Archimedes blinked at him stupidly for a long time. "Why are you so certain that Ptolemy will offer me a job?" he asked at last. "He has some very clever people in Alexandria already."
"He'll want you for exactly the same reasons I want you!" said Hieron impatiently. "I don't think you appreciate yet how exceptional you are. You think that compound pulleys and screw elevators are just things anybody else would have used to solve the engineering problems you were faced with. And they are- now. Now they seem obvious to everyone. But last month they weren't, because they hadn't been invented."
"But- pulleys are used all the time!" protested Archimedes. "And screws have been used to hold things down for ages."
"So it's perfectly natural to use one pulley to turn another, and a screw to lift things up? Certainly. Only nobody ever did. Only somebody who's happier with the theory of screws and pulleys than with the objects themselves could have adapted them like that. You approach engineering through mathematics- and mathematics is probably the most powerful tool ever employed by the human mind. I knew that before I met you, and when I heard about you I suspected at once that you were going to prove exceptional. Ptolemy had Euclid for a tutor, and he knows the value of geometry even better than I do. Probably the only reason he hasn't offered you a job already is that the problems you were working on in Egypt were so extremely advanced that only about half a dozen men in the world were capable of understanding them, and Ptolemy's head of Museum didn't happen to be one of that half-dozen. But even so, you would probably have been offered a post this summer, if you hadn't come here instead. You have planted your fame in Egypt now, though it's taken a little while to grow. A ship's captain I spoke to recently told me about an irrigation device invented by one Archimedes of Syracuse which obliges water to flow uphill."
"It doesn't, exactly," muttered Archimedes. "You have to turn it."
He sat for a moment, contemplating what Hieron had just told him, stunned by it. The unbreachable walls he had sensed closing about him had turned out to be low enough to vault over. The power he possessed could bring him not merely wealth and the favor of kings, but freedom as well. The sea lay before him, and it was his sole choice what course to set on it!
He looked back at Hieron and managed an unsteady smile. "Thank you for telling me this," he said.
"I wouldn't have," replied the king sourly, "if you weren't on the point of working it out for yourself. I still want to keep you. I can't offer the Museum, but anything else you might expect to find in Egypt is yours for the asking."
Archimedes grinned. He picked up his cup of wine and drank it off thirstily, then stood up. "I'll bear that in mind."
"Do!" said Hieron sharply. "And bear in mind, too, that when Alexandria takes the best minds from all over the world, the rest of the world is impoverished. Syracuse is your own city. She is a great and beautiful city, and fully deserves the love of all her children."
Archimedes hesitated, looking at the king with curiosity, then replied impulsively, "That calculation about the areas of a parabola and a triangle- it was the parabola I was interested in when I did it. Not the triangle."
For the first time Hieron was thoroughly taken aback. He stared at Archimedes in honest and straightforward astonishment.
Archimedes grinned again, and for the first time since he'd come into the room his eyes flicked over to meet Delia's, with a look as though he were sharing a joke with her. "I wish you joy," he said to them both, and departed the room with a swagger.
The following morning Archimedes set off for the catapult workshop at the usual time, looking tired but determined. Marcus watched him go, then silently let himself out of the house and set off in the opposite direction, toward the Athenian quarry.
The quarries of Syracuse lay within the city wall. The plateau of Epipolae was composed largely of limestone, a great dry island lying upon the coastal shelf. Its southern, city side broke off in steep cliffs, and into these the Syracusans had cut a series of quarries for building stone. The Athenian quarry was the most famous of these. It took its name from its use nearly a hundred and fifty years before as a prison for the seven thousand Athenian prisoners of war taken at the conclusion of their city's disastrous attempt to subdue Sicily. Within its limestone walls the Athenians had suffered horrors, the living crowded in a narrow pit together with the dead. Many had died, and their bones lay still beneath the quarry floor.
There was nothing in the appearance of the place now to speak of its grim history. The morning sun was just rising above the overhanging cliffs, casting deep cool shadows, and at the quarry sides a thick tangle of cistus and juniper covered the rock spoil with a canopy of sweet-scented green. There was a stone wall across the quarry entrance, however, and the only gate was guarded. Marcus walked boldly up to the gate and wished the guards good health.
The guards- there were six of them- looked back at him suspiciously. "What do you want, fellow?" asked their leader.
"I'm the slave of Archimedes son of Phidias," replied Marcus- and noticed the sharpening of interest as the name was recognized. "He wanted me to check the quarries to find which has the best stone for catapult shot."
At this, suspicion was completely swept away. "Is he building a three-talenter?" asked the youngest man eagerly.
"He starts it this morning," said Marcus. "It'll probably be ready in six or seven days."
"Zeus! A three-talenter!" exclaimed the young guard happily. "More than a man's weight! Imagine that hitting you!"
Marcus forced himself to grin back. "They're going to call it 'Wish You Joy,' " he said.
All the guards laughed. They reminded one another of the names of the other new catapults at the Hexapylon, and punched the air as they recalled how well they had performed.
"But why does the archimechanic want you to check the quarries?" asked the man in charge- not suspiciously, but with genuine puzzlement.
"Think about it," said Marcus. "You can get stone for thirty-pound shot anywhere, but a three-talent boulder is a big piece of rock. If it's flawed or uneven it may not fly straight. So Archimedes told me to go out to all the quarries and check which one would be best for the size of ammunition he needs." He dug into the leather sack he carried and produced a hammer and chisel. "He told me to bring him back a couple of samples, too."
The guards' leader took the hammer and chisel and examined them thoughtfully. Marcus waited, trying to keep his face blank, trying not to think about what he was doing or what he was about to do. He was already in trouble if news of this visit got back to Archimedesthough not in as much trouble as he would be in if it continued.
"I can't let you take this in," said the guards' leader regretfully. "We have Roman prisoners in this quarry. I can't risk something like this falling into their hands."
"Romans?" asked Marcus, tension giving his voice a strained note that passed well as surprise. "Here? Well, bad luck to them!"
"You're an Italian, aren't you?" said the guards' leader.
"A Samnite," agreed Marcus. "And a slave because of Rome. But a Syracusan for the last thirteen years. What's the king going to do with these Romans, then?"
The guards shrugged. "He wants them for something," said the leader. "They get the best of food and the king's own doctor is attending their wounded. He's in there now, in fact."