Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [183]
“The sky is deep, then?” Dietrich said.
“Immeasurably 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 Heinzelmännchen overset properly? Our philosophers say that the nothing does contain what we call the ‘nothingspirit.’ But I misdoubt your folk would know of this. How would you say it with your philosophical tongue?”
“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 ‘vacucum-energia’ of yours. But, attend.” Dietrich raised a finger. “Your vessel moves across insensible directions that lie within all of nature.”
“Ja. As the inside of a sphere is ‘insensible’ to those who apprehend only its surface.”
“Then, your Krenkheim star is not so far away at all. It is within you at all times.”
Hans froze for a moment, then briefly parted his soft lips. “You are a wise man, Pastor Dietrich, or a very confused one.”
“Or perhaps both,” Dietrich admitted. He leaned from the window. “I see no sign of Joachim, and it grows now too dark to go about with no torch.”
“He is in the church,” Hans said. “I saw him go in at nones.”
“So! And not yet out? It is past vespers.”
Alarmed, Dietrich hurried across the church green, stumbling a bit over the half-seen, starlit terrain, coming up with a rush against the carved support post at the northwest corner of the church. Ecke the Giantess lowered upon him; Alberich the Dwarf leered menacingly from the pedestal. The wind swayed and gave them voices. Dietrich staggered up the stairs, paused and laid a gentle hand on St. Catherine’s sinuous form, upon her sorrowful cheek. A night owl passed by with a sound that was almost silence. Fearful of what he might find within, he threw the doors open.
The starlight, attenuated by its passage through the stained glass, left the interior dim. Dietrich heard a dull, slow slapping sound from near the altar.
He ran to the sanctuary, where he tripped upon a prostrate form. There was a familiar stink to the air. “Joachim!” he cried. “Are you well?” He remembered Everard lying in his vomit and his reeks. But this smell was the sharp, sanguine odor of blood.
He groped the body and found it nude above the waist, found