Envoy Extraordinary

"The pressure cooker. I shall reward you for that."

"Then, Caesar, how will you reward me for this?"

"For what?"

"My third invention. 1 have kept it in reserve."

His hand went slowly, dramatically, to his belt.

The Emperor watched him apprehensively.

"Has this any connection with thunder?"

"With silence only."

The Emperor frowned. He held a paper in either hand and glanced from one to the other.

"Poems? You are a poet then?"

"Mamillius wrote it."

"I might have known. Sophocles, Carcides-how well read the boy is!"

"This will make him famous. Read the other poem, Caesar, for it is exactly the same. I have invented a method of multiplying books. I call it printing."

"But this is-another pressure cooker!"

"A man and a boy can make a thousand copies of a book in a day."

The Emperor looked up from the two papers.

"We could give away a hundred thousand copies of Homer!"

"A million if you like."

"No poet need pine for lack of an audience--"

"Nor for money. No more dictating an edition to a handful of slaves. Caesar. A poet will sell his poems by the sack like vegetables. The very scullions will solace themselves with the glories of our Athenian drama--"

The Emperor rose to a sitting position in his enthusiasm..

"A Public Library in every town!"

"-in every home."

"Ten thousand copies of the love poems of Catullus--"

"A hundred thousand of the works of Mamillius--"

"Hesiod in every cottage--"

"An author in every street--"

"An alpine range of meticulous inquiry and information on every conceivable topic."

"Knowledge, education--"

The Emperor lowered himself again.

"Wait. Is there enough genius to go round? How often is a Horace born?"

"Come, Caesar. Nature is bountiful."

"Supposing we all write books?"

"Why not? Interesting biographies--"

The Emperor was gazing intently at a point out of this world-somewhere in the future.

"Diary of a Provincial Governor. I Built Hadrian's Wall. My Life in Society, by a Lady of Quality."

"Scholarship, then."

"Fifty interpolated passages in the catalogue of ships. Metrical innovations in the Mimes of Herondas. The Unconscious Symbolism of the first book of Euclid. Prolegomena to the Investigation of Residual Trivia."

Terror appeared in the Emperor's eyes.

"History-In the Steps of Thucydides. I was Nero's Grandmother."

Phanocles sat up and clapped his hands enthusiastically.

"Reports, Caesar, essential facts!"

The terror grew.

"-Military, Naval, Sanitary, Eugenic-I shall have to read them all! Political, Economic, Pastoral,

Horticultural, Personal, Impersonal, Statistical, Medical--"

The Emperor staggered to his feet. His hands were lifted, his eyes were shut and his face was contorted.

"Let him sing again!"

Masterful and unimpassioned.

The Emperor opened his eyes. He went quickly to one of the pillars and stroked the factual stone for reassurance. He looked up to the ceiling and gazed at the tiled constellation that hung, sparkling, in the crystal spheres. He calmed himself though his body still shivered slightly. He turned and looked across at Phanocles.

"But we were speaking of your reward."

"I am in Caesar's hands."

The Emperor came close and-looked at him with quivering lips.

"Would you like to he an ambassador?"

"My highest ambition has never--"

"You would have time then to invent your instrument which points to the North. You can take your explosive and your printing with you. I shall make you Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary."

He paused for a moment.

"Phanocles, my dear friend. I want you to go to China."