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are likely to go down and break a leg."
Marseille, he'd said. We'd hit it right. "Are you a sailor?" I asked.
"Aye." He gestured at his companion. "We both are, though Marco here finds it
hard to get hired anymore.
Lost a thumb in a bight, and don't neither row nor haul ropes so well as he
did. Though better'n you'd maybe think."
I hadn't understood every word he'd said, but enough.
The other man removed his right hand from his armpit, where he'd been keeping
it warm, and displayed the scarred nub, red and ugly, where once a thumb had
been.
"How can I get some food?" I asked. "Quite a lot of food."
The talkative sailor snorted, and eyed me even more curiously. "How much is a
lot? All you can eat and
drink you can buy at an inn, if you've got a few coppers. And the market is in
the middle of town.
While if it's a shipload you want ..."
"I have no coppers," I told him. "I'll have to see what I can do to get some."
"What do you do?" he asked. "Clearly you're no farmer, nor no sailor, I'll
wager. You're no knight nor sergeant, nor mercenary neither, going about
without weapons." His eyes traveled up and down me.
"A monk, I'd say, except your clothes ain't monkish.
And what else is there?" He shook his head. "It's sure you're no merchant."
"Mercenary's closest," I told him, and an idea struck me. "I'm a bodyguard. If
a merchant wants his person kept safe, he'll do well to hire me."
"Is that so?" An eyebrow had raised. "Jesu knows you're a big one, and maybe
strong, though I might say you don't look the type. Not a scar to be seen,"
He paused. "Nor any weapon at all, unless you carry one of them little daggers
hid in your clothes, and they be mainly useless in a fight."
I didn't answer, just squatted down beside them. I'd talked too much already.
I had no business claiming to be a fighting man on this world; someone might
easily call my bluff. And unless I was willing to use my stunner or pistol,
which was undesirable, I could be dead in a hurry. Hand-foot art was nothing
to face a trained swordsman with, and the odds wouldn't be good against a
skilled knife fighter either.
It was most of an hour before the gate opened, and by that time it looked as
if the weather might clear.
The clouds seemed thin again, and in places blue showed through. I didn't even
say goodbye to the two sailors, just walked inside and followed the muddy
road, which became a muddy street.
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Marseille smelled bad. I'm sure that not all the
water in the street was rain. It seemed as if these people didn't have much
idea of sanitation, and I was glad we'd used the broad spectrum immunoserum in
the medkit.
There weren't many people on the street yet, but most that I did see seemed
lively enough and not unhappy.
One young guy, a year or two younger than me by his looks, was striding along
whistling, his step springy. His clothes were red and yellow beneath their
grime.
"Hello, young sir," I said. "Can I ask you a question?"
He stopped and looked me over. I stood about a head taller than him. "Ask
away," he answered.
"I'm looking for a merchant who will hire me. I do calculations very quickly."
It seemed to me that that was a safer thing to advertise than martial skills.
The young guy looked interested. "Calculations?" he said. "Well, that can be
useful. My own master has a
Saracen slave to do calculations for him. His abacus is different from ours,
and he's very quick."
Our conversation wasn't as neat and direct as I'm telling it here. His
pronunciations were a bit different from those I'd heard before on Fanglith,
and he used words that were new to me, while the
Norman French I mixed with my Provencal gave him a certain amount of trouble.
So a couple of times we had to stop and sort out meanings with each other.
Anyway, an idea began to develop. "Very quick, you say," I said, referring to
the Saracen slave. "I am quicker. I calculate more quickly than anyone in
Marseille!"
His eyebrows arched. "You think so?"
"I know it." I took the communicator off my belt, a
military model with a microcomputer built in. "Give me a problem."
"Add seven to itself nine times."
I didn't need to use the micro for that. "Nine sevens added to seven equals
seventy."
He looked impressed, but also uncertain. It occurred to me that he couldn't do
arithmetic himself, so he couldn't tell whether I was right or not. I cocked
an eye at him. "Is your master's slave faster than that?"
"I think not. Your answer was virtually instantaneous."
"Who is the fastest calculator in Marseille?"
"A merchant and shipowner named Isaac ben Abraham, a
Jew from Valencia. He uses an abacus of beads upon rods, like the Saracen,
which is much swifter than the boards and disks that others use."
"Does he wager?" I asked.
His face went instantly thoughtful. "Would you bet against him?" he asked
back.
"If we're going to talk about things like this, we should know each other's
names. Mine is Larn."
"Mine is Reyno. Would you? Bet against him?"
"I have nothing to bet," I answered. "But if you do, or if others wish to bet,
for a percentage of their winnings I would contest against this-Isaac?"
"Isaac ben Abraham. Let me take you to my master, Carolus the Stonecutter. He
sometimes wagers, but he will wish first to see the horse run."
"Of course," I said. "Take me to him." Meanwhile I
was recording our conversation. It would be useful to
speak Provencal better, including speaking it without a mixture of Norman
French.
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He nodded, and we began to walk briskly in the direction he'd been going. "I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]