Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [173]
One bent and retrieved some object from the ground, which he held indifferently, but which Dietrich, watching from the ridge, knew he studied with great intensity, for he twisted it first one way, then another, which is what the Krenken often did to sharpen the vision of their strange eyes.
“That device,” said Hilde, and Max and Dietrich both turned to her. “I saw it often in the hands of their children. It is some plaything.”
Below, the Krenken squatted and hugged their knees high above their heads.
7
NOW
Sharon
SHE HEARD him call distantly, a tiny, insect-voice, squeak-squeaking her name. But her universe was too lovely to leave. No, not the uni-verse, the poly-verse. Twelve dimensions, not eleven. A triplet of triplets. The rotation groups and the meta-algebra made sense now. The speed of light anomaly fit, too. She squeezed the polyverse, and her pulse quickened. Smart lad, that Einstein. He got it just right. A twist. Kaluza and Klein were no dummies, either. And bend, and … There! If she warped it in that way …
There is an altered state that overcomes one in such moments, as if the mind had slipped into another world. Everything else becomes distant, and time itself seems suspended. Motion ceases. The sun stands still. In such moments, famous mathematicians make cryptic marginal notes.
Sharon’s eyes refocused and she saw Tom’s face staring into hers. “I had it!” she said. “It was beautiful. I almost had it! Where’s my notebook!”
It appeared magically in her hands, open to a blank page. She snatched the pen from Tom’s fingers and scribbled fiercely. Partway through she invented a new notation. Please, she thought, let me remember what it means. She marked an equation with a star and wrote: [*] is true!! She sighed, and shut the book. “Wait’ll I tell Hernando,” she said.
“Who’s Hernando?”
She scowled at Tom. “I don’t know whether to be angry because you interrupted my train of thought, or glad because you had my notebook handy. How did you know?”
“Because you don’t normally pour your tea on your scrambled eggs.”
Only then did she remember she was eating breakfast. She looked down and groaned. “I must be losing my mind.”
“No argument here. I knew it was notebook-serious as soon as your eyes glazed over.” He took her plate to the sink and rinsed it off into the disposal. “You can have one of my soft-boiled eggs,” he told her over his shoulder.
She shuddered. “I don’t know how you can eat those things.” She snagged a piece of bacon from his plate.
He sat back down. “I saw that. Do you want some tea? No, I’ll pour.”
Soon she was sipping on “the Earl.” Tom set the pot down. “So what was the big revelation? I’ve never seen you zone out quite that thoroughly.”
“You don’t understand GUT physics.”
And Sharon didn’t understand cliology; but Tom knew something Sharon did not, although he didn’t know he knew it. And that was that when your words come out of your mouth and back into your ear, your brain gives them a second rinse, and cleans them up a little better. All Tom knew was that when he tried to explain things to Sharon, his own thinking clarified. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll sit here, smile benignly, and nod in all the right places.”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning.”
“Well …” She took a sip of tea as she thought it over. “All right. At the Big Bang—”
Tom laughed. “Whoa! When I said to start at the beginning, I didn’t mean the Beginning.”
She tried again. “Look. Why did the apple fall on Newton?”
“Because he was sitting too close under the apple tree?”
She pushed back from the table. “Forget it.”
“Okay, okay. Gravity, all right?”
She paused and studied him. “Are you interested in my work, or not?”
“Did I have your notebook ready for you?”
So he had. How did the cliche put it? Actions speak louder than words. And a good thing, too, because his words could