A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [32]
Brother Horner was a gentle old man, and Brother Francis liked him from the start. “Most of us do better work on the assigned copy,” Horner told him, “if we have our own project too. Most of the copyists become interested in some particular work from the Memorabilia and like to spend a little time at it on the side. For example, Brother Sarl over there-his work was lagging, and he was making mistakes. So we let him spend an hour a day on a project he chose for himself. When the work gets so tedious that he starts making errors in copy, he can put it aside for a while and work on his own project. I allow everyone to do the same. If you finish your assigned work before the day’s over but don’t have your own project, you’ll have to spend the extra time on our perennials.
“Perennials?”
“Yes, and I don’t mean plants. There’s a perennial demand from the whole clergy for various books-Missals, Scripture, Breviaries, the Summa, encyclopediae, and the like. We sell quite a lot of them. So when you don’t have pet project, we’ll put you on the perennials when you finish early. You’ve plenty of time to decide.”
“What project did Brother Sarl pick?”
The aged overseer paused. “Well, I doubt if you’d even understand it. I don’t. He seems to have found a method for restoring missing words and phrases to some of the old fragments of original text in the Memorabilia. Perhaps the left-hand side of a half-burned book is legible, but the right edge of each page is burned, with a few words missing at the end of each line. He’s worked out a mathematical method for finding the missing words. It’s not foolproof, but it works to some degree. He’s managed to restore four whole pages since he began the attempt.”
Francis glanced at Brother Sarl, who was an octogenarian and nearly blind. “How long did it take him?” the apprentice asked.
“About forty years,” said Brother Horner. “Of course he’s only spent about five hours a week at it, and it does take considerable arithmetic.”
Francis nodded thoughtfully. “If one page per decade could be restored, maybe in a few centuries-”
“Even less,” croaked Brother Sarl without looking up from his work. “The more you fill in, the faster the remainder goes. I’ll get the next page done in a couple of years. After that, God willing, maybe-” His voice tapered off into a mumble. Francis frequently noticed that Brother Sarl talked to himself while working.
“Suit yourself,” said Brother Horner. “We can always use more help on the perennials, but you can have your own project when you want one.”
The idea came to Brother Francis in an unexpected flash.
“May I use the time,” he blurted, “to make a copy of the Leibowitz blueprint I found?”
Brother Horner seemed momentarily startled. “Well-I don’t know, son. Our Lord Abbot is, well-just a little sensitive on that subject. And the thing may not belong in the Memorabilia. It’s in the tentative file now.”
“But you know they fade, Brother. And it’s been handled a lot in the light. The Dominicans had it in New Rome for so long-”
“Well-I suppose it would be a rather brief project. If Father Arkos doesn’t object, but-” He waggled his head in doubt.
“Perhaps I could include it as one of a set,” Francis hastily offered. “What few recopied blueprints we have are so old they’re brittle. If I made several duplicates-of some of the others-”
Horner smiled wryly. “What you’re suggesting is, that by including the Leibowitz blueprint in a set, you might escape detection.”
Francis reddened.
“Father Arkos might not even notice, eh?-if he happened to wander through.”
Francis squirmed.
“All right,” said Horner, his eyes twinkling slightly. “You may use your unassigned time to make duplicates of any of the recopied prints that are in bad condition.