Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [194]
“Oh, that’s a convincing argument. Besides, if you’re right, it’s not exactly a continuum.”
“And that’s why there are gaps in the redshifts. What looks like a continuous motion picture is really just a series of frames. The universe has ‘cracks’ in it.”
The muscular young man laughed. “And what’s in those cracks?”
“Oh, wouldn’t we love to know! Whole other universes, I think. Parallel worlds.”
Hernando cocked his head and looked thoughtful. “Objective evidence?” he said after a time.
“That’s where you come in.”
“Me?” He looked alarmed, as if Sharon was about to send him into one of those parallel worlds.
“You need to build me a chronon detector.”
“Sure, my afternoon is free after my two o’clock lecture. I suppose a chronon is …”
“A ‘quantum’ of time.”
He thought about it. “Cool beans. But how do you detect something like that?”
“You and me, Hernando, we’re going to figure that out. Think of it. Someday, you may walk on another planet, or on a parallel world.”
The post-doc snorted. “I got something to do that weekend.”
Sharon leaned back in her chair, certain now that she had his skeptical mind hooked. Every enthusiast needs a skeptic, or she would run out of control.
XXV
JULY, 1349
Ferial Days
THE GRAY was disinclined to flight, and her stubborn walk was a compromise between Dietrich’s desire to gallop and her own desire not to move at all. When they reached the stretch by the meadow gate where the bushes gave way to open land, and the mare saw untied, wind-scattered sheaves of half-mown hay, she turned off the road and tried to nuzzle the rope from the gatepost. “If you are that hungry, sister horse,” Dietrich conceded, “you’ll not last the journey.” Leaning down, he undid the latch and the horse quickstepped into the meadow like a child shown his birthday cake.
While Dietrich waited impatiently for the gray to feed, curiosity turned his mind to the saddlebags, and he wondered to whom beside God he owed this boon. Searching, he found a linen maniple, dyed bright green and embroidered in thread-of-gold with crosses and the chi-rho. Below that were stuffed other priestly vestments of surpassing beauty. He settled himself in the saddle. What more sign could he ask that the horse had been sent for him to find?
When the mare had eaten her fill, Dietrich turned her toward the shade of the Great Wood. There was a stream there, he remembered, where the horse could drink, and the canopy would be relief against the awful heat.
He had not entered the wood since the Krenkish vessel’s departure, and the expression of summer foliage had altered its aspect considerably. The woods-masters and wild roses suffused the air with their fragrances. Bees hummed. New growth had obscured many of the blazes that Max had cut. Yet, the horse seemed purposeful. Dietrich supposed that she smelled the water and gave her free rein.
Unseen creatures bolted from their path, disturbing the shrubs and the hazel. A blue-winged tail-mouse watched his progress for a space before flying off. Petrarch, it was said, found peace in nature and had once climbed Mount Ventoux near Avignon for no reason but the prospect from its summit. Perhaps the savagery of his writings, his distortions and libels, owed something to his love of savage places.
Dietrich came upon the clearing where the stream pooled before completing its rush down the mountainside. The horse dipped her head and began to drink and Dietrich, reflecting that he too would grow thirsty on the road, dismounted and, hobbling the mare with a hippopede, walked upstream a few paces to drink.
A stone fell into the pool, and Dietrich leapt back. Above him, upon a projecting ledge where the water tumbled into the pool, squatted Heloïse Krenkerin. Dietrich awoke his head-harness. “Greet God,” he told the other through the private canal.
The Krenkerin reached to the