Chapter 9: Where Do We Go from Here?
Queen of the Sea, Saint Helena
February 27, 319 BCE
“What do the passengers say? Jane?” Lars Floden asked as they sat at the conference table. It was the same conference table they sat at on the day of The Event, when Marie Easley came to tell them what was going on in this part of the world. And right now, today, that was what worried Lars most. They had Marie Easley to advise them about the Alexandrian Empire, the diadochi, and the culture of the fourth century BCE Mediterranean. They didn’t have an equivalent for dealing with East Africa or India. They didn’t even know for sure whether Madagascar was occupied.
“It’s mixed, Captain,” Jane Carruthers said. Jane was still in charge of the hotel function of the ship. The casino was under her authority, as were guest services, even if the guests were now the high nobility of the Mediterranean and some from South America. “The scholars, for the most part, want to make the trip around the Cape of Good Hope. The merchants and politicians want to go back to the Med. But it’s not consistent. Roxane wants us to go around the cape, and so does Capot Barca from Carthage. His government wants to extend their trade around Africa and hope to get information about it and what they will face. There are several others of like mind, and some of the merchants are interested in possible new trade opportunities.”
“Daniel?”
“I would love to make the trip, Skipper, just to get some real coffee.” He lifted his cup of cocoamat and grimaced. “But, as for security, it really doesn’t matter. I have my contingent of retrained Silver Shields and the augmented security staff. No one is going to take the Queen unless they have a lot more than we’ve been told. Not against steam cannon and caplock-armed Silver Shields.”
The Silver Shields he was talking about no longer carried shields. They did have badges made of silver, polished and lacquered, in the shape of a shield. They wore them on the right breast of their new uniforms. Nor were they strictly the Silver Shields of Alexander. That was the core, and where the traditions came from, but now they included locals from New America as well as ship people, Carthaginians, Romans, and other Greeks. There were five hundred in all, and they were the Queen of the Sea’s marine force. They bunked six to a room and their families were in New America, because the Queen didn’t have room for all of them.
The Queen, Lars thought, doesn’t have room for half the people it needs on board or half the industry or half the anything, really.
“Eleanor?”
Chief Purser Eleanor Kinney said, “The bank is pretty full so we don’t need the immediate income from the New America to empire trade, Skipper. And the long-term profits from sugarcane and the other stuff we will be able to pick up in exploring the world would be amazing. I say go.”
“Marie?”
“It’s a difficult decision, Captain. We need to be in two places at once. Plying the route between New America and the empire to tie them together and, at the same time, we are going to need the resources of India, China and the rest of the world.” She shook her head, then looked back at Lars. “Madagascar, I would say. Find out if there is anyone there, and if there is, find out if they are people we can work with. If we can put a station there, we need it for the weather data anyway.”
“Anders?”
“I’d like to go, Skipper,” Staff Captain Anders Dahl said, “but Madagascar and back would nearly run our tanks dry. And if we go on up the East African coast to Suez, we won’t have enough fuel to get back. We won’t be dry, not quite, but we will be at Ptolemy’s mercy and I don’t trust Ptolemy.”
“I don’t think he’s going to try anything like he did in Alexandria, sir,” Dag said.
“Maybe not, Dag, but all he has to do is keep the fuel a few miles back from the shore and insist that he’s having transport difficulties until our tanks are dry, and we’ll have to make whatever concessions he wants or become a helpless island that can’t even provide drinking water.” The Queen of the Sea made drinking water from seawater with a system of reverse osmosis that required the engines to function. When they ran out of fuel, they ran out of everything.
“No, he can’t,” Lars said. “Oh, he can make things difficult for us, but the Reliance can make it to Suez with enough fuel to get us back here to Saint Helena. And once we got refueled, Ptolemy would not like what happened to Alexandria.”
“Yes, sir. But does Ptolemy understand that? Or, more importantly, believe it?”
“I think he does,” Dag said. “Or at least Thaïs does, and he listens to her.”
Lars looked around the room. Then he nodded sharply. “Very well. Jane, inform the passengers that the Queen will proceed to Madagascar and in all probability from there to the port at Suez. I need to have a chat with Adrian. I don’t want to make it too blatant, but I do want to be sure that the Reliance is not anywhere that Ptolemy can get his hands on it until we get refueled at Suez. And I want Ptolemy to know it.”
“Well, Skipper,” Anders said, “if he goes back to Trinidad for a full load of fuel, we’ll have reached Suez, been refueled, and be on our way before he gets back here.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, in his day cabin, Lars picked up the phone and had the radio room connect him with Adrian on the Reliance. Adrian had changed. No, that wasn’t right. But the Reliance was the property of New America, while the Queen of the Sea at this point was owned by its crew. “Well, Adrian, the consensus is we go. But I want something from you.”
“Yes, sir?” Adrian asked cautiously.
“It’s nothing too severe. I just want you to go back to New America and pick up another load of fuel. If everything goes well and Ptolemy has the fuel he says he has, we pick it up and everything is fine. But if he doesn’t, if he tries to get clever, I want you out here with a full load of fuel and out of his hands.”
“That won’t be a problem, sir,” Adrian said. “I just got word a Carthaginian ship arrived in Trinidad this morning. We are no longer the only link between New America and Europe.”
“That’s great, Adrian, and no, I hadn’t heard. I’ve been in meetings all morning. Look, make sure that Ptolemy gets the word on what we’re doing. Not blatantly, but make sure he knows that we are going to have access to fuel, no matter what he does.”
“Not a problem, Skipper.”
Alexandria, Egypt
March 1, 319 BCE
When Ptolemy walked into the private chamber he shared with Thaïs, she was lying on a couch on her side, reading a scroll. Her breasts were exposed and the breeze off the Med came in the window to caress her hair.
She looked up from the scroll and lifted an eyebrow in question.
Ptolemy handed Thaïs the sheet of paper he carried. Paper that was made in a factory right here in Egypt, printed in ink that was also made in Egypt, but printed on a dot matrix printer that was made from parts furnished by the ship people and New America.
Thaïs took the message and read. It was an apology. A personal apology from Captain Adrian Scott.
Sorry to tell you, but the New America Godiva chocolates you were expecting will be delayed. The Reliance will be making an additional trip to Saint Helena and probably on to Madagascar to put a fueling station there.
She sat up and looked at Ptolemy. “You know this is not the message.” It wasn’t a question.
Ptolemy laughed. “Of course, I do. I’m not an idiot. It’s a warning. No matter what we do, the Queen will have the fuel to do . . . whatever it should decide to do. What I’m asking is what you think I ought to do about it.”
Thaïs leaned back on the couch and considered. Egypt had very little oil of its own, but it had been shipping it in from Trinidad whenever Ptolemy could get it. They had also informed Antigonus and the other eastern satraps that they were interested in acquiring it. That, along with the ship people knowledge, had by now resulted in two producing wells near the Persian Gulf. Whatever the ship people might have thought, not all of the oil wells in what the twenty-first century called the Middle East were deep wells. That meant that Ptolemy had access to more oil than expected, but at the same time he had more uses than expected too. Oil is a lubricant as well as a fuel, and the base for several products such as tar. Still, so far demand was mostly based on its use as fuel. An oil flame is more readily controllable than any other flame source. You can turn it up or down to control the heat of a steam-engine boiler or a pot of stew. The price of oil was increasing because, so far, demand was growing faster than supply.
She looked at a map on the north wall of the room. “In spite of the cost, I think you should send the fuel not just to Suez but on to Socotra.”
“I’m still not sure it’s worth it.” Ptolemy followed her gaze. “We can’t really charge them more in Socotra than we could at Suez, and the transport will cost rather a lot.”
“I know, but the precedent is what’s important.” Thaïs stood and walked to the map. She drew an arch with her finger from the Port of Suez along the south coast of the Red Sea to Socotra. “It will strengthen our claim on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. We already have envoys in Ethiopia looking for coffee.”
“Not looking for. Have found,” Ptolemy corrected, joining her at the map and pointing to a place on the northeast coast of Africa. “There is a tribe in a place the natives call Dassi where they are familiar with the tree. Some people chew the beans for energy, but it’s not a particularly common practice because the beans are bitter. However, according to his letter, Amir is confident that he has found the right plant, and he has seeds. They bear in the dry season, which is just ending. He has three sacks full of the seeds. Even some seedlings that he brought back.”
“Where is he?”
“Suez.” They had named their port Suez after the ship people name for the same place.
“All the more reason for us to establish ownership or something like sovereignty over the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.”
Ptolemy shook his head. “They won’t accept that. We don’t own the Red Sea. Not even much of its western shore. Much less the Gulf of Aden. It’s not even part of Alexander’s empire.”
“That makes it better. We aren’t rebelling against the central government or attempting to seize additional satrapies, just extending our territory and therefore the territory of the empire. Eurydice will probably support us, as long as we don’t go after other satrapies. And Roxane might. Besides, it will give us major trade goods for sale to New America.”
Sally’s Bar and Party Palace, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad
Tubanic looked at the stage where the girls danced in synchronization and nothing much else. They were all natives from around here, none of them ship people, but the dance was supposed to be a ship person dance called the cancan. He looked over at Drakos, a crewman from the Beard, and grinned. The music was strange, with a pounding rhythm that reminded Tubanic more than anything of the beater on a trireme calling the rowing cadence. But it was complicated by other rhythms that flowed through and around the main beat, and the music came from a box that was called a speaker, not a group of musicians.
There were times on the trip from Carthage when he wondered if the trip was a good idea. Especially as they made their way south, island-hopping. The winds had kept them north of where they wanted to be, making the trip longer. He no longer felt that way. This was possibly the most successful trip he had ever been on.
After the dance ended, he called over one of the dancers and made arrangements in pidgin American. They proceeded upstairs.
A sailor with money in his pocket.
For now.
Capitol building, Fort Plymouth, Trinidad, New America
“I told you!” Anna Comfort insisted hotly. The woman, with her face framed in dark brown hair, straight and parted in the middle, waved toward the window where the sound of music was audible. “This city is turning into a den of iniquity.”
Al agreed with her, as much as he hated agreeing with the loony-liberal congresswoman. He was uncomfortable with the blatant sexuality of the locals, even if he doubted that it was the women being exploited and the men doing the exploiting as Comfort insisted it must inherently be. “I don’t disagree, Congresswoman. You know I supported the bill to outlaw prostitution, but we lost. The vote was overwhelming. So there is nothing we can do about it.”
Poseidon’s Beard wasn’t the only ship in the port. The Argos arrived a day after the Beard, and the port bars were already packed with natives from all over the north coast of South America. There were ships from as far north as the Manguea states, where Mexico was in the twenty-first century. The trips up and down along the coast by the Queen and the Reliance let the people know what was here, and trade was picking up. However, the Beard and the Argos represented a major potential expansion because the radio system had already reported back to Carthage and Sicily that the ships had made the trip successfully. More would be coming. Many, many more. So Comfort was going to get worse.
If only there were a Boston to ship her off to. Someplace where she could complain, and he wouldn’t have to listen.
Peninsula Port, Guayaguayare Bay, Trinidad, New America
March 6, 319 BCE
The Reliance pulled up to the pier and ran out a hose to connect to the pipe. Most of the pier was wood, but they were importing concrete from Rome now. Not in large amounts, but someone was also working on producing portland cement. So that was going to change. The pumps weren’t all that efficient either, so it was going to take two days to fill the Reliance’s holds.
Adrian Scott started the two-hour process of disconnecting the tug from the barge.
* * *
The Reliance tug pulled away and turned for Fort Plymouth. “Get me a link to the Queen, Dan.” The link went through the large station at Fort Plymouth, and was then bounced off the ionosphere using frequency-hopping to insure the bounce. It was an automated technique implemented since The Event, handled by the computers and mostly transparent to the user. But the Queen was now approaching halfway around the world from Trinidad so there was a noticeable delay. Adrian reported that they were refueling and would be spending a couple of days here before heading back. The Queen of the Sea gave their position, which was on the west coast of Madagascar, where Morondava was, back in the twenty-first century.
Morondava, Madagascar
March 10, 319 BCE
Dag looked around at the tropical wilderness. This was a nice place to establish a fishing village, and they had explored the area over the last few days. There was no one here, nor any evidence of prior habitation. That wasn’t proof that there was no one on the island, but it certainly supported the notion that any people who might be here were not in large numbers.
The trees around here were mostly baobab trees. They were old, too. The biggest in sight was sixty feet tall and almost thirty feet wide by Dag’s rough estimate. There were a couple of hundred green fruit in the high branches, again by Dag’s rough guess. They were green, furry, and about three-quarters the size of a coconut. According to Wikipedia, they were edible or would be when they ripened in another few months, by which time they would be the size of coconuts.
According to the Queen, it was raining on the far side of the island, but the mountains in between had removed much of the moisture from the air. The day was hot and a bit humid, but not bad.
“Look over there,” Makis said, pointing.
Dag followed his finger and saw the biggest bird he’d ever seen. It was eleven feet tall, and it made an ostrich look like a fashion model. It was an elephant bird and not the first Dag had seen, but this was the biggest yet. The elephant bird had become extinct sometime around the seventeenth century in the original timeline, but they were common here. They had dark brown feathers instead of the black feathers of an ostrich, but the big difference was the size. Elephant birds were thought to have weighed about a thousand pounds, but Dag suspected that that estimate was on the low side. The monster was blithely ignoring Dag and his escort of Silver Shields. They weren’t the biggest animal on the island, but they were one of the biggest and much larger than any predator, so they didn’t run away as ostriches in Africa did.
“That would be a lot of meat?” Makis asked hopefully.
Dag was tempted, but not because the Queen was low on food stuffs. It wasn’t. But these birds had the potential to be a useful source of all sorts of things. “You want to carry that sucker back to the boat?”
Makis shrugged. “We could send for a wagon.”
“You have a point.” Dag pulled his phone from the specially added pocket in his shirt and opened the wooden protective case. He turned on the phone and called the ship. He discussed the possibilities with Eleanor Kinney, who promised to send a wagon and a butcher.
“Okay, Makis. You have a go.”
Makis searched the area for a good place, walked over a little way and lay on the grassy ground. He took careful aim with the caplock rifle, and BANG.
The bullet, a fifty-caliber minié ball, cut the spine of the elephant bird like it was an ax.
The bird staggered around for a couple of seconds, then collapsed.
Dag and the rest went over and examined the bird. The musculature was impressive. Depending on how these animals responded to domestication, they might turn out to be a significant resource. Dag, as an environmental officer, knew quite a bit about environmental studies. And one thing he realized long since was that one of the best ways to survive as a species was to become a domesticated food and/or draft animal for humans. The surest route to extinction was to be a danger to man. With their modern knowledge, it was entirely possible that they could save the elephant bird from extinction by turning them into a food animal. Considering the culture of the world at this time, any other course as far as Dag could see led to extinction.
Dag turned to Sharon Thigpen, who was a manager of a jewelry store, and was now going to be the head of the Madagascar mission, the weather station, and the radio system. “Well, Sharon, it looks like meat is going to be available. Put someone on studying the life cycle of these creatures. If we can, I would like to ship some to other islands for domestication.”
“Sure, Dag. We don’t want all our eggs in one basket, even if it is almost the size of a continent.”
There were twenty-three people, mostly locals, some from Europe, some from New America, who would be staying on in Madagascar. They would do some farming, but for now, at least, would mostly live off hunting and gathering. It was a dangerously small colony, and to get the volunteers Captain Floden was forced to promise that the Queen would come by at least once every six months and the government of New America was required to promise them massive personal land grants. Everyone in the colony owned at least a square mile of land. Including little Janel Thigpen, all of one year old, Sharon Thigpen, and her husband Tony’s youngest child. Not to mention their older kids, Tegan and Nyssa.
The discussion turned to the station. Nine prefab buildings, none all that large, an oil derrick–style construct to support the antenna, and where all those things were to go. The station had a generator that ran off a low-pressure steam engine with a boiler made on the Queen. Compared to the folks at Jamestown in the original timeline, they were well supplied. But they were one hell of a small colony on one heck of a big island.
“When do you think we will hear from the locals?” Sharon asked, because Dag was the “expert” on locals.
“According to the last radio message from Ptolemy, he’s sent a mission along with the oil ship. We’ll meet it at Dioscorides. They have amphoras of that Egyptian beer you like and quite a lot of grain. Figure a month, maybe two. Long enough for your locals to do some hunting and for you to process the stuff into samples. Besides, we’ve left you enough freeze-dried food to last you six months, even without what you hunt and fish for here.”
“Mostly it’s the extra colonists I’m looking forward to, Dag. More than the food or the beer, you need people to make a colony.”