A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [61]
“Vespers. Will you be in the church?”
“Not until Compline. You take over. What else?”
“Controversy in the basement-over Brother Kornhoer’s experiment.”
“Who and how?”
“Well, the silly gist of it seems to be that Brother Armbruster has the attitude of vespero mundi expectando, while with Brother Kornhoer, it’s the matins of the millennium. Kornhoer moves something to make room for a piece of equipment. Armbruster yells Perdition! Brother Kornhoer yells Progress! and they have at each other again. Then they come fuming to me to settle it. I scold them for losing their tempers. They get sheepish and fawn on each other for ten minutes. Six hours later, the floor shivers from Brother Armbruster’s bellowing Perdition! down in the library. I can settle the blowups, but there seems to be a Basic Issue.”
“A basic breach of conduct, I’d say. What do you want me to do about it? Exclude them from the table?”
“Not yet, but you might warn them.”
“All right, I’ll track it down. Is that all?”
“That’s all, Domne.” He started away, but paused: “Oh, by the way-do you think Brother Kornhoer’s contraption is going to work’?”
“I hope not!” the abbot snorted.
Father Gault appeared surprised. “But, then why let him-”
“Because I was curious at first. The work has caused so much commotion by now, though, that I’m sorry I let him start it.”
“Then why not stop him?”
“Because I’m hoping that he will reduce himself to absurdity without any help from me. If the thing fails, it’ll fail just in time for Thon Taddeo’s arrival; That would be just the proper form of mortification for Brother Kornhoer-to remind him of his vocation, before he begins thinking that he was called to Religion mainly for the purpose of building a generator of electrical essences in the monastery basement.”
“But, Father Abbot, you’ll have to admit that it would be quite an achievement, if successful.”
“I don’t have to admit it,” Dom Paulo told him curtly.
When Gault was gone, the abbot, after a brief debate with himself, decided to handle the problem of the Poet-sirrah! before the problem of perdition-versus-progress. The simplest solution to the problem of the Poet was for the Poet to get out of the royal suite, and preferably out of the abbey, out of the vicinity of the abbey, out of sight, hearing, and mind. But no one could expect a “simplest solution” to get rid of the Poet-sirrah!
The abbot left the wall and crossed the courtyard toward the guesthouse. He moved by feel, for the buildings were monoliths of shadow under the stars, and only a few windows glowed with candlelight. The windows of the royal suite were dark; but the Poet kept odd hours and might well be in.
Inside the building, he groped for the right door, found it, and knocked. There was no immediate answer, but only a faint bleating sound which might or might not have issued from within the suite. He knocked again, then tried the door. It opened.
Faint red light from a charcoal burner softened the darkness; the room reeked of stale food.
“Poet?”
Again the faint bleating, but closer now. He went to the burner, raked up an incandescent coal, and lit a splinter of kindling. He glanced around and shuddered at the litter of the room. It was empty. He transferred the flame to an oil lamp and went to explore the rest of the suite. It would have to be thoroughly scrubbed and fumigated (also, perhaps, exorcised) before Thon Taddeo moved in. He hoped to make the Poet-sirrah! do the scrubbing, but knew the chance was remote.
In the second room, Dom Paulo suddenly felt as if someone were watching him. He paused and looked slowly around.
A single eyeball peered at him from a vase of water on the shelf. The abbot nodded at it familiarly and went on.
In the third room, he met the goat. It was their first meeting.
The goat was standing atop a tall cabinet, munching turnip greens. It looked like a small breed of mountain goat, but it had a bald head that appeared bright blue by lamplight. Undoubtedly a freak by birth.
“Poet?” he inquired, softly, looking straight at the goat and touching his