The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One (18 page)

“Very idealized,” said Galen, again sitting by the window. “And what of Hagen?”

“Oddly enough, Bragi’s version redeems him quite nicely—Siegfried’s ultimate death was of necessity idealized, so that his death would appear as a terrible deed requiring vengeance, but the actual murder dismisses the Norse version and verifies that Hagen is the one who kills him, not in bed, as he slept, but from the version we know, where Hagen treacherously induces Kriemhild to mark the one vulnerable spot on Siegfried’s body, on the plea of protecting him, then does the poor bastard in.”

“I’m not trying to be critical here Langbein,” said Galen, “but how does
that
redeem him?”

“It redeems him, because Hagen, out of all of them, is the one character who retains all of the characteristics from the earliest versions of the myth,” Michael explained. “He’s the real hero of the second half of the
Nibelungenlied
, and in this version of the
Ring
, Wagner was attempting to maintain that aspect. No other character shows so little corruption by the influences of Christianity as does his—in all essential respects he is still the same old gigantic Teuton, who Sturluson, Bragi, and every other poet started out with. And what’s really spectacular, is that the Palimpsest actually gives a powerful mythological basis for Hagen to be the most significant character in the entire cycle.”

“How is that?” Galen asked, concerned. Revolutionary discovery was fine—to a point. If the stories were too divergent from the traditional tales, it might be very difficult to force the acceptance of the
Edda
—and the
Ring
.

“The Palimpsest was the easiest of the three to translate, even though the dialect was older than anything I’d ever seen. It was written in some sort of weak ink, which was then erased before the sheets were used for printing—but once I got the pattern down, translating it was a snap.”

“How do you mean, ‘pattern’?” Jude asked.

“It’s a duplicate of the
Prime Edda
,” Michael said simply, “almost word for word—with one exception that keeps recurring throughout the text, which re-frames the entire story up into a completely different level. Alberich is not merely a
dwarf
—he is Odin’s
father
. The greedy, selfish, cold progenitor of the Nibelung myths is the oldest king of the Gods.”

Galen shot out of his chair like a rocket, spilling what remained of his drink. “Christ … then Hagen …”

“Yes,” said Michael simply. “Hagen could very well have been a god himself, and perhaps even Odin’s
brother
. This document, this palimpsest, changes everything we know.”

They stood in silence, looking at the spilled drinks and the manuscript and the notes, and no one could think of anything to say.

“So what do we do now?” Galen finally asked.

Michael puffed out his cheeks. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I do,” Jude said, rising to clap them both on the shoulders. “We’re going to Yugoslavia.”

***

CHAPTER NINE
The Weltanschauung Inversion

The week before the three scholars could leave for the mysterious trip Jude proposed was an eventful one, particularly for Galen. The new semester was beginning, and the issue of who would be running the University was constantly on his mind. Then, the hand of providence reached down and swept all of the chess pieces off of Galen’s board, save one.

Andreas Raeder, the current and much-respected Rector, was offered a position with a private foundation, which he accepted. His last official act at the University of Vienna was to sponsor the appointment of Mikaal Gunnar-Galen to the position he was vacating. Two days later, Galen was Rector. And before the paint was dry on his office door, and while the ink on his letterhead was still fresh, he sat and drafted a proposal to the Directors of the Wagner Festival committing almost five percent of the University’s resources to future productions of the
Ring
. He signed it, ‘Mikaal Gunnar-Galen, Rector, the University of Vienna’, and handed it to the courier himself.

* * *

While Galen’s personal drama was reaching its metaphoric peak, Michael was busy sorting and assembling the translations of the
Edda
into something scholarly and presentable, which Galen had indicated was of extreme importance; and as Galen was not only his recent benefactor, but was also in the process of becoming his principal employer, Michael was disinclined to let him down.

Michael was hopeful that he’d be able to present the Eddaic documents to the academic community sometime in the next few weeks, but Galen apparently wanted it ready as soon as possible. It was not difficult to guess for what—the bust of Wagner by itself indicated what made Galen rush—and he suspected that the announcement about the
Edda
would be made somewhere around the eighteenth of August, on the eve of the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.

If that was true, then perhaps Galen would send him to the festival on the University’s dime, and let him participate in the announcement—it would be nice to go as someone everyone looked at, rather than one of the rabble.

* * *

The following Sunday, Galen, Jude, and Michael took a car to the airport, where they caught an Austrian Airlines flight to Yugoslavia. In Belgrade, they rented a car, which they took to a deserted grassy hillside overlooking the Danube just outside of the city of Novi Sad.

In truth, after the great personal victories of the previous few weeks, Jude could have dragged Galen and Michael to downtown Beirut and they’d have gone willingly and happily.

They walked around the not unpleasant spot for a few minutes before Jude finally spoke.

“What do you know about the research we’ve been doing at the Physics Department?” Jude asked casually, his hands behind his back.

Both Galen and Michael were embarrassed to admit they knew very little about physics at all, much less the specific kinds of work in which Jude was involved. Of the three of them, he was the obvious polymath.

“Fair enough,” said Jude. “It’s not terribly important, though it might have been helpful in explaining some of the more complex concepts to you. Let’s start with a general one, then: what is time?”

“Time?” said Michael. “A measurement of, ah … uh, time,” he finished lamely.

Galen rolled his eyes and looked at Jude. “Time is a measurement of
perception
—it’s the basis of any form of organization.”

“Ding! Good answer. What does time look like?”

“
Look
like?” Galen said.

“Does it have a beginning or an end?”

Galen frowned. “I don’t think so,” he said tentatively.

“Does it have form? Can we visualize it?”

“Linear—that’s how we perceive it. Flat, straight, infinite, and moving in one direction.”

“I think time is circular,” Michael offered, “That’s why it can’t have a beginning or an end—it just re-loops.”

“Hm,” said Jude. “And what if the loop is so large that you never see the same segment pass twice, so to speak?”

“Then I guess it really could be like Galen suggested,” said Michael. “It would seem to be completely linear, and infinite as well—no boundaries at all.”

“Okay, then consider this—what if the loop were smaller? Say, a billion years? Or a million? Or a thousand?”

They considered this a moment before Galen rejected it. “Not likely—there would be signs all over the place if that were true.”

“What about the books in Meru?”

Galen snorted. “I though we had dealt with that—those books in the ‘library’ were apocryphal in nature. The contradictions were nothing more than that—
stories
. They had no more meaning in the way you imply than if I handed you my Armani coat and said that it had been knitted by Jonah in the belly of the whale.”

“So consider,” said Jude, “what if they are, in fact as I’d said?”

“It’s no matter—they’re all gone.”

“If there were any other way to explain the theory …” Michael began, “then I’d be willing to at least hear you out. It’s the least we can do for bringing us the
Edda
.”

Galen glared at the historian, then reluctantly nodded. “Agreed.”

“Excellent—because that’s exactly what I brought you here to do,” said Jude.

“In Yugoslavia?” Galen said skeptically, “on pile of dirt and grass next to the Danube?”

“Yes,” said Jude. “I’ve told you several times during our acquaintance that everything you seek is around you—you just have to choose to see it.”

“All right,” said Michael, sitting on an oddly shaped mound, “let’s hear it. Tell us about time, for whatever it’s worth.”

* * *

“James Usher, the mid-17th century Bishop of Armagh, wrote in a treatise called Annals of the Old and New Testament that the world had been created on October 22nd, 4004 B.C., at six o’clock in the evening. What is surprising is that he arrived at this conclusion solely through the study of ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts. What is even more surprising is that he was correct, almost to the hour.”

“Hah,” Galen grunted skeptically, “easy enough assertion to make, considering that there’s no way to verify such a claim.”

Jude ignored the remark and continued speaking, although he did so in a stronger tone which asserted that he took Galen’s comment to be directed at his own conclusions more than Usher’s.

“Time is measured in most of the world by the Gregorian calendar, which is really not much more than a corrupted version of the Julian calendar, which only was put into use because Caesar had anyone who declined to follow it put in the arena with the lions. Regardless, the modern calendar of years revolves around one incident—the birth of Jesus the Nazarene.”

“An egocentric western tradition forced on the rest of the world,” Michael said sardonically. “The Chinese have a recorded history reaching back six thousand years. They may accede to the Gregorian calendar for business and commerce, but they’ve kept their own numbering as well.”

“Water in the wine. If they had also chosen to adhere more closely to their own system, they would be holding the trump card on the rest of the world. As it is, they’re just as confused as the rest of us.”

“Confused about what?” asked Galen.

“I’ll explain that in a moment,” Jude said. “I should give you a few cornerstones to go on, first, beginning with this: the Romans gave us the name—Kalendra—and they also were the catalyst for what messed it all up.

“The Sumerians were likely the very first people to create a calendar. They began with the phases of the moon, counting 12 lunar months as a year. To make up for the differences between the lunar year and the seasonal one, they included an extra month in the calendar about every four years or so. It worked so well that the calendar was copied wholesale by the early Egyptians, Greeks, and Semitic peoples.

“Some time later, the Egyptians devised a calendar that corresponded almost exactly to the seasonal year. A lunar-based calendar that was 355 days long was also adopted by the Romans. The months corresponding to March, May, July, and October each had 31 days; February had 28 days; and the rest had 29. As with the Sumerian calendar, an extra month was added about every fourth year. The high priests regulated the calendar, and on the calends, or day of the new moon, they announced to the people the times of the nones—first quarter—and ides—full moon—for that month.”

“Sure,” said Michael, “but weren’t they awful at it? I mean, as I understand it, the priests botched it from the beginning.”

“A charitable way to put it,” said Jude. “By the reign of Julius Caesar, they had summer months coming in the spring. Caesar corrected this situation in 46 B.C. with the counsel of an Alexandrian astronomer named Sosigenes—this was the advent of the Julian calendar. Sosigenes proposed a 365-day year, with one day added every fourth, or ‘leap,’ year. He distributed the extra ten days among the 29-day months, making them identical with the months today.

“The month Quintilis was renamed July for Julius Caesar, and sometime later Sextilis was renamed August in honor of Emperor Augustus. As the old story goes, Emperor Augustus changed the number of days in his month from 30 to 31 so that it would be as long as Caesar’s.”

“That’s probably apocryphal,” Michael said.

“Is it? I’m not so sure,” said Jude. “In fact, I suspect more often than not, additions and omissions of just that kind contributed more to the overall inaccuracies of the calendar system of time than anything else. No mathematical or astronomical finesse, no religious or metaphysical fervor, can possibly compensate for one Royalty-based fit of temperament. Even the French tried to create a new calendar based on the Revolution, but it lasted exactly twelve years before fizzling out from overall incompatibility with everyone else.

“Julius Caesar ‘s correction of one day in four years—actually six hours per year—made the calendar year longer than the seasonal one. Thus, annual events began coming earlier and earlier in the year, and by 1582, the vernal equinox, or beginning of spring, occurred on March 11 instead of the correct date of March 21. Pope Gregory XIII fixed the problem—or so he thought—by ordering that ten days should be dropped from the calendar and that the day after Oct. 4, 1582, should be October 15. He also directed that three times in every 400 years the leap-year arrangement should be omitted.

“This new calendar was called the Gregorian, or New Style, calendar, which also effected the general adoption of January 1 as the beginning of the year. Until then some nations had begun it with December 25, and others with January 1 or March 25. The Gregorian system was adopted by Roman Catholic countries, but Protestant and Eastern Orthodox countries continued to use the Old Style, or Julian, calendar for quite a while longer. The new calendar was not formally used in England until 1752, when it was necessary to drop 11 days to make it conform. The Eastern Orthodox church eventually accepted the New Style in 1923, losing 13 days in the process. And the Chinese finally—if begrudgingly—adopted it in 1912, and they didn’t really care how much time they lost, because they kept the old system running alongside.”

“Michael already said as much,” said Galen. “Is there a point to all of this history?” he asked, exasperated.

“I think what he’s getting at,” Michael offered by way of explanation, “is that eventually, to reconcile all of the Lunar calendars and Solar calendars and cultural calendars, the world opted for what we call the Era system—using the birth of Christ as the Zero Point—in order to simplify the overall chronology. But, in doing so, we may have irrevocably lost some fundamental link with actual Time.”

Michael wished he had a camera to record the moment—Jude looked like a Chuck Jones cartoon who’d just stepped off of a cliff.

“I’m impressed,” said Jude, “If I’d consulted you earlier, I’d’ve had you explain all this to Galen instead of blathering on. Nevertheless, I don’t think ‘link’ is the right word—perhaps ‘harmony’ would be more apt; and there has been no harmony with Time for a long … well, time.”

Michael fought a blush of pleasure he felt receiving praise from the younger man. “You were doing fine. And I think that we probably needed the groundwork, especially if you’re going where I think you’re going.”

“And where is that?” sputtered Galen. “I’m growing very tired of this. What does any of this have to do with harmony, or whatever date the world began on, or the Chinese calendar?”

“Sorry,” said Jude apologetically. “I did say I’d explain that. Let us say that there are two measurements of time—calendar time, and objective Time.”

“There are terms for those,” put in Michael. “Kronos—or clock time; and Kairos, which is pure, dimensional time.”

“Excellent,” said Jude. “Thank you. Kronos is what we are used to, but Kairos is more important. However, to be useful, Kairos would still have to have some sort of measurement applied, and to do that, we would need to know at least one Zero Point—and roughly speaking, we know two. One is Usher’s date, which is not all that dissimilar from the beginning of the Chinese calendar.”

“Yes,” said Michael, “but weren’t both Usher and the Chinese going on Kronos time?”

“Correct—and this is the source of their inaccuracies; if they had had an understanding of Kairos time, the Chinese would rule the world, and Usher might have tried—well, Usher probably wouldn’t have, but his pal Cromwell would.”

“Is it even possible for a culture to have been aware of Kairos time?” asked Galen.

“Not possible but probable,” Jude answered. “The Maya were closer than almost anyone before or since. Their starting date, or ‘zero day’ was different than Usher’s—transposed to our calendar, the date they believed the world began was approximately August 13, 3114 B.C.—but days as a measurement were less important to the Maya than they were to everyone else, which hints that they were looking at patterns that were more significant to them than getting the exact dates right. For the Maya, there was a time for everything and every thing had its place in time. Their comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles was immense. But when it came to single days, the only one which was important was zero.