Eifelheim

Afterward, Hans replenished the fire barrels of the talking head by unfolding a triptych made of glass. This glass converted sunlight into the elektronik essence. Philosophically, one sort of fire might be converted into another sort of fire, but the practical alchemy eluded him.

“Why has the pest come here?” Dietrich asked suddenly.

Hans watched the sigil on the body of the Heinzelmä

“That holds no comfort.”

“Must there be comfort?”

“Life without purpose is not worth living.”

“Is it? Listen, my friend. Life is ever worth living. My… You would say, my ‘grandsire.’ My ‘grandsire’ spent many — months — huddled in a broken nest — a town — wrecked by… by an aerial assault. His nest-brothers were gone down in flames. His nurse had died in his arms from a violent expression worse than that of black powder. He did not know where he would find his next meal. But his life was worth living, because in such straits, finding that next meal gives purpose; the next dawn marks your success. Never was he more alive than in those months when he lived so close by death. It was my own hatching-brood — which wanted for nothing — that found life oppressive.”

When Tuesday dawned with no further instances of the pest, the villagers crept from their cottages and spoke together in hushed voices. Word had come from the manor that Everard was resting and his fever seemed a little milder. “Perhaps the village will escape with no worse,” Gregor Mauer said, when Dietrich passed through the village that morning.

“May God grant it so,” Dietrich answered. They stood in the mason’s workyard, amidst stone dust and chips. Gregor’s two sons idled nearby in leather aprons and wearing thick gloves. Little Gregor, a hulking youth near ten stone in weight, held a plumb in his hand and was swinging it absently.

“Pastor…,” Gregor seemed oddly hesitant. He studied the dust in his courtyard, pushing it with the sole of his boot. A glower sent his sons off. Little Gregor poked his younger brother with his elbow and gri

“No respect,” said Gregor. “I should have sent them away for their ‘prenticing.” He sighed. “Pastor, I would wed Theresia. She is your ward, to give in marriage.”

Dietrich had not looked for this day. In his heart, Theresia remained a tear-stained waif, blackened with the soot of her burning home. “Does she understand your wish?”

“She consents.” When Dietrich made no answer, he added, “She is a sweet woman.”

“She is. But her heart is deeply troubled.”

“I have tried to explain about the Krenken.”

“There is more than that. I think she impresses her i

“I… don’t understand.”

“Something Hans told me about the soul. The Krenken have made a philosophy of it. I call it ‘psyche logos.’ They have divided the soul into parts: the self — that which says, ‘ego,’ the conscience — which sits above ego and rules it, the original sin below it, and, naturally, the vegetative and animal souls of which Aristotle wrote. They say…” He grew suddenly irritated with himself. “But that is of no matter. What I mean is…” He smiled briefly. “There stand matters in her past of which you know nothing.”

“It is less her past than her future that concerns me.”

Dietrich nodded.

“Then we have your blessing?”

“I must think on it. There is no man I’d rather give her to than you, Gregor. But it is a decision for the rest of her life, and not one to be made on a moment’s fancy.”

“The rest of her life,” Gregor said slowly, “may be no long time.”

Dietrich crossed himself. “Do not tempt God. None else have fallen ill.”

“Not yet,” Gregor agreed, “but the end of the world is coming, and in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.”

“I told you I would think on it.” Dietrich turned to go, but Gregor’s shout turned him round.

“We don’t need your permission,” the mason said, “but we wanted your blessing.”

Dietrich nodded, hunched his shoulders, and left the stoneyard.

After vespers, Dietrich ate a simple meal of bread and cheese washed down with ale. He had cut extra pieces for Joachim, but the young monk had not reappeared. Hans squatted by the open window, listening to the insect song called up by evenfall. From time to time, the Krenkl bit into a piece of bread that had been dipped into the life-giving elixir. Even so, some bruises had already marked his skin. The stars, reflected in his huge eyes, seemed to twinkle inside his head. “There stands a sentence in my head,” he said, “that one of those must be Home-star. If God is good, He’d not abandon me with no glimpse of it. I only wish I knew which. Perhaps…” He extended a long forearm, a long finger, “…that one. It is so bright. There must be some reason it is so bright.” He buzzed with his side lips. “But no. It is bright because it is close. The philosophy of chances tells me that Home-star is unknowably distant, in an unknowable direction, and not one of those lights even shines in Krenkheim’s skies. Even that tenuous bond is denied me.”

“The sky is deep, then?” Dietrich said.

“Unmeasurably deep.”

Dietrich came to the window and gazed into the black dome overhead. “I always thought it a sphere hung with lamps. But some are near and some are far, you say, and that is why they seem brighter or dimmer? What holds them up? The air?”

“Nothing. There is no air in the void between the stars. There gives no ‘up’ or ‘down.’ If you were to ascend into heaven, you would go up and up until the earth loses its grip and you float forever — or until you came within the grip of another world.”

Dietrich nodded. “Your theology is correct. In what medium do stars then swim? Buridan never believed in the quintessence. He said that heavenly bodies would continue always in what motion the Creator gave them, for there would be no resistance. But if the sky be not a dome that holds the air in, it must be filled with something else.”

“Must it? There was a famous… experientia,” Hans told him. “A krenkish philosopher reasoned that, were the heavens filled with this fifth element, there would be a ‘wind’ as our world moved through it. He measured the swiftness of light first one way, then the other, but he found no difference.”

“Then young Oresme is wrong? The earth does not move?”

Hans turned and flapped his lips. “Or there is no quintessence.”

“Or the quintessence moves with us, as the air does. There are more than two possibilities.”

“No, my friend. Space is filled with nothing.”

Dietrich laughed for the first time since finding Everard. “How can that be, since ‘nothing’ is no thing, but the lack of a thing. If the sky were filled with no thing, something would move to fill it. The very word shows it. Vacuare is ‘to empty out.’ But natura non vacuit. Nature does not empty. It needs effort to make something empty.”

“Na…,” Hans replied with hesitation. “Does the Heinzelmä

“The noun of vacuare is vacuum, which expresses an abstract action as a factual thing: ‘that which is in the state of having been emptied.’ So: ‘Energia vacuum.’ But we read that ‘the spirit of God moved over the Void,’ so it may be that you have found the very breath of God in this ‘vacuum-energia’ of yours. But, attend.” Dietrich raised a finger. “Your vessel moves across insensible directions that lie within all of nature.”