Analog SFF, July-August 2007 Read online

  The Saxon suspects gentle mockery, for the Franks do love to chatter, and thus confuse Germanic silence with having naught to say. “When Nickl the two heads dropped...” he stammers, falling into the rhythms of his milk-tongue. But what notion the plummeting sufflators has suggested goes once more unsaid when Nicole waves the bellows.

  “Shit! Someone's plugged the damned thing!"

  Buridan snatches it from him before he can remove the plug. “A small gift for Heytesbury when he comes."

  “A plugged bellows? Oh, the Picard humor, she is more subtle than even the Saxon."

  “Mock not the Ch'ti!” Buridan says gravely. “This jape,” he says aside to Albrecht, “from a man who drinks from a ‘mug’ instead of a ‘tasse,’ and whose land boasts ‘castels’ rather than ‘kateaus.’”

  Albrecht scratches his head. “Don't the French say, ‘chateau'?"

  Buridan waves dismissal. “The French speak with porridge in their mouths. When I eat with the French Nation, the servants affect not to understand Picard."

  The Saxon shrugs. “Norman, Picard, French ... It is to me all the same."

  “Well said!” booms a new voice from the doorway, and they turn, and there framed they spy a tall man, all bones and angles, with a nose like a halberd and long, wild hair that suggests motion even while standing still. “Yet they lump your savage folk with mine,” he cries, “into a single nation!"

  Buridan grins. “Anglo, Saxon, it all sounds the same to me. That's why civilized men use Latin.” He rises from his stool and welcomes his guest. “William, how delightful!” The newcomer's youth surprises him—he is but three-and-twenty. Yet he is, after all, a Fellow of Merton College; and while Oxford is not Paris—what town is?—she produces scholars of no mean merit.

  The Englishman returns the embrace, though not the kisses on the cheek. “Greetings,” he says, “from ‘the Calculators of Merton.’ And are these your two prizes? Not very likely specimens, what?” He exchanges a hearty grip with Albrecht and claps young Nicole on the shoulder.

  Buridan shrugs. “One manages. I thought we would eat here in my quarters, rather than in the Nations. After all,” he indicates the four of them, “in which would we dine, Norman, Picard, or Anglo-German?"

  “Your ‘Nations’ are like our ‘Colleges,’ what? Endowments that provide scholars with room and board? Yes, I rather thought so; though ours are not based on the language the scholars speak. Still, I suppose that if students must board together, they ought to be able to talk together at table. Where shall I be quartered? Here? Excellent! Excellent! Just a moment.” And the whirlwind spins and shouts, “Oswy! Oswy!"

  The short, burly servant is standing right behind him with a coffer on his shoulder and resignation on his face. “Oswy!” William tells him, “We are to have the room two doors on the right. This side, the right. Yes. Two doors."

  Oswy turns just as the kitchen maid enters with the goose on a great tray. There is a confusion of coffer and goose, and an evolution much like an estampe; then the wench is dancing into the room, the platter precarious, the goose in deadly peril!

  Saved by the Norman! A steady hand to the platter, a steadier one to the waist, and all that is lost is a little grease splashed upon the hearthstones, and a few years in Purgatory for the thoughts that rush through the young man's mind. A whisper, a giggle, a nod, then she is at work at the hearth, casting sheep-eyes at Nicole while she impales the goose on the roasting spit. After engaging the spit's chain to the blades, she wrestles the two sufflators to the fire's edge. “This'll do ye up fine, m'sir Rector,” she says. “Cook says she's done, but ye should let ‘er roast a bit ‘till the skin gets crispy-like afore ye eat ‘er."

  “Very good, Lizette. You may set the table...” Buridan looks around the room, and each table is encumbered with books. “...that one. Boys, put the books in their cases, so they don't get soiled. Here, William, this is for you.” And he hands his guest the bellows.

  Wench, grease, spit, table ... bellows? The Englishman turns his attention to the device now pressed into his hand. He hesitates, pulls tentatively on the handles, scowls a bit, discovers the plugged nozzle, and falls into a study. Finally, he bursts into laughter. “Nature abhors a vacuum!” he cries.

  Stacking the books at the table, Albrecht and Nicole glance at each other, then at the Englishman. “All right...” says the Saxon.

  “The principle of first and last moments,” Heytesbury exclaims. “Surely, your master has ... He hasn't! Why, what a sorry deficiency!” He waves his hands as he talks, a human windmill. He may fly off like a bird at any moment! “'Sooth, it is simplicity itself, and illuminates natural philosophy with mathematics."

  “'Sooth'?” says Nicole.

  “The Merton Calculators,” Buridan comments aside to his students, “believe that ratios and geometries can reveal the secrets of nature."

  “While the Parisians place their faith in reason,” the Englishman parries off-handedly. “Bradwardine says that anyone who studies the Physics without mastering mathematics will ‘never enter the portals of knowledge.’ The plug will not allow the air to rush in to fill the vacuum, so nature prevents the two plates of the bellows from separating. To see why this is so, consider the separation of two parallel plates in general. Remember, God may do anything short of a logical contradiction, so He may permit a vacuum if He so chooses. But has He ever done so in fact?"

  He spreads his hands, as if in appeal, to the two students, who remain mute.

  “Come now,” the Englishman insists. “If two plates are in perfect mathematical contact, with no material between them, and they are separated in such a fashion as to remain parallel, it would seem that a momentary vacuum must be produced. Why?” He stabs a finger at the Norman.

  Oresme sees no escape. He twists his hand palm up, as if to say it is obvious. “Because at the moment of the separation the air will rush in from the perimeter, but some brief time must elapse before it reaches the center."

  “Excellent! Yet, how can this be?” Heytesbury continues, “Consider first the two plates approaching.” His hands are plates. They approach. “The air between them becomes progressively more rarefied; yet at no time does the air actually part to form a vacuum in the center because there is no last moment at which rarefaction ceases prior to the contact of the plates. Thus, there is no last instant in which the plates are separated. But there is a first instant in which they are in contact. Rarefaction approaches a vacuum, but never attains it because the limiting form—actual contact—is extrinsic to the intension of the rarefaction itself."

  Albrecht nods. “And separation likewise? There is no first instant of separation?"

  Nicole pokes him. “Of course not, Farm-boy. Suppose there is a first moment of separation. But, if they are separated, there must be a small distance between them—"

  “And so,” the Saxon’ voice overrides him, “however small, a smaller distance must have preceded it. Thus, we haff a last moment of contact—an intrinsic limit to contact, doch?—but no first moment of separation.” He shakes his head slowly, grappling with the idea of open and closed sets.

  Heytesbury waves his hand dismissively while he paces about the room. “We Mertonians have not determined all the questions the continuum raises, but we do know that Aristotle was wrong about forms. They are not ‘either/or.’ They are ‘more or less.’ A form like rarefaction can be intensified or diminished. If we could but measure that...” This last he says wistfully, gazing upward, as if entreating God for an instrument, any instrument, that could measure density or heat or color or charity.

  Dropping his eyes, he notices that the goose turns on the spit with no hand moving it. A problem of impetus! Another of Buridan's pranks? He studies the spit from various angles; spies a chain wrapped around a toothed wheel; crouches and looks up the flue.

  “Attend!” the Rector cries. “Your hair!"

  But the ends are singed only a little. “There is a wheel with blades in the chimney,” the Engl
ishman says as he straightens, snuffing the sparks in his hair, “and the hot air rising to its natural place turns the wheel, which turns the spit."

  Buridan nods. “But yes! We call it a turbinus, after the spinning top the Romans used as a toy. They are become quite popular of late. It is mere engineering; yet it illustrates the matters philosophical. It is in principle as the water wheel, no? But instead of the water rushing down, it is the air, as is proper, rushing up."

  “Exquisite! Both air and water take on the nature of a fluid, what? Oh!” He takes a sharp turn into another topic. “The monks at St. Albans—you know the ‘Instrument Makers'? Abbot Richard has only just died, it grieves me to say—but he crafted a most exquisite instrument ... You know how the ingeniators are trying to build a portable clock? A peripatetic timepiece for the Aristotelians, hah! ‘Sooth, ‘tis not enough to erect one in every town square; now there must be one in every house. Soon, they will dangle on lanyards from our very necks, hah-hah! But the ingeniators envision that which they wish to achieve, then they essay divers arrangements of gears and balances to find their way to this vision. I hear they are trying springs; but springs lose potency as they unwind and they've not yet come up with a device to compensate for that. So Abbot Richard, knowing how young men like your Nicole, cannot see far off but only close at hand, envisioned a lens—"

  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 plenum—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 o
ther 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."