Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [98]
For a moment, Dietrich did not speak. “It is hard to forgive such a man,” he said at last, “whatever kindness moved him at the end.”
“Hard for men, perhaps,” Joachim retorted, “but not for God. What befell him afterward? Did the Elsass Duke take him?”
Dietrich shook his head. “No man has heard his name in twelve years.”
THE INTERVAL between the Vigil-Night and the Epiphany was the longest holiday of the year. The villagers paid extra dues to stock the lord’s banquet table, but were exempt from all hand-service, and so a festive spirit came over all. A spruce tree was again erected on the green and hung about with flags and ornaments, and even the meanest cottage did not lack for its dress of holly, fir, or mistel.
But the merrymaking did not extend to the Krenken. A too-literal translation of advent into the Krenkish tongue had led the stranded travelers to expect the actual arrival of the much-heralded “lord from the sky,” so their disappointment was keen. While he was pleased that the strangers had looked forward to the Kingdom of Heaven, Dietrich cautioned Hans against naive literalism. “Since thirteen hundred years the Christ is ascended,” Dietrich explained after the Mass for St. Sebastian, while Hans helped him clean the sacred vessels. “His disciples, too, thought he soon would return, but they were mistaken.”
“Perhaps they were confused by the pressing of time,” Hans suggested.
“What! Can time then be pressed like grapes?” Dietrich was both startled and amused, and smacked his lips in Krenk-like laughter while he placed his chalice in its cupboard and locked it. “If time may be ‘pressed,’ then it is a being on which one may act, and being consists of subject and aspect. A thing that is movable alters in its aspect, for it is here, then it is there; it is this, then it is that.” Dietrich wagged his hand back and forth. “Of motions, there are four: change of substance, as when a log becomes ash; change of quality, as when an apple ripens from green to red; change of quantity, as when a body grows or diminishes; and change of place, which we call ‘local motion.’ Obviously, for time to be ‘pressed’—here long, there short—there must be a motion of time. But time is the mea sure of motion in changeable things and cannot measure itself.”
Hans disagreed. “Spirit travels so fast as the motion of light when there is no air. At such speeds, time passes more quickly, and what is an eye-blink for the Christ-spirit is for you many years. So your thirteen hundred years may seem to him only a few days. We call that the pressing of time.”
Dietrich considered the proposition for a moment. “I admit two sorts of duration: tempus for the sublunar realm and aeternia for the heavens. But eternity is not time, nor is time a portion of eternity—for there cannot be time without change, which requires a beginning and an end, and eternity has neither. Furthermore, motion is an attribute of changeable beings, while light is an attribute of fire. But one attribute cannot inform another, for then the second attribute must be an entity and we must not multiply entities without necessity. Thus, light cannot have motion.”
Hans ground his forearms together. “But light is an entity. It is a wave, like the ripples on the millpond.”
Dietrich laughed at the Krenk’s witticism. “A ripple in the water is not an entity, but an attribute of water that results from a breeze, or a fish, or a stone thrown into it. What is the medium in which light ‘ripples’?”
Hans said, “There is no medium. Our philosophers have shown that …”
“Can there be a ripple without water?” Dietrich laughed again.
“Very well,” Hans said. “It is only like a ripple, but is composed of … very small bodies.”
“Corpuscles,” Dietrich supplied the word. “But if light were composed of corpuscles—a different proposition from being a ‘ripple in no medium’—those bodies would impress themselves upon our sense of touch.”
Hans made the tossing gesture. “One cannot argue with such reasoning.” He rubbed his forearms together slowly but, as the rasps were muffled by the