Not quite halfway down, Teleutas stopped and pointed southeast. “Look there. Furies take me if that isn’t green, down there right by the edge of the Lake of Asphalt. I thought this whole place was just- nothing.”

“It can’t all be nothing, or nobody would live there,” Sostratos said. “That must be Engedi.”

“How do they make things grow, if the lake is salty and if there’s all this salt around?” Teleutas demanded.

“I don’t know yet. Finding out will be interesting, I think,” Sostratos said. “Maybe they have freshwater springs. We’ll see.” Teleutas still looked dissatisfied, but he held his peace.

Down on the salt flat, the sun beat down on Sostratos with a force he’d never known before. He had to squint to escape the dazzle of Helios’ rays off the salt. The very air felt uncommonly thick and heavy. It had the salt tang he associated with the sea and hadn’t expected to smell so far inland. Here, in fact, that salt tang was stronger than he’d ever known it before.

A raven flew past overhead. Moskhion said, “In this part of the world, I bet even the birds have to carry water bottles.”

Sostratos laughed, but not for long. A traveler who ran out of things to drink in these parts wouldn’t last long. Sun and salt might do as good a job of embalming him as natron did for the corpses Egyptian undertakers treated. Heading on toward Engedi, Sostratos wished he hadn’t had that thought.

MENEDEMOS TOOK the bolt of the eastern silk he’d got from Zakerbaal son of Tenes out of the oiled-leather sack where it was stowed and held it up to the sun. Diokles dipped his head in approval. “That’s mighty pretty stuff, skipper,” he said. “We’ll get a good price for it, too, when we go back to Hellas.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Menedemos answered. “But I’m not just thinking about the silver. Look at the cloth! Look how thin it is! The finest Koan silk might as well be wool next to this.”

“Wonder how they do it,” the keleustes said.

“So do I.” Menedemos dipped his head. “And I wonder who they are. People beyond India, Zakerbaal said.”

“Not even Alexander found out what’s beyond India,” Diokles said.

“ Alexander decided there wasn’t anything beyond India,” Menedemos agreed. “That way, he could head back toward Hellas saying he’d conquered the whole world.” He looked at the silk again. “He was wrong. He was a godlike man-even a hero, a demigod, if you like-but he was wrong.”

“I wonder if any more of this stuff will ever come out of the east,” Diokles said.

Menedemos shrugged. “Who can guess? I’d bet we never see another gryphon’s skull, because nobody in his right mind would pay anything for one. But this? This is different. It’s beautiful. Anybody who sees it would pay for it, and pay plenty. So maybe more’ll come from wherever it comes from, but who knows when? Next year? Ten years from now? Fifty? A hundred? Who can say?”

He imagined strange barbarians sitting at their looms, turning out bolt after bolt of this wonderful silk. What would they be like? Beyond India, they might look like anything at all. The folk of India itself were said to be black, like Ethiopians. Did that mean everyone beyond India was black, too?

This is only imagination, Menedemos told himself, and tossed his head. I can make these distant barbarians any color I please. Why, I can make them yellow if I want to. He laughed at that.

“What’s funny, skipper?” the oarmaster asked. When Menedemos told him, he laughed, too. “That’s pretty good. It sure is. You think they’d have yellow hair, too, the way the Kelts do?”

“Who knows?” Menedemos said. “In my mind, they had black hair, but you can make them look however you want. What I want to imagine now is selling this silk and the dye as we go back to Rhodes.”

“It’ll do even better in the Aegean,” Diokles remarked. “The farther from Phoenicia we go, the better the prices we’ll get.”

“That’s probably true,” Menedemos said. “Maybe we can make for Athens next sailing season.” He laughed again. “That would break my cousin’s heart, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, he’d be ever so disappointed.” Diokles snorted. Finding the snort not strong enough, he laughed out loud.

“I wouldn’t mind getting up there myself,” Menedemos allowed. “You can have a good time all kinds of different ways in Athens. If we make port early in the season, we can go to the theater for the tragedies and comedies they put on during the Greater Dionysia. Nothing tops theater in Athens.”

“Yes, theater’s a nice way to pass a day every so often,” the keleustes agreed. “And they’ve got all kinds of wineshops there, and pretty girls in the brothels-pretty boys, too, if you’d rather do that for a change. It’s a good town.”

“A boy’s all right every once in a while,” Menedemos said. “I’ve never been one to chase every youth in bloom through the streets, though.”

“No-you chase wives instead.” But Diokles said it indulgently. He didn’t sound reproving, as Sostratos always did.

“I think wives are more fun-most wives, anyway.” Menedemos made a sour face. “The innkeeper’s wife is chasing me. I don’t intend to let her catch me, either. Sour old crone.”

“No wonder you don’t stay there much.”

“No wonder at all. If it weren’t for the bed…” Menedemos sighed. “I didn’t feel like sleeping on planks all the time we were here.”

“Never bothered me,” Diokles said.

“I know. But then, you’re comfortable sleeping sitting up. I couldn’t do that if my life depended on it.”

The oarmaster shrugged. “All what you’re used to. That’s what I got in the habit of doing when I pulled an oar-lean up against the gunwale, close my eyes, and doze off. After you do it for a while, it seems as natural as stretching out flat.”

“Maybe to you.” Menedemos glanced down toward the base of the pier. “If that’s not a Hellene coming this way, I’m a yellow barbarian myself.” He raised his voice: “Hail, friend! How are you today?”

“Not bad,” the other man answered, his Doric drawl not much different from the one that Menedemos spoke. “How’s yourself?”

“I’ve been worse,” Menedemos allowed. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you the fellow who was selling books at the barracks a while ago?”

Menedemos dipped his head. “That’s me, O best one. I haven’t got many left. Why didn’t you decide to buy sooner?”

“I couldn’t, that’s why,” the stranger said. “I’m a horseman, and I just got back in from a sweep through the hills after bandits.” He had a horseman’s scars, sure enough-on his legs and on his left arm. A hoplite’s large round shield protected that arm, but a horseman couldn’t bear anything so big and heavy.

“I hope the sweep went well,” Menedemos said. “You won’t find a merchant with a good thing to say about bandits.”

“We smoked out a couple of nests,” the other Hellene said. “But it’s more a matter of keeping them down and making them cautious than it is of getting rid of them. Those hills will spawn robber bands for the next thousand years. Too many hiding places for ‘em to use, too many towns and roads close to ‘em. Can’t be helped.” He changed the subject back toward what interested him: “Have you still got any books left?”

“A couple,” Menedemos answered. “One’s the book of the Iliad where godlike Akhilleus and glorious Hektor fight it out; the other’s from the Odyssey, the book where resourceful Odysseus meets Polyphemos the Cyclops.”

“I’d like ‘em both,” the cavalryman said wistfully. “Nothing like a book to make the time pass by. But you’re going to put some great whacking price on ‘em, because where else can I buy if I don’t get ‘em from you?”

“You can’t make me feel guilty, most noble one,” Menedemos said. “I’m not in business to lose money any more than soldiers are in business to lose battles. You can have ‘em both for thirty-five drakhmai. No haggling, no cheating-that’s the same price the garrison soldiers were paying.”