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“You’ll say, “Hmmm-hnnn!’ “

“No! I’ll say He’s already here. I caught a glimpse of Him once.”

“What? Who are you talking about? Thon Taddeo?”

“No! Moreover, I do not care to prophesy, unless you tell me what’s really bothering you, Paulo.”

“Well, it all started with Brother Kornhoer’s lamp.”

“Lamp? Oh, yes, the Poet mentioned it. He prophesied it wouldn’t work.”

“The Poet was wrong, as usual. So they tell me. I didn’t watch the trial.”

“It worked then? Splendid. And that started what?”

“Me wondering. How close are we to the brink of something? Or how close to a shore? Electrical essences in the basement. Do you realize how much things have changed in the past two centuries?”

Soon, the priest spoke at length of his fears, while the hermit, mender of tents, listened patiently until the sun had begun to leak through the chinks in the west wall to paint glowing shafts in the dusty air.

“Since the death of the last civilization, the Memorabilia has been our special province, Benjamin. And we’ve kept it. But now? I sense the predicament of the shoemaker who tries to sell shoes in a village of shoemakers.”

The hermit smiled. “It could be done, if he manufactures a special and superior type of shoe.”

“I’m afraid the secular scholars are already beginning to lay claim to such a method.”

“Then go out of the shoemaking business, before you are ruined.”

“A possibility,” the abbot admitted. “It’s unpleasant to think of it however. For twelve centuries, we’ve been one little island in a very dark ocean. Keeping the Memorabilia has been a thankless task, but a hallowed one, we think. It’s only our worldly job, but we’ve always been bookleggers and memorizers, and it’s hard to think that the job’s soon to be finished-soon to become unnecessary. I can’t believe that somehow.”

“So you try to best the other ‘shoemakers’ by building strange contraptions in your basement?”

“I must admit, it looks that way-”

“What will you do next to keep ahead of the seculars? Build a flying machine? Or revive the Machina analytica? Or perhaps step over their heads and resort to metaphysics?”

“You shame me, Old Jew. You know we are monks of Christ first, and such things are for others to do.”

“I wasn’t shaming you. I see nothing inconsistent in monks of Christ building a flying machine, although it would be more like them to build a praying machine.”

“Wretch! I do my Order a disservice by sharing a confidence with you!”

Benjamin smirked. “I have no sympathy for you. The books you stored away may be hoary with age, but they were written by children of the world, and they’ll be taken from you by children of the world, and you had no business meddling with them in the first place.”

“Ah, now you care to prophesy!”

“Not at all. ‘Soon the sun will set’-is that prophecy? No, it’s merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events. The children of the world are consistent too-so I say they will soak up everything you can offer, take your job away from you, and then denounce you as a decrepit wreck. Finally, they’ll ignore you entirely. It’s your own fault. The Book I gave you should have been enough for you. Now you’ll just have to take the consequences for your meddling.”

He had spoken flippantly, but his prediction seemed uncomfortably close to Dom Paulo’s fears. The priest’s countenance saddened.

“Pay me no mind,” said the hermit. “I’ll not venture to soothsay before I’ve seen this contraption of yours, or taken a look at this Thon Taddeo-who begins to interest me, by the way. Wait until I’ve examined the entrails of the new era in better detail, if you expect advice from me.”

“Well, you won’t see the lamp because you never come to the abbey.”

“It’s your abominable cooking I object to.”

“And you won’t see Thon Taddeo because he comes from the other direction. If you wait to examine the entrails of an era until after it’s born, it’s too late to prophesy its birth.”

“Nonsense. Probing the womb of the future is bad for the child. I shall wait-and