Lest Darkness Fall (14 page)

            Padway went to see Sextus
Dentatus, the froglike goldsmith who had changed his lire to sesterces.
Dentatus croaked directions to the establishment of one Florianus the Glazier.

            Florianus was a light-haired
man with a drooping mustache and a nasal accent. He came to the front of his
dark little shop smelling strongly of wine. Yes, he had owned his own glass
factory once, at Cologne. But business was bad for the Rhineland glass industry;
the uncertainties of life under the Franks, you know, my sir. He had gone
broke. Now he made a precarious living mending windows and such.

            Padway explained what he
wanted, paid a little on account, and left him. When he went back on the
promised day, Florianus flapped his hands as if he were trying to take off.
"A thousand pardons, my sir! It has been hard to buy up the necessary
cullet. But a few days more, I pray you. And if I could have a little more
money on account — times are hard — I am poor —"

            On Padway's third visit he
found Florianus drunk. When Padway shook him, all the man could do was mumble
Gallo-romance at him, which Padway did not understand. Padway went to the back
of the shop. There was no sign of tools or materials for making lenses.

            Padway left in disgust. The
nearest real glass industry was at Puteoli, near Naples. It would take forever
to get anything done by correspondence.

            Padway called in George
Menandrus and hired him as editor of the paper. For several days he talked himself
hoarse and Menandrus deaf on How to Be an Editor. Then, with a sinking heart,
he left for Naples. He experienced the famous canal-boat ride celebrated by
Horace, and found it quite as bad as alleged.

            Vesuvius was not smoking.
But Puteoli, on the little strip of level ground between the extinct crater of
Solfatara and the sea, was. Padway and Fritharik sought out the place
recommended by Dentatus. This was one of the largest and smokiest of the glass
factories.

            Padway asked the doorman for
Andronicus, the proprietor. Andronicus was a short, brawny man covered with
soot. When Padway told who he was, Andronicus cried: "Ah! Fine! Come,
gentlemen, I have just the thing."

            They followed him into his
private inferno. The vestibule, which was also the office, was lined with
shelves. The shelves were covered with glassware. Andronicus picked up a vase.
"Ah! Look! Such clearness! You couldn't get whiter glass from Alexandria!
Only two solidi!"

            Padway said: "I didn't
come for a vase, my dear sir. I want —"

            "No vase? No vase? Ah!
Here is the thing." He picked up another vase. "Look! The shape! Such
purity of line! It reminds you —"

            "I said I didn't want
to buy a vase! I want —"

            "It reminds you of a
beautiful woman! Of love!" Andronicus kissed his fingertips.

            "I want some small
pieces of glass, made specially —"

            "Beads? Of course,
gentlemen. Look." The glass manufacturer scooped up a handful of beads.
"Look at the color! Emerald, turquoise, everything!" He picked up
another bunch. "See here, the faces of the twelve apostles, one on each
bead —"

            "Not beads —"

            "A beaker, then! Here
is one. Look, it has the Holy Family in high relief —"

            "Jesus!" yelled
Padway. "Will you listen?"

            When Andronicus let Padway
explain what he wanted, the Neapolitan said: "Of course! Fine! I've seen
ornaments shaped like that. I'll rough them out tonight, and have them ready
day after tomorrow —"

            "That won't quite
do," said Padway. "These have to have an exactly spherical surface.
You grind a concave against a convex with — what's your word for
emery
?
The stuff you use in rough grinding? Some
naxium
to true them off
..."

            Padway and Fritharik went on
to Naples and put up at the house of Thomasus' cousin, Antiochus the Shipper.
Their welcome was less than cordial. It transpired that Antiochus was
fanatically Orthodox. He loathed his cousin's Nestorianism. His pointed remarks
about heretics made his guests so uncomfortable that they moved out on the
third day. They took lodgings at an inn whose lack of sanitation distressed
Padway's cleanly soul.

            Each morning they rode out
to Puteoli to see how the lenses were coming. Andronicus invariably tried to
sell them a ton of glass junk.

            When they left for Rome,
Padway had a dozen lenses, half plano-convex and half plano-concave. He was
skeptical about the possibility of making a telescope by holding a pair of
lenses in fine with his eye and judging the distances. It worked, though.

            The most practical
combination proved to be a concave lens for the eyepiece with a convex one
about thirty inches in front of it. The glass had bubbles, and the image was
somewhat distorted. But Padway's telescope, crude as it was, would make a
two-to-one difference in the number of signal towers required.

            About then, the paper ran
its first advertisement. Thomasus had had to turn the screw on one of his
debtors to make him buy space. The ad read:

-

DO YOU WANT A
GLAMOROUS

FUNERAL?

-

Go
to meet your Maker in style! With one of our funerals to look forward to, you
will hardly mind dying!

Don't
imperil your chances of salvation with a bungled burial!

Our
experts have handled some of the noblest corpses in Rome.

Arrangements
made with the priesthood of any sect.

Special
rates for heretics. Appropriately doleful music furnished at slight extra cost.

John the
Egyptian, Genteel Undertaker

Near the Viminal
Gate

-

            JUNIANUS, CONSTRUCTION
MANAGER of the Roman Telegraph Co., panted into Padway's office. He said:
"Work" — stopped to get his breath, and started again — "work on
the third tower on the Naples line was stopped this morning by a squad of
soldiers from the Rome garrison. I asked them what the devil was up, and they
said they didn't know; they just had orders to stop construction. What, most
excellent boss, are you going to do about it?"

            So the Goths objected? That
meant seeing their higher-ups.

            Padway winced at the idea of
getting involved any further in politics. He sighed. "I'll see Liuderis, I
suppose."

            The commander of the Rome
garrison was a big, portly Goth with the bushiest white whiskers Padway had
ever seen. His Latin was fair. But now and then he cocked a blue eye at the
ceiling and moved his lips silently, as if praying; actually he was running
through a declension or a conjugation for the right ending.

            He said: "My good
Martinus, there is a war on. You start erecting these ... ah ... mysterious
towers without asking our permission. Some of your backers are patricians ...
ah ... notorious for their pro-Greek sentiments. What are we to think? You
should consider yourself lucky to have escaped arrest."

            Padway protested: "I
was hoping the army would find them useful for transmitting military
information."

            Liuderis shrugged. "I
am merely a simple soldier doing my duty. I do not understand these ... ah ...
devices. Perhaps they will work as you say. But I could not take the ... ah ...
responsibility for permitting them."

            "Then you won't
withdraw your order?"

            "No. If you want
permission, you will have to see the king."

            "But, my dear sir, I
can't spare the time to go running up to Ravenna —"

            Another shrug. "All one
to me, my good Martinus. I know my duty."

            Padway tried guile.
"You certainly do, it seems. If I were the king, I couldn't ask for a more
faithful soldier."

            "You flatterer!"
But Liuderis grinned, pleased. "I regret that I cannot grant your little
request."

            "What's the latest war
news?"

            Liuderis frowned. "Not
very — But then I should be careful what I say. You are a more dangerous person
than you look, I am sure."

            "You can trust me. I'm
pro-Gothic."

            "Yes?" Liuderis
was silent while the wheels turned. Then: "What is your religion?"

            Padway was expecting that.
"Congregationalist. That's the nearest thing to Arianism we have in my
country."

            "Ah, then perhaps you
are as you say. The news is not good, what little there is. There is nobody in
Bruttium but a small force under the king's son-in-law, Evermuth. And our good
king —" He shrugged again, this time hopelessly.

            "Now look here, most
excellent Liuderis, won't you withdraw that order? I'll write Thiudahad at once
asking his permission."

            "No, my good Martinus,
I cannot. You get the permission first. And you had better go in person, if you
want action."

            Thus it came about that
Padway found himself, quite against his wishes, trotting an elderly saddle
horse across the Apennines toward the Adriatic. Fritharik had been delighted at
first to get any kind of a horse between his knees. Before they had gone very
far his tone changed.

            "Boss," he
grumbled, "I'm not an educated man. But I know horseflesh. I always
claimed that a, good horse was a good investment." He added darkly:
"If we are attacked by brigands, we'll have no chance with those poor old
wrecks. Not that I fear death, or brigands either. But it would be sad for a
Vandal knight to end in a nameless grave in one of these lonely valleys. When I
was a noble in Africa —"

            "We aren't running a
racing stable," snapped Padway. At Fritharik's hurt look he was sorry he
had spoken sharply. "Never mind, old man, we'll be able to afford good
horses some day. Only right now I feel as if I had a pantsful of ants."

            Brazilian army ants, he
added to himself. He had done almost no riding since his arrival in old Rome,
and not a great deal in his former life. By the time they reached Spoleto he
felt as if he could neither sit nor stand, but would have to spend the rest of
his life in a sort of semi-squat, like a rheumatic chimpanzee.

            They approached Ravenna at
dusk on the fourth day. The City in the Mist sat dimly astride the thirty-mile
causeway that divided the Adriatic from the vast marshy lagoons to the west. A
faint sunbeam lighted the gilded church domes. The church bells bonged, and the
frogs in the lagoons fell silent; then resumed their croaking. Padway thought
that anyone who visited this strange city would always be haunted by the bong
of the bells, the croak of the frogs, and the thin, merciless song of the
mosquitoes.

-

            Padway decided that the
chief usher, like Poo-Bah, had been born sneering. "My good man,"
said this being, "I couldn't possibly give you an audience with our lord
king for three weeks at least."

            Three weeks! In that time
half of Padway's assorted machines would have broken down, and his men would be
running in useless circles trying to fix them. Menandrus, who was inclined to
be reckless with money, especially other people's, would have run the paper
into bankruptcy. This impasse required thought. Padway straightened his aching
legs and started to leave.

            The Italian immediately lost
some of his top-loftiness. "But," he cried in honest amazement,
"didn't you bring any
money
?"