Eifelheim

He straightened — and across the room the globular eyes of a Krenk danced with the reflection of a hundred flames. Dietrich gasped and took a step back.

The Krenk extended its peculiarly long arm, dangling the harness worn by many of their servants. When Dietrich made no move, the Krenk shook it vigorously and tapped its own head to indicate its twin. Then it laid the harness on the table and took a step back.

Dietrich understood. He plucked the harness up and, after a study of his visitor revealed how it was to be worn, strapped it to his own head.

Krenkish heads were smaller and so the harness fit poorly. Nor were the creature’s ears properly positioned, so that when Dietrich had inserted the “hearing-mussel” in his ear — as he saw the Krenk had done — the other piece, the mikrofoneh, did not hang by his mouth. The Krenk vaulted the table and seized Dietrich.

Dietrich tried to pull away, but the Krenk’s grip was too strong. It made rapid passes at Dietrich’s head, but they were not blows and, when the creature stepped away, Dietrich discovered that the straps now fit more comfortably.

“Does now the harness sit well — question,” asked a voice in his ear.

Quite involuntarily, Dietrich turned his head. Then he realized that the ear-piece must contain an even smaller Heinzelmä

“Doch,” said the creature.

Since there could be no action at a distance, there must be a medium through which the impetus flowed. But had the voice flowed through the air, he would have heard the sound directly, rather than through this engine. Hence, an aether must exist. Reluctantly, Dietrich put the matter aside. “You are come to deliver a message,” he guessed.

“Ja. The one you call the Kratzer asks why you have not returned. The Herr Gschert frets because he thinks he knows. They do not accept the reason I offer.”

“You are the servant. The one they tried to beat.”

There was a silence while the Krenk pondered an answer. “Perhaps not a ‘servant’ in your usage,” it said at last.

Dietrich let that pass. “And what reason have you given them for my absence?”

“That you fear us.”

“And the Kratzer fell from the stalk at that? He does not wear bruises.”

“He ‘fell from the stalk’…”

“It is a figure we use. To be so surprised as to fall down like ripe corn.”

“Your language is strange; yet the head-picture is vivid. But, attend. The Kratzer observes your… Your besitting? Yes. He observes that you are a natural philosopher, as is he. So he dismisses my suggestion.”

“Friend grasshopper, you obviously believe you have explained something, but I am at a loss to know what.”

“Those who are struck accept the grace of the beating — as any philosopher should know.”

“Is it so common among you, then? I can imagine better graces.”

The Krenk made the tossing gesture. “Perhaps ‘grace’ is the wrong word. Your terms are strange. Gschert sees that we are few where you are many. He has the sentence in his head that you would attack us — and that is why you stay away.”

“If we stay away, how can we attack?”

“I tell him that our bugs have seen no warlike preparations. But he answers that all the bugs within the Burg have been carefully removed, which argues for secret preparations.”

“Or that Manfred dislikes being spied upon. No, far from an attack, the Herr proposes that you become his vassals.”

The Krenk hesitated. “What does ‘vassal’ signify — question.”

“That he will grant you a fief and the income from it.”

“You explain one unknown in terms of another. Is this a common thing with you — question. Your words circle endlessly, like those great birds in the sky.” The Krenk rubbed his forearms slowly. Irritation, Dietrich wondered? Impatience? Frustration?

“A fief is a right to use or possess that which belongs to the Herr in return for rents of money or service. In turn, he will… shield you from the blows of your enemies.”

The Krenk unmoving while the shadows in the corners deepened, and the eastern sky, visible through the window, darkened to magenta. The tip of the Katerinaberg glowed in the sunlight, unshrouded as yet by the swelling shadow of the Feldberg. Dietrich had just begun to grow concerned when the creature moved slowly to the window and stared out at… What? Who could say in which direction those peculiar eyes focused?

“Why do you do this — question,” it asked at length.

“It is considered a good thing among us to succor the weak, sinful to oppress them.”

The creature turned its golden eyes on him. “Foolishness.”

“As the world measures things, perhaps.”

“’Gifts make slaves,’ is a saying among us. A lord succors to show his strength and power, and obtain the services of those he rules. The weak give gifts to the strong to gain his forbearance.”

“But what is strength?”

The Krenk struck the windowsill with its forearm. “You play games with your words,” the voice of the Heinzelmä

The creature raised its head to stare directly at Dietrich, who could neither move nor speak in the face of such vehemence. He need not return to the lazaretto to risk a beating by these fierce-tempered folk. The Krenken were quite capable of coming into the village, and had refrained so far only because they thought themselves too weak. Let them once suspect their own power and who knew what casual brutality they might inflict?

“There is,” he began to say, but he could not finish the utterance under that basilisk glare; and so he faced Lorenz’s crucifix above his predieu. “There is another sort of strength,” he said. “And that is the ability to live in the face of death.”

The Krenk clicked its side-jaws once, emphatically. “You mock us.”

Dietrich realized what the emphatic click reminded him of — the two blades of a scissors cutting something off. He remembered that, when the sign had been used, the other party had exposed its neck. Dietrich’s hand rose by itself to his throat, and he put the table once more between himself and the stranger. “I intended no mockery. Tell me how I have offended.”

“Even now,” the Krenk responded, close by his ear though the room stood between them. “Even now — and I ca

“Then we must repair your cart, or find you another. Zimmerman is a skilled wheelwright, and Schmidt can fashion whatever metal fixtures are needed. Horses dislike your smell, and the villagers ca

“No, no, no. It ca

“Well, William of Rubruck walked to Cathay and back, and Marco Polo and his uncles did the same more lately, and there is on this earth no farther place than Cathay.”

The Krenk faced him once more and it seemed to Dietrich that those yellow eyes glowed with a peculiar intensity. But that was a trick of the shadows and the candlelight. “No farther place on this earth,” the creature said, “but there are other earths.”

“Indeed there may be, but the journey there is no natural journey.”