Eifelheim

She remained standing hipshot, with the carton. “I don’t mean to keep you from your work. I only wanted to ask you…” She hesitated. “Oh, it’s probably obvious.”

“What is?”

“Well, you’re researching a village called Eifelheim.”

“Yes. The site is an unexplained void in the Christaller grid.” That was a deliberate test on Tom’s part. He wanted to see what she would make of it.

She raised her eyebrows. “Abandoned and never resettled?” Tom nodded confirmation. “And yet,” she mused, “the locus must have had affinity or it would never have been occupied in the first place. Perhaps a nearby site… No? That is odd. Perhaps their mines were depleted? Their water dried up?”

Tom smiled, delighted at her perception, as much as her interest. He’d had a difficult time convincing Sharon that there even was a problem, and all she’d come up with was a common cause, like the Black Death. This young woman at least knew enough to suggest local causes.

After he explained his problem, the librarian frowned. “Why haven’t you searched for information from before the village’s disappearance? Whatever caused its abandonment must have occurred earlier.”

He swatted the carton. “That’s why I’m here! Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”

She ducked her head to the storm. “But, you’ve never referenced Oberhochwald, so I…”

“Oberhochwald?” He shook his head in irritation. “Why Oberhochwald?”

“That was Eifelheim’s original name.”

“What!” He stood sharply, knocking the heavy reading chair backwards. It hit the floor with a bang and the librarian dropped her carton, folders skittering across the floor. She clapped a hand to her mouth, then stooped to gather them up.

Tom darted around the table. “Never mind those now,” he said. “It was my fault. I’ll pick them up. Just tell me how you know that about Oberhochwald.” Lifting her to her feet, he was surprised at how short she was. Sitting, he had thought her taller.

She pried her arm from his grasp. “We’ll both pick them up,” she told him. She set the carton on the floor and dropped to her hands and knees.

Tom knelt beside her, handed her a folder. “Are you certain about this Oberhochwald place?”

She stacked three folders into the carton and looked at him and he noticed that her eyes were large and brown. “You mean you didn’t know? I learned only by accident, but I thought you… Well, it was a month ago, I think. A brother in the theology school asked me to find a rare manuscript for him and scan it into the database. The name Eifelheim caught my eye because I had already sca

Tom paused with several more folders in his hand. “What was the context?”

“I don’t know. I read Latin, but this was in German. Oh, if I’d only known, I would have sent you an e-mail about it. But I thought—”

Tom placed a hand on her arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you have it here? The manuscript the brother asked for. I need to see it.”

“The original is at Yale—”

“A copy is fine.”

“Yes. I was about to ask you that. We kept a copy of the pdf scan in our own database, and df-imaging comes in once a month and organizes the archives for us. I can call it up.”

“Could you do that for me? Bitte sehr? I mean, pretty please? I’ll finish this.”

He reached under the table to retrieve another wayward folder. Hot damn! Another blow struck for serendipity! He piled two more folders atop the ones he had. No wonder he hadn’t found any contemporary references to Eifelheim. It hadn’t been called Eifelheim yet. He glanced at the librarian, busy at the keyboard in her office.

“Entschuldigung,” He called. She paused and turned. “I haven’t even asked your name.”

“Judy,” she told him. “Judy Cao.”

“Thank you, Judy Cao.”

It was a slim lead, a loose thread dangling from an old tangle of facts. At some unspecified time in the 14th century a wandering Minorite named Fra Joachim had evidently preached a sermon on “the sorcerers at Oberhochwald.” The text of the sermon had not survived the centuries, but Brother Joachim’s oratorical fame had, and a commentary on the sermon had been included in a treatise on homiletics against witchcraft and devil-worship. A later reader — 16th century to judge by the calligraphy — had added a marginal gloss: Dieser Dorp heißt jetzt Eifelheim. This village is now called Eifelhiem.

And that meant…

Tom groaned and laid the printout on the table.

Judy Cao laid a hand on his arm. “What’s wrong, Doctor Schwoerin?”

Tom batted the sheet. “I’ve to go back through all these files.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Oh well. Povtorenia — mat’ uchenia.” He pulled the carton closer to him.

Judy Cao took a folder from the carton and, eyes cast down, turned it over and over in her hands. “I could help,” she suggested.

“Oh…” He shook his head distractedly. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“No, I’m serious.” She looked up. “I volunteer. There’s always a lull on the server after twenty o’clock. The hits from California drop off and the early morning hits from Warsaw or Vie

“I can run a search engine,” Tom said.

“No offence, Doctor Schwoerin, but no one can mouse the Net like a Master Librarian. There is so much information out there, so poorly organized — and so bogus — that knowing how to find it is a science in itself.”

Tom grunted. “Tell me about it. I run a search and I get thousands of hits, most of it Klimbim, which I’m damned if I can figure out how they made the list.”

“Most sites aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on,” Judy said. “Half of them are set up by cranks or amateur enthusiasts. You need to boole your searchstring. I can write a worm to sniff out not only citations of Oberhochwald, but citations of any key words associated with the place. Like…”

“Like Joha

“Or anything. The worm can be taught to screen for context — that’s the hard part — and ignore items that aren’t relevant.”

“All right,” Tom said. “You’ve convinced me. I’ll pay you a stipend from my grant money. It won’t be much, but it’ll give you a title. Research Assistant. And your name will go on the paper after mine.” He straightened his chair. “I’ll key you a special access code for CLIODEINOS so you can dump into my files whenever you find anything. Meanwhile, we -. What’s wrong?”

Judy pulled back from the table. “Nothing.” She looked away briefly. “I thought we might meet here periodically. To coordinate our activities.”

Tom waved his hand. “We can do that easier over the Net. All you need is a smart phone and a modem.”

“I have a smart phone,” she told him, tugging on the string that bound the folder she held. “My phone is smarter than some people.”

Tom laughed, not yet getting the joke.

The two cartons they already had on the table were as good a place as any to start, so Tom took one and gave Judy the other and they went through them, folder by folder. Tom was reading the same items for the second time that night, so he forced himself to concentrate on the words. Searching for “Oberhochwald,” his eyes were snagged by any word starting with an O — or even a “Q” or a “C.” The manuscripts were pe