Summer Solstice Part 2

"Maybe not today, exactly. But soon. You say you don't believe in the stars, august Eratosthenes; yet you come here because you are not completely sure. You are curious." He poured two goblets of Persian wine. "So what do you want of me?"

"Nothing. Everything."

The astrologer smiled faintly. "Translating: Does your horoscope predict anything horrible in your immediate future?"

The geometer gave him a hard look. "Well?"

"But the answer would be meaningless to you, friend, because you do not believe in astrology, or horoscopes, or star-fates."

Eratosthenes sighed. "You're right, you know. I can't have it both ways. I can't denounce horoscopes in one breath and ask for mine in the next. But it's always good to see you, Marcar." He started to rise.

The Chaldean waved him back down. "Not so fast. Tarry a bit. Who requires total belief, old friend? Not I. And what is belief, anyway? A curious mix of tradition, garbled facts, superst.i.tition, prejudice-and once in a great while, perhaps a little truth thrown in to thoroughly confuse the picture." He sipped at his cup. "Let us clear the air. I suspected you might come. So this morning I constructed your horoscope."

The Greek looked across the table in surprise, but was silent.

"You might at least ask," said Marcar. "You owe me that much."

The librarian smiled. "I ask."

"Well, then. At the outset, please understand that a horoscope makes no absolute predictions, at least of the type you are thinking about. No chart will ever say to you, Eratosthenes, you will die at sunup tomorrow. At most your chart will say, Eratosthenes, you will be presented with the possibility of dying on such and such a day, and perhaps at such and such an hour."

"Go on," said his visitor quietly.

The Mesopotamian shrugged. "You have given the G.o.ds much trouble in recent days, and I think that even now the matter is not fully decided. I see Gaea, the Earth G.o.ddess. You would strip her naked. You would say, her size and shape are thus and so. I see Cronos, the G.o.d of time. You would have lovely naked Gaea turning, turning, turning under the lascivious scrutiny of Cronos. Apollo stands still in the skies, and leers."

Eratosthenes laughed. "What a marvelous way of saying the Earth rotates and moves around the sun."

"Ah yes. The heliocentric hypothesis. But that's only part of the difficulty. The scientific pros and cons are quite beyond me, my esteemed colleague. All I can say is, that's the problem that brings the risk. May I be blunt?"

"It would be most refres.h.i.+ng."

"The wrong answer to your present geodetic research may well get you a.s.sa.s.sinated."

"By Ptolemy?"

"I don't read pharaoh... I see a woman... young, beautiful, dedicated."

"So you know about Ne-tiy. Placed in my house by the Horus-priest, Hor-ent-yotf."

"Everyone knows. The female cobra within the flower basket. Why don't you get rid of her?"

"Nonsense. He'd find someone else. Meanwhile, she's where I can keep an eye on her."

Marcar shrugged. "That's up to you, of course. But the risk to your life is not the only matter of significance. There's another thing."

"Oh?"

"You will have a visitor. A most remarkable visitor, from a place far away. I am tempted to say he is a G.o.d, but I know how you feel about the G.o.ds. Like you, Eratosthenes, he faces a great trouble. But you can help him, and he can help you."

The mathematician chuckled. "Now that, friend from the marshes, is a prediction. Years away, of course. It's always safe to predict things that happen ten years from now.''

Marcar smiled. "According to the signs, he arrives on the first day of the New Year.''

"There you go again. Which New Year? The New Year when Sirius is first seen in the dawn skies, announcing that the Nile will begin its rise? In fact, tomorrow, in the hour before sunrise? Or do you mean the New Year of the current Egyptian calendar, the first day of Thoth, which is actually two hundred days away? I remind you that the Egyptian calendar is based on 365 days, not 365 and a quarter, as shown by the stars, and that it loses one full year every 1,460 years. The last time the calendar was right was 1,171 years ago. It won't be right again until 289 years from now. So-which New Year, most n.o.ble charlatan?''

Marcar's eyes gleamed. "Your sign is Cancer. And however you calculate it, O great geometer, Cancer begins at midnight tonight, and announces the first day of the summer solstice. In the dark morning skies Sirius will indeed be seen, heralding the New Year, and the awakening of Hapi, which you Greeks call the Nile, with great festivities beginning in all towns and villages the entire length of the river, and continuing for twenty-one days, with carousing, merriment, and consumption of seas of barley beer.''

Eratosthenes laughed heartily. "I take it, most astute astrologer, that buried in that Rhea-flood of rhetoric is an a.s.sertion that my relevant New Year is within the small hours of tomorrow morning, beginning with Sirius ascendant?"

"Thou seeest all, wise Eratosthenes."

"I see that you are a fraud, more colossal than any pyramid atGizeh."

"My lord overwhelms me with his flattery." He leaned forward. "Now that your stomach is weak with laughter and your defenses breached, may we talk of your sun-project?"

"It's a bit premature."

"In any case, presumably you have by now determined the shape of the Earth? Perhaps you could tell an old friend?"

"My report goes first to Ptolemy. You know that.'"

"Of course, of course. Nevertheless, what harm is a hint... in strictest confidence?"

The mapmaker grinned. "I hear the odds are disc, two to one; cylinder, even; three to one against a square; and ten to one against a sphere." He rose to leave. "Later, Marcar. Later. I promise."

"If you live," whispered the astrologer.

The visitor stopped. He turned around slowly. "Have you drawn the horoscope of Hor-ent-yotf?'' It was a stab in the dark, a flash-of what? Psychic insight? Stupidity?

Marcar peered at him most strangely. Finally he said, "Why do you ask?"

"Never mind. Really none of my affair." But he knew. The astrologer had lifted the veil on the sinister Egyptian, and he had not understood what he had seen. It was pointless to press the seer further. One thing was certain: the fates of Eratosthenes and Hor-ent-yotf were inextricably interwoven, like designs into a funerary shroud.

He bowed and left.

6. The Shadow

And so home again, away from smells and noises and dirty streets. Eratosthenes nodded to the gatekeeper and walked up the palm-lined entrance toward the central gardens. He paused under the colonnade and looked out toward the focus of the courtyard. There, as he had ordered, the scribe Bes-lek sat cross-legged in front of the shadow cast by the man-high gnomon, and he was chanting. Bes-lek had selected his own chant, a hymn, really, something addressed to Horus the sun G.o.d, a recital not too long, not too short. As the Greek watched, the clerk finished his mumbled litany, dipped his reed pen into the little pot of charcoal ink, and made a tiny dot at the tip of the gnomon shadow on the circular stone flagging. Then he commenced again. "Horus, giver of light, son of Osiris and Isis, s.h.i.+ne down upon us in thy journey across the sky..." It was in Egyptian, and between the foreignness of the language and the garbled maundering, the sense was largely lost on the librarian.

Eratosthenes walked up the gravel path toward the chanter. Bes looked up and saw him coming, but his droning mumble did not waver. The geometer looked down at the white flagging with critical eye. Bes sat just outside a concave curve of dots. He had begun about an hour before noon, and now it was about an hour after noon. The dots showed longer shadows at the beginning, growing shorter as noon approached, then growing longer again as midday was pa.s.sed. The dot closest to the gnomon base would be the one for noon. That was the one to measure. "Bes," he said, "my faithful friend, I can see from the marks that you have made a fine record of the G.o.d's overhead course. The matter is complete, except for measuring the noon angle. Get up now, stretch your legs, and then help me with the angle rod."

"Aye, thank you master." The little man groaned with great eloquence as he struggled to his feet. "Such strain, such care. My poor joints. I shall ache for days. For the pain, perhaps my lord could allot two extra puncheons of fine barley beer."

"Two?"

"One for my wife. The dear creature a.s.sumes all my pains. And considering that the festivities begin tonight."

"Two, then. Tell the steward. But first, hold the angle rod. Put the point on that inner dot, the one closest to the gnomon. Yes, that's it. Steady, while I rest the upper edge on the top of the gnomon. Fine, fine. A good angle. Now, let me take the precise measurement on the protractor arc. Yes. Seven degrees, twelve minutes, I'll take the rod."