Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories

by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei

  Padway pulled the covers over his head.

  It was now April, 536. Sicily had fallen to General Belisarius in December. Padway had heard this weeks after it happened. Except for business errands, he had hardly been outside his house in four months in his desperate anxiety to get his press going. And except for his workers and his business contacts he knew practically nobody in Rome, though he had a speaking acquaintance with the librarians and two of Thomasus’ banker friends, Ebenezer the Jew and Vardan the Armenian.

  The day the press was finally ready he called his workers together and said: “I suppose you know that this is likely to be an important day for us. Fritharik will give each of you a small bottle of brandy to take home when you leave. And the first man who drops a hammer or anything on those little brass letters gets fired. I hope none of you do, because you’ve done a good job and I’m proud of you. That’s all.”

  “Well, well,” said Thomasus, “that’s splendid. I always knew you’d get your machine to run. Said so right from the start. What are you going to print? The Gothic History? That would flatter the pretorian prefect, no doubt.”

  “No. That would take months to run off, especially as my men are new at the job. I’m starting off with a little alphabet book. You know, A is for asinus (ass), B is for braccae (breeches), and so on.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. But, Martinus, can’t you let your men handle it, and take a rest? You look as if you haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months.”

  “I haven’t, to tell the truth. But I can’t leave; every time something goes wrong I have to be there to fix it. And I’ve got to find outlets for this first book. Schoolmasters and such people. I have to do everything myself, sooner or later. Also, I have an idea for another kind of publication.”

  “What? Don’t tell me you’re going to start another wild scheme—”

  “Now, now, don’t get excited, Thomasus. This is a weekly booklet of news.”

  “Listen, Martinus, don’t overreach yourself. You’ll get the scribes’ guild down on you. As it is, I wish you’d tell me more about yourself. You’re the town’s great mystery, you know. Everybody asks about you.”

  “You just tell them I’m the most uninteresting bore you ever met in your life.”

  There were only a little over a hundred free-lance scribes in Rome. Padway disarmed any hostility they might have had for him by the curious expedient of enlisting them as reporters. He made a standing offer of a couple of sesterces per story for acceptable accounts of news items.

  When he came to assemble the copy for his first issue, he found that some drastic censorship was necessary. For instance, one story read:

  Our depraved and licentious city governor, Count Honorius, was seen early Wednesday morning being pursued down Broad Way by a young woman with a butcher’s cleaver. Because this cowardly wretch was not encumbered by a decent minimum of clothing, he outdistanced his pursuer. This is the fourth time in a month that the wicked and corrupt count has created a scandal by his conduct with women. It is rumored that King Thiudahad will be petitioned to remove him by a committee of the outraged fathers of daughters whom he has dishonored. It is to be hoped that the next time the diabolical count is chased with a cleaver, his pursuer will catch him.

  Somebody, thought Padway, doesn’t like our illustrious count. He didn’t know Honorius, but whether the story was true or not, there was no free-press clause in the Italian constitutions between Padway and the city’s torture chambers.

  So the first eight-page issue said nothing about young women with cleavers. It had a lot of relatively innocuous news items, one short poem contributed by a scribe who fancied himself a second Ovid, an editorial by Padway in which he said briefly that he hoped the Romans would find his paper useful, and a short article—also by Padway—on the nature and habits of the elephant.

  Padway turned the crackling sheepskin pages of the proof copy, was proud of himself and his men, a pride not much diminished by the immediate discovery of a number of glaring typographical errors. One of these, in a story about a Roman mortally wounded by robbers on High Path a few nights back, had the unfortunate effect of turning a harmless word into an obscene one. Oh, well, with only two hundred and fifty copies he could have somebody go through them and correct the error with pen and ink.

  Still, he could not help being a little awed by the importance of Martin Padway in this world. But for pure good luck, it might have been he who had been fatally stabbed on High Path—and behold, no printing press, none of the inventions he might yet introduce, until the slow natural process of technical development prepared the way for them. Not that he deserved too much credit—Gutenberg ought to have some for the press, for instance.

  Padway called his paper Tempora Romae and offered it at ten sesterces, about the equivalent of fifty cents. He was surprised when not only did the first issue sell out, but Fritharik was busy for three days turning away from his door people who wanted copies that were not to be had.

  A few scribes dropped in every day with more news items. One of them, a plump cheerful-looking fellow about Padway’s age, handed in a story beginning:

  The blood of an innocent man has been sacrificed to the lusts of our vile monster of a city governor, Count Honorius.

  Reliable sources have revealed that Q. Aurelius Galba, crucified on a charge of murder last week, was the husband of a wife who had long been adulterously coveted by our villainous count. At Galba’s trial there was much comment among the spectators on the flimsiness of the evidence…

  ***

  “Hey!” said Padway. “Aren’t you the man who handed in that other story about Honorius and a cleaver?”

  “That’s right,” said the scribe. “I wondered why you didn’t publish it.”

  “How long do you think I’d be allowed to run my paper without interference if I did?”

  “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-product 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 dem
and 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 out of 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 banking—”

  “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 escapement. 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 half-hearted 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 tomorr
ow 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 Flaminian 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.”