"Papyrus doesn't strike me as a practical material for shoes," I said.
"Belike not, but the rules of my religion compel it."
We left our comrades at the inn. Having helped Manethôs to buy a pair of paper shoes, I parted from him and bent my steps in the direction he had indicated, towards a flat-topped hill in the center of the city. On this akropolis stood the camp of the garrison and the palace of King Apries of former times. Manethôs told me that the hill on which the citadel rests is all man-made.
The palace, dating back before the Persian rule, is one of those rambling old edifices of which nearly every part has been demolished and rebuilt at one time or another, so that a chaos of architectural plans and styles results. Next to the room where I waited, workmen were noisily knocking down a wall. Lizards, fleeing the destruction of their homes, darted out of cracks in the wall of the waiting room and scuttled across the floor, pausing only to snap at a passing fly.
The receptionist was a rabbity little clerk named Thespis, who glanced fearfully from time to time towards the door to Alkman's office. When a man came out, Thespis put his head cautiously around the corner of the door. Then he beckoned to me.
"O General!" he said. "This is Chares of Lindos, an officer in the armed forces of Rhodes."
Alkman of Beroia glowered up at me from behind a papyrus-littered table. The strategos was an enormous man: nearly six feet tall, but so broad that he seemed squat. His arms were like the skeins of heavy stone throwers; his legs, like the trunks of gnarled old oaks. Against the fashion, he wore a bristling brown beard. Close-set pale-blue eyes looked out under bushy brows on either side of a nose that some weapon had smashed into a shapeless blob. He wore the undress tunic and kilt of the Ptolemaic army, and his voice was like thunder in the distant hills. One could easily imagine his facing Perdikkas' war elephant with nothing but a spear.
"What do you want?"
I presented my letter and spoke my speech. When I finished, there was silence. Alkman breathed heavily; I almost expected to see flame come from his nostrils.
"Oh, plague! As if I had not enough troubles," he growled, "with the fornicating Egyptians rioting, and taxes below estimates, and the remodeling of the polluted palace, Tauros has to send me a simpering little catamite on the maddest errand since Herakles went after Queen Hippolyta's belt—"
"Sir!" I said, feeling my face flush. "It may seem mad to you, but I'm only trying to carry out my orders as a soldier should—"
"You a soldier? Ha!"
"I am a double-pay man in command of a catapult, and we've fought for more than half a year—"
"Call you that cowardly long-range stuff fighting?"
"I don't care what you call it, General. But I represent a free Hellenic city on a legitimate errand. When I make a civil request, the least a fat-arsed bureaucrat like you can do is to give me a civil answer—"
"Get out, you stinking little he-whore!" roared Alkman in a voice that almost shook the plaster off the walls. With a wrench of his huge hairy hands he tore the letter from Tauros in two.
"Give me that!" I screamed, and dived for the papyrus.
It seems to me that I planted a punch on Alkman's misshapen nose. Then he picked me up with one hand while with the other he hit me a blow on the side of the head that nearly stunned me. I was dimly aware of being borne out through the anteroom to the front door of the palace, of being swung round and round as a quoit is whirled by an athlete, and of being hurled far out into space.
I alighted on the flagstones before the palace with a shattering impact. For an instant I lay, too dazed and pained to move. There was a burst of laughter from the sentries in front of the palace, and a remark about the strategos' having set a new Olympic record. Then I was aware of somebody's helping me up.
"Are any bones broken?" said Thespis in a low, hurried voice.
"I think not," I muttered, trying my joints and choking back tears of futile rage.
"Thank the gods for that! You must excuse the strategos. The Egyptians rioted a ten-day past, with three slain and much property destroyed, and it makes him touchy. None dares speak to him as you did; you are lucky he didn't kill you." Thespis raised his voice, winking at me: "No, get along, fellow! We have no time for such as you!"
"Are the Egyptians in revolt?"
"No, it was a religious affray. Some men of the Province of the Sistrum killed a crocodile and carried it through the streets, and the men of the Crocodilopolite Province resented this flaunting of the slaughter of their sacred beast. But the general has suffered from a headache, and what with one thing and another he has become the most choleric man in Egypt. Go now, my friend, and do not blame the rest of us." Then, in a changed voice: "No, I will not! The strategos has spoken, and that ends the matter!"
"Thanks," I murmured, and limped off.
When I got back to the inn, Dikaiarchos said: "By Zeus the King! What happened to you, Chares?"
I told of my treatment by General Alkman. My comrades clucked and nodded wisely but did not utter any helpful advice.
"You should learn to keep your temper, no matter what the provocation," said Dikaiarchos.
"Easier to say than to do," I said. "The whipworthy rogue would not have used me so foully had he not outweighed me by two to one."
The geographer shrugged. "It is your fate to be small, just as it is mine to be bald and Berosos' to be fat. One must learn to live with these—oh, here is Manethôs . Rejoice, O learned priest! What news?"
"What news indeed? By the triple phallus of Osiris, what ails our commander? Did you get caught in a riot?"
I repeated my tale.
"I like it not," said Manethôs.
"Neither did I."
"That is not what I meant. Tell me exactly what was said, as nearly as you can recall it."
When I had done so, Manethôs pursed his lips. "Forsooth, the strategos is a man of formidable repute, but nought said you at first to incite him to such insult and outrage. Now will I tell you what I have learned. No word of the robe has come to my colleagues, but I have heard somewhat of the state of things in Memphis.
"Ever since Alkman became strategos, organized crime in Memphis has flourished as never before. This is odd, because the strategos, a man of great force and vigor, could stamp out these iniquities as well as any man. One might speculate that these robbers flourish because he suffers them to, and that he suffers them to because it is profitable to him. But this, as I say, is mere surmise.
"Last month, on the tenth of Paophi, was a man named Mathotphes found floating in the Nile with his throat well cut. This Mathotphes was, it seems, the archthief of the entire Province of the White Wall, ruling the robbers, ruffians, burglars, kidnappers, cutpurses, smugglers, forgers, counterfeiters, assassins, and the like, even as General Alkman and the nomarch rule the honest folk. Ever since this event has the Memphite underworld been scuttling about in agitated fashion as do the insects when one overturns a flat stone, all wondering who will take Mathotphes' place. No sooner would the imps of rumor name one for this perilous post than the rapscallion would be found stabbed, poisoned or otherwise disposed of. It would seem that no successor has yet fought his way to the top of this dangerous dung heap.
"Since my colleagues in the temple of Thôth could tell me nought of the robe, they gave me introductions to priests in other temples. If it suits you, O Chares, I will start the rounds of these on the morrow."
Next morning all in our party wished lo see the sights of Memphis. We therefore followed Manethôs through the narrow, winding, dusty streets, past block after block of blank brown walls. Striding ahead with an ivory-handled walking stick, he led us first to the small temple of Hathor in the foreign quarter. He pushed through the crowd of beggars— many blind, for blindness is a common affliction in Egypt— at the entrance to the sacred precinct. He left us in the courtyard (naturally, as we were not purified initiates) and disappeared into the temple proper. Soon he came out again, his visage glum.