Crime Against the Goddess

By Steven W. White

Alexandria, Egypt, 246 BC – in a time of political conflict, a crime has been committed against the Temple of Aphrodite.

To save the center of civilization from martial law, the royal astronomer Conon and the princess Arsinoe chase the perpetrator from the Great Library to the top of the Pharos – the Seventh Wonder of the World.

An illustrated short historical mystery, based on historical figures and actual events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven W. White
• Release date: Apr 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476119946

Steven W. White

Steven W. White has written science fiction and fantasy since he was a teenager. Along the way, he's been a Christmas tree farmer, a rocket scientist, and a snake handler. Lately, he's earned a Fiction MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island, Washington. He writes, teaches, and occasionally plays with fire in the Pacific Northwest.

Book preview

CRIME AGAINST THE GODDESS

by Steven W. White

Copyright 2012 Steven W. White

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Crime Against the Goddess

Excerpt from Outrageous Fortunes

Author's note:

All of the named characters in the following story are actual historical figures. The setting is the famous Library of Alexandria, during the peak of its centuries-long reign as the center of human knowledge, in 246 BC. The story revolves around a crime that, as far as any historian can verify, actually took place.

Words kill. It’s a simple story I tell, but deadly for us then, and even now, dangerous in the telling.

I’ll follow the tradition of Berossus and set the date clearly. Saturn, the light of Kronos, graced Aquarius, and Jupiter, beacon of Zeus, had entered Capricorn. It was the first year of the reign of our Benefactor, Ptolemy III Euergetes, and seventy-seven years since Alexander the Great shed his mortal form.

The Benefactor’s daughter and I reclined on couches in the observatory-courtyard of the Library of Alexandria. She was a difficult student, and so impossible these last few days, I pulled my beard in frustration.

I pointed into the night sky. Name the fiery one, over Orion’s belt.

Arsinoe sighed, weary of the repetition, cursed with the impatience of a fifteen-year-old. Betelgeuse, his armpit.

Shoulder.

Whatever. But how did Orion get up there in the first place?

Orion was stung, killed by Scorpius. Zeus placed him in the sky.

She stared up. When?

Another instructor might have cursed her impertinence. Long ago. Homer wrote of Orion’s stars.

Our eyes had tuned to the dark. Starlight touched her pale, upturned face, but could not reach her black curls, which swallowed the light and left no trace. She had her father’s hair, and her father’s