De Camp, L Sprague - Lest Darkness Fall

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Lest Darkness Fall
By L.Sprague de Camp
Ebook version 1.0.1
To CATHERINE
LEST DARKNESS FALL
A PYRAMID BOOK
Published by arrangement with the Author
PRINTING HISTORY
Henry Holt and Company edition published 1941 Prime Press edition published 1949 Pyramid edition published February 1963 Second printing
August 1969
This story in a shorter version, appeared in the December, 1939 issue of Unknown.
Copyright, 1939, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright, 1941, by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Copyright, 1949, by L. Sprague de
Camp
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc. 444 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022, U.S.A.
CHAPTER I
TANCHEDI TOOK HIS HANDS off the wheel again and waved them. "-so I envy you, Dr. Padway. Here
in Rome we have still some work to do. But pah! It is all filling in little gaps. Nothing big, nothing
new. And restoration work. Building contractor's work. Again, pah!"
"Professor Tancredi," said Martin Padway patiently, "as I said, I am not a doctor. I hope to be one
soon, if I can get a thesis out of this Lebanon dig." Being himself the most cautious of drivers, his
knuckles were white from gripping the side of the little Fiat, and his right foot ached from trying to
shove it through the floor boards.
Tancredi snatched the wheel in time to avoid a lordly Isotta by the thickness of a razor blade. The
Isotta went its way thinking dark thoughts. "Oh, what is the difference? Here everybody is a doc-
tor, whether he is or not, if you understand me. And such a smart young man as you-What was I
talking about?"
"That depends." Padway closed his eyes as a pedestrian just escaped destruction. "You were
talking about Etruscan inscriptions, and then about the nature of time, and then about Roman
archaeol-"
"Ah, yes, the nature of time. This is just a silly idea of mine, you understand. I was saying all
these people who just disappear, they have slipped back down the suitcase."
"The what?"
"The trunk, I mean. The trunk of the tree of time. When they stop slipping, they are back in some
former time. But as soon as they do anything, they change all subsequent history."
"Sounds like a paradox," said Padway.
"No-o. The trunk continues to exist. But a new branch starts out where they come to rest. It has
to, otherwise we would all disappear, because history would have changed and our parents might
not have met."
"That's a thought," said Padway. "It's bad enough knowing the sun might become a nova, but if
we're also likely to vanish because somebody has gone back to the twelfth century and stirred
things up-"
"No. That has never happened. We have never vanished, that is. You see, doc-tor? We continue
to exist, but another history has been started. Perhaps there are many such, all existing
somewhere. Maybe, they aren't much different from ours. Maybe the man comes to rest in the
middle of the ocean. So what? The fish eat him, and things go on as before. Or they think he is
mad, and shut him up or kill him. Again, not much difference. But suppose he becomes a king or
a duce? What then?
"Presto, we have a new history! History is a four-dimensional web. It is a tough web. But it has
weak points. The junction places - the focal points, one might say-are weak. The back-slipping, if
it happens, would happen at these places."
"What do you mean by focal points?" asked Padway. It sounded to him like polysyllabic
nonsense.
"Oh, places like Rome, where the world-lines of many famous events intersect. Or Istanbul. Or
Babylon. You remember that archaeologist, Skrzetuski, who disappeared at Babylon in 1936?"
"I thought he was killed by some Arab holdup men."
"Ah. They never found his body! Now, Rome may soon again be the intersection point of great
events. That means the web is weakening again here."
"I hope they don't bomb the Forum," said Padway.
"Oh, nothing like that. Our Duce is much too clever to get us into a real war. But let us not talk
politics. The web, as I say, is tough. If a man did slip back, it would take a terrible lot of work to
distort it. Like a fly in a spider web that fills a room."
"Pleasant thought," said Padway.
"Is it not, though?" Tancredi turned to grin at him, then trod frantically on the brake. The Italian
leaned out and showered a pedestrian with curses.
He turned back to Padway. "Are you coming to my house for dinner tomorrow?"
"Wh-what? Why yes, I'll be glad to. I'm sailing next-"
"Si, si. I will show you the equations I have worked out. Energy must be conserved, even in
changing one's time. But nothing of this to my colleagues, please. You understand." The sallow
little man took his hands off the wheel to wag both forefingers at Padway. "It is a harmless
eccentricity. But one's professional reputation must not suffer."
"Eek!" said Padway.
Tancredi jammed on the brake and skidded to a stop behind a truck halted at the intersection of
the Via del Mare and the Piazza Aracoeli. "What was I talking about?" he asked.
"Harmless eccentricities," said Padway. He felt like adding that Professor Tancredi's driving
ranked among his less harmless ones. But the man had been very kind to him.
"Ah, yes. Things get out, and people talk. Archaeologists talk even worse than most people. Are
you married?"
"What?" Padway felt he should have gotten used to this sort of thing by now. He hadn't. "Why-
yes."
"Good. Bring your wife along." It was a surprising invitation for an Italian to issue.
"She's back in Chicago." Padway didn't feel like explaining that he and his wife had been
separated for over a year.
He could see, now, that it hadn't been entirely Betty's fault. To a person of her background and
tastes he must have seemed pretty impossible: a man who danced badly, refused to play bridge,
and whose idea of fun was to get a few similar creatures in for an evening of heavy talk on the
future of capitalism and the love life of the bullfrog. At first she had been thrilled by the idea of
traveling in far places, but one taste of living in a tent and watching her husband mutter over the
inscriptions on potsherds had cured that.
And he wasn't much to look at-rather small, with outsize nose and ears and a diffident manner. At
college they had called him Mouse Padway. Oh, well, a man in exploratory work was a fool to
marry, anyway. Just look at the divorce rate among them-anthropologists, paleontologists, and
such-
"Could you drop me at the Pantheon?" he asked. "I've never examined it closely, and it's just a
couple of blocks to my hotel."
"Yes, doc-tor, though I am afraid you will get wet. It looks like rain, does it not?"
"That's all right. This coat will shed water."
Tancredi shrugged. They bucketed down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele and screeched around the
corner into the Via Cestari. Padway got out at the Piazza del Pantheon, and Tancredi departed,
waving both arms and shouting: "Tomorrow at eight, then? Si, fine."
Padway looked at the building for a few minutes. He had always thought it a very ugly one, with
the Corinthian front stuck on the brick rotunda. Of course that great concrete dome had taken
some engineering, considering when it had been erected. Then he had to jump to avoid being
spattered as a man in a Fascist uniform tore by on a motorcycle.
Padway walked over to the portico, round which clustered men engaged in the national sport of
loitering. One of the things that he liked about Italy was that here he was, by comparison, a fairly
tall man. Thunder rumbled behind him, and a raindrop struck his hand. He began to take long
steps. Even if his trench coat would shed water, he didn't want his new fifty-lire Borsalino soaked.
He liked that hat.
His reflections were cut off in their prime by the grand-daddy of all lightning flashes, which struck
the Piazza to his right. The pavement dropped out from under him like a trapdoor.
His feet seemed to be dangling over nothing. He could not see anything for the reddish-purple
after-images in his retinas. The thunder rolled on and on.
It was a most disconcerting feeling, hanging in the midst of nothing. There was no uprush of air
as in falling down a shaft. He felt somewhat as Alice must have felt on her leisurely fall down the
rabbit-hole, except that his senses gave him no clear information as to what was happening. He
could not even guess how fast it was happening.
Then something hard smacked his soles. He almost fell. The impact was about as strong as that
resulting from a two-foot fall. As he staggered by he hit his shin on something. He said "Ouch!"
His retinas cleared. He was standing in the depression caused by the drop of a roughly circular
piece of pavement.
The rain was coming down hard, now. He climbed out of the pit and ran under the portico of the
Pantheon. It was so dark that the lights in the building ought to have been switched on. They
were not.
Padway saw something curious: the red brick of the rotunda was covered by slabs of marble
facing. That, he thought, was one of the restoration jobs that Tancredi had been complaining
about.
Padway's eyes glided indifferently over the nearest of the loafers. They switched back again
sharply. The man, instead of coat and pants, was wearing a dirty white woolen tunic.
It was odd. But if the man wanted to wear such a getup, it was none of Padway's business.
The gloom was brightening a little. Now Padway's eyes began to dance from person to person.
They were all wearing tunics. Some had come under the portico to get out of the rain. These also
wore tunics, sometimes with poncho-like cloaks over them.
A few of them stared at Padway without much curiosity. He and they were still staring when the
shower let up a few minutes later. Padway knew fear.
The tunics alone would not have frightened him. A single incongruous fact might have a rational if
recondite explanation. But everywhere he looked more of these facts crowded in on him. He
could not concisely notice them all at once. The concrete sidewalk had been replaced by slabs of
slate. There were still buildings around the Piazza, but they were not the same buildings. Over
the lower ones Padway could see that the Senate House and the Ministry of Communications-
both fairly conspicuous objects-were missing. The sounds were different. The honk of taxi horns
was absent. There were no taxis to honk. Instead, two oxcarts creaked slowly and shrilly down
the Via della Minerva.
Padway sniffed. The garlic-and-gasoline aroma of modern Rome had been replaced by a
barnyard-and-backhouse symphony wherein the smell of horse was the strongest and also the
most mentionable motif. Another ingredient was incense, wafting from the door of the Pantheon.
The sun came out. Padway stepped out into it. Yes, the portico still bore the inscription crediting
the construction of the building to M. Agrippa.
Glancing around to see that he was not watched, Padway stepped up to one of the pillars and
slammed his fist into it. It hurt.
"Hell," said Padway, looking at his bruised knuckles.
He thought, I'm not asleep. All this is too solid and consistent for a dream. There's nothing
fantastic about the early afternoon sunshine and the beggars around the Piazza.
But if he was not asleep, what? He might be crazy . . . But that was a hypothesis difficult to build
a sensible course of action on.
There was Tancredi's theory about slipping back in time. Had he slipped back, or had something
happened to him to make him imagine he had? The time-travel idea did not appeal to Padway. It
sounded metaphysical, and he was a hardened empiricist.
There was the possibility of amnesia. Suppose that flash of lightning had actually hit him and
suppressed his memory up to that time; then suppose something had happened to jar it loose
again .. . He would have a gap in his memory between the first lightning flash and his arrival in
this archaistic copy of old Rome. All sorts of things might have happened in the meantime. He
might have blundered into a movie set. Mussolini, having long secretly believed himself a
reincarnation of Julius Caesar, might have decided to make his people adopt classical Roman
costume.
It was an attractive theory. But the fact that he was wearing exactly the same clothes, and had
the same things in his pockets as before the flash, exploded it.
He listened to the chatter of a couple of the loafers. Padway spoke fair, if pedantic, Italian. He
could not quite get the substance of these men's talk. In the rush of syllables he would often
catch a familiar sound-group, but never enough at one time. Their speech had the tantalizing
pseudo-familiarity of Plattdeutsch to an English-speaking person.
He thought of Latin. At once the loafers' speech became more familiar. They were not speaking
Classical Latin. But Padway found that if he took one of their sentences and matched it first
against Italian and then against Latin, he could understand most of it.
He decided that they were speaking a late form of Vulgar Latin, rather more than halfway from the
language of Cicero to that of Dante. He had never even tried to speak this hybrid. But by dredging
his memory for his knowledge of sound changes, he could make a stab at it: Omnia Gallia e
devisa en parte trei, quaro una encolont Belge, alia . . .
The two loafers had observed his eavesdropping. They frowned, lowered their voices, and moved
off.
No, the hypothesis of delirium might be a tough one, but it offered fewer difficulties than that of
the time-slip.
If he was imaging things, was he really standing in front of the Pantheon and imaging that the
people were dressed and speaking in the manner of the period 300-900 A.D.? Or was he lying in
a hospital bed recovering from near-electrocution and imaging he was in front of the Pantheon?
In the former case he ought to find a policeman and have himself taken to a hospital. In the latter
this would be waste motion. For safety's sake he had better assume the former.
No doubt one of these people was really a policeman complete with shiny hat. What did he mean
"really"? Let Bertrand Russell and Alfred Korzybski worry about that. How to find ...
A beggar had been whining at him for a couple of minutes. Padway gave such a perfect
impression of deafness that the ragged little hunchback moved off. Now another man was
speaking to him. On his left palm the man held a string of beads with a cross, all in a heap.
Between his right thumb and forefinger he held the clasp of the string. He raised his right hand
until the whole string hung from it, then lowered it back onto his left palm, then raised it again,
talking all the while.
Whenever and however all this was, that gesture assured Padway that he was still in Italy.
Padway asked in Italian: "Could you tell me where I could find a policeman?"
The man stopped his sales talk, shrugged, and replied, "Non compr' endo."
"Hey!" said Padway. The man paused. With great concentration Padway translated his request
into what he hoped was Vulgar Latin.
The man thought, and said he didn't know. Padway started to turn elsewhere. But the seller of
beads called to another hawker: "Marco! The gentleman wants to find a police agent."
"The gentleman is brave. He is also crazy," replied Marco. The bead-seller laughed. So did
several people. Padway grinned a little; the people were human if not very helpful. He said:
"Please, I-really-want-to-know."
The second hawker, who had a tray full of brass knick-knacks tied around his neck, shrugged. He
rattled off a paragraph that Padway could not follow.
Padway slowly asked the bead-seller: "What did he say?" "He said he didn't know," replied the
bead-seller. "I don't know either."
Padway started to walk off. The bead-seller called after him: "Mister." "Yes?"
"Did you mean an agent of the municipal prefect?" "Yes."
"Marco, where can the gentleman find an agent of the municipal prefect?"
"I don't know," said Marco.
The bead-seller shrugged. "Sorry, I don't know either." If this were twentieth-century Rome, there
would be no difficulty about finding a cop. And not even Benny the Moose could make a whole
city change its language. So he must be in (a) a movie set, (b) ancient Rome (the Tancredi
hypothesis), or (c) a figment of his imagination.
He started walking. Talking was too much of a strain. It was not long before any lingering hopes
about a movie set were dashed by the discovery that this alleged ancient city stretched for miles
in all directions, and that its street plan was quite different from that of modern Rome. Padway
found his little pocket map nearly useless.
The signs on the shops were in intelligible Classical Latin. The spelling had remained as in
Caesar's time, if the pronunciation had not.
The streets were narrow, and for the most part not very crowded. The town had a drowsy,
shabby-genteel, run-down personality, like that of Philadelphia.
At one relatively busy intersection Padway watched a man on a horse direct traffic. He would hold
up a hand to stop an oxcart, and beckon a sedan chair across. The man wore a gaudily striped
shirt and leather trousers. He looked like a central or northern European rather than an Italian.
Padway leaned against a wall, listening. A man would say a sentence just too fast for him to
catch. It was like having your hook nibbled but never taken. By terrific concentration, Padway
forced himself to think in Latin. He mixed his cases and numbers, but as long as he confined
himself to simple sentences he did not have too much trouble with vocabulary.
A couple of small boys were watching him. When he looked at them they giggled and raced off.
It reminded Padway of those United States Government projects for the restoration of Colonial
towns, like Williams-burg. But this looked like the real thing. No restoration included all the dirt
and disease, the insults and altercations, that Padway had seen and heard in an hour's walk.
Only two hypotheses remained: delirium and time-slip. Delirium now seemed the less probable.
He would act on the assumption that things were in fact what they seemed.
He couldn't stand there indefinitely. He'd have to ask questions and get himself oriented. The idea
gave him gooseflesh. He had a phobia about accosting strangers. Twice he opened his mouth,
but his glottis closed up tight with stage fright.
Come on, Padway, get a grip on yourself. "I beg your pardon, but could you tell me the date?
The man addressed, a mild-looking person with a loaf of bread under his arm, stopped and
looked blank. "Qui' e'? What is it?"
"I said, could you tell me the date?"
The man frowned. Was he going to be nasty? But all he said was, "Non compr' endo." Padway
tried again, speaking very slowly. The man repeated that he did not understand.
Padway fumbled for his date-book and pencil. He wrote his request on a page of the date-book,
and held the thing up.
The man peered at it, moving his lips. His face cleared. "Oh, you want to know the date?" said he.
"Sic, the date."
The man rattled a long sentence at him. It might as well have been in Trabresh. Padway waved
his hands despairingly, crying, "Lento!"
The man backed up and started over. "I said I understood you, and I thought it was October 9th,
but I wasn't sure because I couldn't remember whether my mother's wedding anniversary came
three days ago or four."
"What year?"
"What year?"
"Sic, what year?"
"Twelve eighty-eight Anno Urbis Conditae."
It was Padway's turn to be puzzled. "Please, what is that in the Christian era?"
"You mean, how many years since the birth of Christ?"
"Hoc ille-that's right."
"Well, now-I don't know; five hundred and something. Better ask a priest, stranger."
"I will," said Padway. "Thank you."
"It's nothing," said the man, and went about his business. Padway's knees were weak, though the
man hadn't bitten him, and had answered his question in a civil enough manner.
But it sounded as though Padway, who was a peaceable man, had not picked a very peaceable
period.
What was he to do? Well, what would any sensible man do under the circumstances? He'd have
to find a place to sleep and a method of making a living. He was a little startled when he realized
how quickly he had accepted the Tancredi theory as a working hypothesis.
He strolled up an alley to be out of sight and began going through his pockets. The roll of Italian
bank notes would be about as useful as a broken five-cent mousetrap. No, even less; you might
be able to fix a mousetrap. A book of American Express traveler's checks, a Roman street-car
transfer, an Illinois driver's license, a leather case full of keys-all ditto. His pen, pencil, and lighter
would be useful as long as ink, leads, and lighter fuel held out. His pocket knife and his watch
would undoubtedly fetch good prices, but he wanted to hang onto them as long as he could.
He counted the fistful of small change. There were just twenty coins, beginning with four ten-lire
silver cartwheels. They added up to forty-nine lire, eight centesimi, or about five dollars. The silver
and bronze should be exchangeable. As for the nickel fifty-centesimo and twenty-centesimo
pieces, he'd have to see. He started walking again.
He stopped before an establishment that advertised itself as that of S. Dentatus, goldsmith and
money changer. He took a deep breath and went in.
S. Dentatus had a face rather like that of a frog. Padway laid out his change and said: "I ... I
should like to change this into local money, please." As usual he had to repeat the sentence to
make himself understood.
S. Dentatus blinked at the coins. He picked them up, one by one, and scratched at them a little
with a pointed instrument. "Where do these-you-come from?" he finally croaked.
"America."
"Never heard of it."
"It is a long way off."
"Hm-m-m. What are these made of? Tin?" The money changer indicated the four nickel coins.
"Nickel."
"What's that? Some funny metal they have in your country?"
"Hoc ille."
"What's it worth?"
Padway thought for a second of trying to put a fantastically high value on the coins. While he was
working up his courage, S. Dentatus interrupted his thoughts:
"It doesn't matter, because I wouldn't touch the stuff. There wouldn't be any market for it. But
these other pieces-let's see-" He got out a balance and weighed the bronze coins,
and then the silver coins. He pushed counters up and down the grooves of a little bronze abacus,
and said: "They're worth just under one solidus. Give you a solidus even for them." Padway didn't
answer immediately. Eventually he'd have to take what was offered, as he hated the idea of
bargaining and didn't know the values of the current money. But to save his face he had to
appear to consider the offer carefully.
A man stepped up to the counter beside him. He was a heavy, ruddy man with a flaring brown
mustache and his hair in a long or Ginger Rogers bob. He wore a linen blouse and long leather
pants. He grinned at Padway, and reeled off: "Ho, frijond, habais faurthei! Alai skalljans sind
waidedjans." Oh, Lord, another language! Padway answered: "I ... I am sorry, but I do not
understand."
The man's face fell a little; he dropped into Latin: "Sorry, thought you were from the Chersonese,
from your clothes. I couldn't stand around and watch a fellow Goth swindled without saying
anything, ha, ha!"
The Goth's loud, explosive laugh made Padway jump a little; he hoped nobody noticed. "I
appreciate that. What is this stuff worth?"
"What has he offered you?" Padway told him. "Well," said the man, "even I can see that you're
being hornswoggled. You give him a fair rate, Sextus, or I'll make you eat your own stock. That
would be funny, ha, ha!"
S. Dentatus sighed resignedly. "Oh, very well, a solidus and a half. How am I to live, with you
fellows interfering with legitimate business all the time? That would be, at the current rate of
exchange, one solidus thirty-one sesterces." "What is this about a rate of exchange?" asked
Padway. The Goth answered: "The gold-silver rate. Gold has been going down the last few
months."
Padway said: "I think I will take it all in silver." While Dentatus sourly counted out ninety-three
sesterces, the Goth asked: "Where do you come from? Somewhere up in the Hunnish country?"
"No," said Padway, "a place farther than that, called America. You have never heard of it, have
you?"
"No. Well now, that's interesting. I'm glad I met you, young fellow. It'll give me something to tell
the wife about. She thinks I head for the nearest brothel every time I come to town, ha, ha!" He
fumbled in his handbag and brought out a large gold ring and an unfaceted gem. "Sextus, this
thing came out of its setting again. Fix it up, will you? And no substitutions, mind."
As they went out the Goth spoke to Padway in a lowered voice. "The real reason I'm glad to come
to town is that somebody put a curse on my house."
"A curse? What kind of a curse?"
The Goth nodded solemnly. "A shortness-of-breath curse. When I'm home I can't breathe. I go
around like this-" He gasped asthmatically. "But as soon as I get away from home I'm all right.
And I think I know who did it."
"Who?"
"I foreclosed a couple of mortgages last year. I can't prove anything against the former owner's,
but-" He winked ponderously at Padway.
"Tell me," said Padway, "do you keep animals in your house?"
"Couple of dogs. There's the stock, of course, but we don't let them in the house. Though a shote
got in yesterday and ran away with one of my shoes. Had to chase it all over the damned farm. I
must have been a sight, ha, ha!"
"Well," said Padway, "try keeping the dogs outside all the time and having your place well swept
every day. That might stop your-uh-wheezing."
"Now, that's interesting. You really think it would?"
"I do not know. Some people get the shortness of breath from dog hairs. Try it for a couple of
months and see."
"I still think it's a curse, young fellow, but I'll try your scheme. I've tried everything from a couple of
Greek physicians to one of St. Ignatius' teeth, and none of them works." He hesitated. 'If you don't
mind, what were you in your own country?"
Padway thought quickly, then remembered the few acres he owned in down-state Illinois. "I had a
farm," he said.
"That's fine," roared the Goth, clapping Padway on the back with staggering force. "I'm a friendly
soul but I don't want to get mixed up with people too far above or below my own class, ha, ha! My
name is Nevitta; Nevitta Gummund's son. If you're passing up the Flaminian Way sometime, drop
in. My place is about eight miles north of here."
"Thanks. My name is Martin Padway. Where would be a good place to rent a room?"
"That depends. If I didn't want to spend too much money I'd pick a place farther down the river.
Plenty of boarding houses over toward the Viminal Hill. Say, I'm in no hurry; I'll help you look." He
whistled sharply and called: "Hermann, hiri her!"
Hermann, who was dressed much like his master, got up off the curb and trotted down the street
leading two horses, his leather pants making a distinctive flop-flop as he ran.
Nevitta set out at brisk walk, Hermann leading the horses behind. Nevitta said: "What did you say
your name was?"
"Martin Padway-Martinus is good enough." (Padway properly pronounced it Marteeno.)
Padway did not want to impose on Nevitta's good nature, but he wanted the most useful
information he could get. He thought a minute, then asked: "Could you give me the names of a
few people in Rome, lawyers and physicians and such, to go to when I need them?"
"Sure. If you want a lawyer specializing in cases involving foreigners, Valerius Mummius is your
man. His office is alongside of the AEmliian Basilica. For a physician try my friend Leo Vekkos.
He's a good fellow as Greeks go. But personally I think the relic of a good Arian saint like Asterius
is as effective as all their herbs and potations."
"It probably is at that," said Padway. He wrote the names and addresses in his date-book. "How
about a banker?"
"I don't have much truck with them; hate the idea of getting in debt. But if you want the name of
one, there's Thomasus the Syrian, near the AEmilian Bridge. Keep your eyes open if you deal
with him."
"Why, isn't he honest?"
"Thomasus? Sure he's honest. You just have to watch him, that's all. Here, this looks like a place
you could stay." Nevitta pounded on the door, which was opened by a frowsy superintendent.
This man had a room, yes. It was small and ill-lighted. It smelled. But then so did all of Rome. The
superintendent wanted seven sesterces a day.
"Offer him half," said Nevitta to Padway in a stage whisper.
Padway did. The superintendent acted as bored by the ensuing haggling as Padway was.
Padway got the room for five sesterces.
Nevitta squeezed Padway's hand in his large red paw. "Don't forget, Martmus, come see me
some time. I always like to hear a man who speaks Latin with a worse accent than mine, ha, ha!"
He and Hermann mounted and trotted off.
Padway hated to see them go. But Nevitta had his own business to tend to. Padway watched the
stocky figure round a corner, then entered the gloomy, creaking boarding house.
CHAPTER II
PADWAY AWOKE EARLY with a bad taste in his mouth, and a stomach that seemed to have some
grasshopper in its ancestry. Perhaps that was the dinner he'd eaten-not bad, but unfamiliar-
consisting mainly of stew smothered in leeks.
The restaurateur must have wondered when Padway made plucking motions at the table top; he
was unthinkingly trying to pick up a knife and fork that weren't there.
One might very well sleep badly the first night on a bed consisting merely of a straw-stuffed
mattress. And it had cost him an extra sesterce a day, too. An itch made him pull up his
undershirt. Sure enough, a row of red spots on his midriff showed that he had not, after all, slept
alone.
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? Ail 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."
"Did You hear that, God? He wants me to make him a present of my business! Go away,
Martinus. You're wasting your time here. I couldn't possibly come down any more. Twelve and a
half. That's absolutely the bottom."
"Ten."
"Don't you understand Latin? I said that was the bottom. Good day; I'm glad to have met you."
When Padway got up, the banker sucked his breath through his teeth as though he had been
wounded unto death, and rasped: "Eleven."
"Ten and a half."
"Would you mind showing your teeth? My word, they are human after all. I thought maybe they
were shark's teeth. Oh, very well. This sentimental generosity of mine will be my ruin yet. And
now let's see that accounting system of yours."
An hour later three chagrined clerks sat in a row and regarded Padway with expressions of,
respectively, wonderment, apprehension, and active hatred. Padway had just finished doing a
simple piece of long division with Arabic numerals at the time when the three clerks, using Roman
numerals, had barely gotten started on the interminable trial-and-error process that their system
required. Padway translated his answers back into Roman, wrote it out on his tablet, and handed
the tablet to Thomasus.
"There you are," he said. "Have one of the boys check it by multiplying the divisor by the quotient.
You might as well call them off their job; they'll be at it all night."
The middle-aged clerk, the one with the hostile expression, copied down the figures and began
checking grimly. When after a long time he finished, he threw down his stylus. "That man's a
摘要：

LestDarknessFallByL.SpraguedeCampEbookversion1.0.1ToCATHERINELESTDARKNESSFALLAPYRAMIDBOOKPublishedbyarrangementwiththeAuthorPRINTINGHISTORYHenryHoltandCompanyeditionpublished1941PrimePresseditionpublished1949PyramideditionpublishedFebruary1963SecondprintingAugust1969Thisstoryinashorterversion,appear...

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