"Having done much and risked much for you," he said, "I expect you to show equal generosity towards me, out of the money you will get for these statues. Let us say, about a hundred and fifty drachmai a statue."
I sat with my mouth open. Then I croaked: "I—I shall have to think this over, O Kallias. Give me until tomorrow."
"Oh, no! I know what you plan. You would go home and discuss the matter with your father or with some trusted friend. Thus our deal would become known. You must make up your mind here and now, or never hope to get a contract from me again."
I pondered the matter. I should have known what was coming. For an instant I even regretted that old Diognetos was not still the city's architect. He at least was not one of those who, as the saying goes, praises the good while pursuing his own profit at all costs.
Kallias put on his charm. "After all, my dear young man, have I not been your friend? And friends have all in common. Well, despite my fine new post, I am pinched for money. I face the cost of buying a house and moving my family hither from Arados. You would not starve your friend, would you?"
At length, eagerness to get a start and lust for fame overcame my scruples. I said: "I agree in principle, but you ask too much. Make it a hundred drachmai per statue."
Kallias laughed. "One could tell that you are part Phoenician. Make it a hundred and twenty-five, no less."
"Done," I said. "Now, if you will show me where the finished statues are to stand—"
Giskon burst in, his beard abristle. "Kallias!" he cried. "I've just come from the marketplace. Demetrios has sailed from Peiraieus, and the Board of Generals meets tonight in the Town Hall."
"Indeed?" said Kallias. "Very well, I shall be there. Chares, I fear we must drop this talk of statuary. Come with me to the arsenal and meet your new command. Wait! You must be identified."
Kallias brought out from his secretarial chest a disk of clay with a thong strung through a hole. With a stylus he scratched on the disk: "This is Chares Nikonos, auth. by Kallias."
He hung the disk about my neck, saying: "Do not take this tag off whilst you are on restricted ground unless you want a sentry's spear through your brisket. Come."
The arsenal and the dockyards form a mass of buildings that take up a good part of the shore of the Great Harbor. The whole is surrounded by a high brick wall with iron spikes along the top. It is constantly patrolled, even in peacetime. The sentries at the gate struck their spears against their shields in salute to Kallias.
We passed through the dockyard, where a new trireme was completing. Kallias said:
"I keep telling Superintendent Rhesos that we shall be destroyed if we build nought but these obsolete little craft when all the other powers are launching fivers, sixers, and so on up. Compared to them, our ships are like sardines to sharks. But"—he shrugged—"none heeds the prophet of new ideas until too late."
He led me into the arsenal. We passed long rows of spears, swords, cuirasses, helmets, and greaves, gleaming quietly in I heir racks, before we came to the section where the missile weapons were stored.
Here stood scores of bows, hundreds of sheaves of arrows, stacks of javelins, bundles of slings, and bags of sling bullets. There was also a rack of those small hand catapults called scorpions or belly bows. There were stacks of catapult darts of various lengths, and pyramids of catapult balls.
At last we reached the large catapults. Those most in evidence were four enormous stone throwers of the flexion type, twelve cubits long over all, with huge bows of horn and wood affixed to their muzzles by iron brackets. Kallias jerked a contemptuous thumb.
"This was my predecessor's idea of defending the city," he said. "As lately as five years ago he bought these from one lsidoros of Abydos, even though the flexion catapult is obsolete. Today one can get the same cast of the same weight of projectile, with half the over-all weight, by the use of the torsion principle. Now these are something else."
Kallias indicated the six new torsion catapults, smaller than those of lsidoros but still of imposing size, lined up on the main floor. They stood on rollers with their metal parts greased and their wood polished. The architect said:
"Thank the gods that Rhodes has one intelligent man: Bias the carpenter. Failing to convert Diognetos to the torsion principle, he carried his battle to the Council, which authorized these engines on an experimental basis. Take your pick."
I gasped with delighted astonishment, stammered my thanks, and went to the machines. I chose the one that seemed to have the stoutest and tautest torsion skeins.
"Know you how to work one?" asked Kallias.
"A little. I played around them as a child; I have read about them; and in Argos they let me load and shoot one at practice."
"Well, that puts you ahead of most recruits. If I be any prophet, crews will be assigned tomorrow. If there be anybody whom you wish for your crew, enlist him forthwith, or you will have to take whom fate allots."
BOOK II — DEMETRIOS
As I crossed the marketplace on the way to my studio, I came upon two swarthy acquaintances from the Seven Strangers: Onas the Egyptian and Berosos the Babylonian. The former proposed that we stop at a wine shop. We squeezed past the counter to a table, and Onas said:
"I trust that the local will suit. Evios stocks not the costly vintages of Chios."
"If Rhodian is good enough for export, it's good enough for me," I said. "I'm no exquisite who sniffs and sips and says, 'Ah, indeed it is good, but the Lesbian vintage of nine years ago was better.' "
"Anything for me," said Berosos, "so that it lighten my liver."
"What ails his liver?" I asked.
Said Onas: "Nought. He means he suffers the pangs of un-requited love. This time it is the daughter of Aratos the miller. Last month it was the wife of—"
"Must you blab my secrets?" said Berosos. "At least I do love those of the opposite sex, unlike many hereabouts. Hither, seeking Onas, I came—as, finding no hope for my suit in the stars, I sought his help in getting one of these Egyptian love potions."
"I told him I was a lapidary, not an apothecary," said Onas. "I seek a man who owes me for the carving of a carnelian, and who seems to possess an invisibility spell, for he vanishes whenever a creditor appears. What brings you hither, O Chares?"
I told them of the threat to the peace of Rhodes and of the rank that Kallias had offered me. "Now I seek squad mates. Would you two care to join?"
"I might," said Onas. "Fain would I take up again the sword of my forebears. Besides, I like Rhodes to dwell in, and if trouble come, the surest Way of being clasped to the city's bosom is to serve in its forces. The marines are not open to foreigners, and rowing is dull work for anybody with the wit to walk around a puddle. How about you, Fatty?"
"Me!" squealed Berosos, terror starting from his bottomless black eyes. "Istar! What an idea!"
I said: "You told me you were doomed by the stars to become a soldier. If that be so, would you not rather fight at long range?"
"But—but we Babylonians have lost all aptitude for war, since King Xerxes disarmed us, nearly two hundred years ago!"
Onas touched his necklace of amulets. "If you would but buy one of these, you need not fear the spear in its thrust or the arrow in its flight."
"What could I do?" wailed Berosos. "I know not one end of a catapult from the other, and not strong enough to turn those great windlasses am I."
Said I: "Your eyesight is keener than that of most; you can see stars that others cannot. You shall be our aimer, who lines up the catapult with the target and guesses the distance."