Pompeii

the handle as fast as he could. The gate descended, rattling like a portcullis, gradually choking off the flow of water until at last it ceased altogether, leaving a smell of moist dust. Only a puddle remained in the stone channel, evaporating so rapidly in the heat he could see it shrinking. He bent down and dabbed his fingers in the wet patch, then touched them to his tongue. No taste of sulphur.
    He had done it now, he thought. Deprived the Navy of its water, in a drought, without authority, three days into his first command. Men had been stripped of their rank and sent to the treadmills for lesser crimes. It occurred to him that he had been a fool to let Corax be the first to get to the admiral. There was certain to be a court of inquiry. Even now the overseer would be making sure who got the blame.
    Locking the door to the sluice chamber, he glanced up and down the busy street. Nobody was paying him any attention. They did not know what was about to happen. He felt himself to be in possession of some immense secret and the knowledge made him furtive. He headed down a narrow alley towards the harbour, keeping close to the wall, eyes on the gutter, avoiding people's gaze.

    The admiral's villa was on the far side of Misenum and to reach it the engineer had to travel the best part of half a mile – walking, mostly, with occasional panicky bursts of running – across the narrow causeway and over the revolving wooden bridge which separated the two natural harbours of the naval base.
    He had been warned about the admiral before he left Rome. 'The commander-in-chief is Gaius Plinius,' said the Curator Aquarum. 'Pliny. You'll come across him sooner or later. He thinks he knows everything about everything. Perhaps he does. He will need careful stroking. You should take a look at his latest book. The Natural History. Every known fact about Mother Nature in thirty-seven volumes.'
    There was a copy in the public library at the Porticus of Octavia. The engineer had time to read no further than the table of contents.
    'The world, its shape, its motion. Eclipses, solar and lunar. Thunderbolts. Music from the stars. Sky portents, recorded instances. Sky-beams, sky-yawning, colours of the sky, sky-flames, sky-wreaths, sudden rings. Eclipses. Showers of stones...'
    There were other books by Pliny in the library. Six volumes on oratory. Eight on grammar. Twenty volumes on the war in Germany, in which he had commanded a cavalry unit. Thirty volumes on the recent history of the Empire, which he had served as procurator in Spain and Belgian Gaul. Attilius wondered how he managed to write so much and rise so high in the imperial administration at the same time. The Curator said, 'Because he doesn't have a wife.' He laughed at his own joke. 'And he doesn't sleep, either. You watch he doesn't catch you out.'
    The sky was red with the setting sun and the large lagoon to his right, where the warships were built and repaired, was deserted for the evening; a few seabirds called mournfully among the reeds. To his left, in the outer harbour, a passenger ferry was approaching through the golden glow, her sails furled, a dozen oars on either side dipping slowly in unison as she steered between the anchored triremes of the imperial fleet. She was too late to be the nightly arrival from Ostia, which meant she was probably a local service. The weight of the passengers crammed on her open deck was pressing her low to the surface.
    'Showers of milk, of blood, of flesh, of iron, of wool, of bricks. Portents. The earth at the centre of the world. Earthquakes. Chasms. Air-holes. Combined marvels of fire and water: mineral pitch; naptha; regions constantly glowing. Harmonic principle of the world...'
    He was moving more quickly than the water pipes were emptying and when he passed through the triumphal arch that marked the entrance to the port he could see that the big public fountain at the crossroads was still flowing. Around it was grouped the usual twilight crowd – sailors dousing their befuddled heads, ragged children shrieking and splashing, a line of women and slaves with earthenware pots at their hips and on their shoulders, waiting to collect their water for the night. A marble statue of the Divine Augustus, carefully positioned beside the busy intersection to remind the citizens who was responsible for this blessing, gazed coldly above them, frozen in perpetual youth.
    The overloaded ferry had come alongside the quay. Her gangplanks, fore