Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 (12 page)

At this juncture, the first sufflator blows. The fire, transferring its quality of heat to the water, has brought the latter to a boil. The stopper pops out of the figure's pursed lips, and the head of steam vents into the hearth with a long, high whistle. Steam is air and water, and water is contrary to fire; but the element of air dominates and so blasts the fire into more lively flames.

"It does sound like whispering," Heytesbury observes in an aside. "Pope Sylvester had one of these in the old days, and simple folk thought that the head whispered secrets to him. Look how fast your turbine spins with the jet upon it! Hah! Delightful!"

The second head of steam sits upon the pool of grease that had earlier been spilled by the serving wench. When it erupts, the head slides backward through the grease, away from the fire until it reaches drier wood and resistance halts it.

"Holy Blue!" cries Buridan in amazement. Heytesbury cups his chin, laying a finger by his nose, and stares at the sufflator, whose jet now spews steam uselessly into the room. The two students look at each other.

"It moved," Nicole tells the senior.

"So there must have been a mover," Albrecht agrees. "The steam?"

"No, the steam went
that
way, but the head slid
this way
." A new species of motion? But motion is not an entity, only a term used to describe a body's successive acquisition of the form of location. But what had just pushed it? The steam is implicated in some manner. As more and more heat is placed into the water, the intensity of the heat—or "temperature"—increases because the volume of the water remains the same. So it is clear why the excess heat seeks to escape in violent motion. Yet,
why should the sufflator take on a contrary motion?

Miracles are, of course, possible; but Aquinas had warned that an action may seem miraculous only because its form is occult, which is to say, "hidden." Yet what is occult to one man may be manifest to another, or to the same man at a different time. Nicole considers how he might become that man. He ought first establish, by repeating the experience, that a common course of nature obtains, for no certain knowledge may be had of chance events. The others bustle about him almost unperceived while he ponders the question.

Dinner passes less dramatically and the only "talking heads" are those of which one normally expects vapors. Servants take their accustomed places behind the chairs, to fetch fowl or ale as the diners' appetites move them. Heytesbury's man, of course, attends his master, but Buridan's kitchen wench jostles the other servants to stand behind Oresme. The young Norman grins at nothing in particular.

Heytesbury hints at a marvel he has brought with him, gesturing with his fork so wildly that, sitting beside him, Albrecht fears impalement. "The very one Abbot Richard fashioned." Heytesbury does not amplify, and Nicole suspects that he enjoys drawing out the suspense. It had best be a damned good marvel, he thinks.

"Abertus," Buridan comments over a leg of goose and black currant sauce, "you have been more absent-minded than usual this afternoon."

"Well . . ." Albrecht rubs his long, thin fingers down his chin. "I can see how homogenous mixed bodies must move at the same speed in a vacuum, regardless of their weights; but their motion in a plenum still puzzles me."

Oresme laughs. "That was clear, cabbage-head."

The Saxon turns on him like an act of nature. "One day, ‘Lefty,' you will toss one jape too many. I may have grown up on a farm, but we farm-boys know something you city-folk do not."

"Really! And what is that?"

"We know shit when we see it."

Buridan and Heytesbury burst into laughter, and Nicole mutters a word that is no more Latin than "‘sooth," but which is commonly heard in low places about Normandy.

Albrecht explains his reasoning to Buridan: "If a body is hömo—is homogeneous, every part of its material contains the same proportions of elements and so each portion of material must at the same speed fall. So, imagine such a body divided now into one-third part and two-thirds parts. Since each body possesses the same ratio of gravity to levity,
each
must fall at the same speed. In a blenum—in a
p
lenum—the external resistance would be greatah on the largah body, but . . ."

"But?" his master prompts him. Heytesbury, listening bright-eyed, grins to bursting with a secret. "Oswy!" he bellows. The servant standing behind him tugs his forelock. "Oswy, bring me my satchel! There's a good fellow."

"But I
saw
dhem fall," Albrecht says, his enthusiasm resurrecting his Saxon accent. "Nickl dropped böth sufflatahs, and you haff dtold us how seeing d' millstone caused you to reconsidah heavenly mötions, ond you haff always said dhat natural philosöphy begins vit d' senses, ond Albertus Magnus wröte dhat ‘Experience is d' önly guide,' ond . . ."

Ond
his Master and fellow student stare with amazement. They have never before heard so many words jostling and stumbling out of the Saxon's mouth at one time.

"
Ond
," Albrecht concludes, "I saw böth heads strike d' ground at d' same möment, even dö one was vit water and one vit air filled. But vatter falls ond air rises, so d' second head ought haff less guickly g'fallen." Oh, the mush-mouth drawl of the Saxon hills can baffle a Bavarian, let alone a Picard, a Norman, and an Englishman. It is difficult enough to follow his accent, let alone his reasoning.

"Perhaps it did," Buridan suggests when he has "buzzled öut" his student's idea. "It is a question of summing up the parts of each element. If the sums are of similar magnitude, even if one be slightly the greater, no sensible difference may result. Nicole, did you see it happen?"

But the Norman shakes his head. "I wasn't watching. It wasn't my fault they fell . . ."

Buridan waves a hand in dismissal. "Perhaps the difference in gravity was too slight to be sensible. What if you were to drop a sufflator and . . . the Moon!"

Heytesbury barks laughter. He had not looked for that example. His eyes dance, resting on the Saxon, eager for his response. He knows the game of
obligations
. As
interlocutor
, Buridan will try to trap his student into holding a contradiction. At this juncture, his man, Oswy returns and places a leather satchel in his hands, and this he lays on the table before him.

"What foolishness!" Albrecht cries in despair. "The Moon cannot fall!"

"But God could cause the Moon to fall if he desired," his Master insists, "so consider,
secundum imaginationem
. . ."

Heytesbury interrupts the "thought experiment" before it can progress further. "Albert, have you ever read Philoponus?"

The Saxon frowns. "No. His books are heretical. He said the Trinity was three different gods."

"He wrote other books," Heytesbury says quietly.

Buridan's eyes drop to the satchel with sudden interest. "He wrote a commentary on Aristotle," he says, "that refuted much of the
Physics
—and justly so, in my opinion. Gerard of Cremona was supposed to have translated him, but . . ."

"But who wants to read a heretic's book?" says Nicole.

Buridan turns to him. "The same who would read a pagan's book, or a Saracen's." He nods toward his own shelves, where Aristotle and Plato rub shoulders with Avicenna and Averröes. "A man may fall into error in his faith, and yet see nature clearly. Recall Augustine
On Christian doctrine
, or Aquinas, or Albertus Magnus." He returns to Heytesbury. "But Cremona's ‘
Philoponus
' has been lost. Abelard knew it in the old days, and thought ill of its ‘base mechanic doctrines,' but the manuscript itself . . ."

". . . came into the hands of Brother Roger Bacon," Heytesbury tells him. "The ‘Wonderful Doctor' was trained by Grosseteste himself, and also here in Paris by ‘Pilgrim Pierre,' and so had a high regard for the evidence of the senses. I think he came by Abelard's copy when he was here. You've read the treatises Bacon wrote for the Pope, of course."

Buridan nods. He has not taken his eyes off the satchel. He knows what must be in there. It is all he can do to refrain from elbowing the Englishman aside and tearing the contents from its canvas wrapper. "I have always thought it a scandal," he said, "that your Order burdened him with so many other labors that he was unable to write more than he did."

Heytesbury waves a hand. "A general prohibition. An Italian brother had written theological treatises containing heretical ideas, so our General required all writings be reviewed by peers within the Order before being sent out. Brother Roger expressed himself carelessly in his theology, and had insulted many potential friends—he really could be quite the ass, the older brothers tell me. But, as it may, his copy of the ‘Lost Cremona' has lain buried in our library these past thirty years since his death. Bradwardine has only just discovered it."

"And. . . ?" Buridan's voice is heavy with lust. He is a sailor in sight of port, and Heytesbury realizes that he can suspend the matter no further. He opens the satchel and removes two bundles. One is a ream of parchment, quarto, tied between two stiff boards, which he hands to the Paris Master. The other is a smaller bundle tied in a rag. This, he passes to Oresme. Albrecht grumbles. What, no gift for him?

"Do not fret, my Saxon giant," the Englishman assures him with a clap to the shoulder. "There is a passage in the Philoponus that will interest you greatly. You recall how Brother Roger wrote, ‘Without experience nothing can be known sufficiently'?"

"As did Albertus Magnus," the Saxon replies, defending his namesake. "Remember how he always added to his statements,
Fui et vidi experiri
. ‘I was there and saw it for myself.'"

Heytesbury brushes imaginary flies. "Yes, yes. And ‘Pilgrim Pierre,' and Aquinas, and all the others said alike. But Brother Roger wrote of
degrees
of experience, and one, which he called the ‘best experience,' is one in which all the forms affecting the experience have been accounted for by deliberate arrangement."

By deliberate arrangement? Albrecht purses his lips. "Would not artificial conditions affect the body's
natural
behavior? It is the natural behavior we wish to understand."

"Shit!" says Oresme, who is frowning over the pair of spectacles he has found in the bundle. "I'm no old man to need reading glasses."

Heytesbury turns to him, "Put them on! Put them on!" Then, without sensible pause, turns back to Albrecht and says, "Philoponus thought contrived experiences useful. So did Bacon, who wrote that we learn more through artful vexation of nature than we do through patient observation."

Albrecht glances at Nicole, who is gawking with wonder out the window of the apartment. "And what does Philoponus say about these ‘best experiences'?" he asks.

"Yes, what does he say?" asks Buridan, who has been eagerly skimming the pages. He is already making plans to have a bookbinder set them between covers, and to have the university stationers produce several additional copies. His purse can afford the labor. Whether his patience can afford the wait is another matter. Yet the laborious process of copying a single book is one reason why so many become lost to mice and mildew and fire. If only there were some way in which a book could be written once, yet read many times.

Heytesbury is smug. "Why only that Philoponus, using a contrived experience, determined as your Saxon giant, that, against Aristotle, bodies fall at the same speed, regardless of their weight, and that their speed increases in . . ."

"In uniformly difform motion," says the Saxon. Then, to the startled looks he receives, adds, "It stands obvious, no?"

"I can see!" Nicole exclaims. But he does not mean that he understands Philoponus, or Heytesbury, or even Albrecht. He has discovered the world beyond his nose-tip. "There is a drover at the corner—" He stands at the window, pointing. "He holds a crook and drives one, three, eight pigs toward the pens. And that lady wears a kirtle in
orofrise
done up with scenes of hunting, and—Good day to you also, m'lady! And such superb melons!"

Now he has his master's attention. Buridan asks to see—the new spectacles; not the lady's melons—and Heytesbury explains how Abbot Richard had reasoned that if ‘lentil-shaped' glasses help a man see close at hand, a concave shape must help him see farther away. "And there are the laws of
perspectiva
," he adds, "which Grosseteste used in De iride. Father Abbot drew diagrams of the paths of the rays, after Witelo's methods, as they enter and leave the faces of the lens. The most difficult task was the artisan's. Grinding a concave glass is not as simple as your convex reading lenses."

There is no help for it. Each must try Nicole's new spectacles, although none else can see more than a blur with them. Albrecht is nettled that Nicole has made himself once more the center of attention.

It is a rowdy era, as are all those eras when everything flips over. There are brawls high and low. Rhineland barons squabble. Kaiser Ludwig strong-arms Margaret Pocket-Mouth, the Ugly Duchess of Tyrol. The theologians of Paris have declared Pope John a heretic, again; and William of Ockham, safe at the Kaiser's court, wastes his pen on political screeds against him. The French fleet sails into Southampton and fires the town. In the Mediterranean, Genoa and Venice stumble through the final years of their long, drawn-out mutual suicide pact.

And in Paris, it is morning and a gang of young townies have spotted Nicole Oresme returning to Buridan's quarters in the University. Town has hated gown ever since the Pope freed the universities of local laws and exactions, and this bird is too easy a prey to pass up. Nicole might have seen them sooner, save that he is gawking everywhere in fascination of his new spectacles.