"What?" repeated Lycon. He must have fallen asleep.
"My only interest," said N'Sumu smoothly, "is to capture the sauropithecus. The credit, so far as I am concerned, will be yours."
He was speaking Greek. While Lycon had no trouble understanding the Egyptian, the effect was unnerving because N'Sumu's vocabulary and elocution were those of the classic stage. Even his elisions were those of metrical drama rather than of the sliding, careless Common Tongue that was the language of trade throughout even the Latin-speaking West of the Empire.
"Where in Hades did you learn that Greek?" Lycon wondered, dazed and focusing on the immediate puzzle before he moved on to greater ones.
"You prefer Latin?" N'Sumu said in that language. Even his voice was different, and his accent could not have been told from that of a Spaniard on the coast of Ocean.
"Yes, I think I do," Lycon said. "But that doesn't answer my question." He probably would awaken from this dream in another moment, find himself lying in the rain beneath a hedgerow.
"In Tipasa," N'Sumu said nonchalantly. He showed no sign of irritation at either the question or the dumbfounded tone in which it was asked.
His answer was true, as well. A touring company had been performing a series of the plays of Euripides in the theater in Tipasa when N'Sumu reached the city. The chorus master had provided the emissary with an expert if idiosyncratic knowledge of Greek during three hours in a private room. The Greek had a very different memory of what had gone on during that time, but it explained in an acceptable fashion the way his head and muscles ached the next day.
A Spanish trader, met in the same North African port, had provided him with his Latin. It appeared that N'Sumu should refine that, refine both apparently, due to regional peculiarities. It pleased him, for all the additional effort, that he found it necessary to supplement the store of native languages provided him by the all-knowing Cora, who had programmed his communications nodes with North African tribal dialects. This evidence of their less-than-perfect intelligence of this planet's culture held promise for the emissary's personal intentions here.
"Gods," Lycon muttered. He rubbed the skin of his face with scarred, knobby fingers. "Where did Domitian ever find you?"
"I think we'd do best to get to a restaurant," suggested Vonones smoothly. "To determine how we best can support you, N'Sumu, and do the will of our god and master. Crispinus made it quite clear, Lycon, that the Emperor has complete confidence in N'Sumu's abilities."
N'Sumu smiled. "We can better discuss the things which are necessary in other surroundings, yes. You will lead us to what you think suitable."
His smile, thought Vonones, was wrong-but everything was horribly wrong, and if this N'Sumu were the creature of Ahriman, then Ahriman was clearly taking his turn on top as the Wheel turned and Ormadz the Light descended. "Yes," Vonones said aloud. "There's a nice place just down the street. Many a deal I've closed there."
It was only after the three men set out in company that Vonones remembered the deal he had most recently closed in that particular shop. It was for the shipment that had included the sauropithecus.
The restaurant's owner was tasting the soup in one of the stone urns set into the sales counter. He had a critical look on his face and was already beginning to shout: "Hieron! How many peppers did you…!"
At sight of Vonones and his companions approaching the counter, which was open to the street along its full length, the man broke off. "Service!" he called toward the back. "A table in the garden for Master Claudius Vonones and his friends? Master Lycon, is it not, sir? And your other companion? Or would you prefer the enclosed dining area, Master Vonones?"
"No, no-the arbor's fine," said the Armenian absently. "Unless N'Sumu would rather…?"
"By all means make whatever arrangements you prefer," said N'Sumu easily. "After all, I am a stranger here."
To get to the door that opened onto the back, they walked around the sales counter. Its top was covered with a mosaic of the beasts of the sea savaging one another. The centerpiece between two of the warming urns was a pair of octopuses dismembering a spiny lobster. It was balanced on the other side of the middle urn by sharks tearing a hapless sailor, while moray eels squirmed in for their share of the fragments.
"The fish stew here is excellent," said Lycon, tapping the countertop with the sharks as he passed.
The frescoes in the courtyard had, unlike the counter mosaics, been recently redone. Pride of place on the wall facing the door was a fresco of a chariot race-not in the Circus, built for the purpose with long straightaways, but in the Amphitheater itself. The nearly circular course meant that only the inside track had a prayer of winning. It also meant that when the gates opened and six four-horse chariots leaped for that inside track, there was an absolute certainty of a multiple collision.
The fresco artist had caught several of the high points of such novelty races in his panorama. In one, the driver for the Green Association was whipping his horses literally over the piled-up chariots, horses, and drivers of the other five associations. The painting showed the Green driver lashing at his Gold-tuniced opponent, who was trying to hold himself clear of the wheels by a grip on the frame of the Green chariot.
Further along the same wall, the artist focused on an individual rather than on a general collision. Philodamas, a Blue Association driver with an impressive series of wins, had been thrown forward when a wheel-bearing froze. Normally that would have meant that the driver was pulled along by the reins laced to his left forearm. In this case, however, the reins had gotten looped around the driver's neck. Philodamas had been decapitated spectacularly to the cheers of the crowd, and given such immortality as this fresco could provide.
The table toward which the waiter was leading them was in a grape arbor. A customer was already relaxing there, waiting for his food to be brought. He was moved out with scarcely more ceremony than that with which an additional stool was snatched from another table and set beneath this one.
"How much do you pay these people?" Lycon asked, as he took the seat farthest within the arbor and against the back wall. He did not fear men, particularly, but he had never been comfortable in an arbor since the night a leopard clawed him through a blind of woven brush. The four parallel scars on his buttocks were still quite obvious, ten years after the event. The scars on his mind showed only in situations like this one, and then only to those who, like Vonones, knew him very well.
"I don't expect the service my business requires to come cheaply," Vonones said airily. "After all, I pay enough for my animals so that the beastcatchers who contract with me always see to it that I have my pick of the healthiest ones." He sighed and let his mind concentrate on dining-thank the gods, civilized dining once again.