Lest Darkness Fall (11 page)

            "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 hadn'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
constitution 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-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 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.