Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [62]
Gregor scowled, now more than half-worried that his friends were plotting his remarriage. “A man would need a bonfire for that undertaking,” he grumbled.
DIETRICH HAD named his nocturnal visitor Johann von Sterne—John-of-the-stars. He resumed his visits to the lazaretto, and slowly his confidence returned. The creatures would glance his way when he arrived, pause a moment, then calmly resume their activities. None threatened him.
Some worked diligently on the ship. Dietrich watched them play fire across certain seams and spray fluids and spread colored earths upon its surfaces. Air, no doubt, also figured in the repairs, for he sometimes heard the hissing of gasses deep within the nether regions of the structure.
Others occupied themselves in natural philosophy, in bizarre and patternless leaping, or in solitary walks and idleness. Some perched in trees like birds! As the autumn forest became a blaze of color, they used wonderful instruments—fotografia—to capture miniature “light drawings” of the leaves. Once, Dietrich recognized the alchemist by his more particular clothing, squatting in that peculiar knees-above-head posture, overlooking the stream where it tumbled over an escarpment. He hailed him, but the creature, absorbed in some contemplation, made no response and, thinking him in prayer, Dietrich quietly withdrew.
Dietrich felt a growing frustration with Krenkish laggardness. “I have seen your carpenters taken from their tasks,” he told the Kratzer on one visit, “to collect beetles or flowers for your philosophers. Others, I have seen playing with a ball, or leaping up and down to no apparent purpose, indeed, sporting themselves naked. Your most urgent task is the repair of your ship, not why our trees change color.”
“All those who do the work do the work,” the Kratzer announced.
Dietrich thought he meant that phitosophers were unskilled in shipbuilding, which was no astonishing insight. “Even so,” he insisted, “there may be apprentice tasks you could perform.”
At this, the Kratzer’s antennae stiffened to rods, and his features, never expressive, grew more still yet. Hans, who had been occupied to the side cataloguing images of plants and paying no apparent attention to the discourse, sat upright in his seat with his hands poised over the array of types by which he instructed the Heinzelmännchen. The Kratzer’s eyes pinned Dietrich to his seat, and Dietrich gripped the sides of his chair in unaccountable terror.
“Such labor,” the Kratzer said finally, “is for those who perform such labors.”
The statement had the seeming of a proverb and, like many proverbs, suffered from a conciseness that reduced it to a tautology. He was reminded of those philosophers who, grown lately besotted with the Ancients, affected their prejudice against manual labor. Dietrich could not imagine himself shipwrecked and unwilling to assist his fellows in the necessary repairs. In such straits, even the gently born would put a hand to the task. “Labor,” he pointed out, “has its own dignity. Our Lord was a carpenter and called to Himself fishermen and tent-makers and other humble folk. Pope Benedict, may he rest in peace, was the son of a miller.”
“Did I hear the utterance correctly,” the Kratzer said. “A carpenter may become a lord. Bwa-wa-wa. Can a stone become a bird—question. Or are all your lords base-born—question.”
“I grant you,” Dietrich admitted, “that a man born into his besitting will seldom rise above it, yet we do not despise the working man.”
“Then we are not so different, your folk and mine,” the Kratzer said. “For us, too, our besitting is written … I think you would say, it is written into ‘the atoms of our flesh.’ There is a sentence among us: ‘As we are, so we are.’ It would be thought-lacking to despise one for being what he was born to be.”
“The ‘atoms of flesh’ …?” Dietrich had started to ask when the Heinzelmännchen interrupted, “Seldom means more often than never—question, exclamation.”
The Kratzer directed a series of rapid clacks at Hans, at the conclusion