by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei
At the sight of the Ulpian Library, Padway had to suppress an urge to say to hell with his present errand. He loved burrowing into libraries, and he definitely did not love the idea of bearding a strange banker in a strange land with a strange proposition. In fact, the idea scared him silly, but his was the kind of courage that shows itself best when its owner is about to collapse from blue funk. So he grimly kept on toward the Tiber.
Thomasus hung out in a shabby two-story building. The Negro at the door—probably a slave—ushered Padway into what he would have called a living room. Presently the banker appeared. Thomasus was a paunchy, bald man with a cataract on his left eye. He gathered his shabby robe about him, sat down, and said: “Well, young man?”
“I”—Padway swallowed and started again—“I’m interested in a loan.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know yet. I want to start a business, and I’ll have to investigate prices and things first.”
“You want to start a new business? In Rome? Hm-m-m.” Thomasus rubbed his hands together. “What security can you give?”
“None at all.”
“What?”
“I said, none at all. You’d just have to take a chance on me.”
“But…but, my dear sir, don’t you know anybody in town?”
“I know a Gothic farmer named Nevitta Gummund’s son. He sent me hither.”
“Oh, yes, Nevitta. I know him slightly. Would he go your note?”
Padway thought. Nevitta, despite his expansive gestures, had impressed him as being pretty close where money was concerned. “No,” he said, “I don’t think he would.”
Thomasus rolled his eyes upward. “Do You hear that, God? He comes in here, a barbarian who hardly knows Latin, and admits that he has no security and no guarantors, and still he expects me to lend him money! Did You ever hear the like?”
“I think I can make you change your mind,” said Padway.
Thomasus shook his head and made clucking noises. “You certainly have plenty of self-confidence, young man; I admit as much. What did you say your name was?” Padway told him what he had told Nevitta. “All right, what’s your scheme?”
“As you correctly inferred,” said Padway, hoping he was showing the right mixture of dignity and cordiality, “I’m a foreigner. I just arrived from a place called America. That’s a long way off, and naturally it has a lot of customs and features different from those of Rome. Now, if you could back me in the manufacture of some of our commodities that are not known here—”
“Ai!” yelped Thomasus, throwing up his hands. “Did You hear that, God? He doesn’t want me to back him in some well-known business. Oh, no. He wants me to start some newfangled line that nobody ever heard of! I couldn’t think of such a thing, Martinus. What was it you had in mind?”
“Well, we have a drink made from wine, called brandy, that ought to go well.”
“No, I couldn’t consider it. Though I admit that Rome needs manufacturing establishments badly. When the capital was moved to Ravenna all revenue from Imperial salaries was cut off, which is why the population has shrunk so the last century. The town is badly located, and hasn’t any real reason for being any more. But you can’t get anybody to do anything about it. King Thiudahad spends his time writing Latin verse. Poetry! But no, young man, I couldn’t put money into a wild project for making some weird barbarian drink.”
Padway’s knowledge of sixth-century history was beginning to come back to him. He said: “Speaking of Thiudahad, has Queen Amalaswentha been murdered yet?”
“Why”—Thomasus looked sharply at Padway with his good eye—“yes, she has.” That meant that Justinian, the “Roman” emperor of Constantinople, would soon begin his disastrously successful effort to reconquer Italy for the Empire. “But why did you put your question that way?”
Padway asked. “Do—do you mind if I sit down?”
Thomasus said he didn’t. Padway almost collapsed into a chair. His knees were weak. Up to now his adventure had seemed like a complicated and difficult masquerade party. His own question about the murder of Queen Amalaswentha had brought home to him all at once the fearful hazards of life in this world.
Thomasus repeated: “I asked why, young sir, you put your question that way?”
“What way?” asked Padway innocently. He saw where he’d made a slip.
“You asked whether she had been murdered yet. That sounds as though you had known ahead of time that she would be killed. Are you a soothsayer?”
There were no flies on Thomasus. Padway remembered Nevitta’s advice to keep his eyes open.
He shrugged. “Not exactly. I heard before I came here that there had been trouble between the two Gothic sovereigns, and that Thiudahad would put his co-ruler out of the way if he had a chance. I—uh—just wondered how it came out, that’s all.”
“Yes,” said the Syrian. “It was a shame. She was quite a woman. Good-looking, too, though she was in her forties. They caught her in her bath last summer and held her head under. Personally I think Thiudahad’s wife Gudelinda put the old jelly-fish up to it. He wouldn’t have nerve enough by himself.”
“Maybe she was jealous,” said Padway. “Now, about the manufacture of that barbarian drink, as you call it—”
“What? You are a stubborn fellow. It’s absolutely out of the question, though. You have to be careful, doing business here in Rome. It’s not like a growing town. Now, if this were Constantinople—” he sighed. “You can really make money in the East. But I don’t care to live there, with Justinian making life exciting for the heretics, as he calls them. What’s your religion, by the way?”
“What’s yours? Not that it makes any difference to me.”
“Nestorian.”
“Well,” said Padway carefully, “I’m what we call a Congregationalist.” (It was not really true, but he guessed an agnostic would hardly be popular in this theology-mad world.) “That’s the nearest thing we have to Nestorianism in my country. But about the manufacture of brandy—”
“Nothing doing, young man. Absolutely not. How much equipment would you need to start?”
“Oh, a big copper kettle and a lot of copper tubing, and a stock of wine for the raw material. It wouldn’t have to be good wine. And I could get started quicker with a couple of men to help me.”
“I’m afraid it’s too much of a gamble. I’m sorry.”
“Look here, Thomasus, if I show you how you can halve the time it takes you to do your accounts, would you be interested?”
“You mean you’re a mathematical genius or something?”
“No, but I have a system I can teach your clerks.”
Thomasus closed his eyes like some Levantine Buddha. “Well—if you don’t want more than fifty solidi—”
“All business is a gamble, you know.”
“That’s the trouble with it. But—I’ll do it, if your accounting system is as good as you say it is.”
“How about interest?” asked Padway.
“Three per cent.”
Padway was startled. Then he asked. “Three per cent per what?”
“Per month, of course.”
“Too much.”
“Well, what do you expect?”
“In my country six per cent per year is considered fairly high.”
“You mean you expect me to lend you money at that rate? Ai! Did You hear that, God? Young man, you ought to go live among the wild Saxons, to teach them something about piracy. But I like you, so I’ll make it twenty-five per year.”
“Still too much. I might consider seven and a half.”
“You’re being ridiculous. I wouldn’t consider less than twenty for a minute.”
“No. Nine per cent, perhaps.”
“I’m not even interested. Too bad; it would have been nice to do business with you. Fifteen.”
“That’s out, Thomasus. Nine and a half.”
“Did You hear that, God? He wants me to make him a present of my business! Go away, M
artinus. You’re wasting your time here. I couldn’t possibly come down any more. Twelve and a half. That’s absolutely the bottom.”
“Ten.”
“Don’t you understand Latin? I said that was the bottom. Good day; I’m glad to have met you.” When Padway got up, the banker sucked his breath through his teeth as though he had been wounded unto death, and rasped: “Eleven.”
“Ten and a half.”
“Would you mind showing your teeth? My word, they are human after all. I thought maybe they were shark’s teeth. Oh, very well. This sentimental generosity of mine will be my ruin yet. And now let’s see that accounting system of yours.”
An hour later three chagrined clerks sat in a row and regarded Padway with expressions of, respectively, wonderment, apprehension, and active hatred. Padway had just finished doing a simple piece of long division with Arabic numerals at the time when the three clerks, using Roman numerals, had barely gotten started on the interminable trial-and-error process that their system required. Padway translated his answers back into Roman, wrote it out on his tablet, and handed the tablet to Thomasus.
“There you are,” he said. “Have one of the boys check it by multiplying the divisor by the quotient. You might as well call them off their job; they’ll be at it all night.”
The middle-aged clerk, the one with the hostile expression, copied down the figures and began checking grimly. When after a long time he finished, he threw down his stylus. “That man’s a sorcerer of some sort,” he growled. “He does the operations in his head, and puts down all those silly marks just to fool us.”
“Not at all,” said Padway urbanely. “I can teach you to do the same.”
“What? Me take lessons from a long-trousered barbarian? I—” he started to say more, but Thomasus cut him off by saying that he’d do as he was told, and no back talk. “Is that so?” sneered the man. “I’m a free Roman citizen, and I’ve been keeping books for twenty years. I guess I know my business. If you want a man to use that heathen system, go buy yourself some cringing Greek slave. I’m through!”
“Now see what you’ve done!” cried Thomasus when the clerk had taken his coat off the peg and marched out. “I shall have to hire another man, and with this labor shortage—”
“That’s all right,” soothed Padway. “These two boys will be able to do all the work of three easily, once they learn American arithmetic. And that isn’t all; we have something called double-entry bookkeeping, which enables you to tell any time how you stand financially, and to catch errors—”
“Do You hear that, God? He wants to turn the whole banking business upside down! Please, dear sir, one thing at a time; or you’ll drive us mad! I’ll grant your loan, I’ll help you buy your equipment. Only don’t spring any more of your revolutionary methods just now!” He continued more calmly: “What’s that bracelet I see you looking at from time to time?”
Padway extended his wrist. “It’s a portable sundial, of sorts. We call it a watch.”
“A vatcha, hm? It looks like magic. Are you sure you aren’t a sorcerer after all?” He laughed nervously.
“No,” said Padway. “It’s a simple mechanical device, like a—a water clock.”
“Ah. I see. But why a pointer to show sixtieths of an hour? Surely nobody in his right mind would want to know the time as closely as that?”
“We find it useful.”
“Oh, well, other lands, other customs. How about giving my boys a lesson in your American arithmetic now? Just to assure us that it is as good as you claim.”
“All right. Give me a tablet.” Padway scratched the numerals 1 to 9 in the wax, and explained them. “Now,” he said, “this is the important part.” He drew a circle. “This is our character meaning nothing.”
The younger clerk scratched his head. “You mean it’s a symbol without meaning? What would be the use of that?”
“I didn’t say it was without meaning. It means nil, zero—what you have left when you take two away from two.”
The older clerk looked skeptical. “It doesn’t make sense to me. What is the use of a symbol for what does not exist?”
“You have a word for it, haven’t you? Several words, in fact. And you find them useful, don’t you?”
“I suppose so,” said the older clerk. “But we don’t use nothing in our calculations. Whoever heard of figuring the interest on a loan at no per cent? Or renting a house for no weeks?”
“Maybe,” grinned the younger clerk, “the honorable sir can tell us how to make a profit on no sales—”
Padway snapped: “And we’ll get through this explanation sooner with no interruptions. You’ll learn the reason for the zero symbol soon enough.”
It took an hour to cover the elements of addition. Then Padway said the clerks had had enough for one day; they should practice addition for a while every day until they could do it faster than by Roman numerals. Actually he was worn out. He was naturally a quick speaker, and to have to plod syllable by syllable through this foul language almost drove him crazy.
“Very ingenious, Martinus,” wheezed the banker. “And. now for the details of that loan. Of course you weren’t serious in setting such an absurdly low figure as ten and a half percent—”
“What? You’re damn right I was serious! And you agreed—”
“Now, Martinus. What I meant was that after my clerks had learned your system, if it was as good as you claimed, I’d consider lending you money at that rate. But meanwhile you can’t expect me to give you my—”
Padway jumped up. “You—you wielder of a—oh, hell, what’s Latin for chisel? If you won’t—”
“Don’t be hasty, my young friend. After all, you’ve given my boys their start; they can go alone from there if need be. So you might as well—”
“All right, you just let them try to go on from there. I’ll find another banker and teach his clerks properly. Subtraction, multiplication, div—”
“Ai!” yelped Thomasus. “You can’t go spreading this secret all over Rome! It wouldn’t be fair to me!”
“Oh, can’t I? Just watch. I could even make a pretty good living teaching it. If you think—”
“Now, now, let’s not lose our tempers. Let’s remember Christ’s teachings about patience. I’ll make a special concession because you’re just starting out in business…”
Padway got his loan at ten and a half. He agreed grudgingly not to reveal his arithmetic elsewhere until the first loan was paid off.
Padway bought a copper kettle at what he would have called a junk shop. But nobody had ever heard of copper tubing. After he and Thomasus had exhausted the secondhand metal shops between the latter’s house and the warehouse district at the south end of town, he started in on coppersmith’s places. The coppersmiths had never heard of copper tubing, either. A couple of them offered to try to turn out some, but at astronomical prices.
“Martinus!” wailed the banker. “We’ve walked at least five miles, and my feet are giving out. Wouldn’t lead pipe do just as well? You can get all you want of that.”
“It would do fine except for one thing,” said Padway, “we’d probably poison our customers. And that might give the business a bad name, you know.”
“Well, I don’t see that you’re getting anywhere as it is.”
Padway thought a minute while Thomasus and Ajax, the Negro slave, who was carrying the kettle, watched him. “If I could hire a man who was generally handy with tools, and had some metal-working experience, I could show him how to make copper tubing. How do you go about hiring people here?”
“You don’t,” said Thomasus. “It just happens. You could buy a slave—but you haven’t enough money. I shouldn’t care to put up the price of a good slave into your venture. And it takes a skilled foreman to get enough work out of a slave to make him a profitable investment.”
Padway said, “How would it be to put a sign in front of your place, stating that a position is open?”
“What?” squawked the banker. �
��Do You hear that, God? First he seduces my money away from me on this wild plan. Now he wants to plaster my house with signs! Is there no limit—”
“Now, Thomasus, don’t get excited. It won’t be a big sign, and it’ll be very artistic. I’ll paint it myself. You want me to succeed, don’t you?”
“It won’t work, I tell you. Most workmen can’t read. And I won’t have you demean yourself by manual labor that way. It’s ridiculous; I won’t consider it. About how big a sign did you have in mind?”
Padway dragged himself to bed right after dinner. There was no way, as far as he knew, of getting back to his own time. Never again would he know the pleasures of the American Journal of Archaeology, of Mickey Mouse, of flush toilets, of speaking the simple, rich, sensitive English language…
Padway hired his man the third day after his first meeting with Thomasus the Syrian. The man was a dark, cocky little Sicilian named Hannibal Scipio.
Padway had meanwhile taken a short lease on a tumble-down house on the Quirinal, and collected such equipment and personal effects as he thought he would need. He bought a short-sleeved tunic to wear over his pants, with the idea of making himself less conspicuous. Adults seldom paid much attention to him in this motley town, but he was tired of having small boys follow him through the streets. He did, however, insist on having ample pockets sewn into the tunic, despite the tailor’s shocked protests at ruining a good, stylish garment with this heathen innovation.
He whittled a mandrel out of wood and showed Hannibal Scipio how to bend the copper stripping around it. Hannibal claimed to know all that was necessary about soldering. But when Padway tried to bend the tubing into shape for his still, the seams popped open with the greatest of ease. After that Hannibal was a little less cocky—for a while.
Padway approached the great day of his first distillation with some apprehension. According to Tancredi’s ideas this was a new branch of the tree of time. But mightn’t the professor have been wrong, so that, as soon as Padway did anything drastic enough to affect all subsequent history, he would make the birth of Martin Padway in 1908 impossible, and disappear?