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Chapter 14: Poisoner?

Reliance, Abdera, Thrace

May 3, 319 BCE

The Reliance turned sharply to port as it left the Bay of Abdera. It was empty of oil and the decks were piled high with wool, soap, and anything else that the locals could come up with. Al Wiley, under pressure from the isolationists in the New American government, declined to use the Reliance to transport troops. In compensation—and very quietly—the government of New America did cosign a note to the Queen of the Sea Bank that would almost double Eumenes’ drawing account. Commodore Adrian Scott left the bridge and headed to his flag cabin, his mind running over the situation.

Roxane and Eurydice’s government would have to pay the money back, but not until after the war. And by then they ought to be able to do so quite handily out of the profits of the various industries that Erica Mirzadeh, Tacaran, Eurydice, Eumenes, and—through Erica—Cleopatra had started. A very conservative estimate was that the production of cloth and most metal goods would double over the next two years. But that was the least of it. Even now trade and production were both up from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.

It wasn’t one thing. No magic bullet named “Tech.” It was tech, but tech wasn’t one thing. It was a thousand thousand things, some mechanical like the shape of a hammer, the function of copper wire in carrying electrical current, the interaction of lye and fat. Some social, legal, political, or economic, like representative democracy or fractional reserve banking. And, most of all, it was the interaction.

The introduction of carding machines and spinning wheels, making the production of thread easier and less expensive, and the new automated Jacquard-style looms lowering the cost of making cloth even more, while at the same time fractional reserve banking increasing the money supply drastically. So more people had the money to buy cloth. Most of all, the knowledge that an economy could expand was still just starting to sink in around the Mediterranean. The common perception in the fourth century BCE before The Event was that the world was a diminishing place, with each generation the same as the last or maybe a little worse off. The common perception in the twenty-first century was that the world had gotten better and was going to continue to do so.

Now, slowly and doubtfully, the fourth century BCE was starting to accept at least the possibility of improvement. That there were other ways of getting rich than stealing it from your neighbors. It wasn’t the first time that Adrian Scott had thought about that, but now, as he walked slowly across the tug and climbed the stairs to the deck of the barge portion of the Reliance, he took the thought a step further. That was the difference between Eumenes and Cassander, Antigonus, or the rest. Eumenes wanted the world to be the way the ship people saw it. Cassander, Antigonus and the rest of Alexander’s successors didn’t. They had spent too many years wading through too much blood in Alexander’s wake to accept that there might be a world where their actions were not justified by grim necessity. What must it be like to wade for a decade through the blood of your victims to carve out an empire, then learn that there was another way?

Adrian reached his flag cabin, a building built onto the deck of the barge portion of the Reliance. The New American Marine sergeant at his door saluted, right fist to left chest, and Adrian reminded himself that he needed to regularize salutes and drill and ceremony in general for the Navy and Marines.

Queen of the Sea, Mid-Atlantic, on route to Alexandria

May 5, 319 BCE

Calix sat in the Royal Buffet, drinking Carthaginian strawberry wine, and watched Olympias across the room. He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or deeply offended that Olympias had simply failed to recognize him. He was not involved in the investigation into the attempt on Dag Jakobsen’s life. He offered, but his offer was declined. It didn’t appear he was even a suspect, though, and most people looked at Olympias with deep suspicion.

Then First Officer Navigation Elise Beaulieu came in with her two guards. They were a belowdecks crewman of the ship people and an Indian from Venezuela. And they were all armed. Elise with her famous pistol and the other two with post-Event-made cap-and-ball revolvers. There was a swagger about them. A swagger that Calix noted Beaulieu didn’t share. She talked with them casually and waved hello to people in the dining hall as she made her way to the line and selected her meal. It was only a few minutes past dawn and, in spite of his best efforts, Calix’s eyes followed her as she collected scrambled eggs, bacon and rolls. Calix noted that while she got her tray and one of her guards did the same, the other waited until they had both reached a table before he went back to the line to get his own tray.

Then Cleopatra came in with the ship person Sean Newton, and Calix hid a grimace. The cult of Cabeiri was not pleased with Olympias, but it was even less pleased with the ship people. They denied the gods. If they were to be believed, didn’t even remember the gods. There were political reasons to disrupt relations between Roxane and the ship people, but for Calix that was almost beside the point. To have the royal house of Macedonia marry into the ship people was a betrayal of the cult and Cabeiri. And Cabeiri would punish Macedonia and the royal house.

Then things got worse. Cleopatra, with Sean Newton, walked over and sat down with her mother. Olympias spoke cordially to Sean Newton, who responded with apparent cordiality.

* * *

Sean suppressed a frown. He believed Cleo when she insisted that her mother hadn’t tried to murder Dag. But the things Cleo admitted Olympias had done were enough to make her a war criminal back in the world. They were not going to get back to the world, however. It wasn’t going to happen no matter how much he might wish otherwise.

“What is bothering you?” Olympias asked, then gave him a careful look. “You miss that other world, do you not? The world you came from.”

Sean felt his mouth fall open and snapped it shut. How could she know? He looked at Cleo, and she was looking smug. Her mom might be a mass murderer, but she was not slow-witted. Sean looked back at Olympias. “Got it in one.”

The old woman smiled with red-lipsticked lips, and Sean suppressed a shudder. “What did you want to see me about?” he asked.

“I understand that you are advising my daughter in matters financial.”

“I guess you could say that,” Sean acknowledged.

“I have access to certain funds.”

She did too. Over the next fifteen minutes or so, they went over the process to invest Olympias’ ill-gotten gains in new businesses. Then Sean and Cleo got up, shook hands, and left. On their way out, they said hello to Elise, and then—for just the briefest moment—Cleo froze.

* * *

Cleopatra had just turned away from Elise when she saw him. He was looking at her with a sour expression and she wondered. She knew him. She wasn’t sure from where, but the Greek man at a corner table was someone she had met before. And he had been looking at her the same way, with disapproval sprinkled with lust. The fragment of memory froze her for a moment, then it was gone.

* * *

Cleo was moving again and Sean moved with her. But even as he did, he scanned the room, trying to think what might have upset her. The Royal Buffet was around three-quarters empty at this time of the morning, and Sean tried to figure out who had been in Cleo’s line of sight when she froze. There were four possibilities, and while trying not to look like it, he took note of them all.

* * *

Calix noticed Sean Newton looking at him, then noticed the same careful examination of the other people in the room. But he was distracted as one of Elise Beaulieu’s guards got up and the small, dark-haired ship person woman said something in English.

* * *

Sean leaned over and spoke into Cleo’s ear as they left the Royal Buffet. “What was it?”

“I’m not sure. It was the Greek with the sideburns and the oiled hair,” Cleo said as they walked along the Lido Deck by the swimming pools.

“I saw him. What about him?”

“I’m not sure. He seemed familiar.”

“More than familiar, I think. From your reaction.”

“What do you mean by that?” Cleo was starting to sound irritated.

“If he had just seemed familiar, you would have gone over and greeted him. Instead, you froze for a moment. It wasn’t much,” he hastened to reassure her. “Just an instant. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t had a hand on your arm. But you froze and covered. So somewhere in the back of your mind, you saw him as a threat.”

“You sound just like my mother,” Cleo said, and Sean wasn’t at all sure how to take that.

He thought for a moment and asked, “Is it someone associated with your mother?”

“I don’t know.” Cleo sounded frustrated, which didn’t bode well for his prospects of a pleasant day. A happy, relaxed Cleo was a lot of fun. A frustrated Cleo wasn’t at all.

So Sean started looking around for a distraction, then suddenly he stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t cover it nearly so well as Cleo had. It took him at least a second or two to recover.

“What?”

“Poison,” Sean said, watching her face. Then he said. “Cabeiri?”

“That’s it!” Cleo said. “Something to do with the Cabeiri.”

Carefully, Sean asked, “Cleo, could he be working with your mom?”

He waited, watching her face, while Cleo thought it through, then said, “No, I don’t think so. If she was involved, he’d be dead by now. First, because he failed. And second, because she wouldn’t want the loose end out where it might be found.”

“I understand, but that’s a pretty hard sell to a jury, love. ‘My mom didn’t do it because she’s such a frigging sociopath that if she had, and she had used him for it, she would have already killed him.’”

“I know, but it’s true, anyway.”

“I think we should talk to Marie Easley.”

“Why Marie?”

“Because Daniel Lang will pull him in and start questioning him. Then what happens?”

“They take his fingerprints and compare them.”

“Not without arresting him. And he can’t arrest him without probable cause. And you vaguely remembering that he was with the Cabeiri at some point in the past is not evidence.” Sean considered. “In fact it’s almost worse than no evidence because of separation of church and state.”

“Okay. But why Marie Easley?”

“Because I want to know who this guy is before we do anything else. If he’s a merchant or a student that’s one thing. But what if he’s someone important?”

“If he were someone important, I would know him,” Cleo said. And Sean knew it was true.

“Yes. But I’d still like to talk it over with Marie Easley.”

Cleo looked at him and for just a second Sean was sure that she was going to tear into him. But she didn’t. Instead her expression went from angry to considering, then she nodded. “All right, Sean. I’ll trust your judgment.”

Queen of the Sea, Deck 9, computer room

Marie repeated the Etruscan word, then turned to Thana, the young Etruscan woman she was working with.

Thana nodded and pointed to the papyrus scroll and made an oo sound as in school but just a little bit different. Thana spoke Etruscan, Latin, and Greek. She also read Etruscan and had brought a small library of the history of the Italian peninsula from the Etruscan point of view. A view that described Romulus and Remus as a pair of bandit chiefs who had been raised by a she-wolf only in the sense that their mother was a real bitch.

They were working together to develop an Etruscan lexicon for the translation app. One that would be able to understand spoken or typed Etruscan and translate it into Greek or English.

There was a polite tap and Marie looked up to see Sean Newton and Cleopatra.

“Do you have a moment, Dr. Easley?” Cleopatra asked.

Thana stood up and bowed, then exited quickly. Not quite running. Thana was from a minor noble house located in a small Etruscan city. She was not the sister of Alexander the Great and was acutely aware of the difference in rank.

“Apparently I do now,” Marie said, not entirely pleased with the interruption.

“Sorry, Marie,” said Sean, “but it is fairly important, though I’m not sure how urgent it is after this long.”

Marie turned her chair a bit more so it faced Sean and Cleopatra more directly. “What’s this all about?”

They took seats at Marie’s table and explained about Cleopatra’s almost recognition and Sean’s hunch. After she heard it, Marie wasn’t at all sure that there was anything there. In fact, she thought it more likely than not that, whoever it was, it was just someone who had a passing resemblance to someone that Cleopatra had met. And even if it was someone she’d met, and someone who had been, or even still was, a member of the cult of Cabeiri, that didn’t mean he was the poisoner of Dag Jakobsen and Travis Siegel.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

More vague explanation followed, and Marie was forced to agree that Daniel Lang wasn’t the best person for this. Daniel was a cop at his core. A good cop, but mostly a beat cop and administrator, not a detective. But even more importantly, he was a cop and restrained by the rules that cops worked under. If he got evidence, he was going to have to act on it. Whereas, if this was anything more than smoke, they needed to know a lot more before they acted.

“If this is real,” Marie said cautiously, “we need to know a great deal more than that he was the one who did it. We need to know why he did it.” She leaned back in her swivel chair and tapped her finger on the formica table that held the computer. “Sean, are you sure that the person you saw was the person Cleopatra recognized?”

“I think so, yes. There was only one guy with sideburns among the people I could see in the direction Cleo was looking. And we’ve discussed the rest of how he looked, the oiled, curled hair and so on. Her description matches the guy I saw.”

“Fine. Tomorrow you’re getting up early and having breakfast in the Royal Buffet. Don’t be obvious about it. Don’t look for him, but just notice if he shows up.”

“And if he does?”

“If he does, wait a few minutes, have some cereal or something, then go to a phone and give me a call.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Cleopatra asked.

“If he doesn’t, Sean is going to become a regular in the Royal Buffet for breakfast until he does show up. Was he with anyone?”

“No. He was alone at the table,” Cleopatra said. “It was the way he was looking at me that caught my attention.”

“Do you have a slate or a phone, Sean?” Marie asked.

“Nope. I sold my phone to the ship before we hit Trinidad the first time.”

That was disappointing, but not surprising. The Queen of the Sea offered three thousand dollars in ship credit for phones in the first months after The Event. By now, the going rate for a cell phone was fifteen thousand dollars ship money.

“Cleopatra?”

Cleopatra shook her head. “I considered one, and on a couple of occasions I have rented one from ship’s stores. But with the amount of investing we’ve been doing, it just never seemed necessary. The ship’s wired phones work well enough, and they come with the suite.”

“Fine. Go to one of the phones and call me, but make sure it’s out of sight of Sideburns. Tell me where he’s sitting and I’ll come take a look and see if I can get a picture.”

Queen of the Sea, Royal Buffet

May 8, 319 BCE

Sean Newton rubbed his eyes and yawned. He and Cleo didn’t normally get up this early. He looked down at his eggs and toast and wished he had some coffee. He took a swallow of milk and looked up to see Sideburns staring at him. He stared back, and Sideburns looked away. Sean went back to his breakfast and tried not to sneak peeks at Sideburns as he got his meal and passed out of Sean’s view. He had another bite of toast, and then stood up and headed for the hall off the Royal Buffet where there was a courtesy phone. On his way he gave a quick glance and saw Sideburns seated at a table behind his.

He dialed Marie’s number, which was not her room number anymore. Firstly, because six months ago she’d moved into the captain’s suite, and secondly, because the numbers had been reorganized so that unlisted numbers were possible.

The phone rang and a grumpy male voice said, “Yes?”

“Sorry, Captain. I’m trying to reach Doctor Easley.”

The phone was passed and an even more grumpy woman’s voice said, “Marie Easley.”

“He’s here, Doctor Easley.” Somehow calling her Marie didn’t seem appropriate right now. “When you come in through the middle corridor, he’ll be at a table three to the left and two behind the one I’m sitting at.”

“Give me fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll give you all the time you want, Doctor. But I can’t speak for Sideburns.”

Marie grunted and hung up the phone.

Sean set the phone back in its cradle and went back to breakfast. He was not the least bit sleepy anymore. On his way back to his table, he stopped and picked up a serving of sausages and hash browns.

Sean didn’t care for hash-browned nut potatoes, but he wanted a reason to have gotten up.

He left the hash browns on the table and finished his eggs, toast, sausage, and milk. He was polishing off his toast when Marie Easley came in and went to the egg station. She ordered eggs over easy and looked around while she waited. She didn’t seem to notice Sideburns, but nodded to Sean. After she got her eggs she came over, sat across from Sean, and asked him about the glass factory near Mount Ida in Lydia.

They talked about the factory that was located where Akçay would be located in the twenty-first century. It was making glass panes now, though one side of them was still rough so they weren’t any good for looking through. They worked fine for letting light in, though, so there was an excellent market for them. About halfway through Marie’s breakfast, Sean noticed Sideburns walk past. He winked at Marie and she nodded slightly.

Once Sideburns was gone, Sean said, quietly, “Do you recognize him?”

“There is no need to whisper, Sean,” Marie said in a normal voice. “And no, I don’t recognize him, but he does look familiar. I think he is with one of the delegations.”

So it proved. Over the next few days, Marie did a search of the passenger list. Every passenger on the Queen had been digitally photographed and a picture ID printed for them. They were dot matrix black and white pictures, printed on locally made rag paper, but having a Queen of the Sea ID card was a matter of significant status anywhere on the Mediterranean coast.

Marie Easley was going through the digital photographs, as they had color and were better quality. One thing that hadn’t made it back was facial recognition software. The cruise line had it, but it was on the docks back in the world, where people’s passports were checked. Marie did a sort by gender, eliminating all the women. That helped, but in the fourth century BCE, most cultures were still very male dominated, so most of the passengers from around the Mediterranean were male, and that was even more true among the Greeks. She also, for the first pass, eliminated all the locals from New America and those from Carthage to Rome, guessing that he was probably Greek. That got the list down to about eight hundred names. The states and satrapies of the Alexandrian Empire were disproportionately represented in the students at the university, as well as in the political delegations and among the merchants.

She had been going through the remaining photos for the last hour, when she saw him. He almost slipped past. In the picture, he had the sideburns but the hair was lank, not oiled and curled. So Marie clicked, glanced, clicked again, then stopped, went back, and examined the picture. Even if the printout would be black and white and pretty grainy, the image on her screen was clear and brightly colored.

Calix, a member of Arrhidaeus’ delegation from Antigonus. Arrhidaeus was Antigonus’ representative to the Queen of the Sea, not to the government, because Arrhidaeus had refused to sign the constitution. That left his diplomatic immunity a bit frayed about the edges, but still there, as a necessary part of the neutrality of the Queen of the Sea.

Marie leaned back in her chair and thought, Well, what do we do now? If Calix was arrested, or even questioned, things were going to get official very fast. And Arrhidaeus was going to start complaining that it was all a smear against Antigonus and the Queen’s neutrality was a sham.

214–216 12th Street, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad

May 8, 319 BCE

Carthalo lifted the pen and dipped it into the small bottle of ink. It was a glass bottle that he made, with considerably greater ease than he was having forming letters on the paper sheets. Blowing glass was a new skill, but not hard to learn if you had spent your life working with the stuff. Touching the metal tip to the side of the ink pot, he drained off the excess ink and carefully drew what he thought was a lower case b.

“No, that’s a d. The b has the line on the other side of the circle,” Stella said. “B is for butt, and the line is behind the b.”

He looked and she was right. Learning to read and write was hard enough. Learning to do it in English was much worse. But he was convinced that he needed the skill in this new world. Wikipedia was in English, so was the daily paper.

He needed to learn how to make better lenses for glasses and for telescopes, microscopes, and other devices. He needed to be able to discuss copper, bronze and steel wire with the craftsmen who made them and shaped them so that he could buy glass frames. And just so he could talk to people. People from Rome, Etrusca, Athens, Macedonia, and Thrace, as well as the tribes and nations along the coasts and rivers of Venezuela. Here in Fort Plymouth, it seemed that everyone was learning ship people English.

By now there was a largeish contingent from Carthage here in Fort Plymouth. Iron makers, cloth makers, spinners, all sorts of people.

There was a slap on the front door and Stella got up to see who it was. She came back a few moments later with the morning paper. She read him the headlines as he carefully drew the c, then the d, the e, and the f.

“The Carthaginians have elected a new pair of shophetim for the year. What’s a shophetim?”

“They . . . they’re sort of like judges and presidents rolled into one, but there are two of them elected each year. And if they can’t agree, it goes . . . Never mind. It’s a stupid system and I never got a vote anyway, being a slave.”

“Gotcha.” She read on. “The election of the new shophetim was delayed by almost six months as the wrangling over the new developments in Alexander’s empire and Formentera Island seriously disrupted Carthage’s political balance.”

Carthalo snorted. Then cursed as his pen slipped and ruined his e.

Stella kept reading. “The investigation into the death of Travis Siegel is ongoing, but there are no new developments of note, and Congresswoman Comfort is asking why.”


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