matter?' asked Archimedes.
'You didn't look at the fifty-pounders in the Euryalus?' asked the chief catapult engineer.
'No,' said Archimedes. 'It's a long walk out there, and I found a machine I liked much closer.'
'But they're the closest in size to what you're trying to build!'
'Yes,' said Archimedes, 'but I'd still have to scale them up, and it's just as easy to scale up a fifteen-pounder. How do they pivot?'
There was a silence. Then the workshop foreman, Epimeles- a big, slow, soft-spoken man in his forties- said, 'They don't. To aim them you have get a few strong lads to move the stand.'
'Well, that's stupid!' observed Archimedes. He began threading his second pulley. There would be one on either side of the catapult. The operator would turn a windlass on the side required and use a third windlass to adjust the elevation.
He paid no attention when one of the workmen sniggered, but looked up sharply at the sound of a blow and a cry of pain. He was just in time to see Eudaimon striding off and one of the workman clutching his ear. Archimedes dropped his rope and dashed after the chief. Eudaimon stopped abruptly and spun about, his seamed face black with anger.
'You had no business hitting that man!' Archimedes told him furiously.
'I will not be laughed at in my own workshop by my own slaves!' Eudaimon shouted back.
'They're not your own slaves, they're the city's. You had no business hitting him! And anyway, what was it to you? It's not as though you'd made those fifty-pounders!'
'I'm in charge here!' declared Eudaimon. 'I can have that fellow flogged if I like. Maybe I do like. Elymos! Come here!'
The man he had struck stepped back in alarm, and the other workmen stared at the chief in horror.
'You don't dare!' cried Archimedes in outrage. 'I won't let you!' He turned to the foreman. 'You run up the road and tell the regent about this!'
'Do you think Leptines wants to be bothered with a squabble in the workshop?' said Eudaimon.
'He will if he has any decency!' replied Archimedes. 'He's in charge, and nobody should allow people to go about flogging people when they haven't done anything wrong!'
'I will tell the regent,' said the foreman decisively, and turned to go.
The foreman was as much a slave as the rest of the workmen, but he was a valuable, experienced, and trusted slave, and his word carried some weight even in the king's house. Eudaimon started in alarm and ordered, 'Stop!'
Epimeles turned back and looked at Eudaimon levelly. 'Sir,' he said, 'you and… this gentleman are both authorized to use the workshop. If you say Elymos is to be punished, and he says he is not, surely it's for our master to tell us which one of you to obey?'
'I am in charge!' grated Eudaimon.
'In that case the regent will tell us to obey you and flog Elymos,' said the foreman quietly.
There was another silence, and then Eudaimon said, 'I never gave any such order.' He glared at them all. 'You all know that! I never gave any such order.' He turned on his heel and walked off.
The foreman let out his breath slowly. Elymos gave a whistle of relief and sat down, and his friends thumped him on the shoulder. Archimedes thought of thumping the slave's shoulder too, but refrained: he was aware that the threat of flogging had been made only because of him.
'Are you all right?' he asked instead, coming over.
Elymos nodded and grinned up at him. 'Thank you, sir,' he said. 'I'll remember how you stood up for me.'
'You shouldn't have laughed,' Epimeles told him sternly, coming over as well.
Elymos ducked his head appeasingly: Eudaimon might order floggings, but Epimeles was the person who was really in charge of the workshop. 'Couldn't help it! It was funny!' protested Elymos.
'But it wasn't even his fault that those fifty-pounders can't pivot,' said Archimedes. 'He didn't build them.'
At this Elymos laughed again, more loudly this time. 'That makes it even funnier!'
Some of the other workmen laughed as well. Archimedes stared, perplexed, and they nudged one another and giggled among themselves. Archimedes realized that the laughter was directed at himself, and flushed. He went back to his catapult and began rethreading the ropes in hurt silence. People had always laughed, were always laughing, at him. He got lost in his geometry and didn't notice things, or he got excited about things they didn't understand, and they laughed. Even slaves he had defended were laughing at him.
Elymos leaped up and followed him. 'Oh, sir, don't be offended!' he said. 'It's just a workshop joke, that's all.'
'Well, I don't get it!' said Archimedes angrily.
The slave sniggered again, then, at a sharp glance, looked solemn. 'Sir, I couldn't explain it. Not to you. Jokes are never funny if you explain them. But please don't be offended, sir. It's just a…a slaves' joke, that's all.' He hurriedly took the third rope and tried to thread it around a pulley.
'Not that one!' Archimedes told him hastily. 'That goes on top. No- no, leave it! Go fetch me the chalk, if you want to be helpful!'
The foreman, Epimeles, watched for a little while as the massive beam was set down upon the joint pin in its stand. Archimedes had calculated the approximate area of equilibrium and ordered a series of holes drilled along it. The stock was found to balance best upon the middle one: Epimeles smiled. He watched for a minute longer as the huge machine pivoted left and right in response to the windlassesthen sighed and reluctantly left the building. He had a long walk before him.
It was dusk when Epimeles got back to the Ortygia, but he did not go directly to the barracks next to the workshops, where he and the other workmen lived. Instead he went to the king's house and knocked upon the door.
Agathon opened it- that was his job, after all- and regarded the workshop foreman with displeasure. 'Your business?' he demanded.
'Came to show you something,' replied Epimeles calmly.
Agathon snorted and invited him in.
The doorkeeper had a lodge beside the door, a small but comfortable room with a couch and a carpet and a stone water cooler against the interior wall. Epimeles sat down on the end of the couch with a sigh of relief and began rubbing his calves. 'Walked up to the Euryalus and back this afternoon,' he commented. 'I could do with a cup of wine.'
Agathon looked even more disapproving than usual, but took a jar from beside the wall, poured some into two cups, and added some water, fresh and chill from the stone. 'Why should I be interested that you were up at the Euryalus?' he asked, sipping.
Epimeles drank most of his wine off at once, then set the cup down. 'Because I went up there for that engineer you told us tolook after,' he said. 'I found this.' He opened the small sack he'd been carrying and brought out a coil of fine cord. It was divided into sections by a series of regular knots, which had been dyed red or black.
Agathon inspected it straight-faced, then said, 'There's something peculiar about a fort having a measuring line, is there?'
Epimeles pulled a second measuring line out of the sack. It was seemingly identical to the first, but older, fraying a little and discolored. He stretched the two cords out side by side, and it was immediately apparent that they weren't identical after all: the new cord's divisions were shorter than the old one's. 'This one's mine,' said Epimeles, touching the old cord. 'It's accurate.'
Agathon looked at the two cords expressionlessly.
'You know that when you're building a catapult, the essential thing is to make all the parts stand in exactly the right proportion to the diameter of the bore?' coaxed Epimeles. 'You get a catapult that works, and you measure it, and then you either reproduce it exactly or scale it up or down.'
'I believe I'd heard that,' said Agathon. He did not, in fact, know very much about catapults, but he had no intention of admitting it- and he understood enough to grasp the implication of the cord. 'You're suggesting that
