Summer Solstice Part 1

SUMMER SOLSTICE.

Charles L Harness.

We turn now to the past, more than two thousand years ago in Egypt, when Eratosthenes was first proving that our world is round. His contention (which he worked out mathematically to a surprising degree of accuracy) was of course heresy at the time... but what if an alien from an advanced star-race had been present to aid Eratosthenes? "Summer Solstice" tells the results with delightful historical accuracy, plus more.

Charles L. Harness has quietly been writing science fiction stories for nearly forty years; they've all been outstanding, including such novels as The Rose, Firebird, and The Venetian Court.

1. The Ship Is. .h.i.t

Even as the sleeper lid rose, Khor could see the console lights flashing and he could hear the intermittent buzzer.

The break-sleep alarm. Very often the last sound some s.p.a.cemen ever heard. His blood pressure began to mount. He wasn't even completely awake, and his body was doing this to him. He shuddered. He would not see home again. Never again the stern Zoology Supervisor. ("What, Khor, still no featherless biped?" And Queva... she had taken the sleep, to wait for him. Beloved Queva. She had given him the key to her casket. "You alone will open. Else I sleep forever." No, Queva, no, no, no... I may never return. But she had done it. The female mind... beyond all comprehension. Well, my friend, what now?)

He deciphered the alarm code mentally as he clambered up from the cushions: the hydraulic system had been hit, aft. Bad, bad. He had a dreadful premonition of what he would find. Get to it. Know the worst.

He ran a finger around his helmet seal, brushing his scapular feathers. Still air-tight. Next he sat on the side of the casket and wondered whether he should remove his helmet. He decided to leave it on. At least for the moment he wouldn't have to make any decisions about cabin pressure and oxygen.

The alarms-all of them-had now become impatient with him. They had moved from console and wall and had invaded his guts and brain like barbed parasites. "Xeris and Mord," he groaned.

He reached for his heat-suit and simultaneously glanced at the ceiling meter. How long had he been under? Forty cycles. Long time. He closed the suit up and clumped over to the console. First turn off thatpflicht alarm. Now back to the tail of the ship.

Air pressure apparently holding. Which meant the hole in the ship wall self-sealed in good order. The missile-a meteorite?-couldn't have been too big. So why hadn't internal automatic repair handled the problem? As he rounded the pa.s.sage, the answer literally hit him in the face. A jet of oil struck his visor. The pin hackles on his neck and face stood out in panic. By reflex his hands grabbed the valve wheel and extinguished the flow. He wiped his visor with his sleeve. "By the egg that bore me!" He felt sick. How much fluid had he lost? From the looks of the b.a.l.l.s of glop floating weightlessly around him, at least half. How was it possible? Not just one leak? He played the inspection light along the piping array. The whole tubular system was dripping. Some of the holes were big enough to see. Others were microscopic, hiding behind tiny globules of fluid. The meteorite had evidently struck a brittle section of the ship wall, which then had imploded into a thousand high-velocity fragments. He had warned Maintenance last time in. The skin was fatiguing. The chief mechanic had laughed at him.

He sighed and looked around. Oil everywhere. Mocking cl.u.s.ters. All sizes.

Where could he find make-up fluid in this Zaforsaken corner of the galaxy? And repair-tape? He'd used the last of his tape on the solar batteries... how many cycles ago?

"Khor," he muttered gloomily, "you sorry misbegotten s.p.a.ce scavenger, you are in serious trouble." He'd have to land. Very funny. (You had to have a sense of humor for these collection missions.) To land, he'd have to find a planet. And not just any planet. One with a civilization sufficiently advanced to supply his needs.

He shuffled back through the collection area, toward the control room. He pa.s.sed the cage with the ten-legged carnivorous reptile, now quietly sleeping its drugged sleep in the corner. Past the telepathic tree that had tried to charm him into its gluey branches as its next meal. Past the floating head-size ball of fluff that seemed to have no mouth, no food, and no alimentary system, but which had doubled in size since he had first captured it on Sargus-VI. And finally the empty cage: "Featherless biped." Where in the name of Xippor the Remorseless was he to find such an unlikely specimen? You can at least try, the Supervisor had admonished him. There are a lot of unexplored planets out there.

And so to the pilot-console, where he activated the chart screen. Nearest star... there we are. Yellow, medium size. Third generation. Has all ninety-two elements. How about planets? Big one. Too big. And too far out. Also that one with the gorgeous ring. No. The red one? No air. Next. There's one... plenty of water, probably good air. Life? Maybe. Civilization? Maybe. Go on. Two more. Both too hot. Back up to III. No choice, really. I'm going in.

2. Ne-tiy Introspects

Ne-tiy knelt and stared into the mirroring surface of the lotus-pool. She liked what she saw: a young woman of excellent figure, with a face possibly bordering on the beautiful. That figure was sheathed in the cla.s.sic linen tube, falling almost to her sandals, and supported by broad shoulder straps covering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She touched her cheeks just below the eyes. There was a certain sadness about her eyes. She would like to use a little kohl at the corners for cheerful emphasis, and perhaps a little red iron oxide to highlight her cheeks, but her owner, the great priest, had strictly forbidden it. "You live for one thing, and that is not to adorn yourself." And what was that one thing? If and when the priest gave the signal, she was to offer the poisoned wine to a certain person.

She tried hard not to think about it. But it was no use. She could think of nothing else.

The priest, who served only the sun-G.o.d Horus, had bought her in the slave market at On, ten years ago. Her parents had been imprisoned for debt, and she had been turned over to the temple of the cat G.o.ddess, Bast. And then things had become blurred. She remembered she had cried a lot. Things had been done to her. In the end she knew only fear, hate, and that she was going to endure.

And then the great inquisitor priest, Hor-ent-yotf, had bought her, and had taught her certain skills. "You will enter the house of the Librarian," he had said. "You will listen to all that he does and says."

"Why, my lord?"

"Why is not your concern."

But she knew why. Hor-ent-yotf (the name meant avenger of the father of Horus) was licensed by the Greek pharaoh to sniff out heresy and impiety in the low and the high. Especially in the high, for they were the most influential. Anything demeaning the sun-G.o.d Horus was suspect. The penalty was death. She shivered.

If she were called upon to kill Eratosthenes, what would she do?

For six months she had lived as a trusted servant in his house. He knew horses, and had taught her. She had driven his chariot. He liked that. His family raised thoroughbreds, back in Cyrene, where the pasturage was rich and blue-green. When she drove with him, her body rubbed against his within the light wicker framework of the vehicle. Something had awakened within her. And now it had come to this: to be near him was torture, and not to be near him was worse.

She stared down into the pool and pa.s.sed her fingertips slowly over her abdomen. "How can I ever bear his child? He doesn't know I exist. I need to be rich. I need exalted office. High priestess of some G.o.d or other. But it is hopeless, for I am nothing, and I will remain nothing."

A shadow fell on the water. She arose and turned slowly, impa.s.sively, head bowed. She did not need to look up. She saw without seeing; the shaven bald pate, eyes lengthened by dark cosmetics, the thin pleated linen skirt with cape, the leopard skin, complete with claws, tail, and fanged, glaring head. His hands hung at his sides. Her eyes rested on his long fingernails.

On his right hand he wore three deaths, shaped as rings, each with its tiny jeweled capsule. First was the copper ring, which had a capsule shaped as Set, the G.o.d of darkness. On the middle finger was the silver ring, bearing the face of the evil G.o.ddess Sekhmet, who slew Osiris. Finally was the gold ring, on his fourth finger. Its capsule was a sardonic bow to the Greek conquerors, for it bore the face of their G.o.d Charon, who ferried their dead across the River Styx to Hades.

The faint north wind moved a sharp blanket of incense around her face. She realized that it had been the smell that had announced him.

"Where is he?" said Hor-ent-yotf.

"He has gone forth into the streets, my lord."

"When does he return?"

" In the afternoon.''

"I have reason to think he has found the directions for the tomb of the heretic pharaoh Tut-ankh-amun. Has he mentioned this?"

"No, my lord."

"Be watchful."

"Yes, my lord."

"There is another matter. In a secluded courtyard at the Library he is making a measurement of the disc of Horus. Listen carefully. Let me know if he says anything about it."

"As my lord wishes." She listened to the sandals crunching away down the pea-gravel path. Then she turned back to the pool, as though trying to hide in the beauty of the flowered rim. The Greeks had brought strange and beautiful flowers to Alexandria: asphodels, marigolds, a tiny claret-colored vetch, irises purple and deep blue. Purple and white anemones, scarlet poppies.

She wished she were a simple, mindless blossom, required only to be beautiful.

Ah, Hor-ent-yotf, great Avenger, thou demi-G.o.d, I know you well. Your mother was impregnated by the ka of Horus the hawk-G.o.d, divine bearer of the sun disc. Flights of golden hawks whirred over your house at your birth, calling and whistling to you. So it was said. As a boy apprentice in the temple at Thebes, you saw the glowing G.o.d descend from the sun, and he spoke to you. Avenge me, the G.o.d said. Find the tomb of Tut-ankh-amun, who married the third daughter of the heretic pharaoh Ikhnaton, who denied me. Destroy that tomb, and all that is within.

So it was said.

She shivered again.

3. Rabbi Ben Shem

Eratosthenes had been wandering the streets for an hour, vaguely aware of the sights, sounds, and smells of Alexandria at high noon.

The Brucheum, the royal quarter of the great city, was totally Greek, as Greek as Athens, or Corinth, or even far Cyrene, where he was born. As thoroughly Greek as the great Alexander had intended, when he strode about this sh.o.r.e opposite the Isle of Pharos, a bare eighty years ago and said: build the walls here, the temples there, yonder the theatre, gymnasium, baths... The mole, the Heptastadia, was built from the city out to the island, dividing the sea into two great harbors. Ptolemy Philadelphus kept his warships in the eastern harbor. Commercial shipping used the western harbor.

Alexandria, the greatest city in the world, the Gem of the Nile, the Pearl of the Mediterranean, was indeed Greek. But more than Greek. All races lived here. Egyptians, of course. And Jews, Nubians, Syrians, Persians, Romans, Carthaginians. (Those last two were quite civil to each other here in the city, though several thousand stadia to the west their countrymen were happily slaughtering each other on Sicily and adjacent seas.)