Lest Darkness Fall (12 page)

            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
halfhearted 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 tomorrow 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 Flamian 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."

            Dagalaif said: "Huh!
We'll let him up all right. A handful of Greeks won't get very far against the
united Gothic nation."

            "That's what the
Vandals thought," answered Padway dryly.

            "
Aiw
," said
Dagalaif. "But we won't make the mistakes the Vandals made."

            "I don't know, son,"
said Nevitta. "It seems to me we are making them already — or others just
as bad. This king of ours — all he's good for is hornswoggling his neighbors
out of land and writing Latin poetry. And digging around in libraries. It would
be better if we had an illiterate one, like Theoderik. Of course," he
added apologetically, "I admit I can read and write. My old man came from
Pannonia with Theoderik, and he was always talking about the sacred duty of the
Goths to preserve Roman civilization from savages like the Franks. He was
determined that I would have a Latin education if it killed me. I admit I've
found my education useful. But in the next few months it'll be more important
for our leader to know how to lead a charge than to say
amo-amas-amat
."

-

            PADWAY RETURNED TO ROME in
the best of humor. Nevitta was the first person, besides Thomasus the Syrian,
who had asked him to his house. And Padway, despite his somewhat cool exterior,
was a sociable fellow at heart. He was, in fact, so elated that he dismounted
and handed the reins of the borrowed horse to Hermann without noticing the
three tough-looking parties leaning against the new fence in front of the old
house on Long Street.

            When he headed for the gate,
the largest of the three, a black-bearded man, stepped in front of him. The man
was holding a sheet of paper — real paper, no doubt from the felter to whom
Padway had taught the art — in front of him and reading out loud to himself: — "medium
height, brown hair and eyes, large nose, short beard. Speaks with an
accent." He looked up sharply. "Are you Martinus Paduei?"

            "Sic. Quis est?"

            "You're under arrest.
Will you come along quietly?"

            "What? Who — What for
—"

            "Order of the municipal
prefect. Sorcery."

            "But... but —
Hey!
You can't —"

            "I said quietly."

            The other two men had moved
up on each side of Padway, and each took an arm and started to walk him along
the street. When he resisted, a short bludgeon appeared in the hand of one.
Padway looked around frantically. Hermann was already out of sight. Fritharik
was not to be seen; no doubt he was snoring as usual. Padway filled his lungs
to shout; the man on his right tightened his grip and raised the bludgeon
threateningly. Padway didn't shout.

            They marched him down the Argiletum
to the old jail below the Record Office on the Capitoline. He was still in
somewhat of a daze as the clerk demanded his name, age, and address. All he
could think of was that he had heard somewhere that you were entitled to
telephone your lawyer before being locked up. And that information seemed
hardly useful in the present circumstances.

            A small, snapping Italian
who had been lounging on a bench got up. "What's this, a sorcery case
involving a foreigner? Sounds like a national case to me."

            "Oh, no, it
isn't," said the clerk. "You national officers have authority in Rome
only in mixed Roman-Gothic cases. This man isn't a Goth; says he's an American,
whatever that is."

            "Yes, it is! Read your
regulations. The pretorian prefect's office has jurisdiction in all capital
cases involving foreigners. If you have a sorcery complaint, you turn it and
the prisoner over to us. Come on, now." The little man moved possessively
toward Padway. Padway did not like the use of the term "capital cases."

            The clerk said: "Don't
be a fool. Think you're going to drag him clear up to Ravenna for
interrogation? We've got a perfectly good torture chamber here."

            "I'm only doing my
duty," snapped the state policeman. He grabbed Padway's arm and started to
haul him toward the door. "Come along now, sorcerer. We'll show you some
real, up-to-date torture at Ravenna. These Roman cops don't know
anything."

            "
Christus
! Are
you crazy?" yelled the clerk. He jumped up and grabbed Padway's other arm;
so did the black-bearded man who had arrested him. The state policemen pulled
and so did the other two.

            "Hey!" yelled
Padway. But the assorted functionaries were too engrossed in their tug-of-war
to notice.

            The state policeman shouted
in a painfully penetrating voice: "Justinius, run and tell the adjutant
prefect that these municipal scum are trying to withhold a prisoner from
us!" A man ran out the door.