'We may come back there one of these days,' Sostratos said. 'People will remember. They always remember scandal.' He didn't need to read any history to be sure of that, and was slightly scandalized when Menedemos only shrugged. He has no sense of anything but the moment, Sostratos thought sadly. Maybe that's why he ends up in trouble over women so often. It never occurred to him to wonder what Menedemos was thinking about him just then. They didn't make Kallipolis before nightfall, and did anchor offshore. The men grumbled a little about that. Sostratos wondered at their logic. They'd just made it very clear that they didn't care to risk going ashore, but they still didn't want to stay at sea? What did that leave? He imagined the Aphrodite floating several hundred cubits up in the air. Daidalos and Ikaros might get to the ship then, but he didn't see how anyone else would. Menedemos' imagination was of a more practical sort: 'I hadn't planned to lay over a night in Kallipolis, but I think I'd better, to give the men a chance to drink and roister.' 'Good idea, skipper,' Diokles said. If the oarmaster thought it a good idea, Sostratos wouldn't argue with him. When they reached Kallipolis the next morning, it proved to lie on an island just off the Italian mainland, as Ortygia lay just off the Sicilian coast. Kallipolis, though, had never expanded off its island the way Syracuse had. It remained what so many of the colonies of Great Hellas had been in their early days: a Hellenic outpost at the edge of a land full of barbarians. Despite its name, it didn't strike Sostratos as a particularly beautiful city. When he said as much, Menedemos laughed at him. 'What would you expect them to call it? Kakopolis?' his cousin asked. 'They'd enjoy trying to lure settlers to a polis with a name like that, wouldn't they? Uglytown?' 'All right, I see your point,' Sostratos said. 'But if you found a land full of snow and ice, you wouldn't call it a green land, would you?' 'I would if I wanted to get anybody to live there with me,' Menedemos replied. 'But I'm a good Rhodian. I don't even want to think about snow and ice, let alone live with 'em.' 'It did snow once when I was in Athens,' Sostratos said. 'It was beautiful, but Zeus! it was cold.' He shivered at the memory. 'We won't need to worry about that here,' Menedemos said. 'We have some wine, and we have some silk. Let's see if we can unload them. And' - he wagged a finger at Sostratos - 'we don't need to tell the Kallipolitans what we think of their polis.' 'I understand,' Sostratos said. 'We'll tell them the land is green.' His cousin laughed. 'Exactly. That's just what we'll do.' Seen from its narrow, winding streets, Kallipolis was even less prepossessing than when viewed from the streets. Because the island wasn't very big and had been settled for centuries, the locals used every digit of space they could. Many of their buildings were two and three stories high. They leaned toward one another above the streets, making them even closer and darker and smellier than they would have been otherwise.
Вы читаете Over the Wine Dark Sea
