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 amusement, 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 "sext"-local midday, as far as I could tell. After eating an early lunch, we walked there through spring sunshine. 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 bass 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 shiny 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 glass 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 Evdashian:
'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 amusement.
"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."