Fanglith - Return To Fanglith Part 6

"Yes. Although I've not been thoroughly instructed in it."

He shrugged. I'd already learned that most Christians hadn't been.

"What is this interesting proposition?" he wanted to know.

"I'm a master calculator," I said. "Reyno tells me that the swiftest calculator in Ma.r.s.eille is a man named Isaac ben Abraham. I am faster at difficult calculations than he can possibly be, and perhaps at simple ones too. It seems to me we could have a contest, he and I, and there could be wagers. Whoever bet on me would win. In reward, I would get part of their winnings."

Carolus looked thoughtful. "You have not seen the Jew at his abacus; he is lightning swift. He is a man late in middle years, who was calculating long before you were born."

This kind of conversation would lead nowhere. "You have a slave who does your calculations," I said.

"Is he fast?"

"Faster than most. But not so fast as the jew." "Let's see how much faster I am than your slave." For just a moment Carolus stood examining me. Then he turned toward a staircase that led upstairs through a raised trapdoor. "Faid!" he bellowed. "Down here!"

A few seconds later a slender, dark-complected man came down the stairs. He might have been thirty or thirty-five. "Yes, my lord?"

"I have need of your calculations."

"Yes, my lord." Faid walked over to a table beneath one of the windows. Carolus, Reyno, and I followed. There Faid sat down, and with one hand drew a sort of open-topped small box to him, a box with rows of beads on what seemed to be thin wooden rods. He looked questioningly at Carolus.

"Do a difficult problem," Carolus said to him, "but do not say from what roots, or what the answer is."

For just a moment Faid looked puzzled, then shrugged. His fingers moved quickly, the beads clicking for a few seconds. "It is done."

Carolus turned to me. "Where is your abacus?" he asked.

I took out my communicator, which was also a microcomputer, and switched it on. "Here," I answered.

He turned to Faid. "State your roots," he said.

"Twenty-eight fourfold."

"One hundred twelve," I answered. I didn't need my computer for that.

Carolus's eyebrows raised slightly and he turned to Faid. "Is that right?" he asked.

"Exactly right." The Saracen looked at me with considerable interest. "And what are the portions if you divide 144 into 18 equal parts?" His fingers raced as he asked it.

"Nine each," I said. "I need no abacus for that." Our math teachers in lower school had drilled us thoroughly. It looked as if this was going to be easy.

Faid looked up at Carolus. "He is right." Then he turned to me. "What sort of question would cause you to use your abacus?"

"Oh, the square root of some large number. Do you know how to do square roots?"

Faid nodded. "In the main they are problems for geometers. I can do them, but it takes time."

"Fine," I said. "Calculate a large square; that'll be easier. Then tell me what the square is and I'll give you its roots."

"Stand away then," he answered, "so you cannot see what roots I use."

We moved a few steps away and I turned my back to him. After a short while he said: "The square is 1,369.".

I tapped 1,369 into the computer and asked for the square root. "The root is 37," I said, and turned to look at him. It had taken me about two seconds, which was about half as long as Paid stared at me before he said anything again.

"That is correct." He sounded impressed, or maybe awed would be more like it. "You must be Indian."

Carolus pursed his lips, then made a decision. "Paid, mention this to no one. None of it. How fast he is, that he comes from India, none of it. And you, Reyno: Keep that glib mouth shut, or I'll see you tongueless." Then he turned to me. "What is your name again?"

"Larn."

"Larn," he said, "we have things to talk about."

TEN.

Carolus sent Reyno to Isaac ben Abraham, inviting him to contest with "a youth who is truly marvelous at calculations." Ben Abraham answered in writing, which Faid read to his master; reading was something else the Saracen could do and Carolus couldn't. After commenting that it was unimportant to him whether someone else could calculate faster or not, ben Abraham said it would amuse him to take me on.

He offered to bet fifty gold bezants or an equivalent in Pisan solidi.

Carolus the stonecutter was a careful man who would bet only what he could afford to lose, even when it seemed almost certain that he wouldn't. And he felt very uncomfortable at the thought of betting fifty bezants. He sent back word that he would bet only twenty. Reyno had almost nothing of his own to bet, but borrowed two bezants from his master, Carolus was grumpy about lending it, and I suspect he only did it to keep Reyno from trying to borrow elsewhere and being questioned. He felt uneasy about word of the contest getting out.

Ben Abraham, smelling Carolus's uncertainty, decided he could probably beat me, and got Carolus up to thirty against his own sixty. Then, in amus.e.m.e.nt, he agreed to cover Reyno's small bet at odds of three to one. All of this was arranged through Reyno as courier.

Carolus was to pay me a sixth, or ten bezants, if I won. I wasn't sure what he'd try to do if I lost, but I couldn't see any chance of that happening.

The contest was to take place in the office of Isaac ben Abraham, shortly after the hour called "s.e.xt"-local midday, as far as I could tell. After eating an early lunch, we walked there through spring suns.h.i.+ne. I was impressed by ben Abraham's offices. They were clean, and there were decorative woven cloths called tapestries on some of the walls.

I was even more impressed with Isaac ben Abraham. He was the biggest man I'd seen yet on Fanglith, and the tallest except for a Norman knight named Brislieu. Besides which, he looked as if, under the fat, he'd be very strong physically. His face went with an age of about fifty or fifty-five, but his long black hair had only scattered threads of gray. He also had a bigger, thicker beard than I'd ever imagined, and wore the richest clothes, topped by a long, far-trimmed, brown velvet cape. All in all, when he spoke in his rich ba.s.s voice, people were likely to pay attention.

And it was obvious that he washed, he and the man who ushered us into his office. I'd never seen a clean Fanglithan before. I hadn't realized there were any.

He had his servant pour wine for us. It was weak and kind of watery intended for flavor, not to get anyone tight. After Carolus introduced us, ben Abraham looked me over with eyes that were s.h.i.+ny black.

"Larn," he said, as if tasting the name. "What is your age?"

"I am a few days short of nineteen."

"And you are already very fast?"

"Very," I answered.

"By the design of your crucifix, I take it you follow the Church of Rome, yet it appears that you bathe.

How is that?"

I had no idea what a safe answer might be, but l had to say something. "I was told to by the Abbot of St. Stephen at Isere. For a rash I get sometimes." I crossed myself when I'd said it, the way I'd learned to do at the monastery, and changed the subject. "I'm ready to contest when it is time."

I'd no sooner said it than the cathedral bells began to ring. A cathedral is a large church-a building in which the Christians carry out important religious activities. Cathedrals apparently always have a bell tower. The people of Fanglith don't have clocks. They read the hour by the shadow on an etched metal plate set in the sun. They also measure intervals of time by the flow of sand through a narrow opening between adjacent gla.s.s hemispheres. But most people simply go by the ringing of bells in the city's cathedral. These are rung several times a day to tell the people when it's time to pray.

As soon as the bells had stopped ringing, Carolus and Key no lowered their heads and began to pray out loud. I didn't know the prayers, but it was expected of me so I did the best I could: I recited a poem, "The Greening of Dancer's Desert," in Evdas.h.i.+an: "Twas on the planet Dancer In the System Farness Meth, There spread a windswept desert Named the Emptiness of Death, The director, Kalven Denken, Wearied by its furnace breath, Swore to plant its desolation, End the Emptiness of Death He never dreamed what it would cost, Nor the kind of coin. In faith, Had he known, he'd not have sworn To plant the Emptiness of Death.... I kept going until the others stopped, and when we were done, Garolus scowled at me suspiciously. Isaac ben Abraham looked on with interest, and again with that hint of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What heretical tongue was that?" Carolus demanded.

It smelled like trouble for sure. My answer was as much a surprise to me as to him, and based on what Arno of Courmeron had said at the monastery two years earlier. "That was Aramaic," I told him. "The language of our Lord Jesu Christ."

I could only hope Carolus didn't speak Aramaic. He frowned. "It sounded like Saracen to me," he said suspiciously.

It was Isaac ben Abraham who answered. "It does indeed. We Jews speak Aramaic in our churches and homes, in the reading of the Talmud. Also, we speak it in trade with Jews of other lands. From his dialect, obviously Larn learned it in the Holy Land, from Syrian monks, whose tongues are not colored by any vernacular." He looked at me with respect. "Truly, I am impressed."

I was more than impressed. I was relieved, but also a little worried. I couldn't imagine what reason Isaac ben Abraham might have had for lying me out of trouble.

After that, the contest was an anticlimax for me. We were to calculate in rounds-the best of nine would win. In each round, ben Abraham would pose a problem and we'd both calculate the answer. Then I'd pose one. If we tied a round, each of us winning a half, then we were supposed to replay the round until one of us won both halves.

But of course I won right away. I didn't know what to expect from Isaac ben Abraham then, or his household guards. I only hoped I wouldn't have to use my stunner. But what he did was pay Carolus and Reyno what they'd won, weighing out the coins to satisfy Carolus that they hadn't been shaved. Reyno was practically dancing, and Carolus's usually sour face was actually smiling as he paid me my ten gold bezants.

Then ben Abraham had wine poured again. "And what will you do with your winnings, young Larn?" he asked.

"I'm not sure how much I can buy with ten bezants," I told him. "I'd like to buy food-fresh meat, cheese, fish, and flour. And dried fruit, if I can get any. And rent a donkey to take it to friends I know, who are hungry."

Carolus looked at me as if I was crazy, but didn't say anything. Ben Abraham looked at me as if he'd like to know what I was really all about. Reyno looked at me as if he didn't really see me; his thoughts were on the girl he might be able to marry now.

By evening I had a donkey loaded with freshly butchered beef, a huge round cheese, dried fish, dates, olives, and other foods I'd bought in the market. Plus two daggers, two short swords, and a set of cheap local clothes for all three of us. The short swords were way the most expensive: a bezant each. Except for a dagger that I'd fastened to my belt, all of it was loaded in two big baskets slung across the donkey's back. They almost hid the donkey.

And I also owned the donkey! I hoped I could bring him back to the market and sell him for what I paid for him. But if I simply had to let him loose, that would be okay too, because I still had two of my gold pieces left.

ELEVEN.

I left the city gate just before it closed at sundown, and followed the road westward, leading my donkey by his rope halter, Off to my left was the sea, beautiful in sunlight, and a beach with no one on it. After a little while I turned off on a trail that wound its way down to it.

The beach seemed like the nearest decent landing place, except for the road itself. After unloading the baskets onto the sand, I tied the donkey to a bush a little way above the beach-far enough that the scout shouldn't scare him out of his wits. Then, when it was dark, I called Deneen to come get me. When they landed, Bubba trotted down the ramp and off into the brush above the beach without a word. He needed to get out and stretch his legs and hunt. Knowing Bubba, I had no doubt he'd catch fresh meat by dawn, when he was to meet us. And no way would he bother my donkey, or anyone's livestock. Well-not my donkey, anyway. But he was bound to be pretty desperate for a proper meal.

After Tarel and I got my purchases loaded into the scout, we took off, and Deneen parked us twenty-one miles above Ma.r.s.eille. There I loaded the contents of my recorder into the computer, and while Deneen and Tarel started putting the food away, I had the linguistics program a.n.a.lyze the language contents against the Provencal and Norman it already knew. It didn't take long-a few seconds. Then I had the computer copy it into the learning program. When that was done, I sat down in the copilot's seat, put on a learning skullcap, and proceeded to upgrade my knowledge of Provencal, running through all we knew of it now until I had it thoroughly.

That done, I took off the skullcap, got up, and went back to the little galley. Deneen was b.l.o.o.d.y to the elbows. "Next time," she said, looking up at me grimly, "see if you can get the meat cut up into pieces that'll fit into storage. This place doesn't have the facilities for cutting up forty-pound hunks of beef-especially tough beef!"

I could see what she meant. They were trying to work on a counter fourteen inches wide. And not only were they b.l.o.o.d.y, and the counter b.l.o.o.d.y, but blood was dripping onto the floor and had smeared the wall behind the counter. She and Tarel had taken off their shoes, and their feet were smeared red. So far, they'd gotten about a fourth of the beef cut and wrapped for putting away.

"Sorry," I said.

She held up one of the belt knives we'd had on Evdash. "This is the biggest thing we have to work with," she added, a little less hostile now. "It would help if you bring a butcher knife next time, even if you do bring the meat in smaller pieces. And we need rags to wipe blood with. We're trying not to use paper toweling; we're almost out of it."

She gestured at the large cleaning drum, where I could see the clothes I'd bought. "I put them in there on sanitize, in case they've got any of those mean little critters you got infested with our last trip here," She grinned then, sheepishly. "Oh, and let me thank you for bringing all these tas ties brother mine. You really did do good work getting them, and I honestly appreciate it. It's just that the meat needs a few improvements in pre processing "Can I help in here?" I asked.

"There's not room for three at once. No, just stand there and admire us, and tell us what you have in mind to do next."

So I did. Before dawn I'd go back to my donkey. Then I'd return to Ma.r.s.eille and see if I could have a long talk with Isaac ben Abraham; I had the notion I could learn even more from him than I had from Brother Oliver two and a half years before. Certainly he could expand our knowledge of Provencal a lot.

And if it was unusual to transport horses by sea, then, as a s.h.i.+powner, ben Abraham might know of Arno. I had no idea how many s.h.i.+p owners there were in Ma.r.s.eille, or even if Arno had gotten this far with his horse herd. It was a long dangerous distance from Normandy.

"Then," I finished, "we may have enough information to plan intelligently."

"I'd like to go with you next time," Tarel put in. "I'd like to get a firsthand feel for what it's like down there."

I looked at that and felt uncomfortable with it, but I couldn't come up with any strong reason why he shouldn't. He was as old as I'd been the first time I'd landed alone on Fanglith, and he already knew quite a lot of the language. "All right by me," I answered. "It'll probably be safer with two of us. Tell you what: I'll help Deneen. You wash up and spend some time on the learning program, upgrading your Provencal. Then, after we try on our new clothes, we'd better get some sleep. We need to get down there before daylight."

Deneen set the scout's honker, and it woke us up an hour ahead of estimated daybreak. Then, twenty-one miles above Ma.r.s.eille, we ate a quick breakfast while watching for the first sign of dawn to touch the horizon, which, from our alt.i.tude, was four hundred miles east. That would give us roughly twenty minutes to get down and on the beach and let Deneen get away while it was still full night on the surface. When the first touch of dawn showed, far to the east, we hurriedly finished eating and stowed our dishes in the cleaner. Then Deneen dropped the twenty-one miles to the beach. As we slowed for landing, the infra scope showed what had to be Bubba lying a few dozen yards from the donkey far enough, and no doubt downwind, not to upset it seriously. Except for those two, there was nothing large and warm blooded anywhere near.

When we landed and Tarel and I stepped down the ramp, Bubba was at its foot. "Catch anything worth eating?" I asked him.

He grinned-something he hadn't been doing a lot of. "Even rodents good after long time on s.h.i.+p's food,"

he woofed, then trotted up into the cutter.

Even without any overcast, we couldn't see far in the moonless night.

The cutter was lost in darkness only seconds after the door closed.

Nothing had happened to my donkey while I was gone, but a lot had happened to the bush I'd tied him to. He'd eaten most of the tough little leaves and a lot of the smaller twigs. I untied his halter rope and we started up the slope from the beach. Looking off to my right, it seemed as if there was already a hint of gray dawn where the land met the eastern sky. By the time we got to the road, there was a distinct wash of gray along the horizon, and even with lots of stars still bright above us, we could see a little better.

It was pretty much daylight when we reached the city gate, and we squatted there with a few others, backs to the wall. Minutes later we watched sunlight touch the hilltops to the northwest, and heard the heavy gate bar being drawn back. We stood up, getting out of the way, heard the hinges groan, then the gates were pushed open by the gate guards.

It's not surprising that so many Fanglithans are burly and strong for their size. Just about everything seems to be done by muscle power, and lots of simple things, like opening the ma.s.sive, timbered gates, are heavy labor. Of course, not all Fanglithans are husky and strong, by any means. Their genetics dictates that lots of them will have slim builds, and I suspect that most of them weren't properly nourished as children. That's probably why they're mostly short by our standards; at least it's a better explanation than genetics. Their parent stock hadn't been any different from our own, or not much different, anyway.

They'd been mind-wiped political prisoners dumped on Fanglith eighteen thousand or so years ago by the mad emperor Karkzhuk.

Another thing about Fanglithans - a surprising number have lost their teeth. They don't seem to have any idea of dental care, and that probably interferes with proper eating. I suspect that quite a few of them have chronic physical ailments that would be easily cured in hightech societies, or wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Like I said though, a lot of them are husky and strong-looking, even if short, and that included the gate guards who watched us enter. But they saw nothing troublesome in Tarel and me, even as big as we were by their standards. We were dressed now in native clothes, and the short swords and daggers on our belts weren't unusual.

We went first to the marketplace, where I sold my donkey back to the man I'd bought it from. He only offered me half what I'd paid him for it, and as a matter of form and principle, I d.i.c.kered him up to two thirds He wasn't more than about five feet tall, but it didn't seem to bother him at all that Tarel and I, five-ten and six-one, were really big by Fanglithan standards or at least by standards in Provence and Normandy.

From the marketplace we went straight to Isaac ben Abraham's. The armed servant at the door recognized me, but had us wait in the courtyard while he sent someone to notify his master. The man was back in a minute, and escorted us to ben Abraham's office.

The merchant's eyes, alert and wise, watched us in. "You are back quickly," he said, then chuckled.

Ben Abraham's version of a chuckle was more of a deep rumble. "If your friend is another rapid calculator," he added, "I am not in the mood for more contests. What may I do for you?"