Of course, none of the perpetrators had wanted to push their luck at first. Galileo had retired to his home, living near the abbey in which his daughter was a nun and probably working on his diplomatic skills for when he published his next paper, which Frank suspected would be a lot more polite than his last one. Most of the Americans had gone back to Germany, and the Marcolis—until Frank and Giovanna and her two cousins returned—had gone back to Venice. Even Mazarini had disappeared, Frank had no idea where.
"Safe?" He asked, after taking that moment to think.
"Within reason, I should say. They have other things to do, I don't doubt." Piero waved a hand in the air. "Oppression of the masses, lying propaganda, show-trials of men in the vanguard of Truth and Progress."
Frank laughed. "Yeah, the usual."
Piero grinned back. "I have a friend in Venice who sent me some of the Committee broadsides your friend Marcoli prints. It is not difficult to mock, I regret to say."
Frank grimaced. "I know. Massimo means well, but I wish he'd stick to actually doing some good rather than just flaming away the way he does."
Piero raised an eyebrow. "He does some good?"
Frank nodded. "Sure. You'll see Benito about the place, he learned to read from Massimo. He teaches street kids their letters."
"What good does that do?"
"Well, the idea is that as they grow up they're capable of more than just grunt labor or enforced idleness. With a bit of education, they figure out how to do things better. Not all of them, just the ones who really were being held back for lack of opportunity." Frank mentally summoned up Committee Propaganda 101. "You see, the way a lot of folks end up going nowhere just because they're peasants or whatever is a real waste of talent. Give those people some education and the means to use it, and everyone ends up better off. We're trying to make all of Europe a land of opportunity."
"So I've read. For the time being I'll help by buying a meal, hey?"
"Right you are," said Frank, "every little helps. You want to get more involved some time, just ask anyone here. We've always got work for willing hands."
Frank took the order back to the bar. Before he got there, though, he heard a commotion and he turned around.
It was two guys over by the door, another couple of lefferti, albeit low-budget ones who could only afford the jacket and hat. Both were on their feet, stools overturned on the floor behind them. Neither had his weapon out quite yet, but there was a definite hovering of hands in the general vicinity of belts. The room was starting to go quiet, and the sounds of stool and chair legs scraping as the other customers turned to watch the action was, Frank had learned in only a few weeks' experience, a Bad Sign.
He dropped his notepad and began to amble over. A quiet word might help, and certainly couldn't do any harm. Hopefully, someone was pulling a gun out from under the counter to back him up if it turned ugly. He was careful to look as unthreatening as possible, and pasted a large smile on his face.
"Guys, guys," he said. "How's about being friendly about this, hey."
"Mind your own business," the taller of the two growled, not taking his eyes off the other guy, who was a short, wide, villainous-looking customer with several days' growth of stubble and caterpillar eyebrows.
"You guys break any furniture, it's my business. My business if there's bloodstains to clean up, too." Frank kept his tone light and pleasant. "Now, I could say take it outside, round the back some place, but maybe you guys can talk about this, hey? Try and get along peaceful-like?"
That provoked a stream of very colloquial Roman dialect from both of them, and hands to clench around the knives—big knives, Frank noted—at their belts. He raised his hands, making placating motions. "Guys? Calm down, please, or take it outside. Neither of you has any quarrel with me, and I'd rather not have to clean up."
Glowering at each other, they did. Frank hoped they'd be able to sort it out without bloodshed, but from the way they a crowd of spectators gathered to follow them out—including Piero, he saw—he didn't think it likely.
Chapter 9
Rome
Sharon and Ruy heard the ruckus from three blocks away—or what passed for blocks in a town that had grown, rather than being laid out in the manner Sharon was used to back up-time. As they rounded a corner, one of those tricks of big-city acoustics that Sharon had found were amplified by the lack of automobiles brought the sound of an uproar and what seemed like chanting. The part of town they were in was a little bit run-down, and so the streets were not busy. Such people as there were, however, seemed more than a little nervous, and were looking toward the source of the sound.