lot because, as the Prophet said, ‘It is written.’ Christians are tormented because they don’t really believe in fate and are always trying to change things. We faithful are happy with oppression if it is God’s will. Tripoli is tranquil in tyranny.”
“So you put up with a lunatic who murders his brother, wounds his mother, and drags his pregnant sister-in- law by the hair?”
“All the world pays tribute to Yussef Karamanli.”
“By God, England and France don’t,” Smith put in.
“This is as it should be. The English and French keep other navies weak. Did not Nelson just destroy the Danish fleet at Copenhagen? We cannot fight their battleships, nor can they close in with our shallow coast. So we leave their flag alone and they leave ours alone, while allowing us to prey on the merchant ships of their commercial rivals. Shippers learn there is safety paying extra to sail under the English or French flag. Here again we see the wisdom of God, with each nation assigned to its rightful place. The only people who do not see reason are the Americans, but look—do you see their frigates? They bluster but hide.”
“It was Yussef who declared war on us.”
“Because your baby nation doesn’t understand the way of the world and pay rightful tribute! The United States should give us what we demand. It will be far cheaper than senseless defiance. You’ll see.”
“I can’t say we have faith in your advice, Dragut, given that you’ve lied, betrayed, and enslaved us.”
“Ah! You are lucky that Hamidou Dragut is the one who captured you, and not a truly hard man like Murad Reis!”
“The traitor Scot?” Smith asked.
“He took the turban, but is dour and gloomy like his homeland. I will put in a word for you but he is not merciful like me, Hamidou. Murad chose valor under the Crescent over slavery under the Cross. Now he is captain of all our corsairs, renowned for his courage, cleverness, and cruelty. Every slave has that opportunity! In your backward nations, slavery is a life’s torment, the work of Negroes you despise. In our enlightened nation it is but a step to wealth and even freedom for those who convert to Islam! Our Christian slaves live the life of the damned, but Muslim slaves can rise as high as their masters. Such is the wisdom of Allah.”
“Not one of us will ever become a Mussulman,” Cuvier vowed, “even we savants who question Scripture.”
“Then you must be ransomed to bankrupt your families, or sentenced to the quarries, or given over to Omar the Dungeon Master. Are you savants not men of reason? Listen to me well: Only reason can save you now.”
Cannon fired salutes as we neared the city. Aurora’s flotilla answered in turn, each puff of smoke from the forts followed a second or two later by one from us, the bangs echoing across the lovely turquoise water. Swarms of dockworkers, slavers, soldiers, and veiled wives assembled on the quay as we glided between the reefs. Horns blew from the city walls and drums beat out a tattoo. Our ship tied up and great rattling chains, each set as heavy as two pails of water, were dragged aboard by starved-looking slaves and manacled around our ankles and wrists, the weight holding our arms down and our hands cupped as if we were trying to cover our privates. This forced pose was not entirely inappropriate because our clothes were ragged after the caves of Thira. Dirty, unshaven, and thin, we looked like the wretched slaves we’d become. My scientist companions gloomily surveyed the churning mob waiting to escort us to the slave markets. Reason! We had one card left, but didn’t dare play it. We thought we knew the place to which the palimpsest map referred.
“I think that’s the limit of the mirror’s effectiveness,” the inventor said. “Within that line, the mirror’s rays were strong enough to set attacking Roman galleys on fire.”
“The symbols may refer to places on land the makers of this map wanted to record,” Smith went on. “The hiding place, perhaps, of the mirror of Archimedes. Caves, forts, a church.”
I looked. There was a cross on the peninsula, and a castlelike symbol a good distance from town. A line was drawn from cross to castle, but it angled at a horseshoe-shaped mark. Where the line bent, there was a wavy line like a symbol for a river. Nearby was an oval, little humps that could mark huts or caves, and arrows with odd symbols and meaningless numbers.
“I think the Templars drew this after they rediscovered the mirror,” Smith whispered, “and hid it on Thira in a place only they knew: some underground catacombs, perhaps.”
“So we have something to bargain with!” I exclaimed.
“Absolutely
“Not turn it over. Just use what we know to get out of this fix, somehow.”
“I’d rather be enslaved than give the barbarians a clue that might result in the destruction of the French navy,” my friend vowed.
“Aye, and the British navy, too,” said Smith. “Come, Ethan, your own nation is at war with these devils. We can’t tell them where this death ray is.”
“Where is it?” I peered at the map.
“We don’t know exactly, but sooner or later they would figure that out. Just pinpointing the city makes discovery far easier. Your frigates would become infernos, and your countrymen would fry. We can’t trade that for freedom. Death before dishonor, eh?”
“Of course.” I swallowed. “Still, a little hint might not hurt.”
Fulton shook his head. “Any modern inventor could probably improve on the Greek design. We dare not even tempt them.”
By the whiskers of Zeus, I’d fallen in with honorable men! That’s always a risky thing—not to mention novel. “But they’ll take the palimpsest from us and maybe come to the same conclusion,” I tried. I’m not craven, just practical.
“The only thing to do,” Cuvier said, “is memorize this scrap to the closest detail and then destroy it. Then the key will be in our brains, not an underground tunnel or a piece of animal skin.”
“Destroy it how? We can’t throw it into the sea from down here.”
“No, and we can’t bring the obscuring prayers back, either. The only thing I can think of, my friends, is to eat it.”
“After we’ve washed it in piss to see the design?”
“Nothing wrong with a little urine, Ethan,” the scientist assured. “Less toxic than bad well water. Maidens used it to wash their hair. Besides, the palimpsest is long dried now. Seasoned, you might say.”
“Eat a palimpsest?” I looked with dismay. “How?”
“A little at a time, I suspect. It’s not like we have salt and pepper.”
And so we did, and by the end I had a sore jaw from chewing and a knotted gut from too much parchment and not enough vegetables. Why can’t I find normal treasure, like gold doubloons or a queen’s tiara?
Our morose chewing of this cud did put us in a philosophical mood, and when men ponder the mysteries of the universe the first thing that comes to mind is women.
I’d explained my unsuccessful audience with Aurora Somerset and given hints of our unhappy history, which seemed to surprise no one. Females, we agreed, were more bewitching than a treasure map and explosive as a keg of gunpowder.
“It’s odd how dangerous they are, given that men are so clearly superior,” Smith said with honest puzzlement. “In strength, in courage, and in intelligence, the evidence of our gender’s advantage is indisputable.”
“Not entirely,” Fulton cautioned. “I know many a man who’d quail at the prospect of childbirth.”
“Certainly women have strengths of their own,” the Englishman allowed. “Beauty, to cite the most obvious. My point is that despite our own male brilliance, the hens seem to get the upper hand over the peacock. Quite baffling, really.”
