Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire
From Turtledove
Pillar of Cloud, Pillar of Fire is an alternate history short story published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the mid-December, 1989 issue. It was reprinted in the Harry Turtledove collection Departures in 1993 and in the revised 1994 edition of Agent of Byzantium.
Although set in the same timeline as the short story Departures, it takes place some 700 year later. It is set in and around Alexandria, Egypt, in 1309 AD, and concerns the attempts by the magistrianos Basil Argyros to restart the stalled re-construction of the pharos or lighthouse which had been destroyed in an earthquake several generations earlier.
