The Seven Hills by John Maddox Roberts Page A

his bottom kicked once to know that he has been kicked. One learns to understand the world as it is presented, not as an ideal dreamed up by a poet." He took a long drink, draining his cup, then he set it down. "Well. It is time for us to be going."
    "Going? Where?"
    "To Alexandria, of course! That is where the new world of philosophy is taking shape. Why should we want to be anywhere else?"
    "But we came here to study the resurgence of Rome!"
    Zeno protested.
    "Part of that resurgence is taking place right now, in Alexandria. And it may well prove to be the most important part. Think of Alexander. His empire did not outlast his final breath, but he spread Greek culture throughout the world. These soldierly oafs may soon be forgotten, but it may be that they have, all unwitting, changed the nature of philosophy, which is a far greater wonder than any conquest. Come along. Gabinius will give us letters of introduction to this Scipio fellow. I know plenty of people in the Museum. You want to be a great historian? We'll be at the center of history!"

CHAPTER SIX
    "A walking ship?" Selene looked from one Ro man to the other. Their expressions seemed earnest. "I can see that I have stayed away from the Museum too long. Does a ship that walks have some advantage over the more familiar sort that sails or is rowed?" She hoped for some equally ironic response, but they seemed to consider her question seriously. Irony, she had learned, was a subtlety beyond the ken of the Romans. And as for humor—she almost shuddered—what struck the Romans as funny struck most people with horror.
    "It doesn't exactly walk," Marcus Scipio said. "In fact, it is more of a rotary motion, rather hard to describe, really—"
    "Perhaps," Flaccus said, "a demonstration is in order." Like Scipio, Flaccus was a senator, one with a more literary bent than his friend. The other Romans considered Flaccus lazy and lacking in martial vigor. Only a Roman would have considered him so. With her own eyes Selene had on one oc casion seen him kill four enemies with six swift strokes of his short sword. Marcus had upbraided him for the two wasted strokes.
    "Yes," she sighed, "a demonstration." The philosophers of the Archimedean school, who had risen from obscurity to preeminence with the arrival of the Romans, dearly loved to show off their new toys.
    They trooped from the palace and entered the huge royal litter, which carried them the short distance down to the royal harbor. Since her last visit, a new ship had arrived. It certainly looked strange, with the bizarre addition of wheels to its sides, but how such a thing could walk escaped her. She saw also that it was equipped with the new, single steer ing oar mounted at the extreme end of the stern, instead of the pair pivoted at its sides in the familiar fashion.
    At the wharf they descended from the litter and boarded the ship by way of its extra-long gangplank. The addition of the huge side wheels meant that the ship itself could not di rectly abut the stone wharf. The main deck of the vessel was as unconventional as the rest. It was very narrow, in order to make room for immense, inboard wheels that corresponded to those on the outside of the ship. These wheels were hollow frameworks, and they contained men.
    "I confess," Selene said, "to utter mystification."
    A man in a philosopher s ragged tunic came forward, his face wreathed in that self-satisfied smile she had come to know so well. He bowed and waited to be addressed.
    "Good afternoon, Chilo," said the queen. "What new miracle have you to show me today?"
    "As so often, my queen," he said, "there is little new about it. It is a novel application for the common water-raising wheel used in irrigation operations."
    "I had noticed the resemblance," she said. "Why one needs irrigation wheels on a ship is not obvious."
    "It has to do with our researches into the properties of energy," he said earnestly. "There is a relationship between force exerted in one