Pompeii by Robert Harris

permission.”
    “Yes, aquarius.”
    There was still a crowd of curious onlookers in the street but they cleared a path to let him through. He took no notice of their questions. He turned left, then left again, down a steep flight of steps. The water organ was still piping away in the distance. Washing hung above his head, strung between the walls. People turned to stare at him as he jostled them out of his way. A girl prostitute in a saffron dress, ten years old at most, clutched at his arm and wouldn’t let go until he dug into the pouch on his belt and gave her a couple of copper coins. He saw her dart through the crowd and hand them to a fat Cappadocian—her owner, obviously—and as he hurried on he cursed his gullibility.
    The building that housed the sluice gate was a small redbrick cube, barely taller than a man. A statue of Egeria, goddess of the water-spring, was set in a niche beside the door. At her feet lay a few stems of withered flowers and some moldy lumps of bread and fruit—offerings left by pregnant women who believed that Egeria, consort of Numa, the Prince of Peace, would ease their delivery when their time came. Another worthless superstition. A waste of food.
    He turned the key in the lock and tugged angrily at the heavy wooden door.
    He was level now with the floor of the Piscina Mirabilis. Water from the reservoir poured under pressure down a tunnel in the wall, through a bronze grille, swirled in the open conduit at his feet, and then was channeled into three pipes that fanned out and disappeared under the flagstones behind him, carrying the supply down to the port and town of Misenum . The flow was controlled by a sluice gate, set flush with the wall, worked by a wooden handle attached to an iron wheel. It was stiff from lack of use. He had to pound it with the heel of his hand to loosen it, but when he put his back into it, it began to turn. He wound 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 sulfur.
    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 toward the harbor, 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 that separated
the two natural harbors 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,