Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [44]
Manfred grinned briefly. “Should I suspect now that you, too, are all gears and cams?”
“Please, I was conscious of the irony.” They walked together from the credence table to stand near the fire. The ruddy embers hissed, and licked occasionally into flame.
Dietrich rubbed his hand across the roughly textured glass of his wine-bowl while he considered. “There was no cadence to the voice,” he decided. “Or, rather, its cadence was mechanical, without rhetorical flourishes. It lacked scorn, amusement, emphasis, … hesitation. It said ‘many thanks’ with all the feeling of a shuttlecock flying across a loom.”
“I see,” said Manfred, and Dietrich raised a finger post.
“And that was another convincing point. You and I understand that by ‘see’ you signified something other than a direct impression on the sense of sight. As Buridan said, there is more to the meaning of an utterance than the precise words uttered. But the Heinzelmännchen did not understand figures. Once it learned that the ‘tongue’ is a part of the body, it became confused when I referred to ‘the German tongue.’ It did not comprehend metonymy.”
“That’s Greek to me,” Manfred said.
“What I mean, my lord, is that I think … I think they may not know poetry.”
“No poetry …” Manfred frowned, swirled his wine cup, and threw down a swallow. “Imagine that,” he said. For a moment Dietrich thought the Herr had spoken sarcastically, but the man surprised him when he continued almost to himself, “No King Rother? No Eneit?” He lifted his cup and declaimed:
“Roland raises Oliphant to his lips
Draws deep breath and blows with all his force.
High are the mountains, and from peak to peak
The sound re-echoes thirty leagues away …”
“By God, I cannot hear those lines sung without a shiver.” He turned to Dietrich. “You will swear that this Heinzelmännchen is only a device and not a real brownie?”
“Mine Herr, Bacon described such a ‘talking head,’ though he knew not how one might be fashioned. Since thirteen years the Milanese built a mechanical clock in their public square that rings the hours with no man’s hand intervening. If a mechanical device can speak the time, why cannot a more subtle device speak of other matters?”
“That logic of yours will get you into trouble one of these days,” Manfred cautioned him. “But you say it already knew some phrases and words. How was that come by?”
“They placed devices about the village to listen to our speech. They showed me one. It was no bigger than my thumb and looked like an insect, for which reason I call them ‘bugs.’ From what he overheard, the Heinzelmännchen deduced somehow a meaning—that ‘How goes it?’ signified a greeting, or that ‘swine’ signified that particular animal, and so forth. But he was limited by what the mechanical bugs saw and heard, much of which he did not properly understand. So, while he knew that swine were sometimes called ‘sucklings’ or ‘yearlings,’ he did not grasp the distinction, let alone that between the first, second, and third pen or between breeding and leader sows—by which I deduce that these folk are not swineherds.”
Manfred grunted. “You still call it a Heinzelmännchen, then.”
Dietrich shrugged. “The name is as good as any. But I coined a term in Greek to signify both the brownie and the bugs.”
“Yes, you would have …”
“I call them automata, because they are self-acting.”
“Like the mill-wheel, then.”
“Very like, save that I know not what fluid impresses an impetus on them.”
Manfred’s eyes searched the hall. “Might a ‘bug’ listen even now?”
Dietrich shrugged. “They placed them on Laurence-eve, just before your return. They are subtle, but I doubt they could have slipped into the Hof or the Burg. The sentries may not be the most alert, but they might have marked a skulking, five-shoe-tall grasshopper.”
Manfred guffawed and slapped Dietrich on the shoulder. “A five-shoe