Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [59]
The Krenk beckoned with its long arm. “Come, and I will explain, although the talking head may not own the words.” When Dietrich had come hesitantly to his side, the Krenk pointed to the darkening sky. “Out there sit other worlds.”
Dietrich nodded slowly. “Aristotle held that impossible, since each world would move naturally toward the center of the other; but the Church has ruled that God could create many worlds should He wish, as my master showed in his nineteenth question on the Heavens.”
The Krenk rubbed its arms slowly. “You must introduce then me to your friend, God.”
“I will. But tell me. For other worlds to exist, there must be a vacuum beyond the world, and this vacuum must be infinite to accommodate the multiplicity of centers and circumferences needed to provide places for these worlds. Yet, ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ and would rush to fill it, as in siphons and bleeding cups.”
The Krenk was slow in answering. “The Heinzelmännchen hesitates. There gives ja a multiplicity of centers, but what means—circumferences—question. Unless—it is what we call the—sun-ridge. Within the sun-ridge, bodies fall inward and circle the sun; beyond it, they fall outward until captured by another sun.”
Dietrich laughed. “But then each body would have two natural motions, which is impossible.” But he wondered. Would a body placed beyond the convex circumference of the prime mobile possess a resistance to its natural downward motion? However, the creature had suggested also the sun as the center of the world, which was impossible, for there would then be parallax among the fixed stars when viewed from the Earth, contrary to experience.
But a more troubling thought intruded. “You say you fell outward from one of these worlds across the ‘sun-ridge’ to fall upon our own?” Satan and his minions had fallen in just such a way. These Krenken are not supernatural, he reminded himself. Of this, his head was convinced, however doubtful his bowels.
Further discourse clarified certain matters and obscured others. The Krenken had not fallen from another world, but had rather traveled in some fashion behind the empyrean heavens. The spaces behind the firmament were like a sea, and the insula, while in some ways like a cart, was also like a great ship. How this was so eluded Dietrich, for it lacked both sails and oars. But he understood that it was neither cog nor galley, but only like a cog or a galley; and it did not sail the seas but only something like the seas.
“The aether,” said Dietrich in wonder. When the Krenk cocked its head, Dietrich said, “Some philosophers speculate that there is a fifth element through which the stars move. Others, including my own teacher, doubt the necessity of a quint essence and teach that heavenly motions can be explained by the same elements we find in the sublunar regions.”
“You are either very wise,” said the Krenk, “or very ignorant.”
“Or both,” Dietrich admitted cheerfully. “But the same natural laws do apply, not so?”
The creature returned its attention to the sky. “True, our vehicle moves through an insensible world. You can neither see, smell, nor touch it from this existence. We must pass through it to return to our home in the heavens.”
“So must we all,” Dietrich agreed, his fear of this being fading into pity.
The Krenk shook its head and made a smacking sound over and over with its soft upper and lower lips, quite unlike the loose flapping of their laughter. After a few minutes, it said, “But we know not which star marks our home. By the manner of our travel through the inward-curling directions, we cannot know, for the appearance of the firmament differs at each place, and the selfsame star may show a different color and stand in a different place in the heavens. The fluid that drives our ship jumped in an unexpected manner and ran down the wrong mill race. Certain items burned. Ach!” He rubbed his two forearms together sharply. “I do not have the words to say it; nor you the words to hear.”
The creature