temple pressures. Hor-ent-yotf, the high priest of Horus, was complaining that these studies were demeaning to the hawk-deity and might even foreshadow a revival of monotheism, as attempted by Ikhnaton a thousand years ago. That misguided pharaoh had proclaimed, "There is but one god, and he is Aton, the sun. Pull down all other temples." The crazed pharaoh had been slain and his name obliterated from all monuments. Over the years the tombs of all his descendants, direct and collateral, had been searched out and desecrated.
All except one, mused the geometer. The boy pharaoh, who married the third daughter of the heretic. The youth had been assassinated, of course, and then properly and secretly buried, along with suitable treasures, in a hillside in the necropolis at Thebes. However, before the Aton-haters could find the grave, the tomb of the fourth Rameses was dug in the cliffside just above, and the boy-king's grave was buried under the quarry chips. Eratosthenes had seen the maps and read the reports, and then he had hidden them away.
And why was he thinking of the tomb of Tut-ankh-amun? Because it was knowledge that might save his life.
He passed on into the building and walked through silent halls into the mathematics room. Here he found the scroll of trig tables and ran his finger down the tangent columns. The angle whose tan is one hundred twenty-five thousandths. Here we are. Seven degrees, seven and one-half minutes. I was looking for seven degrees, twelve minutes. Well, not bad. Within experimental error? And how good are these tables? Some day soon, redo the whole thing. Suppose I take the average. Call it seven degrees, ten minutes, or almost exactly 1/50 of a circle. Base line, Syene to Alexandria, 5,000 stadia.
So if the Earth is a sphere, 5,000 stadia is 1/50 of its circumference, which is, therefore, 250,000 stadia.
Two hundred and fifty thousand stadia.
That's w
hat the numbers said. But was it really so? Such immensity was inconceivable.
He rubbed his chin in perplexity as he walked over to the big table where his map was spread out. His greatest work. Ptolemy himself had praised it and had accorded the ultimate flattery of reproducing the map in mosaic in the floor of his study. Copyists were turning out duplicates at the rate of one every two weeks, and probably making all sorts of errors in their haste. For which he, the author, would be blamed, of course.
He bent over the sheet.
It had been a magnificent effort, drawn mostly from documents in the library: travelers' reports (especially Herodotus'); terse military accounts; letters; local descriptions; sea captains' logs; census and tax reports. To the west, it showed the Pillars of Hercules; and even beyond that, Cassiterides, the tin-islands discovered by Himilco the Phoenician. To the east, Persia, conquered by Alexander, and on to India and the Ganges River. And beyond that a mythic land, Seres, where a fine fabric called silk was woven. Then the legend isles of Cipangu (which he didn't even show). But the whole known world, from west to east, was at most 75,000 stadia—less than one-third of the sphere he had just calculated.
And yet he knew his numbers were right.
There was more to the world than he or anyone else had dreamed.
Was the rest simply water? Vast, barren seas? Or, on that other invisible hemisphere, were there balancing land masses, with peoples and cities and strange gods? His heart began to pound. He knew it was futile to speculate like this, but he couldn't help it. Some day…
7. The Light
Khor sniffed the cabin air. Was it going stale? Yes, the CO2 was definitely building. Which meant the absorbers were very nearly saturated. Why hadn't the alarm sounded? And then he noticed. The purifier bell was ringing. And the proper red light was flashing. Swamped by his other troubles, he just hadn't noticed. Alkali. Did he have any more? No. He re-membered shaking out the last flecks of sodium carbonate from the container. He had tossed the empty box into the disposal.
Best Science Fiction of the Year 14 Page 13