Steampunk! Part 27

"You might well disbelieve such auguries. And yet, no one wishes to defy the G.o.ds, most terrible and most gentle to mankind.

"So I, sir - I propose to make you a machine that shall determine the G.o.ds' will. An oracle engine.

"This oracle will not be some drunken priest, singing the praises of Bacchus with slurred speech behind a screen. It will not be some idiot rubric for measuring lines on hands or scat from the temple deer of Artemis. It will be a machine into which I shall feed the stories of all past battles - strategy, tactics, sacrifices made beforehand; the disposition of the generals; the lay of the land; the tricks of wise lieutenants. The machine shall have stored within it the whole history of Greek and Roman battle, and more, for I shall endeavor to teach it the ways of men. Then, when a consul such as yourself wishes to know the future outcome of a battle or a war or even some difficult negotiation, we will arrange the question on a mosaic for the machine to examine. It will sift through a thousand treaties and ten thousand battles, and it will issue a prophecy - and this prophecy shall not be one of the fallible fairy stories of priests, but the wisdom of the G.o.ds, who view us from above, set upon the table of the earth, as clear and predictable in our motions and ranks and evolutions as ants in a line."

Cra.s.sus asked, as if it was no great matter, how much such a machine would cost.

Marcus Furius named him a price in gold for the construction of the mechanism.

"That is far too much."

Marcus Furius bowed and smiled. He said, "I did not need an oracle to predict you would say so."

"That is just the cost of building the machine," Cra.s.sus protested. "But above that, you will charge me a fee for your design."

To this, Marcus Furius replied, "I will charge you nothing on my own account until the engine is complete."

Cra.s.sus regarded the man with suspicion. "Why would you agree to build such a machine without surety of pay?"

For a moment, we are told, Marcus Furius stared at the consul, and in that instant, it was as if the fire in that dark street of the Esquiliae still burned, reflected, in his eyes.

Then he made the semblance of a smile and replied, saying, "My motive? Nothing mercenary, sir, though it may be immodest. I wish for Rome's eternal glory and for my own renown as an inventor, a votive of Minerva. As children in the Guild of Mechanics, we heard the stories of those machinists who had come before us and were inspired by them: I speak of Prometheus, first artificer, who in the first age a.s.sembled the automaton called man, and set him walking on the earth, and gave him fire fallen out of heaven. I speak of clever Odysseus, who raised up the horse that, breathing coal smoke and flame, trampled Troy and kicked down the towers of Ilium. I speak of Daedalus, who built the Labyrinth of Crete and made its walls to shuffle so the Minotaur could clamp its victims with no hope of their escape; the same Daedalus, who, when this atrocity was completed, the corridors creaking open and closed along their toothed coulisses, sought to flee the isle of Crete with Icarus, his son, inventing the first flying machines so they could do so. They flapped away from that island prison, watching the Labyrinth diminish behind them, laughing at their freedom, father and son - until Daedalus flew beneath a cloud and the plates on his engine were cut off from the nouris.h.i.+ng sunlight, dropping him with horrible precipitation into the sea; whereas Icarus, flying higher, receiving all the beams of Phoebus, stayed buoyant, reached the land, and so became the first to give the gift of flight to human men. I speak of Archimedes, who designed for his Sicilian king many engines of war, and who first drew plans (now lost, alas) for the dire Curse of Syracuse, dropped upon the city of Carthage to destroy it utterly and end the Punic Wars. There is no machine more terrible than that blight of fire, and none more sought after by our generals - for even now, a century later, Carthage is a wasteland where no crop will grow and no living thing can thrive. It is despised by the G.o.ds, a broken plain fit only for whimpering jackals with eyes that bleed and jaws that cannot close and legs that cannot carry them. There shall be no life where that upstart city stood for a hundred generations.

"Save the G.o.ds themselves, only inventors may confer such miraculous powers upon mortals. Though my arm may be weak, a lever is strong. Men of action such as you, Cra.s.sus, and your excellent son Publius - who I see before me - you still may benefit from the aid of a poor recluse like myself, a man who would be a laughingstock were I to stagger onto a field of battle carrying sword and scutum.

"So this I do for fame, Licinius Cra.s.sus, and for the glory of Rome. I have laid before you an opportunity to attract the notice of Jove himself and all his retinue. I can say no further - nor should I, since night has so advanced, and I must return to my study, my lamp, and my lucubrations. If you have no interest, tell me frankly, and I shall remove myself and instead present this mechanical oracle notion to Pompey - whom they call the Great, if I am not mistaken - or to young Julius Caesar, who shows such promise. They might, perhaps, have interest."

The next day, Cra.s.sus engaged Marcus Furius Machinator to build the first oracle engine.

Marcus Furius took a week to hire several metalworkers of the highest skill to a.s.sist him. By that time, Cra.s.sus had paid the decemvirs and the priests of Apollo sufficiently in gold that when he returned to the temple, the auguries for his future success were very happy indeed - jubilant, even. So he made arrangements for his army to depart, taking with him Marcus Furius and his smiths. Cra.s.sus sent seven legions by aquatic quadrireme to meet him in the province of Syria. He and his advisers, Marcus Furius among them, traveled by airs.h.i.+p, sputtering across the wine-dark seas, stopping for fuel each night at Thessalonica or Pergamum or other cities where Cra.s.sus might announce himself and collect tribute. At long last, the shadows of their s.h.i.+ps were cast over the waters and banks of the Euphrates River.

There, they met the seaborne legions, who had marched across Galatia, and together they made camp at the town of Zeugma, which stood at the border of the Parthian Empire. It looked down upon the banks of the Euphrates, and its houses, I am informed by travelers, resembled wasps' nests of mud.

Marcus Furius and his smiths set to work. They hired a forge and enlarged it, taking also for their own a warehouse nearby where the engine could be a.s.sembled.

The forge being in blast, they began work on the mechanism. First, they made a huge number of small metal grids, each divided by many lines into many squares, just as the soothsayer's floor is divided into quadrants. At each intersection of the lines, there was a peg, which could be moved either up or down and fixed in place. Each metal grid represented one battle or skirmish or negotiation, and upon each there were perhaps sixteen hundred pegs, every one of them answering one question - yes or no - about that conflict.

With painstaking labor, Marcus Furius set the pegs to answer a great host of questions, according to a written key: the pegs, in their totality, indicated the number of infantry, cavalry, and aerial levitatii on each side; the disposition of those troops on the battlefield; the maneuvers that followed; what sacrifices had been made by each side before the battle (cattle, goat, or fowl), and to which G.o.ds; and whether each general had been humble or proud. Then Marcus Furius scoured histories and primed the machine with tales of the past: the wars of the Greeks against the Persians; the fall of Troy; the Samnite Wars; Hannibal rumbling down out of the Alps with his battle machines, their snouts hurling artillery from the slopes above Lake Trasimenus; the guile of Fabius the Dictator; the disastrous impetuousness of the consul Varro. Marcus Furius fed the machine the histories of Polybius, Herodotus, and Thucydides. When he finished establis.h.i.+ng the information upon each grid, he stacked it carefully atop the others.

Cra.s.sus, hearing that Marcus Furius often worked through the night, like a man haunted (indeed) by the Furies, suggested that they should hire some local youths to help with the training of the machine so it might be concluded more quickly. Cra.s.sus's demand was that the youths must live in the workshop and agree to take an oath at the altar of Minerva that they would tell no one else of the oracle engine, and that they would be entirely faithful to him alone. "A sort of order of male Vestal Virgins," said Cra.s.sus, "cut off from the world."

"I believe," said Marcus Furius, "that an order of male virgins who never see the light of day would be ideal for the operation of a computing machine such as this."

Seven youths were sought out and hired. They were clad in white robes and shoes made of soft leather from the hide of sacrificial beasts. Thus was founded the inviolable sect of the Minervan Virgins.

In these weeks while the machine was being a.s.sembled and oriented, Cra.s.sus wasted no time in securing the border of Roman territory. He did not march far into Parthian territory - waiting as he did for the oracle engine to be completed so that it might suggest to him the best tactic to pursue - but he engaged his time making small sorties to towns and cities in the region, ensuring that they pledged allegiance to Rome. None of them offered much resistance, save Zenodotium, which was quickly reduced by Cra.s.sus's legions.

These early victories might have brought Cra.s.sus pleasure, except that his son Publius arrived with news from Rome: that already Julius Caesar's victories in Gaul were being applauded as prodigious, and Pompey the Great was so beloved by the people of the capital that the Senate grew uneasy. Meanwhile, the auguries at Rome once again forecast failure for Cra.s.sus: when his expedition was discussed, horses grew restless, banners toppled, and the sacred owls would sweat.

Hearing this, Cra.s.sus made his way to the engineers' workshop and demanded that Marcus Furius tell him when his machine would be completed. He needed it to calculate certain questions. There were rumors that the king of Parthia had split the Parthian army into two and that both halves were roaming through the plains, awaiting Roman movement. Should Cra.s.sus move to attack one force or the other? Or might he slip by them both to a.s.sault the city of Ctesiphon or woo the city of Seleucia or plunder ancient Babylon?

Marcus Furius replied, "You will wish us to take more time. The more the machine has been taught, the more accurate it will be." Cra.s.sus noted with some displeasure the angry intensity of Marcus Furius's gaze. He asked whether there was anything that was not to the engineer's liking. But Marcus Furius said merely, "No. I have a name for the machine now. It is called the stochastikon, for it calculates fate."

Hearing of this continued delay, Cra.s.sus took aside one of the Minervan Virgins and asked the youth whether the calculations were legitimate. He demanded that the virgin pledge that the machine would operate precisely as promised.

"So long as it is given enough examples to consider," the virgin answered, "its foresight shall be astounding."

Cra.s.sus agreed to wait, even as the king of Parthia wandered north and invaded Armenia.

Now that Marcus Furius had a.s.sistants, he was determined to acquaint the oracle engine not only with the military and political history of nations but also with the character of individual men and women - for it would not be accurate unless it understood the nature of mankind itself.

And so, through the long nights, through the hot days, he began populating grids with tales taken from the comedies of Aristophanes and Plautus, the tragedies of Sophocles. He described the ancient cycles of revenge: father kills daughter, sacrificing her to the G.o.ds; mother, outraged, kills father; and the son, almost crazed with grief, kills the mother - and so the cycle goes on, murder for murder, inexhaustible. Oedipus slays his father on the road and weds his mother. Foolish King Pentheus, mocking the G.o.d Dionysus, is pulled apart, limb from limb, by his own mother, the queen, in a fit of religious ecstasy. Great men bake each other's children in pots. All of this the oracle engine learned.

The weeks went by and Cra.s.sus heard that in his army the legionnaires said, "The general waits for this machine as an excuse. He is afraid of the desert and of the Parthians, though they are nothing but ragged barbarians without the power of flight. He is no commander of men."

So once again, Cra.s.sus made his way to the workshop. His bodyguards, his lictors, went before him and pounded upon the door.

"You delay too long!" Cra.s.sus said. "You wish me to fail!"

But for once, Marcus Furius's gaze was placid. He said to Cra.s.sus, "I am ready. It is finished." He smiled and offered, "Would you like to see it?" He opened the door wide and allowed Cra.s.sus and the lictors to enter. Cra.s.sus entered and viewed the machine his money had funded.

We have descriptions of that first oracle engine, which differed in many particulars from those now used by our augurs.

It was, I am given to understand, a device contained in a vast bronze vat, which was round in shape and some sixteen feet high. On one side of this vat was impressed the face of the oracle at Delphi, and through its eyes, ears, and mouth one communicated with the male vestals, who sat inside, arranging pegs on a grid to mark the contours of the supplicant's problem. Much of the machinery within the vat consisted of the library of previous grids, the records of previous battles, all of them in stacks, which shuttled back and forth on tracks in accordance with the machine's mechanical investigations, determining probabilities. Projecting above the top of the vat were wooden cranes on swivels, each balanced by a counterweight, which drew the male vestals up and down within the vat so they could make adjustments to the works. Each virgin was tied with rope to his own crane, and when the machine was in operation, they leaped about its workings like anxious sparrows.

Cra.s.sus studied the machine, and then, no less, studied Marcus Furius's face. "I wish a proof of its accuracy," he said.

Marcus Furius agreed gladly. He indicated that Cra.s.sus should approach the oracle's face and recite the circ.u.mstances of the recent skirmish at Zenodotium, near Nicephorium, and the negotiations at other cities, concealing the outcomes, as if none of those events had happened yet. This way, these inquiries might confirm the stochastikon's predictions. Agreeing with this plan, Cra.s.sus described each situation as it had arisen and made as if he wished to decide whether to fight, parley, or retreat.

When he had recounted the facts to the youth hidden behind the face of the machine, his request for a judgment was placed in a bracket and a lever was pulled.

The stochastikon began its calculations. Pins dropped and determined the position of fixed pegs, kicking into place new inquiries. Battle trays rolled along tracks and were collated into new formations. The male vestals hopped about, weightless on their lines, checking to ensure that nothing jammed.

At last, there was a final click, and several trays representing an answer were deposited for the youth sitting by the mouth to interpret.

In each case, the stochastikon prophesied what had actually come to pa.s.s. It predicted that at Zenodotium, Cra.s.sus would lose a hundred men but would gain the town, which was correct; and it recommended that he should lead troops to the Syrian city of Hieropolis, for he would ama.s.s great wealth by raiding the temples there - and indeed, he had spent a few days previous counting out the gold from that very visit. In every respect, the oracle engine showed complete accuracy in its recommendations.

At this, Cra.s.sus showed his clear delight. He congratulated Marcus Furius on his genius and invited the inventor to celebrate in his tent.

In the general's tent, Cra.s.sus's servants had laid out a small dinner with various meats and fruits. He and Marcus Furius reclined, and servants came forward to offer sugared dainties and Mamertine wine, while three-legged tables carved with leonine paws clanked to and fro carrying rabbit and lamb.

Cra.s.sus said, "The night has come. I believe the king of Parthia has taken half his army to the north, into Armenia, and there is only a small force remaining to menace us. I would like to confront them in the desert tomorrow." He raised a gla.s.s. "So after dinner, we shall return to your workshop and ask the oracle if I should proceed immediately - or if I should remain encamped here in Zeugma. And if the machine responds favorably, we will go out into that desert, sixty thousand men, secure in the knowledge of our victory."

Marcus Furius, surrounded by these unfamiliar luxuries, remained watchful and silent. He drank and he ate. Cra.s.sus praised him highly for his ingenuity not simply in devising the operation of the mechanism but in conceiving it. He was impressed by Marcus Furius's boldness of thought and wondered where he came by it. Did his father work as an inventor? (Marcus Furius did not reply.) Had he always been intrigued by the workings of machinery, even as a child? What drew him to consider the workings of fate? On all these questions, Marcus Furius answered not at all, or in the shortest manner possible, watching his host carefully.

On hearing that Marcus Furius claimed not to have received his gift for invention from his father, Cra.s.sus inquired who Marcus Furius's father was, and being informed in two words that the man was dead, Cra.s.sus said, "In that, you and I are alike, having lost our fathers when we were young. . . . Ah, men can scarcely judge the lessons we learn from fathers - not simply from what they say but through the example of their lives. For myself, I learned (when my father was executed) the importance of eliminating my enemies quickly. I grew wealthy destroying the men who'd applauded when my father was condemned. Revenge became my profession." A table walked to his side, and Cra.s.sus inspected the rabbit before refusing it and pus.h.i.+ng the machine away. With much the same look he had lavished on the roasted rabbit, Cra.s.sus inspected his guest. Sharply he asked, "Why, engineer, did you bring this glorious invention to me, rather than to my rivals? They are younger. Some say their prospects are better, though I weaned them both."

There was, say some, a look of challenge in Marcus Furius's eyes as he lied, "I came to you, Consul, because I knew you were hesitating to set out on this campaign, and I wished to gain renown for the Republic."

"Then you know how very important to me it is that I achieve glory upon this field of battle and return to Rome amid triumphs and processions. You may imagine how I long for the satisfaction of cataclysm, so long as it swallows my enemies and rivals entirely."

Marcus Furius said knowingly that, yes, he could indeed imagine such a desire for cataclysm.

"Then you shall not find it surprising," said Cra.s.sus, "that it is of great importance to me that Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar can never build a machine like this themselves. You understand that I must ensure it is wholly mine to operate. No word of it can ever reach them."

Marcus Furius a.s.sented.

"Tomorrow, I hope, shall prove to both those cubs and to Rome itself that I am a commander to be reckoned with. I am eager for action. It is a tremendous night."

Full of secret glories, Marcus Furius agreed, "Tomorrow shall be a long-awaited victory for both of us."

Without pleasure, Cra.s.sus smiled. He said, "Now. You have done your work. What gift do you wish to ask of me?"

"There is nothing, Consul, that I require from you."

"Surely there is!" exclaimed his host. "You are not so wealthy that you do not need gold, I presume. That would be extraordinary, wealth such as that, for an orphan such as yourself - your family's wealth all reduced to slag."

At this, Marcus Furius started in surprise. "Consul?" he said. "What do you mean by that?"

Cra.s.sus replied, "An orphan raised by poor relations after the death of your parents in an unfortunate conflagration. Everything, as I recall, burned with them." When Marcus Furius, surprised at his knowledge, could not speak, Cra.s.sus regarded him with pity and disgust. He said to the inventor, "Did you not think, after you first presented yourself, that I wouldn't inquire into your history? I keep excellent accounts, Marcus Furius Medullinus Machinator, and when I discovered that your parents had died by fire, I made further inquiries and determined that I had been on hand and that they had refused my a.s.sistance."

"I did not know that you were aware of my parentage," admitted Marcus Furius quietly.

"I did not wish you to know until you had completed your machine."

"And now that I have completed my machine?"

"I expect you will wish to take your revenge somehow. I expect to see a plot come to fruition."

Marcus Furius looked down at the table. He asked sadly, "You have poisoned my dinner, haven't you?"

"Why would you suggest that, engineer?"

"You poisoned the rabbit."

Cra.s.sus admitted that he had. "As I said, my father's example taught me to eliminate my enemies." He beckoned the chafing dish with the rabbit. He lifted the dish from its tripod and smelled it, smiling, then put it down. Marcus Furius looked stunned and then informed his host that he could not yet feel the effects. "You will, presently," said Cra.s.sus, and excused him, if he wished to stand. Having received this permission, Marcus Furius did stand but found already there was a palsy upon him.

"Do not be too sorrowful," said Cra.s.sus. "I would have had you killed regardless of your parentage, to ensure that the machine's design remains solely with me."

Now the calculating calm that always characterized Marcus Furius failed: he looked at Cra.s.sus and began to call out curses and oaths. They rang throughout the tent. The lictors did not move to apprehend the raving engineer.

Cra.s.sus said, "I am pleased that there was time for you to train the Minervan Virgins in the operation of the machine. We shall not need you now."

Marcus Furius reached for a knife and dashed toward the table. He was restrained by the lictors, who threw him down upon the floor. He made some attempt to claw his way to the consul and do the man violence, but his body was involved in spasms now, as if a spirit tormented him. Cra.s.sus, it is said, rose and left the tent.

Marcus Furius died upon the floor, surrounded by the lictors, who made no move to help him.

Thus was the end, trivial and sudden, of he who is renowned for countless small inventions and one great one: a machine which could predict the future, but which did not warn him of his own. Some maintain that Marcus Furius knew that his doom would soon engulf him, and that, tired of life, he submitted to it and embraced it. Indeed, otherwise, we might ask: How may any of us know our end when Rome's greatest servant of prophecy met death through unexpected poison and betrayal?

Meanwhile, Cra.s.sus walked directly to the inventor's workshop, where he bade the Minervan Virgins prepare themselves for prophesy.

For half an hour, he described the military situation to the youth in the bronze tub - the heat of the desert and its lack of features behind which an army could hide, the proposed strength of the Parthian forces, the primitive state of their weaponry by all accounts. He spoke of the sacrifices he had made upon the altars at Rome and offered to make sacrifices upon the altars at Zeugma, either to Roman or to foreign G.o.ds. He asked for guidance: Should he go to battle in the desert on the morrow, and if he did, would the outcome be felicitous?

The youth applied the pegs to the grid. He arose to feed the question to the engine.

But at that moment, Cra.s.sus stopped him.

"No," said the consul. "Halt. All of you stop what you are doing. Do not submit the question yet. Cease your adjustments. I am no fool." He held up his hand. "Marcus Furius will have tampered with the mechanism. I am certain that to protect himself he inserted some irregularity in the workings of the machine, some trap to ensure that if I operated it without him, it would produce a false answer that would lead to my doom."

And so he bid them to examine the machine for the next four hours, at which time he would return; and he informed them that if any of them had doubts as to the seriousness of this endeavor, they should know that Marcus Furius himself was not present because he lay dead, poisoned to stop up his mouth from spreading the secrets of the oracle engine too liberally.

With that, he left.

For the next four hours, Cra.s.sus circulated in the camp, spreading word that the army might set out for the desert the next day and that all should be in preparation against that possibility.

While he spoke to his troops, the youths within the bronze tub bounded and scurried up and down the mechanism, terrified, seeking sabotage.

When the fourth hour was over, Cra.s.sus returned, surrounded by his lictors and torchbearers.

He demanded of the engineers, "Have you found anything?"

One of the boys nodded. "Yes, Consul," said he.

"And what did you find?"

"Sabotage, as you predicted, your excellency. It appears Marcus Furius shoved this into the works so that one of the pins could not fall. It's lucky we found it. The prophecy calculations would have been faulty. Disastrously."

The youth held forth an object that sparkled in the torchlight: the trinket that had jammed the machine was a single silver coin, one denarius, worn as if through years of rubbing.

We cannot know when we touch an object what it has meant to another. A patina acquired when a gift has been clutched continuously for years looks, to someone else, merely like tarnish.

"That was clever of Marcus Furius. So he meant revenge," said Cra.s.sus." He examined the coin, little aware that he had held it once before. He shrugged, said, "It is my machine. So I suppose it is my coin." He dropped it in his money bag. This obstacle being removed, he said, "Now! Apply my question. Shall we venture into the desert tomorrow? What will be the outcome of a confrontation with half the Parthian army?"

The youths nodded, pulled on their ropes, and bounded back up over the lip of the tub. They went to work; they fixed the plate with the question in its bracket and engaged the lever.

Once again, the oracle engine performed its calculations, stacked up statistics on fear and glory and the nature of man, and pins dropped, and pegs stopped them, and plates slid, and metal fingers traced the lines of each mechanical dec.u.ma.n.u.s and cardo, and abacus beads rattled, and tiles dropped into place one by one - and the stochastikon ground to a halt.

For a while, the boy behind the bronze face was silent, reading the results and translating them into the language of men.

And this was the oracle engine's prophecy, delivered to the consul Cra.s.sus: "It says yes, you should proceed and attack. If you meet the enemy in the desert tomorrow, your name and your son's name shall echo down the ages and shall always be remembered in Rome for this battle. You shall be showered with gold. By the day after tomorrow, you shall be riding on a flying machine into the Parthian capital, and that very night, you shall look down upon the king of Parthia himself, and he shall shake before you."

When the youth had spoken, there was silence in the room; it was the first time an oracle engine had delivered a prophecy.

The silence was of short duration, however, for Cra.s.sus was delighted. He set off immediately to order his centurions to prepare to march and engage.

Come dawn, seven legions left Zeugma and crossed the Euphrates on a bridge while Cra.s.sus watched from his quinquereme above, surrounded by his aerial levitatii. Often stories have been told of the ill omens that accompanied this departure: lightning flashed in the sky; the aquila, the eagle standard of the army, was jammed in the ground and would not come free without violence; the bridge across the Euphrates splintered from the many thousands of men who pa.s.sed over it, and collapsed; the bull sacrificed to Mars in the night panicked and almost escaped the acolytes who held it. Cra.s.sus took no notice of these portents. Through a speaking trumpet, he reminded his men that the Parthians were barbarians, lacking all deep science, without the subtle weaponry of Rome, and without the gift of flight. Still, in the ranks below, the soldiers murmured against him and against the oracle engine, which had led him to ignore even the most obvious admonitions of the G.o.ds.

Across the plains the legions marched, while over them flit the shadows of the levitatii, seeking to spy the enemy in the distant scrub.