Pakebkis reached down and grabbed one of the jars of beer tied to his camel’s odd saddle. He swigged from it. “Got to keep drinking. Drink, drink, drink,” he said. “You no drink, Ra strike you dead.” He pointed at the sun.
Thus encouraged, Sostratos drank more himself. The more he poured down, the more he sweated. He urged the rowers to drink again, too. He didn’t want one of them falling off a camel from heatstroke. They chaffed him less than they had earlier in the morning, when the weather was cooler.
After a while, Pakebkis asked, “You see all things you to see want?”
“Yes, I think so. Thanks.” Sostratos wished he had some way of making pictures so he wouldn’t have to trust fading, unreliable memory for the rest of his life. But some things were simply too big to forget. “When I have grandchildren, I’ll bore them silly with my story of how I came to Memphis and saw the Pyramids.”
“They just there,” the Egyptian said.
“They’re just there if you’re here. You are, so you can take them for granted,” Sostratos said. “There’s nothing like them in Hellas, believe me, or anywhere else in the world. If I crossed the sea to trade in Egypt, I wasn’t going to miss them.”
“The sea? Water all over everywhere till you no find land?” Pakebkis’ eyes widened in wonder. “Maybe one day I go down Nile to Alexandria. I to see that want. Maybe.” Everything was a marvel to someone who didn’t know about it.
IX
Seseset hadn’t been out of Menedemos’ chamber in the palace for more than a few heartbeats when someone knocked on the door. Guessing she was coming back because she’d forgotten something, he thought about not bothering to put his tunic back on before he opened up. He did, though.
And he was glad he did, because there in the hallway stood not Seseset but Demodamas. “Come along with me,” Ptolemaios’ tough-looking steward said.
Menedemos had the feeling the man would have said the same thing if he had opened the door naked. “Lead on. I’ll follow,” he said. The hard-faced Macedonian turned and walked away. After a glance over his shoulder, he grudgingly gave Menedemos time to close and latch the door—not much time, but enough.
He led Menedemos to a part of the palace where he’d never gone before. Most of the men there had the look of soldiers: they were in good shape for their age, they’d seen more sun and wind than most men, and several of them bore nasty scars or had missing bits.
At last, Demodamas brought Menedemos into a room where Ptolemaios was talking with a couple of men not far from his own age. They were going back and forth in Macedonian. Menedemos caught a word here and there, but not enough to follow what they were saying. Some people claimed Macedonian was a broad northern dialect of Greek; others said it was its own speech. Whatever it was, it was a long way from the language Menedemos used every day.
One of the other men pointed at Menedemos with his chin. Ptolemaios had to half-turn to see him. When he did, he switched at once to the almost-Attic he used with ordinary Hellenes: “Ah, the Rhodian! Hail, son of Philodemos! Tell Argaios and Kallikrates here what you told me when you got here.”
“Of course, sir.” Menedemos paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, then came as close as he could to delivering to the others the same report about Demetrios that he’d earlier given to Ptolemaios. He finished, “I expect you’ll have more recent news than this.”
“It’s the same as what you’ve already heard,” Ptolemaios said. “Demetrios holds eastern Cyprus, gods curse him. He still has my brother Menelaos holed up in Salamis, in the far southeast. Menelaos has a fair-sized fleet of his own, but he can’t break out of the harbor. He has all he can do to keep Demetrios’ ships from breaking in.”
“I’ve tied up in that harbor,” Menedemos said. “The opening is narrow. It would be hard to break into or break out of against opposition.”
“That’s about the size of it,” one of Ptolemaios’ officers said—Menedemos thought it was Argaios. A pale scar gulleyed one cheek and pulled up the corner of his mouth. Like Ptolemaios, he spoke Greek to Menedemos. Unlike his overlord, he still had a thick Macedonian accent.
“Menelaos can sneak small boats out under cover of darkness and get past Demetrios’ scout ships,” Ptolemaios said, “but it isn’t easy for a small boat to get from Cyprus to Alexandria. So our news has been spotty.”
“They’ll be getting hungry in Salamis. Awful hungry.” Argaios seemed a man who came out and said whatever was on his mind. By all accounts, such people were commoner in Macedonia than in Hellas.
“He’s right,” Ptolemaios said. “And that’s a problem for us. You’ll know, Rhodian, that the winds are mostly northerly on the stretch of sea between here and Cyprus at this time of year.”
“It’s worse yet farther north, up in the Aegean. You can count on the Etesian winds howling down from the north all the way through the autumnal equinox,” Menedemos said. “But yes, you can’t count on sailing north now.”
“Which means that, if we’re going to get help and supplies to Menelaos in time to do him any good, we’ll have to take oared ships. Those tubby merchantmen would need gods can only guess how much time to get up to Cyprus.”
“I can see that,” Menedemos said. Sailing merchantmen were lumbering tubs even when a tailwind filled their big square sails to the fullest. Tacking against a steady headwind? Menedemos would have bet on garden tortoises to outpace them. He might have bet on the snails that came out at night to nibble holes in lettuce leaves. But he felt he had to ask, “Excuse me, sir—what has this got to do with me?”
By the way Ptolemaios looked at him, he knew he’d lost points. “You brought your galley here from Rhodes. It’s not a big hull, but it’s one more I can fill with grain and raisins and weapons and get them to my brother in Salamis while he can still use them. What will it cost me to hire the Aphrodite to do just that?”
Argaios spoke up once more: “Don’t be shy, Rhodian. Everybody knows what a cheap prick the Ptolemaios is—”
“To the crows with you, Argaios!” Ptolemaios broke in without great heat.
The officer went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “—but not when his brother’s arse is on the line. Squeeze him. He’ll pay.” How long had the two men known each other, and how well, for Argaios to be able to say such things with Ptolemaios listening?
That question flickered through Menedemos’ mind for a moment, then went out like a lamp flame in a strong wind. A much bigger worry loomed instead: “Forgive me, sir, but I don’t think I can do that,” he said to Ptolemaios. “My polis is neutral in your fight with Demetrios and Antigonos. If they got word I was helping you against Demetrios—”
“I can just seize your gods-cursed akatos,” Ptolemaios said, and he might have poured snow down the neck hole of Menedemos’ tunic. “You know I can, too. What could you do about it? Not even this!” He snapped his fingers. But then, a scowl on his heavy features, he went on, “You can’t, no, but your detestable free and independent polis is liable to. You don’t want to get Antigonos and Demetrios angry at you. I don’t want Rhodes angry at me, or she might go over to old Cyclops, and that would be a nuisance.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” Menedemos said, and he didn’t think he’d ever told the truth more sincerely in all his life.
“I’ll bet you are,” Ptolemaios growled. “Look, I’m not asking you to lend a hand for nothing. Argaios is right, even if he is a loud-mouthed son of a whore who—”