For now.
Not even the plea of “being upon the public business of the municipium” could obtain leave for the lad Iohan to take water and leave or return via the canal; this was reserved purely (or impurely) for the magnates’ cargoes, for themselves, or for their servants. Vergil was vexed. Iohan was not. He shrugged. “ ‘Twould save but small time, master,” he said, “and ‘twill stink less by the road.” It was surely true that this single waterway of the Very Rich City received the effluent of the single cloaca which sluggishly flowed into it, when it flowed at all; and equally it was true that the overfill or overstow of such cargo as the crushed sea-snails from which a pseudo-purple dye was boiled added nothing like the scented offshake of a ship of spices to the canal. When the rains somewhat washed the cut cleaner, it merely stank abominably. So Vergil replied to Iohan’s shrug with one of his own, put money in the lad’s purse, repeated directions and instructions, and saw him off. Meanwhile -
It was essential to begin making charts — in time, in space. As he was in effect measuring a circle, even if an immensely imperfect circle, it did not matter where he began. However, after considering it both ways, he concluded it would be easier to chart the matter of time, of times, if he had already charted the space and the spaces. The Etruscans and others, they charted the heavens above the earth; he would chart where beneath-the-earth broke through upon land between. He asked, therefore, for a map of the city. Was met with blank faces, slightly open mouths. Any map of the city, he said. In the Chamber of Magnates they said, What he means, a map? In the barrack room of the City Guard, they said, We needs no map. There was — one might not have thought so, but there was — a Civic Library; thither, briskly, Vergil went.
The building was a sorry, a very small and very sorry, imitation and on a very minor scale, not of the one in Alexandria! but of one in some new-colonized town on a far frontier. Working from standard plans, a library would be erected the same as a bath and a temple and a this and a that. It was not well furnished with books, but the books took up all the space for books there was. An aging man, wattles wobbling, looked up from whatever shabby sheet he had been looking down on, and stared in amazement so great that Vergil wondered when last someone else had entered. “I have come about a map of the city,” Vergil said.
The librarian hissed. He stood, he actually stood upon his toes and peered to see if someone was to enter following. No one was. Next he beckoned Vergil close, quite close, and — and still looking over Vergil’s shoulder — whispered, “Ser, my ser, I will give you what I have, I will give you all I have, I will give you three pieces of silver! —
“ — if you will let me copy a map from you. I will even give you one piece of silver, good silver, old and pure, messer, old silver and pure and full weight and neither sweated nor clipped, if you will merely let me see your map of the city! Eh? Do you want to see my silver? Here!”
And stop him Vergil could not, see the silver he must, and so he did. And watched the man sag as he listened to hear that Vergil wanted such a map as much as he himself did: and had none. “Though I shall try and let you see, and. . if I have time. . and let you take a copy of my own, when I make it. And your silver you may keep.”
Finally, in a sort of not-yet desperation, and acting upon what the librarian mentioned as a wild hope, he took the way to the tax office, where he was, reluctantly, and after several applications and armed with orders and permits, reluctantly allowed to copy a copy of the cadastral map. “Who knows who mayn’t begin to complain about taxes if he get a chance to see where his own property lines be drawn; ah, well!”
And with this as his prime material he began his next stage of work. After he had made sketches, after he had checked and rechecked the sketches, next Vergil drew more orderly copies. He made grids. He brought to play all he had learned from Euclid and Apollonius and Ptolemy. He did not of course have to show latitude; it was enough if he was able to show scale, and — of equal importance — keep the same scale on each of the maps.
Which is where, space having been established, time entered. And this took even more time than had the matter of space.
Regretting the present absence of his servant, he had perforce to carry on by himself; with his wax-inlaid tablets in one hand and his style or stylus in the other (its well-worn handle, of nondescript wood, had by long usage almost become fitted to his hand; its iron point had been sharpened more than once, though its use upon the wax would hardly ever exemplify the old principle that “the anvil wears the hammers out.” Unceasingly, hour to hour, from day to day, he went about the city, questioning not the magnates alone but their foremen and servants and slaves; when the tablets were on both sides filled up, he transcribed the data into a book he kept always with him, and with the blunt end of the style rubbed out the former notes and rubbed the waxy surfaces smooth, then began again. He dragged up ancient hulks and wrecks of human refuse from gutters, from under the arches of the aqueducts where the cold water dripped upon them, from the ash-tips next to whose heaped hot refuse those without homes kept warm, he asked them,
“Where were the flames when you worked?”
“When did you work?”
“Where did you work?”
“How do you remember?”
“How do you know what year it might have been?”
Clear and crisp the questions might have been, but clear and crisp the answers could not be; not, considering, who was being asked. Much watered wine — cheap, bad, the worst, nonetheless welcome, nonetheless essential — was supplied, gulp by gulp; and much broken bits of bread — also cheap, and, as sometimes, if it was too stale, into the watered wine it went to soften — was supplied, before minds could bethink them and mouths mumble answers.
“What other events happened in such and such a year?”
“Do you recall having heard the number of the year of the Reign?”
“You are quite sure that was the Emperor then?”
“Who was consul?”
“When your master’s works was moved because the flames ‘went sick,’ was there news of war? With whom, war?”
“Heard you anyone speak, those years, you do not remember exactly which years, of prices rising or falling? Which prices?”
Understanding of what he intended there was probably none, it was to none of their immediate advantage to figure what it might be or to guess at it; likely beyond capacity, for that matter. Interest? At first, none. . save for the wine and the small coin and the bread. How did Vergil, how could Vergil know, that they were not merely inventing, filling a vacant mouth with lies in order to fill a vacant belly? Had he begun with them, those, the castoffs, he could not have known. By having begun with those whose interest it was he should know the truth — the magnates — he had therefore somewhat of a list to check against. And. . among those at the bottom. . or as near to the bottom as they could get without getting to the top of the bone-pit. . it was curious to see how indifference of one would sometimes, often, increasingly often, change to interest when hearing what some other outthrown had to say -
“Nuh! Nuh, master! Julius was Emp’ro’ when they move them work to South Gorge. Him’s wrong” — gesturing to another.
And: “War! I say, was war!” was the other’s reaction, he having said nothing at all about war till then, and who ignored his possible error in re the name of the then-emperor. “War in Parth’a, was, ‘en they move them Magnate Muso work, South Gorge!” And his vehemence died off into a cough, a trickle of some inclement ichor oozing from his protruding and pendulous lip, down upon his trembling chin; nor was it wiped away.