The Macedonian Hazard by Eric Flint & Paula Goodlett & Gorg Huff

Author:Eric Flint & Paula Goodlett & Gorg Huff [Flint, Eric & Goodlett, Paula & Huff, Gorg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Action & Adventure, Alternative History
ISBN: 9781982125103
Google: 6jqazQEACAAJ
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2021-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Alexandria, Egypt

April 14, 319 BCE

TinTin Wai adjusted her glasses, then looked through the microscope. It was impressive in its way, even if its magnification was only a little over a hundred power. It had taken the efforts of three glassmakers, a jeweler, two carpenters, and a brass smith three months to make. TinTin was in new territory. She was using the microscope to try and identify the bacteriological infection that was making Abaka sick. Abaka was the twelve-year-old daughter of a family of wealthy Egyptian merchants. She had the symptoms of tuberculosis, but TinTin wanted to be sure because the sulfa drugs that she, along with the help of the local apothecaries and the Queen of the Sea’s database—

There! There is one of the tubular little suckers. She was pleased at the confirmation that the microscope was working and useful in identifying the disease. Happy that it worked. Still, the prognosis wasn’t good. There were surgeries that could be tried to relieve the symptomatology, and the sulfa drugs would at least impede the disease. But those drugs were poison. They would destroy the liver with regular use.

She sat up and stretched, then waved Kadmos over. Kadmos was a doctor in the mold of Hippocrates, both an experimenter and good with patients. He was, in fact, second chair of medicine in the newly formed University of Alexandria. TinTin gave him her stool and he looked. It took a minute. Then he said, “Yes, yes. I see it. It is much like the image I saw on the computer, but different as well. Harder to see.” He spoke in English with a Greek accent that TinTin thought was even worse than her Cantonese accent. Whatever Bruce said.

The door opened without a knock. “Sorry to interrupt, Doc,” Bruce said, “but I need TinTin.”

“What? Oh, fine,” Kadmos said in Greek with a pronounced Spartan accent. The difference between Athenian Greek and Spartan Greek was about as great as the difference between Southern and Bronx, with the Macedonians off somewhere in Cockney Land.

“What do you need?” TinTin asked.

“Word just came in. Eumenes took Abdera yesterday.”

“And?”

“And Ptolemy has a message to send to Antigonus.”

TinTin lifted an eyebrow as she moved to the door.

Bruce shrugged. “It’s in code,” he said as he stepped back out of the room.

TinTin waited until the door was closed to ask, “What code?”

“A variant on the military code that they were using with the signal fires.”

“Cracked?” TinTin asked. She was careful even here in their offices.

The ship people enclave was a large four-story building near the Temple of Serapis. The temple was new, built since Ptolemy had become Satrap of Egypt. In it there stood a newly made statue of the god Serapis. Fifteen feet tall, made of painted terracotta, and dressed in robes. Serapis had aspects of Osiris, but also a Greek look about him. The temple, reminiscent of the Acropolis in Athens if smaller, was made of marble columns. TinTin could see it every time she looked out the window of her suite in the four-story apartment building that was now the ship people enclave.

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