A Canticle For Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  "Only that it's a long dangerous trip, and I can't spare six months' absence from the collegium. I wanted to discuss the possibility of sending a well-armed party of the Mayor's guardsmen to fetch the documents here for study."

  Apollo choked. He felt a childish impulse to kick the scholar in the shins. "I'm afraid," he said politely, "that would be quite impossible. But in any case, the matter is outside my sphere, and I'm afraid I can't be of any help to you."

  "Why not?" Thon Taddeo demanded. "Aren't you the Vatican's nuncio to the Court of Hannegan?"

  "Precisely. I represent New Rome, not the monastic Orders. The government of an abbey is in the hands of its abbot."

  "But with a little pressure from New Rome . . ."

  The impulse to kick shins surged swiftly. "We'd better discuss it later," Monsignor Apollo said curtly. "This evening in my study, if you like." He half turned, and looked back inquiringly as if to say Well?

  "I'll be there," the scholar said sharply, and marched away.

  "Why didn't you tell him flatly no, then and there?" Claret fumed when they were alone in the embassy suite an hour later. "Transport priceless relics through bandit country in these times?" It's unthinkable, Messér."

  "Certainly."

  "Then why—"

  "Two reasons. First, Thon Taddeo is Hannegan's kinsman, and influential too. We have to be courteous to Caesar and his kin whether we like him or not. Second, he started to say something about the Mad Bear clan, and then broke off. I think he knows what's going to happen. I'm not going to engage in espionage, but if he volunteers any information, there's nothing to prevent our including it in the report you're about to deliver personally to New Rome."

  "I!" The clerk looked shocked. "To New Rome—?" But what—"

  "Not so loud," said the nuncio, glancing at the door.

  "I'm going to have to send my estimate of this situation to His Holiness, and quickly. But it's the kind of thing that one doesn't dare put in writing. If Hannegan's people intercepted such a dispatch, you and I would probably be found floating face down in the Red River. If Hannegan's enemies get hold of it, Hannegan would probably feel justified in hanging us publicly as spies. Martyrdom is all very well, but we have a job to do first."

  "And I'm to deliver the report orally at the Vatican?" Brother Claret muttered, apparently not relishing the prospect of crossing hostile country.

  "It has to be that way. Thon Taddeo may, just possibly may, give us an excuse for your leaving abruptly for Saint Leibowitz abbey, or New Rome, or both. In case there are any suspicions around the Court. I'll try to steer it."

  "And the substance of the report I'm to deliver, Messér?"

  "That Hannegan's ambition to unite the continent under one dynasty isn't so wild a dream as we thought. That the Agreement of the Holy Scourge is probably a fraud by Hannegan, and that he means to use it to get both the empire of Denver and Laredan Nation into conflict with the Plains nomads. If Laredan forces are tied up in a running battle with Mad Bear, it wouldn't take much encouragement for the State of Chihuahua to attack Laredo from the south. After all, there's an old enmity there. Hannegan, of course, can then march victoriously to Rio Laredo. With Laredo under his thumb, he can look forward to tackling both Denver and the Mississippi Republic without worrying about a stab in the back from the south."

  "Do you think Hannegan can do it, Messér?"

  Marcus Apollo started to answer, then closed his mouth slowly. He walked to the window and stared out at the sunlit city, a sprawling disorderly city built mostly of rubble from another age. A city without orderly patterns of streets. It had grown slowly over an ancient ruin, as perhaps someday another city would grow over the ruin of this one.

  "I don't know," he answered softly. "In these times, it's hard to condemn any man for wanting to unite this butchered continent. Even by such means as — but no, I don't mean that." He sighed heavily. "In any case, our interests are not the interests of politics. We must forewarn New Rome of what may be coming, because the Church will be affected by it, whatever happens. And forewarned, we may be able to keep out of the squabble."

  "You really think so?"

  "Of course not!" the priest said gently.

  Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott arrived at Marcus Apollo's study as early in the day as could be construed as evening, and his manner had noticeably changed since the reception. He managed a cordial smile, and there was nervous eagerness in the way he spoke. This fellow, thought Marcus, is after something be wants rather badly, and he's even willing to be polite in order to get it. Perhaps the list of ancient writings supplied by the monks at the Leibowitzian abbey had impressed the thon more than he wanted to admit. The nuncio had been prepared for a fencing match, but the scholar's evident excitement made him too easy a victim, and Apollo relaxed his readiness for verbal dueling.

  "This afternoon there was a meeting of the faculty of the collegium," said Thon Taddeo as soon as they were seated. "We talked about Brother Kornhoer's letter, and the list of documents." He paused as if uncertain of an approach. The gray dusklight from the large arched window on his left made his face seem blanched and intense, and his wide gray eyes searched at the priest as if measuring him and making estimates.

  "I take it there was skepticism?"

  The gray eyes fell momentarily, and lifted quickly. "Shall I be polite?"

  "Don't bother," Apollo chuckled.

  "There was skepticism. 'Incredulity' is more nearly the word. My own feeling is that if such papers exist, they are probably forgeries dating back several centuries. I doubt if the present monks at the abbey are trying to perpetrate a hoax. Naturally, they would believe the documents valid."

  "Kind of you to absolve them," Apollo said sourly.

  "I offered to be polite. Shall I?"

  "No. Go on."

  The thon slid out of his chair and went to sit in the window. He gazed at the fading yellow patches of cloud in the west and pounded softly on the sill while he spoke. "The papers. No matter what we may believe of them, the idea that such documents may still exist intact — that there's even a slightest chance of their existing — is, well, so arousing a thought that we must investigate them immediately:"

  "Very well," said Apollo, a little amused. "They invited you. But tell me: what do you find so arousing about the documents?"

  The scholar shot him a quick glance. "Are you acquainted with my work?"

  The monsignor hesitated. He was acquainted with it, but admitting the acquaintance might force him to admit to an awareness that Thon Taddeo's name was being spoken in the same breath with names of natural philosophers dead a thousand years and more, while the thon was scarcely in his thirties. The priest was not eager to admit knowing that this young scientist showed promise of becoming one of those rare outcroppings of human genius that appear only a time or two every century to revolutionize an entire field of thought in one vast sweep. He coughed apologetically.

  "I must admit that I haven't read a good deal of—"

  "Never mind." Pfardentrott waved off the apology. "Most of it is highly abstract, and tedious to the layman. Theories of electrical essence. Planetary motion. Attracting bodies. Matters of that sort. Now Kornhoer's list mentions such names as Laplace, Maxwell, and Einstein — do they mean anything to you?"

  "Not much. History mentions them as natural philosophers, doesn't it? From before the collapse of the last civilization? And I think they're named in one of the pagan hagiologies, aren't they?"

  The scholar nodded. "And that's all anyone knows about them, or what they did. Physicists, according to our not-so-reliable historians. Responsible for the rapid rise of the European-American culture, they say. Historians list nothing but trivia. I had nearly forgotten them. But Kornhoer's descriptions of the old documents they say they have are descriptions of papers that might well be taken from physical science texts of some kind. It's just impossible!"

  "But you have to make certain?"

  "We have to make certain. Now that i
t's come up, I wish I had never heard of it."

  "Why?"

  Thon Taddeo was peering at something in the street below. He beckoned to the priest. "Come here a moment. I'll show you why."

  Apollo slipped from behind the desk and looked down at the muddy rutted street beyond the wall that encircled the palace and barracks and buildings of the collegium cutting off the mayoral sanctuary from the seething plebeian city. The scholar was pointing at the shadowy figure of a peasant leading a donkey homeward at twilight. The man's feet were wrapped in sackcloth, and the mud had caked about them so that he seemed scarcely able to lift them. But he trudged ahead in one slogging step after another, resting half a second between footfalls. He seemed too weary to scrape off the mud.

  "He doesn't ride the donkey," Than Taddeo stated, "because this morning the donkey was loaded down with corn. It doesn't occur to him that the packs are empty now. What is good enough for the morning is also good enough for the afternoon."

  "You know him?"

  "He passes under my window too. Every morning end evening. Hadn't you noticed him?"

  "A thousand like him."

  "Look. Can you bring yourself to believe that that brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon, harnessed the forces of Nature, built machines that could talk and seemed to think? Can you believe there were such men?"

  Apollo was silent.

  "Look at him!" the scholar persisted. "No, but it's too dark now. You can't see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Paresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate superstitious, murderous. He diseases his children. For a few coins he would kill them. He will sell them anyway, when they are old enough to be useful. Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What do you see?"

  "The image of Christ," grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. "What did you expect me to see?"

  The scholar huffed impatiently. "The incongruity. Men as you can observe them through any window, and men as historians would have us believe men once were. I can't accept it. How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?"

  "Perhaps," said Apollo, "by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else." He went to light a tallow lamp, for the twilight was rapidly fading into night. He struck steel and flint until the spark caught and he blew gently at it in the tinder.

  "Perhaps," said Thon Taddeo, "but I doubt it."

  "You reject all history, then, as myth?" A flame edged out from the spark.

  "Not 'reject.' But it must be questioned. Who wrote your histories?"

  "The monastic Orders, of course. During the darkest centuries, there was no one else to record them." He transferred flame to wick.

  "There! You have it. And during the time of the antipopes, how many schismatic Orders were fabricating their own versions of things, and passing off their versions as the work of earlier men? You can't know, you can't really know. That there was on this continent a more advanced civilization than we have now — that can't be denied. You can look at the rubble and the rotted metal and know it. You can dig under a strip of blown sand and find their broken roadways. But where is there evidence of the kind of machines your historians tell us they had in those days? Where are the remains of self-moving carts, of flying machines?"

  "Beaten into plowshares and hoes."

  "If they existed."

  "If you doubt it, why bother studying the Leibowitzian documents?"

  "Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history."

  The nuncio smiled tightly. "And what do you want me to do about it, learned Thon?"

  The scholar leaned forward earnestly. "Write to the abbot of this place. Assure him that the documents will be treated with utmost care, and will be returned after we have completely examined them for authenticity and studied their content."

  "Whose assurance do you want me to give him — yours or mine?"

  "Hannegan's, yours, and mine."

  "I can give him only yours and Hannegan's. I have no troops of my own."

  The scholar reddened.

  "Tell me," the nuncio added hastily, "why — besides bandits — do you insist you must see them here, instead of going to the abbey?"

  "The best reason you can give the abbot is that if the documents are authentic, if we have to examine them at the abbey, a confirmation wouldn't mean much to other secular scholars."

  "You mean your colleagues might think the monks had tricked you into something?"

  "Ummm, that might be inferred. But also important, if they're brought here, they can be examined by everyone in the collegium who's qualified to form an opinion. And any visiting thons from other principalities can have a look at them too. But we can't move the entire collegium to the southwest desert for six months."

  "I see your point."

  "Will you send the request to the abbey?"

  "Yes."

  Thon Taddeo appeared surprised.

  "But it will be your request, not mine. And it's only fair to tell you that I don't think Dom Paulo, the abbot, will say yes."

  The thon, however, appeared to be satisfied. When he had gone, the nuncio summoned his clerk.

  "You'll be leaving for New Rome tomorrow," he told him.

  "By way of Leibowitz Abbey?"

  "Come back by way of it. The report to New Rome is urgent."

  "Yes, Messér."

  "At the abbey, tell Dom Paulo that Sheba expects Solomon to come to her. Bearing gifts. Then you better cover your ears. When he finishes exploding, hurry back so I can tell Thon Taddeo no."

  13

  * * *

  TIME SEEPS SLOWLY on the desert and there is little change to mark its passage. Two seasons had passed since Dom Paulo had refused the request from across the Plains, but the matter had been settled only a few weeks ago. Or had it been settled at all? Texarkana was obviously unhappy with the results.

  The abbot paced along the abbey walls at sundown, his jaw thrust ahead like a whiskery old crag against possible breakers out of the sea of events. His thinning hair fluttered in white pennants on the desert wind, and the wind wrapped his habit bandage-tight about his stooped body, making him look like an emaciated Ezekiel with a strangely round little paunch. He thrust his gnarled hands into his sleeves and glowered occasionally across the desert toward the village of Sanly Bowitts in the distance. The red sunlight threw his pacing shadow across the courtyard, and the monks who encountered it in crossing the grounds glanced up wonderingly at the old man. Their ruler had seemed moody of late, and given to strange forebodings. It was whispered that the time soon was coming when a new abbot would be appointed ruler over the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz. It was whispered that the old man was not well, not well at all. It was whispered that if the abbot heard the whispers, the whisperers should speedily climb over the wall. The abbot had heard, but it pleased him for once not to take note of it. He well knew that the whispers were true.

  "Read it to me again," he said abruptly to the monk who stood motionless near at hand.

  The monk's hood jogged slightly in the abbot's direction.

  "Which one, Domne?" he asked.

  "You know which one."

  "Yes, m'Lord." The monk fumbled in one sleeve. It seemed weighted down with half a bushel of documents and correspondence, but after a moment he found the right one. Affixed to the scroll was the label:

  SUB IMMUNITATE APOSTOLICA HOC SUPPOSITUM EST.

  QUISQUIS NUNTIUM MOLESTARE AUDEAT,

  IPSO FACTO EXCOMMUNICETUR.

  DET: R'dissimo Domno Paulo de Pecos, AOL, Abbati

  (Monastery of the Leibowitzian Brethren,

  Environs of Sanly Bowitts Village

  Southwest Desert, Empire of Denver)

  CUI SALUTEM DICIT: Marcus Apollo

  Papatiae Apocrisarius Texarkanae

 
"All right, that's the one. So read it," the abbot said impatiently.

  "Accedite ad eum..." The monk crossed himself and murmured the customary Blessing of Texts, said before reading or writing almost as punctiliously as the blessing at meals. For the preservation of literacy and learning throughout a black millennium had been the task of the Brothers of Leibowitz, and such small rituals helped keep that task in focus.

  Having finished the blessing he held the scroll high against the sunset so that it became a transparency. " 'Iterum oportet apponere tibi crucem ferendam, amice...' "

  His voice was faintly singsong as his eyes plucked the words out of a forest of superfluous pen-flourishings. The abbot leaned against the parapet to listen while he watched the buzzards circling over the mesa of Last Resort.

  " 'Again it is necessary to set before you a cross to be borne, old friend and shepherd of myopic bookworms,' " droned the voice of the reader, " 'but perhaps the bearing of the cross will smack of triumph. It appears that Sheba is coming to Solomon after all, though probably to denounce him as a charlatan.

  " 'This is to notify you that Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, D.N.Sc., Sage of Sages, Scholar of Scholars, Fair-Haired Son-out-of-Wedlock of a certain Prince, and God's Gift to an "Awakening Generation," has finally made up his mind to pay you a visit, having exhausted all hope of transporting your Memorabilia to this fair realm. He will be arriving about the Feast of the Assumption, if he manages to evade "bandit" groups along the way. He will bring his misgivings and a small party of armed cavalry, courtesy of Hannegan II, whose corpulent person is even now hovering over me as I write, grunting and scowling at these lines, which His Supremacy commanded me to write, and in which His Supremacy expects me to acclaim his cousin, the thon, in the hope that you'll honor him fittingly. But since His Supremacy's secretary is in bed with the gout, I shall be no less than candid here:

  " 'So first, let me caution you about this person, Thon Taddeo. Treat him with your customary charity, but trust him not. He is a brilliant scholar, but a secular scholar, and a political captive of the State. Here, Hannegan is the State. Furthermore, the thon is rather anti-clerical I think — or perhaps solely anti-monastic. After his embarrassing birth, he was spirited away to a Benedictine monastery, and — but no, ask the courier about that...' "