at some Rome atrocity.
'How did you get in here?' asked Gaius. 'How did you get the guards to allow you to bring in saws and ropes?'
'They didn't know I had 'em,' replied Marcus. 'Though they did take my hammer and chisel. I told them I was on an errand for my master. They know my master, so they let me through. I told them I'm Samnite, too, so that they wouldn't suspect me of wanting to help. Now, listen. I can invent another errand and come again if you need me, but if I do it too much, someone will start to suspect. So it's better if I don't come again soon, and I need to know now: are you going to try to escape?'
'Can you pass the saw in?' interrupted the man on Gaius's right.
'Who are you?' demanded Marcus.
'Quintus Fabius,' replied the other. 'Friend and tentmate of your brother. He's not going to get out without someone to help him.'
'You're safer staying where you are!' warned Marcus.
'We'll get out if we can,' said Gaius. 'I don't care to find out what the tyrant of Syracuse wants prisoners for.'
'There's nothing wrong with King Hieron,' said Marcus. 'He's cleverer than a fox and more slippery than an eel, but he's not cruel.'
'He's a Sicilian tyrant!' protested Gaius in astonishment. 'He cooks his enemies alive in a bronze bull!'
Marcus gaped. 'Don't be ridiculous!' he exclaimed, recovering a little. 'He's never put a single citizen to death, let alone cooked one alive. It was Phalaris of Akragas who had the bull- a man who lived centuries ago and in another city.'
There was a bewildered silence, and then Gaius said, 'I heard that Hiero'- he used the Latin form of the name- 'had a hundred of the wives and children of his enemies impaled on stakes.'
Marcus realized that his brother had undoubtedly heard dozens of stories of Syracusan atrocities. The Mamertini would have told some when they asked for Roman help, and more would have sprung up among the legions as they prepared for war. The Senate must have known the tales were false, but had said nothing.
'You heard a brazen-faced liar,' snapped Marcus in disgust. 'A stinking bandit who wanted an excuse for his own crimes.'
'How can you be so sure?'
'Gaius, I live here! I've met Hieron, been to his house! If anything remotely similar had happened, I'd know about it. King Hieron has never killed or injured any citizen- which is more than the people you've come to Sicily to help can say!'
'You've gone very Greek,' said Fabius quietly.
'I don't have to have gone Greek to say that the Mamertini are a tribe of bandits!' replied Marcus heatedly. 'We put our own people to death for doing what they did- but you've come to fight and die for that bunch of filthy Campanian murderers.' He stopped himself, swallowed a lump of anger, and went on, more moderately, 'But what I meant to say is, if you think you need to escape because King Hieron's likely to harm you, think again. You'll be well treated until he exchanges you. Things are likely to be much worse if you try to escape than if you stay where you are.'
'I mean to escape anyway,' said Gaius, 'if I can.'
Marcus sighed again: it was no more than he'd expected. 'I can probably manage to get two out of the city,' he said, 'but no more.'
'Can you pass us the saw?' asked Fabius.
Marcus passed in the saw, though he had to take the handle off to get it to fit through the crack. Fabius tucked it under his mattress.
'With this and your knife and rope we can get out,' he said. 'Hide them under a rock beside this plank. You wouldn't happen to have noticed how many guards there are, and where they're posted?'
'Half a file,' said Marcus. 'Six on the gate, two on each of the sheds. Presumably the other six are on the wall, though I didn't see them when I came in. Don't even think of going up the cliff: it overhangs. The spoil heap by the west edge of the wall is probably your best chance: it's high, and it's overgrown pretty thickly and can give you cover while you wait for a sentry to turn his back. If you get out, come to our house, and I'll get you out of the city. All I ask is that you wait at least three nights first. If you come at once, somebody's bound to remember that I was here, and know where to look for you: a few days will give them a chance to forget. And Gaius needs the time to recover his strength, anyway.'
He gave careful instructions on how to find the house. 'The brick on the left side of the doorframe about halfway up is crumbled,' he finished. 'You can't mistake it. I'll find an excuse to sleep down in the courtyard, starting in three nights' time, and if you come at night I'll let you in secretly. If you don't come- and I tell you again, I think you'd do better to stay where you are! — I'll come back in ten days with some more money.'
'Whose house is it?' asked Fabius.
'You're not to ask for it!' said Marcus. 'That would give everything away.'
'I just want to know,' said Fabius. 'Who's this master of yours that all the guards know, who goes to visit the king?'
'His name's Archimedes,' admitted Marcus. 'He's an engineer.'
'The catapult maker!' said Gaius, turning his head to stare through the crack.
'Don't look!' growled Marcus. 'Yes, he makes catapults.'
'They were telling us about him at the fort. They showed us one of the catapults and said he was building an even bigger one.'
Marcus said nothing.
'They said that the next one would be the biggest catapult in the world. They said it was bound to work, because his catapults always work. They said it was no use hoping to take Syracuse by storm, because Syracuse has the greatest engineer in the world. He's your master?'
'If you come to his house,' Marcus said suddenly, between his teeth, 'you're not to harm him. You have to swear that to me.'
Silence. 'It would be better for Rome if a man like that were dead,' said Fabius slowly.
'You're not coming into the house unless you swear not to harm him,' said Marcus. 'I'm not having anyone in that house hurt.'
Again, silence. 'He's treated you well?' asked Gaius at last, with a mixture of bewilderment and shame. Marcus should never have been in the position where it mattered how a master treated him.
'Oh, may I perish!' muttered Marcus. 'He trusts me. And- and he ought to exist. Someone like that- there aren't any others like that, not even in Alexandria. He can do anything- make water flow uphill, move a ship single- handed, tell you how many grains of sand it would take to fill the universe. It's not better for anybody when a man like that is dead. It means that there are a lot of things which the human race could do once and suddenly can't anymore.' He stopped, utterly sick with confusion. He felt suddenly that he must have died without noticing: the Marcus who had run away at Asculum would never have thought the sort of things that were in his mind now.
Again there was a silence. Then Gaius said resignedly, 'I swear that I will not harm him. May all the gods and goddesses destroy me if I do.'
'I also swear it,' muttered Fabius.
'Then come when you will,' said Marcus, 'and I will help you as much as is in my power.'
11
Archimedes found that it was, after all, possible to understand what a catapult was for and still build it. The trick was to take each step of the construction independently and concentrate on the technical problems, without looking beyond them to the finished machine.
Not that the technical problems were interesting. The increase in the diameter of the bore needed for a three-talenter was only three finger-breadths, giving a proportional increase of three twenty-fifths all around- a laborious figure to calculate with, but not a difficult one. He was aware that if he'd been feeling happier about the
