Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

Tom Holt

Tom Holt is best known for his many humorous fantasy novels, which began with Expecting Someone Taller (1987) and include Whos Afraid of Beowulf? (1988), Paint Your Dragon (1996) and The Portable Door (2003) the last heralding the start of a series featuring the magic firm of J. Wellington Wells from Gilbert and Sullivans light opera The Sorcerer . But Holt is also a scholar of the ancient world and has written a number of historical novels including The Walled Garden (1997), Alexander at the Worlds End (1999) and Song for Nero (2003).

The following story, which is the shortest in the anthology and so eases us in gently, features one of the best known of the ancient Greek scientists and mathematicians, Archimedes. He lived in the third century BC in the city of Syracuse, in Sicily, under the patronage of its ruler Hieron II. It is a shame that the one enduring image we all have of Archimedes is of him leaping out of his bath shouting Eureka, meaning I have found it. But it does encapsulate how Archimedes operated. When presented with a scientific problem he applied his whole self to it using scientific principles, many of which he had propounded. Archimedes unified much scientific theory into a coherent body of thought which allowed him to apply what he regarded as the scientific method. It probably made him the worlds first forensic investigator.

No, I told him. Absolutely not.

You dont talk like that to kings, not even if theyre distant cousins, not even if theyre relying on you to build superweapons to fight off an otherwise unbeatable invader, not even if youre a genius respected throughout the known world. Its like the army. Disobeying a direct order is the worst thing you can possibly do, because it leads to the breakdown of the machine. Youve got to have hierarchies, or you get chaos.

He looked at me. Please, he said.

He, for the record, was King Hiero the Second of Syracuse; my distant cousin, my patron and my friend. Even so. No, I said.

Forget about the politics, he said. Just think of it as an intellectual problem. Come on, he added, and that little-boy look somehow found its way back on to his face. Amazing, how he can still do that, after the life hes lived. Youll enjoy it, you know you will. Its a challenge. You like challenges. Isnt that what its all about, finding answers to questions?

Im busy, I told him. Really. Im in the middle of calculating the square root of three. If I stop now

The what of three what?

Ill lose track and have to start all over again. Four years work, wasted. I cant possibly drop that just to help out with some sordid little diplomatic issue.

One of these days, people tell me, one of these days Ill get myself into real trouble talking to important people like that. Dont be so arrogant, people tell me. Who do you think you are, anyhow?

Archimedes. He wasnt looking at me any more. He was staring down at his hands, folded in his lap. It was then I noticed something about him that Id never realized before. He was getting old. The bones of the huge hands stood out rather more than they used to, and his wrists were getting thin. No, I said.

You never know, he went on, it might lead to a great discovery. Like the cattle problem or the thing with the sand. Those were stupid little problems, and look where they ended up. For all you know, it could be your greatest triumph.

I sighed. You think somebody knows you, and then they say something, and its obvious they dont. No, I said. Sorry, but thats final. Get one of your smart young soldiers on to it. That Corinthian we had dinner with the other evening; sharp as a razor, that one; Im sure hed relish the chance to prove himself. You want someone with energy for a job like this. Im so lazy these days I can hardly be bothered to get out of bed in the morning.

He looked at me, and I could see Id won. Id left him no alternative but to use threats do this or itll be the worse for you and hed decided he didnt want to go there. In other words, he valued our friendship more than the security of the nation.

Oh, all right, I said. Tell me about it.

*

The extraordinary thing about human beings is their similarity. Were so alike. Dogs, cows, pigs, goats, birds come in a dazzling array of different shapes and sizes, while still being recognizable as dogs, cows, pigs, goats, birds. Human beings scarcely vary at all. The height difference between the unusually short and the abnormally tall is trivial compared with other species. The proportions are remarkably constant the head is always one-eighth of the total length, the width of the outstretched arms is always the same as the length of a single stride, and the stride is so uniform that we can use it as an accurate measurement of distance. Human beings have two basic skin colours, three hair colours, and thats it. Just think of all the colours chickens come in. Its a miracle we can ever tell each other apart.