Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition
Page 4
“The lamp blinds your eyes, perhaps,” the astronomer said with humility. “It is better to look without light. I can do it because I have done it for so long. It is all practice—like placing the gads, which you always do right, and I always do wrong.”
“Aye. Maybe. Tell me what you see—” Bran hesitated. He had not long ago realized who Guennar must be. Knowing him to be a heretic made no difference but knowing him to be a learned man made it hard to call him “mate” or “lad.” And yet here, and after all this time, he could not call him Master. There were times when, for all his mildness, the fugitive spoke with great words, gripping one’s soul, times when it would have been easy to call him Master. But it would have frightened him.
The astronomer put his hand on the frame of his mechanism and replied in a soft voice, “There are . . . constellations.”
“What’s that, constellations?”
The astronomer looked at Bran as if from a great way off, and said presently, “The Wain, the Scorpion, the Sickle by the Milky Way in summer, those are constellations. Patterns of stars, gatherings of stars, parenthoods, semblances . . .”
“And you see those here, with this?”
Still looking at him through the weak lamplight with clear brooding eyes, the astronomer nodded, and did not speak, but pointed downward, at the rock on which they stood, the hewn floor of the mine.
“What are they like?” Bran’s voice was hushed.
“I have only glimpsed them. Only for a moment. I have not learned the skill; it is a somewhat different skill . . . But they are there, Bran.”
Often now he was not in the stope where they worked, when they came to work, and did not join them even for their meal, though they always left him a share of food. He knew the ways of the mine now better than any of them, even Bran, not only the “living” mine but the “dead” one, the abandoned workings and exploratory tunnels that ran eastward, ever deeper, toward the caves. There he was most often; and they did not follow him.
When he did appear amongst them and they talked with him, they were more timid with him, and did not laugh.
One night as they were all going back with the last cartload to the main shaft, he came to meet them, stepping suddenly out of a crosscut to their right. As always he wore his ragged sheepskin coat, black with the clay and dirt of the tunnels. His fair hair had gone gray. His eyes were clear. “Bran,” he said, “come, I can show you now.”
“Show me what?”
“The stars. The stars beneath the rock. There’s a great constellation in the stope on the old fourth level, where the white granite cuts down through the black.”
“I know the place.”
“It’s there: underfoot, by that wall of white rock. A great shining and assembly of stars. Their radiance beats up through the darkness. They are like the faces of dancers, the eyes of angels. Come and see them, Bran!”
The miners stood there, Per and Hanno with backs braced to hold the cart from rolling: stooped men with tired, dirty faces and big hands bent and hardened by the grip of shovel and pick and sledge. They were embarrassed, compassionate, impatient.
“We’re just quitting. Off home to supper. Tomorrow,” Bran said.
The astronomer looked from one face to another and said nothing.
Hanno said in his hoarse gentle voice, “Come up with us, for this once, lad. It’s dark night out, and likely raining; it’s November now; no soul will see you if you come and sit at my hearth, for once, and eat hot food, and sleep beneath a roof and not under the heavy earth all by yourself alone!”
Guennar stepped back. It was as if a light went out, as his face went into shadow. “No,” he said. “They will burn out my eyes.”
“Leave him be,” said Per, and set the heavy ore-cart moving toward the shaft.
“Look where I told you,” Guennar said to Bran. “The mine is not dead. Look with your own eyes.”
“Aye. I’ll come with you and see. Good night!”
“Good night,” said the astronomer, and turned back to the side-tunnel as they went on. He carried no lamp or candle; they saw him one moment, darkness the next.
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In the morning he was not there to meet them. He did not come.
Bran and Hanno sought him, idly at first, then for one whole day. They went as far down as they dared, and came at last to the entrance of the caves, and entered, calling sometimes, though in the great caverns even they, miners all their lives, dared not call aloud because of the terror of the endless echoes in the dark.
“He has gone down,” Bran said. “Down farther. That’s what he said. Go farther, you must go farther, to find the light.”
“There is no light,” Hanno whispered. “There was never light here. Not since the world’s creation.”
But Bran was an obstinate old man, with a literal and credulous mind; and Per listened to him. One day the two went to the place the astronomer had spoken of, where a great vein of hard light granite that cut down through the darker rock had been left untouched, fifty years ago, as barren stone. They retimbered the roof of the old stope where the supports had weakened, and began to dig, not into the white rock but down, beside it; the astronomer had left a mark there, a kind of chart or symbol drawn with candleblack on the stone floor. They came on silver ore a foot down, beneath the shell of quartz; and under that— all eight of them working now—the striking picks laid bare the raw silver, the veins and branches and knots and nodes shining among broken crystals in the shattered rock, like stars and gatherings of stars, depth below depth without end, the light.
The Will of God
Keith Roberts
Martyrdom is usually thought of as something reserved for prophets, saints, and missionaries, but as the unsettling story that follows demonstrates, it’s perfectly possible to be a martyr for science—particularly if you stubbornly insist on continuing to search for Truth long after more cautious folk would have heeded the warnings and let themselves be turned away.
One of the most powerful talents to enter the field in the last half of the twentieth century, the late Keith Roberts secured an important place in genre history in 1968 with the publication of his classic novel Pavane, one of the best books of the sixties and certainly one of the best Alternate History novels ever written, rivaled only by books such as L. Sprague De Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall, Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee, and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Trained as an illustrator—he did work extensively as an illustrator and cover artist in the British science fiction world of the sixties—Roberts made his first sale to Science Fantasy in 1964. Later, he would take over the editorship of Science Fantasy, by then called SF Impulse, as well as providing many of the magazine’s striking covers. But his career as an editor was short-lived, and most of his subsequent impact on the field would be as a writer, including the production of some of the very best short stories of the last three decades. Roberts’s other books include the novels The Chalk Giants, The Furies, The Inner Wheel, Molly Zero, Grainne, Kiteworld, and The Boat of Fate, one of the finest historical novels of the seventies. His short work can be found in the collections Machines and Men, The Grain Kings, The Passing of the Dragons, Ladies from Hell, The Lordly Ones, Winterwood and Other Hauntings, and Kaeti On Tour, Roberts died in 2000. Publishers take note: a posthumous collection of his best work is long overdue.
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“Becker-Margareth . . . Becker-Margareth . . .”
The voice seems to come from a distance. The man is interrupted in his work. He looks up, listening intently; and the words sound again.
“Becker-Margareth . . .”
He shakes his head slightly, as if to clear it. It was not the voice that was far off, but his mind. The thought starts others that are shadowy, immense; but they too slip away. Too fast, it seems, for the originating brain to grasp. If indeed the brain originates them at all; if they are not supplied, by some other being or from some other place. For who can claim to be the father of a thought? One m
oment it is not there; the next it is, and the world has changed.
He shakes his head again. The path is an alluring one, but barren; he has followed it already times enough. Philosophy perhaps is not his bent; he must do the work that lies to hand. There is little time; little enough even for that.
A key grates in a lock. Bolts are withdrawn; the door of the inn creaks open, is slammed shut again. From above, the man hears the dull thump, senses the vibrations that chase and eddy through the fabric of the place. Vibrations, it seems, are entwined with his life, part of its very essence. In his mind he sees them reaching out, spreading as from a focus; meeting others of their kind, diminishing, reacting. A hundred pebbles, a thousand, are dropped into a pond. Its surface twinkles, coruscates, becomes a paradigm perhaps for a great truth barely glimpsed; that life, all being, is itself vibration.
He rubs tiredly at his face. A lifetime is a flickering; too brief to follow such a notion even halfway to its root. The image fades; and he turns back to the bench. The water of the pond is still again.
Downstairs, the girl pulls her headscarf free, shakes at her hair. She leans her back to the door; and as ever a tiny sigh escapes her, a breathing of relief. At first, the leaning building with its smoke-stained walls oppressed; now it has come to seem a haven. Its gloominess is almost welcome, the faint, sour stink that always seems to cling to it and that with time, she is sure, has worked its way into her very clothes. It shuts her from the street, the busy world outside; the endless grind of traffic, gabbing of voices from the marketplace, the shops. Once the town excited, thrilling with its life and bustle; the bright clothes of its citizens, goods brought from halfway round the world by the great ships in the harbor. Now she is less sure. A shadow has fallen on the place, a darkness even sunlight cannot dispel. A menace stalks the streets, formless but to be dreaded; one day, she knows it will seek her out.
She swallows, and brushes at her hair again. Such fears are for children; she should have long outgrown them. She is unimportant; a dust speck merely, in the great scheme of things. Also, she has done no harm; so why should harm come to her? The thing is absurd; absurd as all night fears.
The old woman is already stumping away, down the long corridor toward the kitchen. The girl finds her voice, uncertainly at first. She says, “Is he upstairs?”
The other turns back, sardonically. “Where else?” she says. “Where is he ever?” She jerks her thumb at the tall landing. “Don’t be long,” she says. “I need you to shop for me, save my legs for a change. So just you don’t be long.”
The girl nods unhappily, staring after her. The words hang in the air; the words and the threat beneath them, unspoken but no less real. Where would he go, if she turned him out of doors; where would either of them go? His money is useful, sure enough; the customers, what few remain, are old, not caring, or not noticing, that the ale is vinegar-thin. But these are unsure times.
She puts the thought from her, takes a fresh grip on the basket she carries. Though climbing the stairs, she cannot help her nose once more wrinkling with distaste. The odor that pervades the place has itself a quality of oldness; old dirt in the cracks of unscrubbed boards, old draperies fusty with their years. Old sins perhaps. So unlike her mother’s house, still fresh in memory. She remembers that other world, with sudden longing. Sweetness of thatch, in which the mice and birds made homes, scents of flowers from the tiny, neat-trimmed garden; also the vividness of sky, seen through diamond-lighted windows. Here, the panes are grubby as the rest; so the light seems always dull, lowering as if at the onset of a storm. Through them, the surrounding buildings loom forbiddingly, shutting away more of the sky. It’s an area the police for the most part avoid; the new police she fears so much, with their hard, suspicious faces, the guns strapped to their belts. The few that do venture into the precinct walk in pairs; the rest stay safe inside their vehicles. Though the vehicles are equally to be dreaded. Hearing them pass at night, the girl shivers; waiting for the pounding on a door, the cries of yet another wretch, arrested by the State for crimes unmentionable.
A part of her mind wonders why she came at all, to this alien, confusing place. In one sense, the answer is easy; yet in another, there is no answer at all. Perhaps there was some notion of security, of hiding herself in the town with its bustling crowds. Certainly the village, once so safe, seemed less so after the police first came. Early it was, on a bright spring day; she saw their vehicles in the little square, the priest and doctor standing by bemused, the priest wringing his hands. She heard the shouted questions; and a great hot pang shot through her, stabbed to her very heart. They were searching for him, without a doubt; searching for her mentor, who had always been so kind. But they were disappointed, for he was already gone. Packed his bags by night, if the village gossip was true, locked his house and fled. To the town, where such goings-on as his were maybe tolerated. Later she packed her own things, what few she owned; though the thought of the journey, and what awaited her, dried her lips, made the phlegm rise to her throat. She told herself without her he was helpless; none to fend for him, or see him fed. She knew this to be true; yet it was another force that drove her.
She sighs, tapping at the low-beamed door. A fine trade, his father left him; a fine trade and honorable, if he would but follow it. In childhood dreams she worked beside him, kneading at the stiff dough, laying the pale loaves out on their wooden paddles. Later they were drawn out from the brick-lined ovens, smoking and golden; and all was peace. The machines though disrupted peace, whirring and clattering; the machines he built so cleverly, making each part with his hands. His forge glowed, orange in the night; later a steady rasping sounded as he shaped and smoothed the work. “The Big Wheels,” she said once when she was young. Clapping her hands, and pointing. “The Big Wheels . . .” But he shook his head, and laughed. “No,” he said, “a Drejelad. A turning-lathe. The old folk knew about them, the writings are in books. But mine is strong, for metal.” He took her hands then, drew her from the bench. “Stand farther off,” he said, for he was always gentle to her. “My lathe bites cruelly, with silver teeth.”
He showed her where the tip of his own finger was gone, eaten by the monster he had made; so she backed off, clenching her fists and pouting. Hearing the whick-hiss of leather belts, rumble of other wheels that turned half-seen under the cobwebby stone roof. In her memory, the sounds mix with others; shouts of children splashing in the stream outside, silky roar of water from where the mill race still discharges, making a green-white foam that fans and spreads across the deep green of the pool.
There has been no answer to her knock. But then, she scarcely expected one. Once he is engrossed, the roof might fall. That or the sky; and he would be none the wiser. She told him once, laughing; but that was in the days when laughter came more readily.
She pushes at the door. No lathes now of course; he left such things behind him. Instead, other matters preoccupy his mind. He looks up, seeming to see her vaguely. He is bent, as ever, over his little bench. Before him is a curious device, a sheet of thinnest metal, clamped at its edges to a frame. Round it at intervals are small brass screws; she has seen him turn them, tapping and listening as a musician tunes the stretched skin of a drum. A slender pointer touches a cylinder that itself revolves, driven by the parts of the old clock hanging on the wall. Seeing him repair it her heart jumped with pleasure, thinking he had found a trade that might be profitable; but it was for the machine.
Below the frame, wires are fixed at their ends by more brass screws. They are like silver string, or the false edge that curls back from an oversharpened blade. Other wires he wraps painstakingly with paper, before winding them coil on coil. “To stop the fluid soaking all away,” he told her once; and she peered, bemused. Try as she might she could see no fluid, no hint of dampness at all; but he merely laughed, for he was never angered by her lack of understanding. “This fluid is not visible,” he said. “Nonetheless it can be stored, and gathered. See, I will show you.”
She frowned, not wholly reassured; still half-convinced, despite his words, that he was a magician. For some days after, she avoided his home. In time, the mood passed; for she could never remain angry with him for long.
She sets the basket down, stares round the little chamber. The frown returns; also she bites her lip. On the little table by the window lies a plate with uneaten food. “You promised me,” she says. “Yesterday, you promised. But you forgot again.”
He has followed the direction of her glance. For a moment he seems puzzled; then he understands, and gives a little guilty smile. “I am sorry,” he says simply. “I meant to.”
Knowing he is sincere, she smiles in turn; but her eyes remain somber. “You will waste away to nothing,” she says, “because of your machines. You will become so thin the breeze will blow you away. Then when I come, you will not be here. You must think of me as well. What would I do, with no one to look after? And no one to look after me?”