Lest Darkness Fall (4 page)

            He got up and washed with
the soap he had bought the previous evening. He had been pleasantly surprised
to find that soap had already been invented. But when he broke a piece off the
cake, which resembled a slightly decayed pumpkin pie, he found that the inside
was soft and gooey because of incomplete potash-soda metathesis. Moreover, the
soap was so alkaline that he thought he might as well have cleaned his hands
and face by sandpapering.

            Then he made a determined
effort to shave with olive oil and a sixth-century razor. The process was so
painful that he wondered if it mightn't be better to let nature take its
course.

            He was in a tight fix, he
knew. His money would last about a week — with care, perhaps a little longer.

            If a man knew he was going
to be whisked back into the past, he would load himself down with all sorts of
useful junk in preparation, an encyclopedia, texts on metallurgy, mathematics,
and medicine, a slide rule, and so forth. And a gun, with plenty of ammunition.

            But Padway had no gun, no
encyclopedia, nothing but what an ordinary twentieth-century man carries in his
pockets. Oh, a little more, because he'd been traveling at the time: such
useful things as the traveler's checks, a hopelessly anachronistic street map,
and his passport.

            And he had his wits. He'd
need them.

            The problem was to find a
way of using his twentieth-century knowledge that would support him without
getting him into trouble. You couldn't, for example, set out to build an
automobile. It would take several lifetimes to collect the necessary materials,
and several more to learn how to handle them and to worry them into the proper
form. Not to mention the question of fuel.

            The air was fairly warm, and
he thought of leaving his hat and vest in the room. But the door had the
simplest kind of ward lock, with a bronze key big enough to be presented by a
mayor to a visiting dignitary. Padway was sure he could pick the lock with a
knife blade. So he took all his clothes along.

            He went back to the same
restaurant for breakfast. The place had a sign over the counter reading,
"RELIGIOUS ARGUMENTS NOT ALLOWED." Padway asked the proprietor how to
get to the address of Thomasus the Syrian.

            The man said: "You follow
along Long Street down to the Arch of Constantine, and then New Street to the
Julian Basilica, and then you turn left onto Tuscan Street, and —" and so
on.

            Padway made him repeat it
twice. Even so, it took most of the morning to find his objective. His walk
took him past the Forum area, full of temples, most of whose columns had been
removed for use in the five big and thirty-odd little churches scattered around
the city. The temples looked pathetic, like a Park Avenue doorman bereft of his
pants.

            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."