Lest Darkness Fall

by L. Sprague Camp

  "Oh, I never thought of that."

  "Well, remember next time. I can't use this story either. But don't let it discourage you. It's well done; a lead sentence and everything. How do you get all this information?"

  The man grinned. "I hear things. And what I don't hear, my wife does. She has women friends who get together for games of backgammon, and they talk."

  "It's too bad I don't dare run a gossip column," said Padway. "But you would seem to have the makings of a newspaper man. What's your name?"

  "George Menandrus."

  "That's Greek, isn't it?"

  "My parents were Greek; I am Roman."

  "All right, George, keep in touch with me. Some day I may want to hire an assistant to help run the thing."

  Padway confidently visited the tanner to place another order for vellum.

  "When will you want it?" said the tanner. Padway told him in four days.

  "That's impossible. I might have fifty sheets for you in that time. They'll cost you five times as much apiece as the first ones."

  Padway gasped. "In God's name, why?"

  "You practically cleaned out Rome's supply with that first order," said the tanner. "All of our stock, and all the rest that was floating around, which I went out and bought up for you. There aren't enough skins left in the whole city to make a hundred sheets. And making vellum takes time, you know. If you buy up the last fifty sheets, it will be weeks before you can prepare another large batch."

  Padway asked: "If you expanded your plant, do you suppose you could eventually get up to a capacity of two thousand a week?"

  The tanner shook his head. "I should not want to spend the money to expand in such a risky business. And, if I did, there wouldn't be enough animals in Central Italy to supply such a demand."

  Padway recognized when he was licked. Vellum was essentially a by-produce of the sheep-and-goat industry. Therefore a sudden increase in demand would skyrocket the price without much increasing the output. Though the Romans knew next to nothing of economics, the law of supply and demand worked here just the same.

  It would have to be paper after all. And his second edition was going to be very, very late.

  For paper, he got hold of a felter and told him that he wanted him to chop up a few pounds of white cloth and make them into the thinnest felt that anybody had ever heard of. The felter dutifully produced a sheet of what looked like exceptionally thick and fuzzy blotting paper. Padway patiently insisted on finer breaking up of the cloth, on a brief boiling before felting, and on pressing after. As he went out of the shop he saw the felter tap his forehead significantly. But after many trials the man presented him with a paper not much worse for writing than a twentieth-century paper towel.

  Then came the heartbreaking part. A drop of ink applied to this paper spread out with the alacrity of a picnic party that has discovered a rattlesnake in their midst. So Padway told the felter to make up ten more sheets, and into the mush from which each was made to introduce one common substance—soap, olive oil, and so forth. At this point the felter threatened to quit, and had to be appeased by a raise in price. Padway was vastly relieved to discover that a little clay mixed with the pulp made all the difference between a fair writing paper and an impossible one.

  By the time Padway's second issue had been sold out, he had ceased to worry about the possibility of running a paper. But another thought moved into the vacated worrying compartment in his mind: What should he do when the Gothic War really got going? In his own history it had raged for twenty years up and down Italy. Nearly every important town had been besieged or captured at least once. Rome itself would be practically depopulated by sieges, famine, and pestilence. If he lived long enough he might see the Lombard invasion and the near-extinction of Italian civilization. All this would interfere dreadfully with his plans.

  He tried to shake off the mood. Probably the weather was responsible; it had rained steadily for two days. Everything in the house was dank. The only way to cure that would be to build a fire, and the air was too warm for that already. So Padway sat and looked out at the leaden landscape.

  He was surprised when Fritharik brought in Thomasus' colleague, Ebenezer the Jew. Ebenezer was a frail-looking, kindly oldster with a long white beard. Padway found him distressingly pious; when he ate with the other bankers he did not eat at all, to put it Irishly, for fear of transgressing one of the innumerable rules of his sect.

  Ebenezer took his cloak off over his head and asked: "Where can I put this where it won't drip, excellent Martinus? Ah. Thank you. I was this way on business, and I thought I'd look your place over, if I may. It must be interesting, from Thomasus' accounts." He wrung the water from his beard.

  Padway was glad of something to take his mind off the ominous future. He showed the old man around.

  Ebenezer looked at him from under bushy white eyebrows.

  "Ah. Now I can believe that you are from a far country. From another world, almost. Take that system of arithmetic of yours; it has changed our whole concept of hanking—"

  "What?" cried Padway. "What do you know about it?"

  "Why," said Ebenezer, "Thomasus sold the secret to Vardan and me. I thought you knew that."

  "He did? How much?"

  "A hundred and fifty solidi apiece. Didn't you—"

  Padway growled a resounding Latin oath, grabbed his hat and cloak, and started for the door.

  "Where are you going, Martinus?" said Ebenezer in alarm.

  "I'm going to tell that cutthroat what I think of him!" snapped Padway. "And then I'm going to—"

  "Did Thomasus promise you not to reveal the secret? I cannot believe that he violated—"

  Padway stopped with his hand on the door handle. Now that he thought, the Syrian had never agreed not to tell anybody about Arabic numerals. Padway had taken it for granted that he would not want to do so. But if Thomasus got pressed for ready cash, there was no legal impediment to his selling or giving the knowledge to whom he pleased.

  As Padway got his anger under control, he saw that he had not really lost anything, since his original intention had been to spread Arabic numerals far and wide. What really peeved him was that Thomasus should chisel such a handsome sum out of the science without even offering Padway a cut. It was like Thomasus. He was all right, but as Nevitta had said you had to watch him.

  When Padway did appear at Thomasus' house, later that day, he had Fritharik with him. Fritharik was carrying a strong box. The box was nicely heavy with gold.

  "Martinus," cried Thomasus, a little appalled, "do you really want to pay off all your loans? Where did you get all this money?"

  "You heard me," grinned Padway. "Here's an accounting of principal and interest. I'm tired of paying ten per cent when I can get the same for seven and a half."

  "What? Where can you get any such absurd rate?"

  "From your esteemed colleague, Ebenezer. Here's a copy of the new note."

  "Well, I must say I wouldn't have expected that of Ebenezer. If all this is true, I suppose I could meet his rate."

  "You'll have to better it, after what you made from selling my arithmetic."

  "Now, Martinus, what I did was strictly legal—"

  "Didn't say it wasn't."

  "Oh, very well. I suppose God planned it this way. I'll give you seven and four tenths."

  Padway laughed scornfully.

  "Seven, then. But that's the lowest, absolutely, positively, finally."

  When Padway had received his old notes, a receipt for the old loans, and a copy of the new note, Thomasus asked him, "How did you get Ebenezer to offer you such an unheard-of figure?"

  Padway smiled. "I told him that he could have had the secret of the new arithmetic from me for the asking."

  Padway's next effort was a clock. He was going to begin with the simplest design possible: a weight on the end of a rope, a ratchet, a train of gears, the hand and dial from a battered old clepsydra or water clock he picked up secondhand, a pendulum, and an escapemen
t. One by one he assembled these parts—all but the last.

  He had not supposed there was anything so difficult about making an escapement. He could take the back cover off his wrist-watch and see the escapement-wheel there, jerking its merry way around. He did not want to take his watch apart for fear of never getting it together again. Besides, the parts thereof were too small to reproduce accurately.

  But he could see the damned thing; why couldn't he make a large one? The workmen turned out several wheels, and the little tongs to go with them. Padway filed and scraped and bent. But they would not work. The tongs caught the teeth of the wheels and stuck fast. Or they did not catch at all, so that the shaft on which the rope was wound unwound itself all at once. Padway at last got one of the contraptions adjusted so that if you swung the pendulum with your hand, the tongs would let the escapement-wheel revolve one tooth at a time. Fine. But the clock would not run under its own power. Take your hand off the pendulum, and it made a couple of halfhearted swings and stopped.

  Padway said to hell with it. He'd come back to it some day when he had more time and better tools and instruments. He stowed the mess of cog-wheels in a corner of his cellar. Perhaps, he thought, this failure had been a good thing, to keep him from getting an exaggerated idea of his own cleverness.

  Nevitta popped in again. "All over your sickness, Martinus? Fine; I knew you had a sound constitution. How about coming out to the Flaminian racetrack with me now and losing a few solidi? Then come on up to the farm overnight."

  "I'd like to a lot. But I have to put the Times to bed this afternoon."

  "Put to bed?" queried Nevitta.

  Padway explained.

  Nevitta said: "I see. Ha, ha, I thought you had a girl friend named Tempora. Tomorrow for supper, then."

  "How shall I get there?"

  "You haven't a saddle horse? I'll send Hermann down with one tomorrow afternoon. But mind, I don't want to get him back with wings growing out of his shoulders!"

  "It might attract attention," said Padway solemnly. "And you'd have a hell of a time catching him if he didn't want to be bridled."

  So the next afternoon Padway, in a new pair of rawhide Byzantine jack boots, set out with Hermann up the Flamian Way. The Roman Campagna, he noted, was still fairly prosperous farming country. He wondered how long it would take for it to become the desolate, malarial plain of the Middle Ages.

  "How were the races?" he asked.

  Hermann, it seemed, knew very little Latin, though that little was still better than Padway's Gothic. "Oh, my boss . . . he terrible angry. He talk . . . you know . . . hot sport. But hate lose money. Lose fifty sesterces on horse. Make noise like . . . you know . . . lion with gutache."

  At the farmhouse Padway met Nevitta's wife, a pleasant, plump woman who spoke no Latin, and his eldest son, Dagalaif, a Gothic scaio, or marshal, home on vacation. Supper fully bore out the stories that Padway had heard about Gothic appetites. He was agreeably surprised to drink some fairly good beer, after the bilgewater that went by that name in Rome.

  "I've got some wine, if you prefer it," said Nevitta.

  "Thanks, but I'm getting a little tired of Italian wine. The Roman writers talk a lot about their different kinds, but it all tastes alike to me."

  "That's the way I feel. If you really want some, I have some perfumed Greek wine."

  Padway shuddered.

  Nevitta grinned. "That's the way I feel. Any man who'd put perfume in his liquor probably swishes when he walks. I only keep the stuff for my Greek friends, like Leo Vekkos. Reminds me, I must tell him about your cure for my wheezes by having me put the dogs out. He'll figure out some fancy theory full of long words to explain it."

  Dagalaif spoke up: "Say, Martinus, maybe you have inside information on how the war will go."

  Padway shrugged. "All I know is what everybody else knows. I haven't a private wire—I mean a private channel of information to heaven. If you want a guess, I'd say that Belisarius would invade Bruttium this summer and besiege Naples about August. He won't have a large force, but he'll be infernally hard to beat."

  Dagalaif said: "Huh! We'll let him up all right. A handful of Greeks won't get very far against the united Gothic nation."

  "That's what the Vandals thought," answered Padway dryly.

  "Aiw," said Dagalaif. "But we won't make the mistakes the Vandals made."

  "I don't know, son," said Nevitta. "It seems to me we are making them already—or others just as bad. This king of ours—all he's good for is hornswoggling his neighbors out of land and writing Latin poetry. And digging around in libraries. It would be better if we had an illiterate one, like Theoderik. Of course," he added apologetically, "I admit I can read and write. My old man came from Pannonia with Theoderik, and he was always talking about the sacred duty of the Goths to preserve Roman civilization from savages like the Franks. He was determined that I would have a Latin education if it killed me. I admit I've found my education useful. But in the next few months it'll be more important for our leader to know how to lead a charge than to say amo-amas-amat."

  CHAPTER V

  Padway returned to rome in the best of humor. Nevitta was the first person, besides Thomasus the Syrian, who had asked him to his house. And Padway, despite his somewhat cool exterior, was a sociable fellow at heart. He was, in fact, so elated that he dismounted and handed the reins of the borrowed horse to Hermann without noticing the three tough-looking parties leaning against the new fence in front of the old house on Long Street.

  When he headed for the gate, the largest of the three, a black-bearded man, stepped in front of him. The man was holding a sheet of paper-real paper, no doubt from the felter to whom Padway had taught the art—in front of him and reading out loud to himself: "medium height, brown hair and eyes, large nose, short beard. Speaks with an accent." He looked up sharply. "Are you Martinus Paduei?"

  "Sic. Quis est?"

  "You're under arrest. Will you come along quietly?"

  "What? Who—What for—"

  "Order of the municipal prefect. Sorcery."

  "But . . . but—Hey! You can't—"

  "I said quietly."

  The other two men had moved up on each side of Padway, and each took an arm and started to walk him along the street. When he resisted, a short bludgeon appeared in the hand of one. Padway looked around frantically. Hermann was already out of sight. Fritharik was not to be seen; no doubt he was snoring as usual. Padway filled his lungs to shout; the man on his right tightened his grip and raised the bludgeon threateningly. Padway didn't shout.

  They marched him down the Argiletum to the old jail below the Record Office on the Capitoline. He was still in somewhat of a daze as the clerk demanded his name, age, and address. All he could think of was that he had heard somewhere that you were entitled to telephone your lawyer before being locked up. And that information seemed hardly useful in the present circumstances.

  A small, snapping Italian who had been lounging on a bench got up. "What's this, a sorcery case involving a foreigner? Sounds like a national case to me."

  "Oh, no, it isn't," said the clerk. "You national officers have authority in Rome only in mixed Roman-Gothic cases. This man isn't a Goth; says he's an American, whatever that is."

  "Yes, it is! Read your regulations. The pretorian prefect's office has jurisdiction in all capital cases involving foreigners. If you have a sorcery complaint, you turn it and the prisoner over to us. Come on, now." The little man moved possessively toward Padway. Padway did not like the use of the term "capital cases."

  The clerk said: "Don't be a fool. Think you're going to drag him clear up to Ravenna for interrogation? We've got a perfectly good torture chamber here."

  "I'm only doing my duty," snapped the state policeman. He grabbed Padway's arm and started to haul him toward the door. "Come along now, sorcerer. We'll show you some real, up-to-date torture at Ravenna. These Roman cops don't know anything."

  "Christus! Are you crazy?" yelled the clerk. He jumped u
p and grabbed Padway's other arm; so did the black-bearded man who had arrested him. The state policemen pulled and so did the other two.

  "Hey!" yelled Padway. But the assorted functionaries were too engrossed in their tug-of-war to notice.

  The state policeman shouted in a painfully penetrating voice: "Justinius, run and tell the adjutant prefect that these municipal scum are trying to withhold a prisoner from us!" A man ran out the door.

  Another door opened, and a fat, sleepy-looking man came in. "What's this?" he squeaked.

  The clerk and the municipal policeman straightened up to attention, releasing Padway. The state policeman immediately resumed hauling him toward the door; the local cops abandoned their etiquette and grabbed him again. They all shouted at once at the fat man. Padway gathered that he was the municipal commentariensius, or police chief.

  At that two more municipal policemen came in with a thin, ragged prisoner. They entered into the dispute with true Italian fervor, which meant using both hands. The ragged prisoner promptly darted out the door; his captors didn't notice his absence for a full minute.

  They then began shouting at each other. "What did you let him go for?"

  "You brass-bound idiot, you're the one who let him go!"

  The man called Justinius came back with an elegant person who announced himself as the corniculatis, or adjutant prefect. This individual waved a perfumed handkerchief at the struggling group and said: "Let him go, you chaps. Yes, you, too, Sulla." (This was the state policeman.) "There won't be anything left of him to interrogate if you keep that up."

  From the way the others in the now-crowded room quieted, Padway guessed that the adjutant prefect was a pretty big shot.

  The adjutant prefect asked a few questions, then said: "I'm sorry, my dear old commentariensius, but I'm afraid he's our man."

  "Not yet he isn't," squeaked the chief. "You fellows can't just walk in here and grab a prisoner any time you feel like it. It would mean my job to let you have him."

  The adjutant prefect yawned. "Dear, dear, you're such a bore. You forget that I represent the pretorian prefect, who represents the king, and if I order you to hand the prisoner over, you hand him over and that's the end of it. I so order you, now."