“The Ancient Engineer” by Bruce Sterling (2016)

Bruce Sterling
51 min readDec 8, 2024

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It took me forty years to write this story. From very early in my career, I wanted to write a historical cyber-fantasy about some unfortunate adept who owned and used an Antikythera Mechanism. This wildly advanced and well-engineered machine was doomed to vanish from history. I knew that my protagonist would be tragically aware of the machine’s potential but unable to explain it to anybody.

I never knew who this computational person was and what he wanted from life, until I realized that he lived in two of my favorite towns, Turin and Zemun. In the Antikythera era, these Italian and Serbian cities were locales within the same empire. When I understood that my hero was born in one town, and felt fated to carry his miraculous device to the other, then everything became clear to me.

This Antikythera hacker would be a learned and dutiful engineering graduate from famous M.I.T., the “Moesia Institute of Techne.” And then…

The Ancient Engineer

by Bruce Sterling

I.

The engineer was the only man weeping at the funeral.

The Governor was poised between the corpse and the mourners. The Roman statesman’s eulogy was crammed with obscure Greek rhetorical devices: Antithesis, Anacoluthon, Anastrophe… Even the Greeks in the crowd couldn’t understand him.

Blue-bottle flies buzzed through the Institute’s windows, to the gray marble slab where the dead philosopher lay in white linen.

One short generation ago, said the Governor, Moesia’s fine towns had been fishing villages. All its stone highways, cow-paths of mud. Then came Apollodorus of Rhodes, astronomer, engineer, and friend to the Roman Empire. Apollodorus had founded a great academy on the River Danube: the Moesia Institute of Techne.

Technology had transformed the province with irrigated crops, military border walls, bath-houses, and the world’s longest, strongest bridge. Above all, like the heavens: calendar regulation!

Apollodorus, Imperial astronomer, had unified the backward local calendars of Moesia’s rude tribes of Dacians, Thracians, Celts, and Scythians. Thanks to him, the official Calendar of Julius Caesar ruled Moesia. The planting days, the harvest days and the market days were synchronized. Great caravans of golden Moesian grain moved promptly to Imperial Rome. The mortal days of Apollodorus were now one with history, but his scholarly achievements would last as long as the Library of Alexandria.

Moesia’s greatest philosopher needed no gaudy marble tomb. The true Monument of Apollodorus had been built all around them, for any man to see.

The Governor had ended his eulogy by praising his own administration. With a solemn, sandalled step, he left the dais.

An old and ugly Greek woman, huddled in the corner — (she was the housekeeper of Apollodorus, it was she who had found him dead) — rose to her bare feet, tore her white hair, wailed in ritual anguish and pounded her withered bosom.

Four Institute graduates carried the philosopher’s remains outside the Academy, to the cross-stacked pyre. These chosen gentlemen represented the four greatest towns of Roman Moesia: Vincianium, Sirmium, Rittium, and Singidunum.

A priest in a tall head-dress jabbed a torch into the oil-soaked black timbers. The philosopher in his white linen vanished in rippling sheets of red flame.

After sunset, the pyre burned low. The funeral feast commenced within the Institute. The Governor tasted a few dishes, then absented himself. The Roman ruler seemed genuinely grieved.

The new masters of Moesia, though, were educated men with a lot on their minds. The students of Apollodorus had matured, to become Moesia’s mine owners, horse breeders, shipping captains and timber men. The frontiersmen of Moesia were never fussy about what they drank, as long as there was plenty of it. They soon grew boisterous over the Institute’s amphorae, rhytons and kraters.

Verus’s older brother, Gnaeus Glitius Atilius Verus, was a leader of Moesia’s rising generation. Gnaeus provoked the booming argument that soon broke out around the campus dining couches.

What should become of the Moesia Institute of Techne, now that the old professor was ashes? The philosopher had built his idyllic campus in the modest riverside fort-town of Taurunum. Why not move the Academy to the capital city? Vincianium was the strongest city of Moesia.

The younger faculty members strongly favored this proposal. It lacked logic that advanced Greek science was still taught in obscure little Taurunum.

“But the astronomical viewing is excellent here,” argued Verus, who had been born in Taurunum. “The town’s atmosphere is calm and pleasing, and well-suited to the study of the stars.”

His bashful words, as usual, did not go over well.

Later, after the glutted mourners had devoured every roast scrap of mutton and emptied the last pot of wine, Gnaeus threw his brawny arm over Verus’ toga-itching neck.

“Little brother, there is no pleasing you,” said Gnaeus. “You should be happy to see the Institute of Techne moved to our capital. You live in Vincianium.”

“I have no choice, because the Governor commands my attendance at his court. But my heart is always here in sweet Taurunum. My little town is proud of its reputation for learning.”

“There are four thousand dreaming hicks in this town, and forty thousand hard men in Vincianium,” Gnaeus said. “To tell a secret to you… I think that you should be placed in command of the new school.”

“Who, me? I’m a Roman engineer, I’m not a Greek Academic!”

“That’s why my idea is good. Moesia needs roads, bridges, and forts. You excel at building them. So teach engineering, and spread your knowledge. Show everyone what technology can do in this world.”

“I can’t resign my Imperial command, and teach teenagers how to conjugate in Greek! People hate technical lectures. No one ever listens to me.”

“I can arrange your discharge from the Roman army,” said Gnaeus airily. “After all, you have no field command. You’re just ‘the Sickle’ — our dear Governor’s only honest administrator.”

“I hold the military rank of Prefect of Fabrication for the Fifth and Thirteenth Imperial Legions,” said Verus stiffly.

“Like I said: you’re a courtier. But your Governor’s appointment will soon expire. And then what, Julius? Eh? Why not administer this technical school? You understand all their machines. You’re the only kid who ever paid any attention in astronomy class.”

“My imperial duties are of grave importance,” Verus said. “I’m the Governor’s highway inspector. If a Roman bridge falls down from sub-standard construction, that’s worse than murder.”

Gnaeus sighed. “You know why you always fail at public speaking, Julius? It’s because you never listen.”

“I’m no fancy lawyer. I’m an engineer. Machines don’t trick people with empty rhetoric and argument. Machines work. And so do I.”

Gnaeus stared him down. “What did our grandfather always tell us about taming barbarians?”

Verus gazed sullenly at the tiled floor of the Academic dining room.

“Go on. Recite Grandpa’s Roman wisdom to me.”

“Our grandfather told us: ‘First: give ’em a beating they never forget. Then: kindness and pretty gifts.’”

“That’s right. We’re the sons of a Dacian prince, and that was done to our own father,” said Gnaeus. “Beat them, then bribe them: that’s how Rome rules the world. Every man at this funeral knows how to dominate, because we all have that education.”

“Not me, Gnaeus. I learned the ethics of an engineer in this school.”

“I’m sure you did, but as soon as your Roman boss leaves Moesia, every man in here will make a snatch at a hot slice of pie! And when you block their way — you, with your honest accounting about Imperial building projects — they will beat you to a pulp!”

“Gnaeus, I understand ambition. I don’t approve of greed, and I don’t need your pretty gift.”

“No? Admit it, my gift is very pretty.”

“Yes, this school is truly beautiful, but no.”

“Must you always be this way? You might at least help me seize command our own Alma Mater! Look, we both wear golden graduation rings.”

“Gnaeus, no. It’s unethical, and I’m not a scholar by my nature. I’m an engineer.”

“So, you still remain loyal to that tiresome Roman Governor,” said Gnaeus heavily. “Well, your gratitude to that posh librarian won’t feed my serfs and miners. Moesia is eight hundred miles from Rome! Once your Roman boss is back home drinking lemonade and quoting poetry, our Moesia means nothing to him! Your ethics are Academic.”

The ashes of old Apollodorus were not yet cool in the clay urn. Yet already the world was transforming, like a stricken nymph from a tale by Ovid.

Worse yet, Verus knew that his brother had common sense. The top men of Moesia were a warrior class: they wanted iron weapons, red gold, fertile soil, horses and women. Of course they would make a grab for those fine things when the Roman administration changed. When would they have a better chance?

His own position was precarious. He had won the Governor’s favor because he was a dutiful, patriotic and hard-working engineer. But: who in Moesia loved ‘the Sickle’ — an honest government expert with the ear of the chief? Not many.

“Gnaeus, what would you do now, if you were me? I know you would never teach Greek in this technical school.”

Gnaeus rubbed his bearded chin. “I think you should get married.”

“Really?” said Verus. Gnaeus had married a rich Roman heiress — she had doubled his patrimonial estates, but she was ugly as a mare. The Roman Governor’s pinched, aristocratic consort was no prize, either. Political men married for political reasons.

“Marriage will teach you the perils of honesty,” Gnaeus counselled. “Since you refuse to take this fine school that I offer you, then I suggest… I urge… No, listen. When you have no woman, Julius, you are grumpy and stubborn. When you go whoring, you are ten times worse! So: I command you, as the head of our family, to venture to the ancestral home of our Roman lineage. Go to Augusta Taurinorum. Get yourself a bride.”

“You want me to leave Moesia,” Verus concluded. “You want me to resign my post, forsake the Governor, and go into political exile.”

“Did I say all that? I said that Augusta Taurinorum is the ancestral home of the Verus clan. So, go there and find a wife. I will arrange your military furlough. We have to get you married some time, Julius. That noble action is easy to justify. Pack. Make your farewells. Leave the province. Don’t come back here till you hear from me.”

“You are sending me off to Italy to go courting, because I’m in the way of your intrigues here.”

“It is entirely proper that a marriage should follow a funeral,” Gnaeus declared. “Where will new philosophers come from, except from the loins of good women? Do it for technology!”

II.

Apollodorus had built his stellar observation deck over the village of Taurunum. The astronomer’s derrick was an owl’s nest over the dark confluence of the mighty Danube and a tributary river.

Trim little Taurunum slept beneath its low thatched roofs. On the Academic campus, red coals still glowed from the philosopher’s cremation. Across the benighted Danube, in the barbarian lands to the north, were a few scattered campfires of poor Dacian fisherman. Downriver, in busy urban Singidunum, Verus saw the hot orange glow of the great imperial iron forges.

The observatory had warm furs, a chamber pot, an astrolabe, an armillary sphere, and a long-dry clepsydra water-clock. With much effort, Verus lit the lamp.

Verus had studied the stars, in this tower, as the acolyte of the Greek philosopher. Apollodorus had taught him that the stars were ideal, geometric and eternal things, while earthly things such as Roman roads and mass-produced Roman clay lamps were merely passing things. Then Verus had left the Greek Academy of astral physics, and Verus had struggled, frozen and bled to build Roman roads. Because roads brought lamps.

Verus built sturdy Imperial roads with five distinct layers of clay, cement, mortar, stone, and concrete. People with roads were rulers. People without roads were barbarian rabble. Verus knew rather a lot about stars and planets, but he had thrown in his lot with the roads.

Verus heard the footsteps of the Roman Governor, ascending the wooden steps of the astronomy tower.

The Governor arrived through the old trap-door, into the scanty lamplight. To Verus’s astonishment, the Governor was carrying a bag. Verus had never seen the stately Governor touch a piece of luggage.

“I searched through his heirlooms tonight,” said the Governor. “So many curiosities, strange things there I scarcely remembered. Some things I never knew about at all!” He opened the bag and displayed the Celestial Mechanism.

“I remember that one, sir,” Verus said. He quickly relieved the aristocrat of his burden, and set it upright on the astral chart table. “When I was sixteen, the professor held a Cosmic Symposium. We dismantled this Celestial Mechanism. We polished and oiled every gear in it. It took us three days to put it all back together.”

“Then, do you suppose that his favorite stellar device here can still foretell the fates of men and nations?”

“Oh, Apollodorus loved the Celestial Mechanism of Rhodes, sire. He said that there had once been a good many, but this one might be the very last bronze Greek Computer.”

“Can you show me how this device works?”

“Who, me?” said Verus.

“Who else should I ask, my dear boy?”

“Well, there’s the Institute’s professor of astronomy.”

“He got drunk tonight, and he tactlessly foretold some regrettable political things. I had to deprive him of tenure.”

The Governor cast a meaningful look at a sybilline tripod stool. Verus hastily unfolded it. The Governor adjusted his toga and sat on the taut leather seat.

“I knew Apollodorus well, and I paid well to support his Academy of Techne,” he said, “but he never told me how a machine can think.”

“The Celestial Mechanism is a computer, sir. It’s a calculator, a geometric arrangement of bronze gears.”

“Well, the Celestial Mechanism knows the past and future of the Moon and all the planets! Riddle me that!”

The cheap lamp flickered, and Verus suddenly understood that the Governor was afraid. The old man feared the calendar. Death by old age was a sentence of death from which no pardon was ever possible.

“All the wonderful Greek machines of Alexandria,” sighed the Governor. “Do you remember all those fine machines we saw there?”

Verus remembered. The Governor had once taken Verus, by Roman treasure ship, on a long state visit, from Moesia to exotic Egypt. The Moesia Institute of Techne had written and copied many learned scrolls about Moesia. The learned Apollodorus had gathered, curated, and edited all these written works, and then the Governor had taken those precious local scrolls to safety in the world’s greatest Library.

It followed that Verus had passed a long celestial season in great Alexandria, as a young Roman officer. In that vast, seething, amazing metropolis — the imperial capital of mechanical engineering — ‘Skepticism,’ ‘Cynicism,’ ‘Sophistication’ and ‘Cosmopolitanism’ were not just four fancy Greek words.

The temples in Alexandria offered prayer scrolls from coin-operated machines. The priests hauled bronze automata on sacred carts, gear-driven statues which threw perfumed holy water on the urban masses from rotating siphons.

The great Imperial Triune Goddess, Isis-Venus-Aphrodite, loomed on the street-corners of Alexandria. The spectacular Imperial Goddess stood thirty feet high: She was shapely, shameless and stark naked in gleaming alabaster, with a golden cornucopia piled on Her sacred head, and poets chanting in Greek, Latin and Egyptian at Her mighty feet.

Because the Governor had brought learned scrolls from Moesia, his officer, Julius Glitius Atilius Verus, had been given a free rein inside the Library of Alexandria. Verus was allowed to read all of the world’s most famous works of engineering.

Every form of technical knowledge was available on the coded, alphabetical library shelves. The ‘Peripatetic Problemata’ of the Aristotelian School of Athens. The ‘Planetaria’ of Archimedes. The ‘Mechanica’ of Ctesibius. Ten dazzling volumes by Hero of Alexandria, concerning valves, pistons, pumps, water-lifting screws, water organs, catapults, pneumatic toys, theatrical automata, and fast-whirling, steam-spewing jet devices.

Verus was blazingly eager to master engineering — he knew this was the one great chance in his life to grasp these arcane texts — but the Greek scrolls were old. Every text was written in a different regional dialect. The cramped, scribal handwriting had agonizing varieties. When the scrolls rolled free from their splintered wooden handles, often the ancient ink flaked right off the papyrus.

After head-splitting days of studious pain inside the Great Library, Verus staggered by night to the great brothels of Alexandria. The libraries and brothels were Alexandria’s twin sister enterprises.

The libraries of Alexandria were the world’s greatest libraries, while the brothels of Alexandria were the world’s greatest brothels. Every possible variety of girl was cataloged and made available there. Girls from Silkland and Tinland, girls from Serendib, Punt and Ultima Thule: bizarre and frightening girls with red hair and blue eyes, or girls with blue hair and red eyes.

“Don’t be shy with me tonight,” the Governor urged. “I know there are no royal roads to geometry. Demonstrate the Celestial Mechanism.”

“If you will please hold that lamp, sir…” Verus settled the box on its feet. He attached the Mechanism’s hands.

The face of the Mechanism bore seven elaborate pointers, for the Moon and the six planets. The obverse side had two simpler pointers, revolving over two spiral calendars, in upper and lower engravings. The Mechanism also featured four fat little digits that counted off the lunar cycles.

Verus inserted the stout iron crank into the square bronze socket. He gave the works a twist. The Celestial Mechanism squeaked, clicked, creaked, squealed, and made the high-pitched gnashing noise of angry squirrels in a hollow log.

“It works, sir,” Verus declared. “Try it for yourself.”

Verus held the oil lamp while the Governor spin the iron crank. All the proper pointers moved smoothly. The planetary hands ticked and clicked. The ivory-and-ebony ball of the Moon, mounted on a little spinner all her own, rotated through her phases.

The Celestial Mechanism needed a good oiling, but it was still sound.

“What a marvel,” the Governor murmured. “I would never believe that Greeks could compute with a bronze machine, if I hadn’t done this myself.”

“I’ll demonstrate the inner workings for you, sir.” Verus struggled with the left-hand panel. The Mechanism’s case was tightly sealed with eight metal fastenings. Verus had forgotten the name of these arcane, semi-secret devices. All he could remember was that they’d been invented by Archimedes.

“This side panel needs a special tool,” Verus said.

“Maybe you can hack it open,” said the Governor.

Verus laughed obediently. By the Governor’s standards, it was a good joke.

The absent-minded professor had left his secret key attached to the box with a dab of wax. Verus rotated the tool inside the Archimedean fasteners. The ebony box slowly loosened.

“The word is out that you will marry,” said the Governor.

Verus almost dropped the key, but kept his composure. “Sir, marriage is a duty. When my father was my age, he had three children.”

“Oh, our Empire must be peopled,” the Governor agreed. “So: where will you find this young lady, to adorn your distinguished Dacian family?”

“I will seek my bride in Taurinorum,” said Verus, diligently working the key.

“What, you’d marry some little peasant girl from here in Taurunum? You, a young blade who has seen the girls in Alexandria?”

“No, sir, not here in Taurunum. I meant: ‘Augusta Taurinorum.’ The home town of my Verus family.”

“Oh, of course, I see! Two Celtic place-names, my boy! That Celtic babble always sounds the same to the Roman ear. ‘Augusta Taurinorum’: it’s that foothill fortress by the snowy Alps. I have been there.”

“You know Taurinorum, sir?”

“Valiant Augusta Taurinorum, I know it well! When I was your age, under arms in Spain, we marched the military road over the Alps. We crossed from Gaul back to Italy. Our horses fell in dozens and our men fell in half-dozens. When we finally reached Taurinorum, we all had some hot spiced wine. Their wine is truly excellent, and they also excel at iron work and witchcraft.”

Verus pulled at the ebony panel. The top came loose.

“The road-fort of Augusta Taurinorum,” the Governor reminisced. “Rebuilt from the weeds of its decay by Augustus Caesar, because there was not one Celt left alive in its ruins. The Celts are hard for an Empire to please. Their Druids dump their mystic victims like dogs into the bogs.”

The Celestial Box yawned open. The Governor leaned closer with the lamp.

“I see,” he said. “No starry gods or goddesses in the computer, no spells, no invocations… I’m a bit disappointed.”

“Watch how the gears move when I spin the crank, sir.”

“The teeth of those metal circles bite one another,” the Governor observed. “So: that’s the secret: those undisturbed ‘Circles of Archimedes.’ Bronze disks, crimped along their edges like so many bakers’ pies. So it’s just a Greek gadget, isn’t it? They had so many gadgets, the Greeks, in their prime.”

“These disks are geometrical gears, sir. Euclid made his proofs with his straight lines and compasses. But this is bronze proof, invented by the greatest Greek astral engineers — Aristarchus, Posidonius, and Hipparchus.”

“I always protected Apollodorus and his Academy,” said the Governor, shifting on his unsteady stool. “The people of this little town were kind to the Greek star-gazer and his brazen instruments of Science. Our Empire can be proud of that achievement. Don’t you think so? We are conquerors, but we struggle for divine light.”

Verus said nothing.

“Well, it’s very sad that old Apollodorus is finally gone now, but let’s not weep about him any more, eh? If he saw us weeping tonight, he would chide us just as Socrates once did. We will console ourselves with his fine computer here. Show me more.”

“This computer needs its documents,” Verus said. “It needs the Babylonian star observations and the Egyptian records. The documents of the Celestial Mechanism date back to the beginning of time.”

“Time had a ‘beginning’?” said the Governor, startled.

“Well sir, the Egyptian calendar is the world’s oldest calendar. That’s why the Celestial Mechanism uses the original Egyptian year, which begins with the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, in the Egyptian latitudes. Look here, sir: all the Egyptian months are written here in Greek letters, on this dial: ‘Thoth, Phaophi, Hathor, Choiak, Tybi…’”

“What horrid names the Egyptians gave to their unfortunate months.”

“The disks were cut to the old Babylonian system,” Verus explained eagerly. “Babylonian circles of three hundred and sixty degrees! Apollodorus used the Mechanism to double-check the Babylonian eclipses. To do that, he cranked it backward, like this” — The Celestial Mechanism emitted a harsh screech.

“Don’t do that,” the Governor commanded.

“Forgive me, sir. But, anyway: it was the great virtue of Apollodorus to always double-check his data. Apollodorus told me that the Babylonian priests were a scandal to science! With this computer, he proved that their ancient eclipse predictions were often incorrect by whole hours! He said that the priests of Babylon were drunk, or bribed, or lazy, or else their water-clocks were badly engineered!”

“Instruct this computer about the year that we inhabit. Tell it that this is the fifth of May during the fourth year of the reign of Antoninus Pius.”

“It’s a very old Greek device, sir. It can’t understand modern Roman emperors.”

“Rome is an ancient city. Instruct it that this is the Year 895 since the ‘Founding of the City of Rome.’”

“Sir, the Celestial Mechanism just can’t work in a Roman way. It knows the Greek Olympiad calendar. It knows the Egyptian Sothic calendar of one thousand, four hundred and sixty one years. Also it knows the Metonic Cycle, which is nineteen years. It knows nothing of our Imperial Calendar from Julius Caesar, Dictator and Pontifex.”

The Governor stared in bemusement through the guttering lamplight. “How can you engineers memorize all those numbers, in your work?”

“Well, the numbers are inscribed here on the box-frame here, sir. Also, the case has instructions inside.”

“Does the Celestial Mechanism know the day when I must resign as Governor, and return to Rome? The day when I must lose my political power?”

“No, sir. It doesn’t know that day, I promise.”

“Does it know when mortal men must die?”

“No, sir. All it knows is that this crank twists, and the gears move, and the positions of the planets will always repeat themselves.”

The Governor leaned back on his stool and adjusted his toga. “Well! Then that’s not much use, is it? Fortune favors the bold, my boy! Our faults are in ourselves, not in these little metal planets on their little bronze sticks!”

“I’m sure that is as you say, sir.”

The Governor tilted the flickering oil lamp. “What an ugly, cheap little lamp Apollodorus had. Engineers and philosophers — neither are known for their good taste!”

Verus found a dusty jug of olive oil and refilled the lamp.

“So,” said the Governor slowly, “I have lost my wonderful philosopher, and now you, my best engineer, must also leave my service, to marry. Taurinorum to Taurunum. Taurunum to Taurinorum. One great cycle of movement. Like the stars, like the planets. That’s your family history, eh?”

“That imperial road back to Italy is the ‘Via Militaris,’ sir. Its condition is good.”

“Prepare to march, my brave engineer. A bridal quest is a mystical act that meets with divine approval. You must sacrifice in a temple before you leave your native province. Sacrifice to Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth.”

Verus coughed on the lantern’s smoldering wick. “I’m thankful for your kindness and spiritual counsel, sir…” Verus sneezed, and the lamp went out.

“Never mind the lamp,” said the Governor. “The Moon has risen.”

“The Moon!” said Verus. He quickly set the big bronze Moon pointer, then spun the crank, carefully watching the Metonic spiral on the back of the box. “See here, sir! Look, the local hour of Moonrise — as you see, Mars is visible in the heavens, right there — and there is Saturn, too, just as computed! Sire, I have set the Celestial Mechanism for you! ‘As above, so below!’”

“Excellent work,” said the Governor. “I wish every man in the Roman Army was an engineer. If only the Empire were free of priests and lawyers! What towns and villages I would possess. All the people would be straight and square.”

The rising Moon climbed over the calm Danube. The broad river turned scaley and silvery. A breeze arose that rocked the Roman ships at dock in Taurunum. Somewhere a drunken woman shrieked with laughter.

“Ten years of my lifetime, sacrificed to this cold, remote, and dirty frontier province,” said the Governor, fiddling with the Mechanism’s iron crank. “I wanted to be Rome’s greatest patron of science… Remember Alexandria? When we carried that big heap of scrolls to Egypt…. Do you think I wanted to read in a library? No, I wanted to rule Egypt! Great Egypt should have been my province, not cold Moesia! The Emperor Hadrian wanted to give me that post!”

The Governor drew a pained breath. “Imagine what I might have achieved, as Roman Governor of Egypt! I could have transformed the whole Empire. All that wondrous mechanical knowledge! My dear boy, you would have built your roads from a jewelled chariot, with shovels that breathed steam! But the gods forbade that to me. For no better reason, than Hadrian died. The Emperor Hadrian, a wise and learned man, who loved me. And that new Emperor, a pious dolt who hates all Greek technology, he hates me. Antoninus Pius hates me, even more than your brother does, and his greedy, stupid clique of rural oafs here… These local barons all hate me — and since you’re of their blood, they hate you worse than me.”

Verus said nothing.

“Julius, if you had ever betrayed me — you, my engineer, a pillar of my regime — I would have been very upset. For your brother to plot against me, to scheme against Rome, that’s just his cheap colonial rubbish. I understand that he’s sending you to Italy to marry — yes, a Roman must marry, I married, men must marry, propriety requires that — but listen. Listen carefully. Never trust your brother. Never come back to Moesia. Make your own way in this Empire. The great Empire is vast and powerful. The Empire needs engineers like you.”

Verus kept his mouth firmly shut. The Roman overlords always played at ‘divide and rule.’ It was the only way that an elite of Italians could rule over millions of Europeans, Africans and Asians.

The Romans were so used to dividing-and-ruling that it was their very nature. They didn’t even know when they were doing it.

“What is it that the Empire’s generals advise us?” said the Governor. “‘First: beat them, then give them a kiss.’ Practical words, but this is such a sad day. We must part forever after the funeral of Apollodorus, my boy. Forgive a cruel old man for shocking you like this. My honest Moesian lad: you don’t know how often your smiles consoled me. I must think of some handsome parting gifts for you.”

“It was my honor to serve you and the Empire, sir. I require no gifts.”

“Only young rural idiots talk ethics like that, Julius. You are going to Italy, so of course you need some favors. You must venture to Augusta Taurinorum. I will grant you a brevet promotion. You’ll get priority with the post-horses in the Army stables. Travel at full speed, my boy. Don’t look back.”

“A military promotion, sir? Thank you, sir!”

“You’ll need good money to seek a bride…. Carrying gold on the road is awkward. I’ll write a promissory note to a Jew I know in Mediolanum. Present to him that parchment with my seal, and you can redeem a sum. It is my wedding gift.”

“That is a great favor, sir.”

“What else do you need for your courting? A dashing new uniform, I can see to that for you…. You have that splendid weapon you carry — that Dacian Sickle of Decebalus, a famous, glorious weapon… What can assure that my engineer is properly respected in distant Taurinorum?” The Governor drummed his fingers on his toga-covered knee. “Wait, I have it. Of course. Here it is, in front of me. You must take the Celestial Mechanism.”

“What? This computer?”

“It came from Rhodes, didn’t it? It can travel the world.”

“But it was the professor’s greatest prize!”

“Then I declare you the professor’s heir. You are an engineer, a master of machinery. Take this contraption away, Julius. Improve the computer. Build a better one. Bigger. Stronger. Faster. The Greeks never mastered technology. Neither did us Romans, not yet. Scrub off that painful rubbish from the ancient Egyptians. Use your own wit! Build a proper Celestial Mechanism and put our Imperial calendar on full display!”

“I swear I will do my best, sir. What a wonderful gift!”

III.

Verus’s brother-in-law owned a big spread of land outside Taurunum. The Roman landlord and his Dacian farmhands shared a rambling, thatched mansion, where the food was hearty, and life was simple.

Verus’s mother had her chosen corner by the hearth, in the chair of matronly respect, where she sat in her spreading skirts, minding the grandchildren and endlessly spinning wool. Verus had never seen his mother without her distaff and spindle. She’d spun enough thread to reach Taurinorum and double back.

He sought his mother’s blessing for his journey, and his mother said to Verus that she feared that some pretty cousin would keep him forever in Italy. But she forgave him for that, she said, because she herself had done the same. She had married a handsome Dacian prince and become a Moesian lady. A woman’s life within a great Empire had to be like that. Then his mother blessed him, kissed his forehead and told him to always be brave.

Verus demonstrated the Celestial Mechanism to his Moesian cousins, nephews, neighbors, and even the slaves. Not one of them understood it.

Verus, often called ‘the Sickle,’ was a rather famous man in Moesia, but never because of a Greek computer. He was famous because of his Sickle. The Dacian Sickle was a two-handed pole-arm with a sharp hooked tip and long curved blade.

Verus was the only Roman soldier in Moesia who was allowed to carry a Dacian Sickle. The war-tale about the Dacian Sickle was heroic, so all Romans naturally wanted to hear that story from him. Nobody wanted to hear the complex, ambivalent story of Julius Glitius Atilius Verus, a well-educated political appointee with a complicated Greek calculating device.

So Verus had to repeat his glorious war story to everyone, even his own mother.

As a young Roman officer, fresh from the Moesia Institute of Technology, Verus had been commanding a road-work gang. They were building the border wall on the south bank of the Danube, as mandated by the Emperor Hadrian. Under the cover of dense fog, barbarian river pirates had ambushed the Roman construction party.

At that same time, the new Governor of Moesia had ridden forth to inspect the border works. Pirate arrows flew in the ambush. In the confusion, Verus had lost his Roman short-sword and hastily grabbed up a Dacian sickle. There had been some sharp fighting. The Governor and Verus had shared the peril together. When all seemed darkest, the Governor’s Roman cavalry escort had galloped in, chased off the Danube pirates and killed many.

After this brave adventure, Verus had been taken into the Governor’s retinue. He had been granted a high state office. His Dacian Sickle was the public proof of his valor, and his loyalty to the Roman Imperial cause.

Even the Sickle itself had a good story. The iron Dacian Sickle was a magic Sickle from the conquered court of the slain King Decebalus, the Dual Monarch of the Goths and Dacians. The iron Sickle blade had been forged for King Decebalus by the sorceror Decenius, a renegade Greek engineer. This wily Greek arms dealer had once been the bosom friend and the classmate of the great Apollodorus (although very few dared to speak about that).

Every Roman soldier worth his salt was keenly interested in the Sickle of Decebalus: an enchanted, exotic, valuable, semi-forbidden weapon. The Celestial Mechanism of Rhodes was, by contrast, just a weird, obscure astronomy device. No one but trained geometers would ever fully understand the Celestial Mechanism of Rhodes.

Try as he might, the tongue-tied Verus could never explain a computer in any way that made it interesting.

IV.

The trip from Taurunum to Taurinum took him thirty days: one rotor-spin of the Celestial Mechanism.

Verus shook the dust of his native province from the plodding hoofs of an Army horse. In the happy reign of Antoninus Pius, the great Roman roads were at peace. Trade was booming across the length and breadth of the Empire. The cruel iron gibbets at the cross-roads hung empty, while the wooden crucifix had become old-fashioned. The road bandits had despaired of their robbery. Barbarian hordes feared to trespass the border walls. Even the Roman slaves were buying themselves out of their bondage by setting up jolly roadside souvenir shops.

Verus rode through the long clusters of bullock carts, and joined boisterous caravans of horse-drawn wagons. He rode steadily, mile-post by numbered stone mile-post, through the thriving Roman cities of Siscia, Tarsatica, Aquilea, Verona, Placentia, and Mediolanum.

Verus lived mostly on hard-tack and dried fruit. He slept under the all-knowing stars. He tried not to kill his borrowed Army horses.

He arrived in Taurinorum like a prince.

V.

The Roman roads carried Roman armies and Roman commerce. The roads also carried Roman epidemics.

Augusta Taurinorum had been devastated by a plague. Verus rode his plodding, foot-sore Army nag through deserted streets and squares. He saw looted, empty shops, and abandoned homes wrecked by fire.

Taurinorum had its own river, called the Po, an Italian cousin to the Danube. The Italian river was pretty, but its bridge was was choked with miserable beggars. It shocked Verus to see Roman citizens — the rulers of the world — reduced to stricken wretches, begging for alms in their excellent Latin.

Verus rode over the Po on the bridge. A skinny, demented, local priestess, wrapped and hooded in black, had gathered a small congregation of the plague-stricken. The cultists were pining and beating themselves.

At the far end of the bridge stood a temple. It was a soundly-built and decent house of worship, but there had been a riot, and mad bandits devoid of ethics had scattered the sacred fires and even stolen the bronze tripods. The local cult of plague lunatics had built a huge dummy for their temple steps, an eerie, daubed, bloated effigy of painted sackcloth, with straw stuffing… This terrible offering had been soaked with rain, and her crudely painted eyes and lips were weeping black and drooling blood.

Verus found a stone trough with stagnant water, and let his horse drink. He thought better about drinking the water himself.

Was this his ancestral city, was this the town of his mother’s birth? Where were his kinfolk? Where was the stirrup cup, and the glad reunion? Where was the pretty bride?

Thick strands of smoke rose beyond the city wall. He rode toward these black plumes, and heard the rhythmic banging of machines.

VI.

The water-powered forges on the River Dora were under military contract. They were manned by Army slaves captured in combat. The bakery mills were run by dogged survivors from Taurinorum.

The Gothic Pox, suddenly arriving with the heat of summer, had killed half the town’s population. But the city mills still had to grind some flour, or the remaining survivors would starve.

The owner of the iron forges was dead of the plague, but a new master had seized command of the water mill-machines, because someone had to be responsible in the city’s emergency. This new man’s name was Lucius Valerius Ursus. The Ursus and the Verus families were of the same Ligurian tribe.

“Well met in these dark times, cousin,” Lucius shouted, over the banging and sloshing of his water-wheel hammers. “Where do you stay now, in Taurinorum?”

“Where can any man stay here? The whole town is a ruin!”

“Then you must stay in my house!” Lucius bellowed, between ringing hammer strikes. “Stay as long as you like, we have plenty of room now! My new wife is an excellent cook, if you don’t mind Dacian food!”

“I knew my hospitable kinfolk would welcome me!” Verus coughed on the vapors from the blazing charcoal pits.

“Please don’t think too badly of us, cousin! Our little city was cursed by the stars, but we’re not yet extinct, we’re just massacred!”

“Must we shout about this dreadful business? I can’t hear you while those hammers beat hot iron!”

“Hot iron is my duty, cousin! If we don’t make our numbers for this quarter-year, the inspectors of the Roman Army will decimate us! In Taurinorum we make all the Army hob-nails and bridle bits!”

“But I myself am a Roman Army inspector! I travelled a whole month here to seek a bride! Can’t you spare me a moment of decent silence?”

They left the stony barn of the water-mill forge. Tied to a tree-stump, Verus’s terrified horse was wall-eyed from the racket of the Roman factories.

“I can’t interrupt my iron production,” Lucius explained, in a more reasonable voice. “Taurinorum is sacred to the iron industry. But you can see our plight. I can only hope such terrible suffering will spare your own town, Taur, Tauro, wherever it is!”

“Taurunum is in Moesia. We, too, are renowned for our iron. As you can see by this.” Verus pulled the Dacian Sickle from its horse-scabbard.

“That is masterful Greek work,” said Lucius, with deep respect. “What a wonderful… scythe, or whatever this is.”

“This is a Dacian war-sickle, sometimes called a ‘falx.’ My father was a Dacian prince, and he taught me the martial art of the sickle. Have you ever seen better iron?”

“Well, yes, I think I have.”

“Then look more closely. A Greek philosopher forged this weapon for a Gothic King. See how he crowded the atoms into the sharpest part of the blade, then he left the atoms much looser here, so the blade remains flexible.”

“My dear cousin, I dare to say that I understand iron just as well as you do. Iron passes through Taurinorum from all over the Empire.”

Lucius guided Verus to his own home, where a slave took the horse and the saddle goods. This gracious red-brick villa, all arched pillars and shaded porticoes, had once belonged the mill’s dead owner. Lucius had commandeered the fine mansion to “protect it,” as he said.

The villa’s elegant halls were squatted by five yelling children and the new wife of Lucius. This young freedwoman was a second-generation Dacian immigrant. Her mother had been a Dacian slave, captured in Trajan’s wars, and shipped in irons to Italy.

“The Empire is always like that for us women,” said the wife of Lucius in Dacian, while serving him cheese, olives and wine. “Fate is kind, that I should serve the son of Prince Dapyx.”

“What is my wife telling you?” said Lucius, who spoke not a word of Dacian.

“She remembers the name of the prince, my father,” said Verus. The Roman conquerors never had remembered his father’s name.

The hostess noted a small scar on Verus’ cheekbone. She spoke the Dacian name of this childhood disease. This was Taurinorum’s ‘Gothic Pox.’ Verus, his brother and his two sisters had all caught the disease while infants. Their passing childhood spots and fever had done them no great harm.

So the plague of Taurinorum could not harm him. Verus felt one moment of relief from fear, and then, a dense surge of satisfied understanding.

How could omens be any clearer? The town of his ancestors was crushed by a dreadful plague, but the plague could not hurt him. He had a role in this tragedy. A stellar purpose had sent him from Taurunum to Taurinorum. His Roman ancestors had left this town to conquer Moesia. A generation later, returning from Moesia, he, the grandson, arrived as the town’s redeemer.

That simply had to be true, because it was so logical. Tragedy might crush a town, but the Cosmos had purpose. The Cosmos had reason. Nature had law.

Lucius, his host, returned with a leather-wrapped packet.

“This was the prize of my late master’s collection of arms,” Lucius said. “This Celtic blade is much older than that Dacian Sickle of yours. This mystical blade was dredged from a magic bog. I can confide this to an adept like you, cousin — this blade is Star Iron.”

Verus closely examined the mystic artifact. He had often heard tell of Star Iron, but never seen or touched it. Star Iron had occult occlusions deep in its very grain — shining pockmarks.

The Celtic hilt of the blade was made from twisted aurochs horn, much bedizened with precious and semiprecious stones — being mere Celts, they couldn’t tell any difference.

Despite its long immersion in a rude bog and its lumpy, unfaceted, discolored gems, a rude magic boiled off the knife. Any child of five would have known that the dagger belonged to a queen-priestess, a raging red-head Celtic maenad who would bite goats to death. He’d never seen any object so blatantly supernatural.

Verus looked up. “I sense a divine significance in this moment, cousin Lucius. I came to this city to search for my bride. This woman’s blade is the first thing in Taurinorum that I have set my own hand upon. I think I should trade you my Dacian Sickle for this magic Celtic dagger.”

“That trade seems fair to me,” said Lucius, “but I can’t trade the property of my late master.”

“Will your late master come back from Hades to retrieve this knife?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He’s dead! Half the town is dead!” Verus slid the Celtic dagger though his Army belt. “Have you never seen a stricken town, sacked, burned? When you conquer a town, you can’t wait like a fool for the probate courts! You dictate martial law to the survivors! That is how it’s done!”

“I confess, I haven’t seen any conquered towns. You have?”

“I’ve seen a few.”

“Here in Augusta Taurinorum, we fully respect the imperial Roman law. We are very proper and decent here. We are even censorious.”

“That’s because you Italians are soft and weak! I’m no lawyer, and I make no fancy speeches. But I’m an engineer. I know what to do now. I will tell you.”

Verus took a deep breath. “Bury the dead! Feed the living! Seize the grain mills, take all the bread. Ration the food. Do a census, number the survivors. If they don’t work to repair this city, they don’t eat. Search every block for the strong young men. Put them all under arms, and make them the town militia. Punish looters with death. Make all the guilds meet — every master of craft and industry, the bakeries, the smithies, any trade that makes money. Have them all gather together and re-distribute the tools among survivors who can do business. Do you understand the plan so far?”

“I don’t know much about this, cousin. Obviously you do.”

“I’m from the Roman frontier. Life is hard out there. We don’t waste time in imposing order.”

“I see.”

“This town needs order, cousin. If we fail to act, it means ruin.”

“Some people tell us that Taurinorum deserves to be a ruin,” said Lucius. “When our Mayor died, the Empire sent us new administrators. Three times, they sent us new masters, to tell us what to do here. They all died like dogs of the Gothic Pox. So even the great Empire has abandoned us to our sorry fate. The Empire has lost cities before. We’re like Pompeii.”

“Well, I, too, am an agent of the Empire, and I survived your plague when I was two years old.” Verus smacked the table with the butt of the Celtic knife. “Taurinorum is mine. I am your Achilles. I am heaven-sent.”

VII.

Within three days, Julius Glitius Atilius Verus was the Dictator of Augusta Taurinorum. Some locals preferred to call him “Pontifex,” or High Priest.

In Roman law, Dictatorships were common during grave emergencies. But Taurinorum was desperate for a High Priest. Taurinorum had fallen so hard, and suffered so unbearably, that its Roman laws were almost useless. Only redemption could save it.

The Gothic Pox still racked the town. Verus had the pox victims isolated under tents, pitched far outside the city walls. The victims were tended only by those who had already survived the Gothic Pox. These care-givers included Verus himself. As the town Dictator, he made a public ritual of visiting and consoling the stricken victims, every day.

The awful sight of these innocent people, disfigured, swollen, oozing with their many sores, burning alive with fever and thirst, was enough to shake the most resolute. But courage meant redemption for a stricken people, and, while many in Taurinorum died of pox, many survived it.

Verus found an ally. He was the orphaned son of the city’s dead Mayor. Verus took the boy with him among the cots of the stricken. This young lad of Taurinorum, who was named Claudius, was only eight years old. But little Claudius was already an aristocrat: he was dutiful, resolute and well-mannered. This brave Roman boy understood his civic duty.

Along with this altar-boy of the crisis, Verus gathered other loyal followers: mostly, his own blood relatives. The Verus, Severinus, and Ursus families were all of the same local Ligurian provincial tribe. The plague had halved their numbers, but these sturdy working folk were far more numerous than the aristocracy, who had almost been wiped out.

Verus told his relatives the stark truth. To survive as a lineage after a great disaster, they had to marry. Grieving cousins must become new spouses. Older widows had to marry younger men, if that departure from custom was needed. Above all, the children had to be fed and sheltered.

The relatives of Verus obeyed his stern commands. They forced Verus himself to perform the new ceremonies of marriage and adoption — not being a priest, he had to invent a few rituals. However, this resolute action made his own tribe the most respected people in Taurinorum. They had suffered, but they had endured.

Due to the Pox, the Roman road system had detoured around Taurinorum. A new, foul, and muddy track led through the dead Mayor’s half-derelict vineyards. A meager shanty-town of bars and brothels had sprung up.

Verus had these shacks demolished and their inhabitants beaten. To further teach his lesson, he established his quarantine for the plague-stricken right on top of this dirt road.

That sent the Roman imperial traffic back through the town again. Almost at once, everyone understood that Taurinorum would survive. The Gothic Pox still smoldered in town — every day claimed one or two dead — but new migrants were also arriving in Taurinorum. No Goth feared the Gothic Pox. Word had spread that the town’s dictator welcomed Moesians.

At night, exhausted with a Dictator’s struggle with hundreds of large and small decisions, Verus soothed himself with the Celestial Mechanism. He never spoke about the computer to the people of Taurinorum. He knew that all his explanations were useless. No matter how hard he tried, no one ever understood.

He also realized that — once he’d owned the Celestial Mechanism — his life had forever changed.

The public master of Taurinorum was the secret master of the Celestial Mechanism. Were those two different metaphysical conditions? Of course not! They were geometrically congruent, and logically, they had to be identical. “As Above, So Below.”

VIII.

Verus buried the dead and burned the town debris. He cleaned the centers of infection. He ordered the demolition of every derelict structure, and found new uses for the flat red Roman bricks.

Verus widened the town roads. He repaired the aqueducts. He demolished the town’s profaned temple and laid the foundations for a new, improved temple on the same site. This new temple would be consecrated to Juno, the divine wife and mother. Being an Italian wife, Juno always suffered greatly, yet She always prevailed in the end.

Verus discovered that building schemes came easily to a Dictator. The town, emerging from its ugly disaster, strongly desired a renewal. The Dictator’s clique inside Taurinorum was quick to profit in the new regime. The new rich were already sheathing their modest brick homes in fine, shining marble.

Taurinorum’s awkward little hippodrome expanded in the Dictator’s regime. The local stadium showed good, Roman-style, bloody games, in which the town’s dwindling criminals were forced to stab each other to the edification of the law-abiding public.

Julius Glitius Atilius Verus, the Dictator and Pontifex of Augusta Taurinorum, had found his destiny. He was still quite bad at rhetoric, but he excelled at telling people what to do.

He had many practical successes, but like any dictator, he still suffered political problems. The roads were excellent and commerce was reviving, but Augusta Taurinorum still had a witch.

This local witch was the mother of brave little Claudius. She was the widow of the city’s deceased Mayor. The name of this town witch was Severina. She was of the Verus clan, and she was his cousin.

This female cousin of Verus — they shared a great-grandfather — had not always been a witch. She had once been a beloved figure in Augusta Taurinorum. As the First Lady of Taurinorum, Severina had possessed many shining civic virtues.

The Mayor’s pretty wife had thrived in her small, square-walled fortress town. Severina was a polite and pious woman, and the source of bounty to the town’s poor. Her gracious female presence made a bleak Roman road fort into a pleasant community. Even the town’s two poets liked Severina, and wrote complimentary odes to her.

All of her goodness and grace, with awful suddenness, had been eaten away by public fever. The Gothic Pox had made Severina into a raving creature of the streets. Severina was pock-marked, howling, starving, and covered in black weeds. She’d had two children — the plague had killed her daughter, along with her husband — and her remaining son, Claudius, that brave and noble lad of eight, had finally deserted his mother because she frightened him so much.

Severina remained the soul of Taurinorum, but she was an accursed soul. She haunted the bridge across the River Po, muttering her prayers and spells, sleeping on hard pavement under a wolf-skin, and living on handouts from Isis cultists.

Worse yet, Severina’s minor son Claudius was the heir of the Mayor’s extensive estates. Verus toured the widow’s large estates on horseback. Her magnificent, garden-like Italian farms, abandoned to cruel fate, had become a public nuisance: they abounded with weeds, rats and rabbits.

A Dictator had to act.

IX.

The summer passed. The Gothic Pox ceased as mysteriously as it had begun. Half the town’s people were dead — but the surviving half suddenly had twice as much town to enjoy. Augusta Taurinorum had become a roomy, spacious, well-organized town. The streets, the basilica, the theater, the porticoes, the square city walls, the long river aqueduct, the hippodrome, even the very sewers were refreshed.

One golden autumn afternoon, the town police arrived at his Dictatorial office, which Verus had established inside the convenient Temple of Mars. The militia told Verus that the Mayor’s crazy widow was attacking the city bridge.

Verus dismissed the police. He spun the Celestial Mechanism. He studied the stars and planets. He had his stallion saddled.

The witch of Taurinorum ran away at the sight of him, but he’d staked out both ends of the bridge with his militia. He dismounted the stallion. He tied the beast to the bridge rail.

At his approach, the witch plucked back her black hood, stuck out her tongue, and leered at him. The Gothic Pox had destroyed her cheekbones, her forehead; red scars had defaced the bridge of her nose.

Except for the scars, Severina looked very like his own mother.

“Madame, speak to me. Why do you harm our city’s bridge? Are your wits entirely disordered?”

“Don’t you dare address me in that rude fashion, you Gothic tyrant! You have no right of command over me: the First Lady of Taurinorum. You came here from nowhere, and you usurped the town. I defy your injustice. Do your worst to me.”

“Madame, I’m a Dacian dictator, not a Gothic tyrant. I came here from Taurunum in Moesia. In Taurunum, you Ligurians usurped our town. You conquered us, you did your did your worst to us, fifty years ago.”

The widow shrugged. “You understand nothing of Roman legality. You can’t do evil today because of some alleged evil that happened so long ago. That is not even an argument.”

“Madame, why do you harm the town bridge? This is waterproof cypress wood, an ideal construction material.”

“I adorn the bridge with runes as my sacred prayer to the Great Isis. Some letters are Greek, some are Latin, and I had to make up the rest of those letters because my prayer is black magic.”

Verus reached under his cavalry cape. He offered the widow a roll of fresh bread. She took it, sniffed it with contempt, and threw it sailing off into the river.

Verus kept his composure. Thanks to the Celestial Mechanism, he knew that the day was auspicious for this struggle. He was engaged in a climactic fight with the town’s darkest force of unreason. As Dictator, he was familiar with the city, and he knew that the fate of Taurinorum was at stake.

A conundrum of this kind called for Greek philosophy.

“So, mistress of black witchcraft: explicate your mystic prayer. Give me the exegesis.”

“Oh, stop talking Greek rubbish! I pray to the Great Isis, so that She puts an end to our awful torment! Why was my town afflicted with the pox? I was always dutiful, I prayed and I sacrificed! Ask anybody: I was chaste, dignified, wise, generous, and esteemed! But the cruel gods took my parents, they took my husband the Mayor, they took my daughter and they even took my own face!”

Verus was silent for a moment. “Madame, that statement was Dionysian, but very lucid.”

“Fine, then, you Dictator, you tyrant, you big bully — go back to Moesia, and let me go back to my cries for justice. Although I get no justice, at least I can howl my pain.”

Verus knew that he had to win this debate. He had no gift for rhetoric, but the soul of the town was at stake.

He pondered the act of taking the magnificent Greek computer from its stout wooden box on the stallion’s saddle, and displaying it to the town witch. If he could demonstrate to her that the Cosmos had reason, regularity, and order, he might prove to her that her hideous disfigurement had served some higher moral end.

But would that work? It was never persuasive to tell a woman that she was tragically ugly, forever, and that was good. The Celestial Mechanism was an excellent model of the universe, but it was mute in all political relations. He would never win an argument with his computer, and yet he had to win.

“Madame, I can hear your civic howling. But listen: as a Roman matron, where is your sense of propriety? You have lost loved ones, and yet your son, Claudius, remains with us. What of your motherly duties to this good little boy?”

“Claudius is doomed. All must die who deny the Great Isis.”

“Madame, that remark is wicked. Also, I can prove to you that it is poor theology.”

The needs of imperial commerce were never to be denied. Traffic on the bridge of Taurinorum was thick. Passing travellers were naturally attracted by a public political argument.

One of these busybodies was a roving scribe with a big bag of commercial scrolls. He interrupted. “So, sir, do you then assert that you are a theologian?”

“I assert that I am an engineer,” said Verus.

“And I am a priestess of the Great Isis,” said Severina.

“How can an engineer and a priestess squabble on a bridge about theology?” said the scribe, frowning. “Is this decent public behavior in our Empire? What would your town Censor say?”

“I can speak about Isis!” Verus declared. “Because, with these two eyes of mine, I saw the Great Triune Isis. She is Venus, combined with Aphrodite, combined with Isis. She is our united Empire, and She stands in wise Alexandria. She is naked, colossal, and supreme under the stars. Her head bears the cornucopia of riches. Through Her divine agency, grafts will grow on alien branches, while all the gardens of the Empire are drenched with dew. She is holy.”

The seller of scrolls glanced at Severina. “Priestess, that was a beautiful prayer. Obviously, this scholar here is well-read. Do you ever read in libraries?”

Severina glowered at the stone-paved bridge.

The scribe sensed a growing need for his decisive public intervention. “Look here, black priestess — obviously this gentleman is ‘cosmopolitan!’ A small-town girl like you, who lacks a great library, you can’t debate a scholar who has been to Alexandria. Better just to ask him what he wants from you.”

Severina turned up her scarred face. “All right. Fine! What do you want from me?”

“Madame — cousin. Listen to me. Enough with penitence, throwing ashes into your hair, sleeping rough under wolf-skins, and stabbing stray dogs to death with your knife. Enough. Our beloved fell to earth, our dear relations bit the dust. That episode is over. Now we close ranks around our fallen! We unite! We march onward! We draw strength from one another like the sticks wrapped on an axe!”

A curious local crowd had gathered behind the talkative scribe. A seller of radishes, a vestal nun, a coppersmith, a foreign diplomat, the village idiot, and similar commonplace daily figures of Taurinorum.

A stout woman with a straw basket of pickled fish spoke up helpfully. “Madame Severina, listen to us. The Dictator wants to marry you. That’s what he’s trying to say to you. Everyone in town knows he came to Taurinorum looking for his bride. So, just say yes to him, and let’s get this over with.”

“Me, Severina, become his bride? But I am scarred and horrible, and my heart is broken forever! Also, I swore a vow of celibacy to the Great Isis-Venus-Aphrodite!”

“Madame, Venus hates celibacy. You’re not the only woman who has suffered in this town. I lost two children in that epidemic, but, by Juno, I swear I’ll make two more.” The fishwife moved her straw basket and slapped her capacious hip.

The crowd was deeply moved by this pious remark. They raised their thumbs and murmured blessings for the fishwife.

“Good people of Taurinorum,” Severina cried, “I have no interest in this foreigner’s conjugal embraces! I have a religious vocation, and besides, he’s an engineer!”

“This is why women will never be Senators,” came a deep voice from the back of the crowd. A tall, bald aristocrat strode forth, in his starchy, purple-lined toga. “Women are vain and frivolous creatures — they always think marriage is about their pretty faces! Marriage is a public Roman rite, woman! It’s not about your boudoir. Marriage is a sacrament of property and legal dominion.”

The crowd made way for this authority.

“So, you’re back again!” said Severina. “Where have you been all summer, you rascal, while we suffered here in the streets?”

“I retired to my country estate,” said the bald gentleman in the toga. “That is the proper course of action when plague afflicts the plebeians. Now the illness has retreated. Conventional morality can return to Taurinorum.”

“Who is this gentleman?” said Verus to Severina.

Severina spoke reluctantly. “This is the Censor of Taurinorum.”

Verus had heard about ‘Censors’ — the legendary exalted figures of Roman moral authority — but in his rude frontier of Moesia, Censors didn’t even exist. Verus had never met one, and was thrilled to find one.

“This is my lucky day!” Verus shouted to the crowd. “I am your city’s Dictator, but I admit I am a mere technocrat! I gladly submit my marriage suit to the moral arbitership of our city’s Censor.”

The Censor of Taurinorum preened a bit. “So, what seems to be the moral trouble here?”

Severina rolled her eyes under her pox-scarred forehead. “This stupid Moesian soldier, and his low-class cronies, have seized all the best properties in town. Now he wants to marry me! So that he can take legal control of my late husband’s properties, of course.”

The Censor looked Verus up and down. “Speak your full legal name, sir.”

Verus straightened. “I am Julius Glitius Atilius Verus, Dictator and Pontifex of Augusta Taurinorum.”

“Are you a Roman citizen?”

Verus extended his right arm. “Civis Romanus Sum!”

“Are you currently married to any other woman?”

“Absolutely not, your honor.”

“You are aware,” said the Censor, “that all the properties of our late Mayor belong by right to his legitimate son, Claudius?”

“I acknowledge that legal fact here and now to everyone, your honor. My dear Claudius is an excellent boy. Claudius is noble, brave, and intelligent. I think I can teach him Greek mathematics.”

“Speaking now from your heart,” the Censor recited formally, “do you swear, on your sacred honor, as a citizen, gentleman and officer, that you are morally fit to take on the solemn duties of a paterfamilias, the head of a Roman family?”

“I do!”

“Then find an augur and name the day for the marriage ceremony.” The Censor stared at Severina. “And you, you grimy, cultist bride-to-be: go home, wash that dirty hair, anoint yourself with a perfumed oil and put on more becoming raiment.”

Severina spoke up languidly. “Dictator: my bridal modesty is offended by this big crowd. Call your police, and have this bridge cleared.”

Verus took her suggestion, for he hated speaking in public. The Censor of Taurinorum, smirking in triumph, was the first to depart the scene, but the rest of the crowd was profoundly reluctant to leave the exciting spectacle of a public quarrel between a Dictator and a witch. The militia-men had to shove and whack the citizenry with wooden staves and batons.

The seller of scrolls was the last to leave. “But sir! Dictator! Pontifex! My scrolls would greatly interest you! I have all the lunar fantasies by Lucian of Samosata, in a deluxe edition on the finest papyrus!”

“Sorry, but as a Dictator, I lack the time for any leisure reading.”

“But sir, you could buy my scrolls now and read them later, on your honeymoon. Lady, tell him to buy these wondrous fictions about moon travel. They’re the kind of books men really like!”

The militia cleared the bridge. Severina leaned over the railing to gaze moodily at the River Po.

“I thank the stars that episode has passed us,” Verus offered. “That Censor must be heaven-sent. What an excellent man. I must have him join my administration.”

“You are an ignoramus, for all your Alexandrian book-learning,” said Severina sourly. “That Censor has his spies and tattle-tales all over the town. He came here to curry favor with you, because he knows that you are the new Dictator. You know nothing about Italian politics. You fell for his gambit like a child.”

“What?”

“Everyone in Taurinorum hates the Censor. All the young people, every woman in town, we all despise him. All he ever does is scold us and boss us and tell us how to behave.”

“Then the Censor is a very Father to the people! Did you hear what he said? He publicly accepted me, a colonial Dacian soldier, as the Dictator and the proper head of an imperial family. At last, civil justice is done! Long live the great Empire! Long live our wise Emperor, Antoninus Pius!”

Severina glanced at him in contempt, then down into the cold, flowing river. “I can’t believe this, but even darker days are ahead for my poor Taurinorum.”

“Cousin, let’s not argue any more. Everything has been settled. It’s all over now except for our nuptials, lyric music, dancing, feasting and the throwing of happy rose petals. Ever since I came to Taurinorum, the stars have favored me.”

“Dictator, Taurinorum does not love you,” Severina said. “Because you don’t love us. You care about the walls, the streets, and the sewers, but you never care about us. If we were all dead of the pox, and you had this city as some bronze Greek toy of yours, you would be happier.”

Verus gripped the bridge railing. “What a strange thing to say.”

“It’s the truth. You rule us, because you know how to repair a broken town. But you don’t understand that our hearts are broken. Every bond of nature was shattered by our disaster. The best people, the kindest, the most generous of us died first. You fix our town walls, but you are blind to our suffering.”

Verus thought about this deadly statement while watching the cold, remorseless flow of the river.

“You know,” he said, “I need to be married. I need someone who can tell me these things.”

“You should have just known all of that.”

“How? How could I know?”

Severina said nothing.

A teenage militiamen arrived at the trot, and saluted him with a straight arm. “Hail, Julius, Dictator, Pontifex!”

“What is the problem?”

“Shall I arrest this witch? She’s just been reported as spreading the evil eye!”

“The evil eye to you,” said Severina casually. “You, dead on a stretcher, bleeding pus, from a hundred bloody boils.”

The lad dropped his baton in shock. Verus picked it up and gave the stick back to him. The trembling cop fled in fear.

“You really shouldn’t say that to them,” Verus chided. “That corrupts the youth.”

“I’ll give you my evil eye, too,” Severina ventured. “Wither and die, Lord and Master.”

“Look here, I’m an educated man!” Verus shouted. “I’m an adept of Science! I own the Celestial Mechanism! I know where the Moon was before Time began! You think you’re a witch, but you’re just a mortal woman like any other woman! Every month, women are slaves of the Moon.”

Severina was stunned. “Do you imagine that you are the lord and master of Diana, our Moon? The Moon is a Virgin Huntress, you blasphemer! Diana will rip your flesh to shreds with your own dogs!”

“Ha! I can tell you when the Diana the Moon will be plunged into total darkness. Here in Taurinorum, that night will be the 18th of July, five years from now! Deny that if you can.”

“That is blasphemy! The Moon is a sacred goddess! No engineer can dictate to a goddess!”

“I can do it. My Celestial Mechanism knows the marching orders of every celestial body. Even Jupiter Himself. My computer is the geometric proof of the Cosmos. It is the bronze embodiment of reason. If only you would look at this machine, and understand it! Then we could live in contentment.”

“Are you entirely mad? Why don’t you leave me alone? What have I ever done, that makes you want to offend every god and goddess? I’m a priestess, I have a divine calling! I don’t want to marry some mechanical atheist!”

“Why is a computer always so hard to explain?” Verus mourned.

Thanks to their passionate outcries, they had been joined once again by a gathering crowd of the curious Taurinorumese. All the local citizens had been chased away by the city militia, but they had simply run off and told all their friends about the big argument. Now, everybody in town was coming to see the quarrel.

Verus tried to ignore the crowd’s stares; he was too engrossed in the ethical struggle. “I’ve tried so hard to explain my computer, but I can never make people understand! There is structure in the Heavens! The Cosmos has Law! These bronze gears are the Music of the Spheres… Oh, what is the use? All you gawking people, you’re just like those blind people in that cave who mistake mere shadows for the ideal reality!”

Severina glanced over the revealed Celestial Mechanism. “I can see your stupid Greek toy here. Your miracle box of philosophy is just a wooden crate with rings and pointy needles on it.” For the first time, she seemed to pity him.

Verus socketed the crank. He turned the Mechanism. It whined and chattered.

He looked at the blank and doubtful faces of the thickening crowd. “I know you don’t understand this,” he told them. “But — only because this box is too small. Listen! I’m a good engineer, and I have big plans and ideas! Instead of this little box of wood — I can build you a big stone tower! A tower in the city, that we can all see! These little needles, these little hands that move around in their circles — I could make them into a public monument!”

The crowd was entirely uncomprehending, but they were excited anyway. They all understood that an obscure power struggle was taking place.

“There are bronze gears in this box,” Verus insisted. “Gears can be made of iron, and iron gears can be huge! Taurinorum could have a stone tower with iron gears inside it — and that tower would control the calendar! We can build a city tower, with a time machine inside of it… Everyone would come to look at our great time tower. Everyone would see the time: the greatest calendar ever made! Taurinorum would be famous! More famous even than Alexandria!”

The Taurinorumese gazed at one another with polite, brow-lifting skepticism. They were flattered by his hopes for their urban improvement, but they didn’t believe a word he said.

“I mean it! It’s all true! There would be a tower with a dial, with sixty small marks on the dial, in that Babylonian sexagesimal segmentation… No, forget it, that is too technical… Never mind, just look, watch this computer! The Cosmos is a rational machine!”

He spun the crank on the box. The people ignored the demonstration, murmuring to one another. They felt sorry for him. They had never seen their Dictator reduced to a shameful condition. They wanted to help him.

“This little ball there, which is black and white, and it spins,” said Severina slowly. “That is the Moon.”

“Yes! Yes! I thank the Great Triune Isis that you can see that! And these other hands that move, they are all the wandering planets!”

“But Diana is not a ball. Diana is the Bow. Diana is the Horns.”

“There is no Bow, there are no Horns! The Moon is a ball of stone in the sky! The crescent Moon is the light of the Sun, shining on a ball! Look, move the handle for yourself.”

Severina took the crank, and rotated it. “These hands are the gods in the heavens? This white one is Venus, this red one is Mars?”

“Yes! Yes, those are the gods in the heavens!”

“The stars care nothing for us? The planets just make the same motions, again and again, turning like wheels?”

“Yes! She understands it! She understands the Cosmos!” Verus began to weep. “Listen! Listen, everybody! I, Julius Glitius Atilius Verus, I declare this wonderful woman, the widow Severina, to be my betrothed! And her son, Claudius, I declare him to be my own son and heir! We will have a wonderful wedding, with a great public feast… Let me check the date of the next full Moon!”

Verus shoved Severina’s hand aside and rapidly worked the crank. “The next full Moon over Taurinorum will be on October the tenth! Let everyone mark that date! That is my fore-ordained nuptial day! I have found my destiny! Taurunum to Taurinorum! Dear fellow citizens, forgive my sweet tears of joy! The stars above are so kind to me! I swear that you will all share my happiness!”

The happy crowd applauded him. “Ave! Dictator, Pontifex! Felicitas!”

Severina suddenly scrambled onto the railing of the bridge. The crowd made a rush for her. They grabbed her black rags as she tried to fling herself into the river.

“Let me drown!” she shrieked. “Let me die! There are no gods in our heavens. No day is ever holy. Let me die on this horrible day!”

The crowd was infuriated by this obscene blasphemy. They tore her from the railing of the bridge and threw her onto her face.

Verus gripped her arm and tried to lift her to her feet. “Forgive my bride, good people! Astral philosophy is as yet beyond her female understanding, but as her husband-to-be, I pledge to you that…”

Severina suddenly lunged from his grip, seized the Celestial Mechanism, and tumbled it into the river.

Verus staggered to the guard-rail. For just one moment, he glimpsed the dark wooden case, bobbing in the cold, Alpine current of the river Po, but the Greek box was crammed with heavy bronze gears. In a few stricken heartbeats, it was gone without a trace.

Verus snatched the horse whip from his saddle.

Severina fell shrieking as he hit her, but the roar of the Roman crowd was much louder than her cries of pain.

“Whip her! Kill her! Cut her head off!”

“Chain her to a chariot! Drag her naked through the streets!”

The jostling women in the crowd were especially eager to witness the whipping. “You dirty whore! Are you the only one who suffered grief? I suffered much worse than you did!”

“You deserve it, in those ugly black rags of yours!”

“Witch! Heretic! She worships that undead Jewish wizard! Let lions eat her!”

Severina shrieked until her voice failed, then she collapsed. Verus dropped the horse-whip. He staggered again to the guard-rail of the bridge.

The Celestial Mechanism had vanished as if computers had never existed. The fresh, lively turbulent river would carry that old Greek box, tumbling, wobbling, spewing bubbles and a trace of olive oil, until it sank in the deep mud of the riverbed.

His computer had vanished forever. It had drowned. Drowned forever, in some obscure nook, unknown to man. Unknown even to the gods themselves.

Those precise gears, perfected by centuries of astronomic science from so many lands… They would adhere within that souring mud, and slowly corrode into one useless lump, and never, ever trace the stars again.

It was tragic. It was unbearable, horrible. It was so dreadful that Verus had no words for it. It was so awful that he could not even think about it. The catastrophe was beyond his comprehension.

So it was someone else’s awful, tragic horror. He was free of it.

He went to the horse, and searched through its saddlebags.

Sprawled on the bridge, lashed and beaten, Severina was barely clinging to awareness.

He gathered her two slack hands and put the precious dagger between them. “Don’t faint. Wake up. Look, my darling, look at this pretty gift. This knife is for you.” He kissed her cheek.

The crowd on the bridge had grown large. The entire town seemed to be standing there. From an obscure niche on the crowd’s periphery came a shrill cry. “Stab him to death! Kill him! Fall, Caesar!”

Somehow, the crowd did not perceive this outcry. The words struck their ears — Verus could see that, from the sudden strange look on their faces — but the idea was meaningless to them. The demand was incomprehensible. It might as well have never been said.

Severina rose. She held her magic dagger in one hand, and clutched the guardrail with the other. She stared at the tight-packed crowd that confronted her. Everyone in Taurinorum had come to see. The young, the old, the tall, the short, the men, the women, the swarming children of the town.

Severina stabbed the air with a stiff-armed salute. “Hail Julius! Pontifex! Dictator!”

https://youtu.be/dRXI9KLImC4?si=ShiYCFrCxyLkk-gP

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Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling

Written by Bruce Sterling

one of the better-known Bruce Sterlings

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