breathtaking vista. Perhaps the new prospect was as narrow and confined as the old streets when you were inside it- but if she never explored it, she would never know. That was the thing that gnawed at her: not to know, to marry some nobleman or king and have children and grow old, never knowing what she had missed.
In the end she told herself that if she did know him better, she would probably discover that she didn't much like him. Then she could go home and settle to her lot in life, not perhaps content, but at least untroubled by wild suppositions of how much better things could have been. This small, this easy, disobedience, wasn't much to pay for peace of mind, was it? And she would not do anything with the man. He wouldn't dare take liberties with her. They would talk a bit, and then she would see how silly she was being, and go home.
She had never been so frightened in her life. But she walked on resolutely toward the fountain of Arethusa.
She had chosen the fountain for three reasons: it wasn't far from her brother's house; it wasn't far from the catapult workshop; and it was enclosed by a small garden which could provide some cover for a private conversation, while remaining public enough to give her a sense of security. She did not at all believe that as soon as she was alone in private with Archimedes he would leap on her like a maddened satyr, but she had been warned of the wickedness of men and the dangers of impropriety so often that she wanted to feel that someone would hear her if she shouted. So she walked into the garden with one eye on the passersby she might have to call on: two guardsmen sharing a drink under a date palm; a couple of girls sitting on the ground by a myrtle bush; a pair of lovers kissing under a rose trellis. The girls would all be whores: respectable girls didn't sit about in public like that- like her. She tugged a fold of her cloak farther over her head, to hide herself from curious eyes.
The fountain itself was a large oblong basin of dark water, shaded by pines. The sweet water welled up silently from its depths. Tall, feathery-topped papyrus reeds grew in the shallows, a gift from Ptolemy of Egypt; in all Europe, the papyrus grew only here. Above one side of the basin towered the city wall, and at the far end, white and lovely, a statue of the nymph Arethusa gazed upon her fountain. Flowers garlanded the base of the statue, and coins gleamed in the water's depths: offerings to the protectress of Syracuse.
There were people here, too, but she noticed only one of them: a tall young man who crouched by the fountain's edge, intently regarding a collection of sticks which floated upon the surface. He was dressed in black, and his hair was cut short in mourning. She guessed that his cloak was quite a good one, since it looked heavy, but it was patched with dust and he was at that moment treading the hem into the mud. The water cast wavering reflections upon his long-boned face. He felt her gaze on him and looked up sharply. His eyes, she thought, catching her breath, were the color of honey.
Archimedes smiled delightedly and stood up. His cloak was at once pulled off by the trodden edge and collapsed about his feet, half in the water and half in the mud. 'Oh, Zeus!' he exclaimed, and stood there gazing at it helplessly. His black tunic was even dustier than the cloak had been.
He had guessed that she was the one who sent that note, even though it was unsigned. I wish you well: she had sent the same message through Marcus. All through that day, working in the catapult workshop on the hundred-pounder, he had contemplated this meeting with a thrill of excitement. He had brought the cloak along that morning out of a desire to look dignified; he had been astonished to find it so shabby and dusty-looking after a day spent on the workshop floor. Now it was utterly disreputable, he looked a fool, and the king's beautiful sister was watching him from under a white linen veil, her dark eyes astonished.
Then Delia laughed. He did not like being laughed at, but for a laugh like that he would have put on a mask and gone into comic mimes. He grinned ruefully, picked up the cloak, and wrung out the damp end. 'Excuse me,' he said. He thought of adding, 'I didn't mean to undress in front of you,' but this was both so highly inappropriate and so close to what he would like to do that it threw him into confusion and made his face hot.
'Good health to you,' she said politely.
'Good health!' he replied. He tried to brush the crumpled cloak straight, then gave up and simply folded it up and put it over his shoulders: his gesture toward dignity had gone wrong, so there seemed no point in persisting with it. Too hot for a cloak, anyway. 'I, umm…' he began.
'Shh!' she said urgently, glancing at the miscellaneous citizens who were relaxing beside the fountain. 'Can we go somewhere quieter?'
She walked rapidly away from the fountain, and he followed her. There were people everywhere, and they ended up making a complete circuit of the small garden before settling for a comparatively quiet spot under a grapevine in the shadow of the city wall. There were no benches, but Archimedes spread out his cloak on the ground and sat on the damp end himself. It could hardly get any muddier, after all. Delia sat down beside him nervously, pulling her own cloak forward again, and looking at her hands upon her doubled knees. She had worked out her excuse for the meeting. She had sent him a warning through his slave, and she was certain that the slave must have delivered it even after she told him not to. 'I… wanted to speak to you,' she said breathlessly. 'I needed to explain.' She swallowed, and risked a sideways glance at him.
He nodded: he had assumed that that was what she wanted. She had warned him to be careful of his contract. The king had not, in fact, offered him a contract- but it was only four days since his father's death, and it wouldn't have been appropriate to enter into business with him in the period of deepest mourning. Hieron had put in an appearance at Phidias' funeral, but he had made no reference either to engineering posts or to the money Archimedes had refused. So Delia had come to follow her warning with some advice. Archimedes was happy to think that she was his supporter in her brother's house. He had played with the delightful possibility that her feelings might be warmer than that, but he had dismissed the notion as wildly implausible.
'When I sent you that message, I was afraid Hieron meant to tie you to something in your contract,' Delia went on. 'I was wrong. I shouldn't have said anything to your slave. It was simply that he was there, and I had the opportunity. I hope it didn't alarm you.' She shot him another sideways glance.
He was frowning. 'King Hieron isn't going to tie me to anything in my contract?' he asked.
She took a deep breath. The least she could do to atone for her own disloyalty would be to reassure him about Hieron. 'He's not going to give you a salaried position as a royal engineer at all. He thinks you'd like it better if he simply pays you well for what you do. He said that any job he gave you you'd come to regard as a prison. So, you see, I was quite wrong, and shouldn't have said anything. I should have known Hieron wouldn't do anything… unjust.' Guilt at her own behavior added warmth to her tone.
'But I thought…' he began- then stopped. The frown was deepening. 'I don't understand. What does the king want of me?'
'You must know you're exceptional,' she said. 'As an engineer, I mean.'
The frown did not lighten. 'I'm better at mathematics.'
She thought of the ship gliding along the slipway, and laughed. 'You must be very exceptional at that, then! The whole city is talking about your demonstration.'
That was true: Agathon had reported it. The whole city was talking about the man who had moved a ship single-handed, and adding that the same man was now building astounding catapults for the defense of Syracuse. The threatened citizens comforted themselves with the thought of Archimedes' skill.
Archimedes made an impatient gesture with one hand. 'There's nothing new about pulleys! But I've done some things in mathematics that nobody else has done before.' He chewed on a thumb.
'What?' she asked.
He looked at her hopefully. 'Do you know anything about geometry?'
She hesitated uncomfortably. 'I can keep household accounts.'
He shook his head. 'That's arithmetic.'
'Are they so different?'
He looked at her. She was already beginning to be annoyed when she realized that it was not a look of disgust at her stupidity, still less the condescending don't-trouble-your-pretty-head-about-that look that Leptines the Regent gave her far too often. It was a look that might have come from a stammerer confronted with an urgent need to speak: a passionate longing to be understood and the hopeless knowledge that he would not be. 'Arithmetic is a natural system,' he said. 'But geometry is something the god of the philosophers invented to design the world. Rome, Carthage, Syracuse- we're all that'- he snapped his fingers- 'to geometry. Oh gods, it's a divine and beautiful thing!'
She studied his face, the line of the cheekbones and the brightness of the eyes. She recognized remotely that it was this 'divine thing' which had attracted her to him- or rather, its reflection in music. Utterly pure and inhumanly precise, it enlarged the world simply by existing. And she wanted, she had always wanted, more than her
