“Not much. History mentions them as natural philosophers, doesn’t it? From before the collapse of the last civilization? And I think they’re named in one of the pagan hagiologies, aren’t they?”

The scholar nodded. “And that’s all anyone knows about them, or what they did. Physicists, according to our not-so-reliable historians. Responsible for the rapid rise of the European-American culture, they say. Historians list nothing but trivia. I had nearly forgotten them. But Kornhoer’s descriptions of the old documents they say they have are descriptions of papers that might well be taken from physical science texts of some kind. It’s just impossible!”

“But you have to make certain?”

“We have to make certain. Now that it’s come up, I wish I had never heard of it.”

“Why?”

Thon Taddeo was peering at something in the street below. He beckoned to the priest. “Come here a moment. I’ll show you why.”

Apollo slipped from behind the desk and looked down at the muddy rutted street beyond the wall that encircled the palace and barracks and buildings of the collegium cutting off the mayoral sanctuary from the seething plebeian city. The scholar was pointing at the shadowy figure of a peasant leading a donkey homeward at twilight. The man’s feet were wrapped in sackcloth, and the mud had caked about them so that he seemed scarcely able to lift them. But he trudged ahead in one slogging steep after another, resting half a second between footfalls. He seemed too weary to scrape off the mud.

“He doesn’t ride the donkey,” Than Taddeo stated, “because this morning the donkey was loaded down with corn. It doesn’t occur to him that the packs are empty now. What is good enough for the morning is also good enough for the afternoon.”

“You know him?”

“He passes under my window too. Every morning end evening. Hadn’t you noticed him?”

“A thousand like him.”

“Look. Can you bring yourself to believe that that brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon, harnessed the forces of Nature, built machines that could talk and seemed to think? Can you believe there were such men?”

Apollo was silent.

“Look at him!” the scholar persisted. “No, but it’s too dark now. You can’t see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Paresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate superstitious, murderous. He diseases his children. For a few coins he would kill them. He will sell them anyway, when they are old enough to be useful. Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What do you see?”

“The image of Christ,” grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. “What did you expect me to see?”

The scholar huffed impatiently. “The incongruity. Men as you can observe them through any window, and men as historians would have us believe men once were. I can’t accept it. How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?”

“Perhaps,” said Apollo, “by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else.” He went to light a tallow lamp, for the twilight was rapidly fading into night. He struck steel and flint until the spark caught and he blew gently at it in the tinder.

“Perhaps,” said Thon Taddeo, “but I doubt it.”

“You reject all history, then, as myth?” A flame edged out from the spark.

“Not ‘reject.’ But it must be questioned. Who wrote your histories?”

“The monastic Orders, of course. During the darkest centuries, there was no one else to record them.” He transferred flame to wick.

“There! You have it. And during the time of the antipopes, how many schismatic Orders were fabricating their own versions of things, and passing off their versions as the work of earlier men? You can’t know, you can’t really know. That there was on this continent a more advanced civilization then we have now — that can’t be denied. You can look at the rubble and the rotted metal and know it. You can dig under a strip of blown sand and find their broken roadways. But where is there evidence of the kind of machines your historians tell us they had in those days? Where are the remains of self-moving carts, of flying machines?”

“Beaten into plowshares and hoes.”

“If they existed.”

“If you doubt it, why bother studying the Leibowitzian documents?”

“Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.”

The nuncio smiled tightly. “And what do you want me to do about it, learned Thon?”

The scholar leaned forward earnestly. “Write to the abbot of this place. Assure him that the documents will be treated with utmost care, and will be returned after we have completely examined them for authenticity and studied their content.”

“Whose assurance do you want me to give him — yours or mine?”

“Hannegan’s, yours, and mine.”

“I can give him only yours and Hannegan’s. I have no troops of my own.”

The scholar reddened.

“Tell me,” the nuncio added hastily, “why — besides bandits — do you insist you must see them here, instead of going to the abbey?”

“The best reason you can give the abbot is that if the documents are authentic, if we have to examine them at the abbey, a confirmation wouldn’t mean much to other secular scholars.”

“You mean your colleagues might think the monks had tricked you into something?”

“Ummm, that might be inferred. But also important, if they’re brought here, they can be examined by everyone in the collegium who’s qualified to form an opinion. And any visiting thons from other principalities can have a look at them too. But we can’t move the entire collegium to the southwest desert for six months.”

“I see your point.”

“Will you send the request to the abbey?”

“Yes.”

Thon Taddeo appeared surprised.

“But it will be your request, not mine. And it’s only fair to tell you that I don’t think Dom Paulo, the abbot, will say yes.”

The thon, however, appeared to be satisfied. When he had gone, the nuncio summoned his clerk.

“You’ll be leaving for New Rome tomorrow,” he told him.

“By way of Leibowitz Abbey?”

“Come back by way of it. The report to New Rome is urgent.”

“Yes, Messér.”

“At the abbey, tell Dom Paulo that Sheba expects Solomon to come to her. Bearing gifts. Then you better cover your ears. When he finishes exploding, hurry back so I can tell Thon Taddeo no.”

13

Time seeps slowly on the desert and there is little change to mark its passage. Two seasons had passed since Dom Paulo had refused the request from across the Plains, but the matter had been settled only a few weeks ago. Or had it been settled at all? Texarkana was obviously unhappy with the results.

The abbot paced along the abbey walls at sundown, his jaw thrust ahead like a whiskery old crag against possible breakers out of the sea of events. His thinning hair fluttered in white pennants on the desert wind, and the wind wrapped his habit bandage-tight about his stooped body, making him look like an emaciated Ezekiel with a strangely round little paunch. He thrust his gnarled hands into his sleeves and glowered occasionally across the desert toward the village of Sanly Bowitts in the distance. The red sunlight threw his pacing shadow across the courtyard, and the monks who encountered it in crossing the grounds glanced up wonderingly at the old man. Their ruler had seemed moody of late, and given to strange forebodings. It was whispered that the time soon was coming when a new abbot would be appointed ruler over the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz. It was whispered that the old man was not well, not well at all. It was whispered that if the abbot heard the whispers, the whisperers should speedily climb over the wall. The abbot had heard, but it pleased him for once not to take note of it. He well knew that the whispers were true.