"L. Sprague De Camp - Lest Darkness Fall" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

Padway asked in Italian: "Could you tell me where I could find a policeman?"
The man stopped his sales talk, shrugged, and replied, "Non compr' endo."
"Hey!" said Padway. The man paused. With great concentration Padway translated his request
into what he hoped was Vulgar Latin.
The man thought, and said he didn't know. Padway started to turn elsewhere. But the seller of
beads called to another hawker: "Marco! The gentleman wants to find a police agent."
"The gentleman is brave. He is also crazy," replied Marco. The bead-seller laughed. So did
several people. Padway grinned a little; the people were human if not very helpful. He said:
"Please, I-really-want-to-know."
The second hawker, who had a tray full of brass knick-knacks tied around his neck, shrugged. He
rattled off a paragraph that Padway could not follow.
Padway slowly asked the bead-seller: "What did he say?" "He said he didn't know," replied the
bead-seller. "I don't know either."
Padway started to walk off. The bead-seller called after him: "Mister." "Yes?"
"Did you mean an agent of the municipal prefect?" "Yes."
"Marco, where can the gentleman find an agent of the municipal prefect?"
"I don't know," said Marco.
The bead-seller shrugged. "Sorry, I don't know either." If this were twentieth-century Rome, there
would be no difficulty about finding a cop. And not even Benny the Moose could make a whole
city change its language. So he must be in (a) a movie set, (b) ancient Rome (the Tancredi
hypothesis), or (c) a figment of his imagination.
He started walking. Talking was too much of a strain. It was not long before any lingering hopes
about a movie set were dashed by the discovery that this alleged ancient city stretched for miles
in all directions, and that its street plan was quite different from that of modern Rome. Padway
found his little pocket map nearly useless.
The signs on the shops were in intelligible Classical Latin. The spelling had remained as in
Caesar's time, if the pronunciation had not.
The streets were narrow, and for the most part not very crowded. The town had a drowsy,
shabby-genteel, run-down personality, like that of Philadelphia.
At one relatively busy intersection Padway watched a man on a horse direct traffic. He would hold
up a hand to stop an oxcart, and beckon a sedan chair across. The man wore a gaudily striped
shirt and leather trousers. He looked like a central or northern European rather than an Italian.
Padway leaned against a wall, listening. A man would say a sentence just too fast for him to
catch. It was like having your hook nibbled but never taken. By terrific concentration, Padway
forced himself to think in Latin. He mixed his cases and numbers, but as long as he confined
himself to simple sentences he did not have too much trouble with vocabulary.
A couple of small boys were watching him. When he looked at them they giggled and raced off.
It reminded Padway of those United States Government projects for the restoration of Colonial
towns, like Williams-burg. But this looked like the real thing. No restoration included all the dirt
and disease, the insults and altercations, that Padway had seen and heard in an hour's walk.
Only two hypotheses remained: delirium and time-slip. Delirium now seemed the less probable.
He would act on the assumption that things were in fact what they seemed.
He couldn't stand there indefinitely. He'd have to ask questions and get himself oriented. The idea
gave him gooseflesh. He had a phobia about accosting strangers. Twice he opened his mouth,
but his glottis closed up tight with stage fright.
Come on, Padway, get a grip on yourself. "I beg your pardon, but could you tell me the date?
The man addressed, a mild-looking person with a loaf of bread under his arm, stopped and
looked blank. "Qui' e'? What is it?"
"I said, could you tell me the date?"
The man frowned. Was he going to be nasty? But all he said was, "Non compr' endo." Padway