'sir' and lowered your eyes when he talked to you, like a good slave?'
'I'm freeborn,' said Marcus sullenly. 'I've never crawled to you and your father, so why should I crawl to some Tarentine without a house or half acre to his name?'
'You and your free birth!' exclaimed Archimedes in disgust. 'I'm freeborn and a citizen, and I don't quarrel with mercenaries.' He was on the point of adding, 'Anyway, I don't know why I should believe in your free birth, when you can't decide whether it's free Sabine or free Samnite!' when he noticed that the customs official was walking off while the remaining soldier stood listening. He swallowed the words. They were pointless, anyway. No one born to slavery could ever have been as obstinate, awkward, and proud as Marcus.
'There wouldn't have been any trouble if we'd been seen first,' growled Marcus, still defending himself. 'They wouldn't've had time for it. And we would have been first, if you hadn't been too busy drawing circles to pay attention.' He glanced at the scuffed and scratched quayside and corrected himself: 'Drawing cubes.'
'Cuboids,' said Archimedes wearily. He gazed at the half-eradicated drawings, then started, grabbed at his belt, and exclaimed, 'I've lost my compasses!'
Marcus glanced around and quickly retrieved the compasses from the ground beside the luggage. Archimedes seized them gratefully and began checking them for damage.
'That thing looks sharp,' said the Syracusan soldier, coming over. 'Lucky you dropped it. If it'd been in your belt when Philonides knocked you down, it would've speared you. That leg all right?'
Archimedes blinked, then glanced at his grazed knee. It had stopped bleeding. 'Yes,' he said. He put the compasses through his belt.
The soldier snorted at this piece of folly, but offered to help with the luggage. The guardsman was, Archimedes noticed, about his own age, a wide-shouldered man with a close-clipped curly beard and a pleasant, shrewd-eyed face. For all his whispered jokes to his comrade earlier, he seemed genuinely to want to be friendly now. Archimedes accepted the offer.
With Marcus carrying one end of the chest, the soldier the other, and Archimedes trying rather ineffectually to help in the middle, they started toward the gate. 'Thanks for the money,' said the soldier. 'My name's Straton, by the way, son of Metrodoros. When you come to enlist, mention me and I'll see that you're looked after.'
Archimedes blinked again, then remembered the customs official's assumption that he'd returned to fight for his city. He was silent for a moment. He had no plans to enlist; on the other hand, some advice from a friendly source in the city garrison would be very welcome. 'I, uh, wasn't planning to enlist, exactly,' he said hesitantly. 'I, uh, thought the king would want engineers. Do you know how I should go about asking for a job as one?'
Straton glanced at the wicker basket strapped to the chest- the big bucket! — and smiled to himself. 'You know anything about catapults and siege engines?' he asked.
'Um, well,' said Archimedes, 'I never actually made one. But I know how they work.'
Straton smiled again. 'Well, you can talk to the king about it, of course,' he said. 'He might want people. I don't know.'
Marcus laughed. The soldier's smile vanished, but he said nothing.
'Is King Hieron in the city now?' asked Archimedes earnestly.
King Hieron, Straton informed him, was off with the army, besieging the city of Messana. The man in charge in Syracuse was the king's father-in-law, Leptines. Straton wasn't sure whether Archimedes should approach Leptines or whether he'd do better to go north to Messana and speak to the king himself. He'd ask around. Would Archimedes like to meet him the following evening, for a drink? He'd be posted to the docks again all day, but his shift finished at dusk, and they could meet at the gate. Archimedes thanked him and accepted the invitation.
They had passed the gate by this time, and they set the heavy chest down in the narrow dirt street on the other side. 'Where are you going?' Straton asked.
'Other side of the Achradina,' Archimedes supplied at once. 'Near the Lion Fountain.'
'You don't want to carry this all that way,' said Straton authoritatively. 'Gelon the Baker down the road has a donkey he'd loan you for a few coppers.'
Archimedes thanked him and went off to see about the donkey. Marcus started to sit down on the chest; Straton caught his arm. 'Just a minute!' he said sharply.
The slave's face went blank, and he stood perfectly still, making no effort to retrieve his arm from the other's grip. The two men were much of a height, and they looked directly into each other's eyes. It was beginning to get dark, and behind them the new guard shift was closing the sea gate of Syracuse.
'I'm not Philonides,' said the soldier quietly, 'and I don't beat other men's slaves, but you deserve a thrashing. I don't care what sort of Italian you are, but just at the moment the city doesn't like any of your nation, and if we'd gone to a magistrate, you wouldn't have escaped without a beating at the least. Your master got you out of a nasty hole there- and in return you were insolent to him. I don't like to see a slave laugh at his master. Plenty of other people feel the same way, and some are like Philonides.'
Marcus had relaxed as he realized that he was in trouble for his conduct rather than his nationality. 'When did I laugh at my master?' he asked mildly.
Straton's hand tightened on the slave's arm. 'When he said he wanted to be an army engineer.'
'Oh, then!' replied Marcus calmly. 'It was you I was laughing atsir.'
Straton stared in offended surprise, and the corner of the slave's mouth twitched. He was beginning to enjoy this.
'You were laughing at him from the moment you set eyes on him,' he said. 'And when he said he'd never made a catapult, you made up your mind he doesn't know a thing about them, didn't you? Let me tell you this: if Archimedes makes catapults, and if King Hieron's half as clever as he's supposed to be, then whoever the king has making catapults at the moment is out of a job. Do you gamble?'
'Some,' said Straton, puzzled now.
'Then I'll lay you a bet on it. Ten drachmae to the stater he gave you- no, make that twenty! I bet you that if my master becomes an engineer for the king, then whoever's in charge of whatever he's set to do will be demoted or unemployed within six months, and Archimedes will be offered his place.'
'You have twenty drachmae?'
'I do. Before you decide about the bet, you want to hear how I got it?'
Straton stared suspiciously a moment, then gave a snort of concession. 'All right.' He let go of the slave's arm.
Marcus leaned back against the chest. 'We went out to Alexandria three years ago. My master's father, Phidias, sold a vine-yard to pay for the trip: he'd been to Alexandria himself as a young man, and he wanted his son to enjoy the same opportunity. Archimedes did enjoy it, too- Herakles, he did! They have this big temple to the Muses in Alexandria, with a library-'
'I've heard of the Museum,' said Straton with interest. 'Myself, all I know is how to read, and that badly, but I've heard that the scholars of the Museum of Alexandria are the most learned men on earth.'
'It's a lunatic asylum,' said Marcus disgustedly. 'Full of a lot of Greeks drunk on logic. My master raced in to join them like a lost lamb that's finally found its flock. Made a lot of friends, did geometry all day, sat up drinking and talk, talk, talking all night; didn't ever want to go home to Syracuse. You saw fit to tell me I deserve a thrashing for the way I talk to my master: let me tell you, I've earned the right to talk to him anyway I like! I could've stolen every copper he had and run off with it, anytime, and he wouldn't even have noticed until three days later. Instead, I looked after him and tried to make one drachma do the work of two. Phidias had given us money to last us a year- though with the prices they charge in Alexandria, it wouldn't have. First we spent that, and then we spent our return fare, and then we bartered and borrowed and sold bits and pieces, and then, after two years in the city, we were flat out of cash and in debt. I kept pointing this out to Archimedes until he finally paid attention and agreed to do some machine-making.'
Marcus paused. 'That's a common story, isn't it, apart from the geometry? Young man away from home for the first time, running wild in a big foreign city, faithful slave wringing his hands and saying, 'Oh, sir, remember your poor old father and come home!' All right, but here's where it gets uncommon. My master builds machines. Not ordinary machines, but machines so cunning and ingenious you could travel the world from one end to the other and never see anything like them. That's how we lasted two years in Alexandria: whenever we were short, he'd put something together and I'd go sell it. He'd been playing around with that for a while'- Marcus jerked his head at the wicker basket behind him- 'but he'd never got around to seeing if anyone wanted a full-size one. Now he took it to a rich man we knew who'd recently acquired an estate in the Nile Delta and was looking for ways to improve his land.
