Eifelheim

“Why has God abandoned us?” Gregor asked.

Dietrich tried to pry Theresia’s arm loose so he could lance the last pustule. He did not think it mattered. “God will never abandon us,” he insisted, “but we may abandon God.”

The mason swept his arm wide, relinquishing his grip on Theresia’s shoulder. “Then where is He in all this?” he shouted. Theresia flinched at the bellow and he immediately took a more tender note and stroked her hair with his great stubby fingers.

Dietrich thought of all the reasoned arguments, of Aquinas and the other philosophers. He wondered how Joachim would have answered. Then he thought that Gregor did not need an answer, did not want an answer, or that the only answer was hope.

“Theresia, I need to cut the pustule under your arm.”

She had opened her eyes. “Will I see God?”

“Ja. Doch. Gregor, look for some cooking oil.”

“Cooking oil? Why?”

“I must anoint her. It is not too late.”

Gregor blinked, as if a

Dietrich took it. “It will do.” His lips moved in silent prayer as he blessed the oil. Then, wetting his thumb in it, he traced the sign of the cross on her forehead, then on her closed eyelids, praying, “Illúmina óculos meos, ne umquam obdórmium in morte…” From time to time, when Dietrich paused to recollect the proper words, Gregor would say, “Amen,” through his tears.

He was nearly finished with the sacrament when Theresia coughed and a bolus of blood and vomit issued forth from her mouth. Dietrich thought, the small-lives are in there. They will have gotten Gregor and me. Yet this was not the first time he had been spattered; and Ulf, on his last inspection of Dietrich’s blood, had pronounced it still clean.

But Ulf died many days ago.

When he had completed the rite, Dietrich set the oil aside — Others would need it soon. — and he took one of Theresia’s hands in his own. It seemed a fragile thing, though the skin was rough and cracked. “Do you remember,” he said, “when Fulk broke his finger and I taught you how to set it?” Her lips, when she smiled, were as red as berries. “I do not know which of the three of us was more frightened, you, I, or Fulk.” To Gregor, he said, “I remember her first words. She was mute when I brought her here. We were out in the Lesser Wood searching for peony and other herbs and roots, and I was showing her where to find them when her foot became caught in the cleft of a fallen branch, and she said…”

“Help me,” said Theresia and her hand clenched Dietrich’s so tight as possible in her weakness. She coughed a little, and then a little more, and the coughing built until a great flood of vomit and blood poured from her, soaking her gown all the way to her waist. Dietrich reached around to turn her head so that she would not choke on the effluvium, but as he lifted it he knew, perhaps from that it was a little lighter than before, that his unbegotten daughter had died.

Some long time afterward, he crossed the road to the hospital to tell Hans what had happened and found the Krenkl had died also in his absence. Dietrich knelt by the corpse and lifted the great, long, serrated arms and folded them across the mottled torso in an attitude of prayer. He could not close the eyes, of course, and they seemed still aglow, though that was only the rays of the declining sun out beyond the autumn fields reflecting through them like one of Theodoric’s raindrops, and the shadow of a rainbow fell on Hans’ cheeks.

9. Now: Tom

The subconscious is a wonderful thing. It never sleeps, no matter what the rest of the mind does. And it never stops thinking. No matter what the rest of the mind does.

Tom awoke in a cold sweat. No, it’s not possible! It was absurd, ridiculous. But everything fit. It all fell into place. Or did it? Was it the answer to his dilemma, or a chimera that made sense only as a troubled dream?

He glanced at Sharon, who sprawled, fully-clothed, beside him. She must have returned late from the lab and crashed. Usually, he woke when she entered the condo, no matter how late the hour or how deep his sleep; but he could not remember her coming in last night. She turned slightly and a smile sketched itself on her lips. Dreaming of chronons, no doubt.

He eased out of bed and tip-toed from the room, closing the door gently behind him. He seated himself at CLEODEINOS and called up the Eifelheim file. He carefully checked and crossreferenced each item, creating a relationship map. Information lay in the arrangement of facts, not in the facts themselves. Re-arrange them in another configuration and — who knew? — their meaning could change utterly.

He put his facts into chronological order, placing undated items through context or through logical relationship, not always an easy task. Not only had the calendar been unreformed, but they had started years at different times. In the Empire, a Year of Our Lord started on the Feast of the Incarnation, while regnal years, like IV Ludovici, began on the civil new year day. It seemed screwy to Tom, but Judy had laughed and said, “Render unto Caesar, Tom. Popes and emperors may have been trying to one-up each other for centuries, but no one ever forgot that they had different spheres of authority.”

Which meant that everything from January 1 to March 25 of 1349 CE, in the modern reckoning, had been recorded as A

He interpolated the dates when the Black Death had broken out in Basel and Freiburg, and any other contextual events on which he could find information. The record was spotty, incomplete. If the strangers had arrived in the fall, why had there been no rumors about sorcerors and demons in Oberhochwald for six months or more? He didn’t really know when Dietrich had bought the wire; nor when the ‘travelers had determined to try for home.’ And how did Ockham fit in? The Pope had invited him to Avignon on 8 June 1349, but there was evidence he had left Munich earlier, just ahead of the plague outbreak there. Nothing further was ever heard of him, and historians supposed he had died of the plague along the way. His route would have taken him near Oberhochwald. Would he have stopped there to see “my friend, the doctor seclusus”? Had he brought the plague with him from Munich? Had he died there?

Tom chewed on the tip of his lightpen. He envied physicists. The answers were always “in the back of the book.” If the physicist were only persistent enough or clever enough, she could pry them loose from the universe. Cliologists were less fortunate. The facts themselves did not always survive; and those that did, survived by luck, not importance. No amount of persistence could interpret a record that had perished in a long-ago fire. If you couldn’t live with that — with the knowledge that the answers were not in the back of the book — best stay out of history altogether.

He studied his list and diagrams carefully, referring to the original documents from time to time to refresh his mind on the details. On a map, he checked the flight of the “Feldberg Demon” from St. Blasien “in the direction of the Feldberg.” Oberhochwald lay on its path. In the end, he saw no other possible explanation. In fact, he wondered now why he hadn’t seen it earlier. What had he told Sharon that day in the restaurant? Maybe the subconscious is smarter than we think.

Or maybe not. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, pulling his lip. He couldn’t see any obvious flaws in his reasoning; but what did that mean? Sometimes the obvious is only wishful thinking. He needed a second opinion. Someone on whose judgement — and discretion — he could rely. He copied his files and added a summary. When he looked at the old digital wall clock with its liquid crystal display, it was 03:20 hours. That meant 09:20 hours in Freiburg. He took a deep breath, hesitated, then, before he could have second thoughts, he downloaded all of it to my office, a quarter of a world away. It contained a single question: Was glaubst du? What’s your guess?