Through Darkest Europe

by Harry Turtledove

  “Maybe not too bad, for an ape or a swine of a Jew,” Dawud said with no rancor Khalid could hear. He could cite texts from the Christians’ section of the Bible, and from the Qur’an as well.

  “Nobody with his head on straight takes those verses seriously any more,” Khalid said. “Any holy book from a long time ago will have passages in it you wish it didn’t. They thought differently back then, and you can’t go along with everything in there if you’ve got a modern education and a modern way of looking at things.”

  “You understand that. I understand that. People like the Grand Duke and the King of France understand part of that when they’re having a good day,” Dawud said. “But the Aquinists, they don’t understand that at all. They want the old days back again.”

  “Well, there are Muslims who want the old days back again, too,” Khalid said. “They write books. They crank out letters to the newspapers. They hold marches. Sometimes they get into fistfights with modernists, or throw rocks at them. They don’t shoot them or blow them up.”

  “It’s the price we pay for civilization,” Dawud said. “We don’t get passionate enough about religion to want to kill each other on account of it.” He made a small production out of lighting a cigar. “Not us! When we kill each other, it’s because of politics. And politics is important.”

  “Er—right,” Khalid said, a little uneasily. “By your logic, nothing is worth killing anybody else over.”

  “If somebody’s trying to kill me, I’ll kill him to keep him from doing it,” Dawud answered. “Call me rude if you want to, but I think I’m entitled to go on breathing till I get sick and the doctors can’t fix me or till I do something idiotic like walking in front of a train. I think everybody is.”

  “Shows what you know, doesn’t it?” Khalid said.

  “All right, call me a crazy optimist,” the Jew replied. “But there haven’t been any big wars in the civilized world for most of a lifetime. We could do worse. They do worse here.”

  One of the reasons there hadn’t been any big wars in the realm where modern civilization held sway was that countries there feared the consequences too much to risk them. When you worried more about this world than the next one, that was how you behaved. When heaven was what mattered, you’d do what you needed to do here and assume God would reward you in eons to come. You’d act like an Aquinist, in other words.

  * * *

  The Papal Guards searched Khalid and Dawud before admitting them into Marcellus IX’s presence. They were thoroughgoing professionals. Had either Maghribi been carrying a weapon, they would have found it.

  “You’re clean,” said the officer in charge of the detail. “You can go on.”

  “Captain Salgari told us to come unarmed. We already knew that, but he told us anyhow,” Khalid said in some irritation. “Did you think we wouldn’t listen?”

  The officer gave back an impassive stare and an expressive shrug. “Maybe you’re stupid, so you don’t listen. Maybe you want to hurt his Holiness, and Captain Salgari doesn’t know it. Maybe you really aren’t who your documents say you are. So we go ahead and make sure.”

  He sounded like any security man worth his salary whom Khalid had ever met. Arguing with such people was more trouble than it was worth. Their nature and their training combined to make them what they were.

  An ecclesiastical functionary waved the Maghribis to chairs in the antechamber to Pope Marcellus’ private office. The man spoke to them in a language that sounded like Italian but wasn’t. It had to be Latin. Dawud gave a low-voiced translation into Arabic: “He says the Pope is talking with someone else, but he should be done soon.”

  “Thanks,” Khalid said, also quietly.

  “Accept my apologies, my masters.” The ecclesiastic might be dressed in odd robes of slightly faded velvet, but his command of classical Arabic was excellent. “I will use your tongue from now on.” He eyed Dawud. “And how, ah, interesting that you should understand the language of the Vatican.”

  “I’d rather be interesting than boring,” Dawud said, which might mean anything or nothing.

  Khalid cautiously sat in one of the chairs. It creaked at his weight, but the wicker under his behind held. The chair’s arms and legs had been gilded, but most of the goldwork had worn away, showing the oak from which the frame was made. Painters should have touched up the gilding. Had the Papacy been richer, they probably would have.

  A modern intercom on the cleric’s desk buzzed for attention. He picked up the handset, listened, murmured “Sì, sì,” and put the handset back in its cradle. “His Holiness will see you now, my masters,” he said, and hurried to open the door that led to the office. He might not have been young—no one in the Vatican except the guards seemed to be young—but he was spry.

  Nobody but Marcellus awaited the Maghribis in the papal office. Whoever he’d been talking with before had left through a different door. Popes might need to keep visitors separate from one another. They made sure they could. In a more modern, efficient office, with only one way in and out, discretion would have been harder to preserve.

  “Your Holiness,” Khalid and Dawud said together, one in Arabic, the other in Italian.

  “I greet you both, gentlemen,” the Pope replied in his own good Arabic. “I must tell you that the state of the world, or at least of this part of it, has not improved since I first had the honor of making your acquaintance. Please sit, if you would be so kind. I do not bother with ceremony here. Getting away from it can be a relief.”

  Visitors’ chairs in the chamber were good-quality office furniture. They wouldn’t have been out of place in Calcutta or Qom or Tallahassi. Neither would his own chair, which was the sort any prominent executive might have used. The antique desk and the bookshelves full of titles in close to a dozen languages, ancient and modern, told a different story, as did his regalia. He might not stand on much ceremony here, but he couldn’t escape it all.

  “No, things aren’t better, your Holiness,” Khalid said after settling himself. “That’s why we wanted to speak with you again. The problem comes not least from the militant wing of your church.”

  “True. It does,” Marcellus said sadly. “But people who want to eat fire will eat fire even if they have to kindle it themselves.”

  “You have the power to bind and to loose, though. That’s what the New Testament says, isn’t it?” Dawud said. Yes, he could quote other faiths’ scriptures along with his own.

  No doubt the Pope could, too, especially since Christians recognized the Old Testament as the foundation on which the New lay. But Marcellus chose not to here. “As I told you when we first met, what I may do in law is not the same as what I can do in the real world. If those I bind reject me, I have no army to force them to obedience. If they name an Antipope, they will deny I have any authority over them at all—and Christendom will be torn asunder. I cannot risk that.”

  “Not even if they blow up this great church of Saint Peter around your ears?” Khalid asked.

  “I pray they will be able to do no such wicked thing,” Pope Marcellus replied. “But if they should, I will echo our Lord and Savior when He said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’”

  “Oh, they know what they’re doing, all right,” Dawud said. “They know much too well.”

  Before Marcellus could say anything more, the door that didn’t lead out to the antechamber opened. A servitor walked in carrying a tray. It held small cups of strong coffee and sweet rolls fragrant with almond paste. “Grazie, Giorgio,” the Pope told the man. He and the investigators ate and drank without talking till Giorgio left the office again.

  “Very tasty,” Dawud said then, licking sticky icing off a fingertip.

  “Grazie,” Marcellus said again.

  “Your Holiness, if you can’t see your way clear to ordering the Aquinists to disband or anything like that, could you issue an edict—” Khalid began.

  “A bull. A Papal bull. That’s what they call them,” Dawud b
roke in.

  Smiling, Marcellus said, “The bulla is the seal on the document. If it is gold, we call the document a chrysobull—Latin, borrowing from Greek.”

  Khalid didn’t care why the Church called an edict a bull. He had a modern impatience with irrelevant details. He went on, “Could you issue a bull condemning violence that takes innocent lives? If you do even that much, the fanatics won’t be so sure they’re going straight to heaven after they blow themselves up in a public square.”

  “That … may be possible,” the Pope said slowly. “I do not wish to do anything to touch off a schism in the Church. I will consult with the Curia—my council of advisors—and see if they feel I can safely issue such a bull.”

  “Please consult with Grand Duke Lorenzo, too, my master,” Khalid said. “If the Aquinists kill him or overthrow him and grab hold of Italy, you won’t have a comfortable time, will you?”

  Marcellus was far from a young man. Even so, Khalid doubted that his thin, almost ascetic features could have shown so much pain very often. “I don’t fear for myself,” he said, and Khalid believed him where he would have doubted most men. After a moment, the Pope resumed: “That would not be good for the Church, though, and it would be dreadful for the Church’s flock. It would mean war, wouldn’t it? War with the Maghrib, I mean, and perhaps Egypt as well.”

  “It depends on what the Aquinists do next.” Khalid picked his words with care.

  “Seems pretty likely, though, doesn’t it?” Dawud said. “They wouldn’t stop with Italy. They’d figure it was just the first bite. They want to make over the whole wide world.”

  “Yes. They do,” Pope Marcellus said. “As the civilization centered in the Muslim world has made the world over in its image through the past few centuries.”

  “Do you really want to fall back into the Jahiliyah, your Holiness?” Khalid asked. “That’s what the Aquinists are after. They say ‘God wills it!’ but they mean ‘We want it!’”

  “You must know I have no love for ignorance, for obscurantism, for pretending the last few hundred years never happened,” Marcellus said. “The world is as it is, not as one might wish it would be. One can, perhaps, turn back the hands of a clock. Once cannot turn back the leaves of a calendar. The Aquinists do not understand that, and they never will.”

  The world is as it is. Anyone who could see that had a running start at living in these modern times. Khalid nodded to the Catholic pontiff. “On that much, at least, your Holiness, we agree.”

  Dawud had a different way of looking at things. Or maybe it wasn’t so very different after all. “We’ve got to keep you alive, your Holiness,” he said. “You’re too important to let those fools kill you.”

  “For which I thank you, though I doubt I deserve your generous praise,” the Pope said. “The Aquinists have one thing right, at least. The future will be as God wills. It can be no other way. Unlike them, though, I don’t think we can certainly know God’s plan before we see it unfold. I also don’t think we can use assault rifles to mold it into a shape we like. It will be as He wills, as I said—not as we will.”

  “You’d better be careful, sir,” Dawud said. “If you don’t watch yourself, people will start telling you what a sensible fellow you are.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’m in much danger there. Other dangers, possibly, but not that one.” Did Marcellus’ eyes twinkle behind his bifocals? Khalid thought so, but couldn’t be sure. The Pope went on, “And now, my masters, if you will excuse me … I will seriously consider the bull you have urged on me, I promise. I expect I will issue it, though I am not in a position to pledge any such thing.”

  That side door opened. The servitor who’d brought in the coffee and rolls beckoned to the Maghribis. Out they went, through a corridor whose plaster walls showed water stains here and there. After the door closed behind them, Dawud spoke in Arabic to Khalid: “That, my friend, is what they call a man.”

  “He is,” Khalid agreed in the same language.

  “Well, you may be foreigners, but you aren’t stupid foreigners.” Giorgio proved to have better than decent Arabic of his own. Had he stood behind the door, listening to everything? He’d certainly known when to open it. Then again, Marcellus wouldn’t not know he was there. That argued he was trustworthy—or at least that the Pope thought he was, which might not be the same thing.

  After a few turns this way and that, the wanderers came to a side door with a stout modern lock and latch. The servitor opened it with a key from a ring he kept in a hidden pocket on his robe. Khalid and Dawud stepped out—and found themselves only a few cubits from the checkpoint where the Papal Guards had frisked them. One of the guards nodded pleasantly as they emerged.

  Now speaking Italian, the servitor said, “God keep you, gentlemen. If you got here on your own, you should be able to make it back on your own.”

  Rome’s street plan was even twistier than that corridor. The Grand Duke’s patrols and strongpoints made things no easier. The investigators managed even so. Maybe we’re starting to learn our way around, Khalid thought. That was a really alarming idea.

  * * *

  “Today,” the Italian TV newsman said in portentous tones, “his Holiness, Pope Marcellus IX, issued a bull entitled De necessitate pacis, or On the need for peace.”

  The picture cut away from him and showed Marcellus reading in Latin behind a microphone. Khalid understood no more than a word here and there, when one chanced to sound recognizably like its Italian descendant. The old language was more rolling and sonorous than the new, just as classical Arabic seemed more majestic than the clipped dialects spoken at supper tables and in shops these days.

  “In this bull”—the program cut back to the announcer—“the Pope stresses the urgency of resolving differences and disputes without violence. ‘We are all brothers and sisters in our humanity, regardless of creed,’ he states. ‘Efforts to change people’s views through violence and force fly in the face of the teachings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.’”

  “That’s about as strong a statement as he can make,” Khalid said.

  “Sure it is,” Dawud … agreed? “Now for the next interesting question—whether anybody pays any attention to it.”

  They sat in the hotel bar, drinking red wine while they watched the news. The bar was crowded. The Italians and foreigners smoked and drank and ate salted nuts and olives and anchovies and other fare calculated to make them want to drink more. Some of them paid attention to the news. Others chatted among themselves or engaged in another age-old sport at dives plain and fancy: trying to pick up a barmaid.

  If the Pope’s edict impressed them, most of them hid it very well. They went on about their business as if his Holiness hadn’t spoken. Khalid worried that the Aquinist fanatics would feel the same way.

  Here was the handsome newsman again. “Grand Duke Lorenzo has announced his full support for the Holy Father’s wise and compassionate bull,” the man said. “He warns that those who continue to disturb order in Italy will face the most severe punishment in both this world and the world to come.”

  Khalid and Dawud looked at each other. They both took long pulls from their wineglasses. Pope Marcellus might be conciliatory. Lorenzo III seemed more ready to challenge the movement that had murdered his father. His worries and his approach were different from the pontiff’s. Not necessarily in a good way, either, Khalid thought.

  An arm reached in from off-camera to pass the newsman a sheet of paper. “This just in from the Corrector of the Aquinist Seminary in München, the capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Father Adolphus states, ‘Our struggle continues. “I came not to send peace, but with a sword,” our Lord says in Matthew 10:34. No one who fails to remember this can be a true Christian.’”

  Sure enough, you could always find something in a holy book to support your point of view, whatever it happened to be. Father Adolphus hadn’t needed long. Khalid sighed and drained his glass. The Corrector in München hadn’t called for Marcellus’ ov
erthrow, but he had challenged the legitimacy of the Pope’s beliefs. The difference was liable to matter only to people in the habit of splitting hairs.

  “Well, we tried. The Pope tried,” Dawud said, so his train of thought must have been rolling down the same gloomy track. “People who already believed we were right still do. Those who didn’t, don’t. Isn’t it amazing?”

  “That’s one word for it.” Khalid waved to the barmaid who’d been taking care of them. She came over right away. He and Dawud tipped well. They didn’t get grabby or aim lewd propositions at her. “Another glass of the house chianti, per favore,” he said.

  Dawud emptied his goblet, too. “And for me.”

  “I’ll get them, gentlemen.” She hurried off. Her rear view was pleasant. Khalid enjoyed watching without wanting to do anything more than watch.

  “To life!” Dawud said when they got their refills. He and Khalid clinked glasses and drank. He lit a cigar.

  “You’d live longer if you didn’t do that so much,” Khalid said.

  “You keep telling me so,” the Jew replied. “It would certainly seem longer. I can smoke and eat good food and die. Or I can do without them—and die anyway. I’d sooner enjoy myself while I’m here.”

  Khalid dropped it. He’d known plenty of people who talked that way … till their first heart attack, anyhow. Then a lot of them changed their tune—and their habits. A good many of the ones who didn’t or couldn’t didn’t last long after that. But Dawud hadn’t had to pay for having a good time yet. He might reach a ripe old age in spite of everything. Some did.

  “Here is another facet of the Aquinist threat,” the newsman said. “With me in the studio today is Dr. Giulia Cadorna, a surgeon on the staff at the hospital of San Agostino here in Rome.”

  Dr. Cadorna was in her late forties, with iron-gray hair severely pulled back and no-nonsense spectacles. She wasn’t bad looking, but Khalid would have called her handsome rather than pretty. That might have been because she looked worried. She sounded worried, too: “If the Grand Duke—may God protect him—is overthrown and the Aquinists seize power, all the progress Italian women have made over the past lifetime will go up in smoke.”