“From 1923 to 1928, the five published determinations alternated between the stellar aberration method and polygonal mirrors, with averages of 299,840 and 299,800, respectively.”
Tom was deep into MEGO by then. My Eyes Glaze Over. Normally, he was fascinated by matters statistic, but look up “fascination” some day. His “ummm” had turned into “unh-huh.”
“But there are little hints,” Sharon bubbled on. “Van Flandern — Naval Observatory — saw a deviation between the moon’s orbital period and atomic clocks, and claimed atomic phenomena were slowing down. But he was called a crank, and no one took him seriously. Maybe the moon was speeding up. Even allowing for all that, there seems to be a monotonically decreasing series whose asymptote is the Einsteinian constant.” She beamed in triumph, even thought she had discovered only a curiosity and not an explanation.
Tom had finished imitating a fish. “Umm. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there good reasons why light speed is supposed to be constant? That Einstein guy? I mean, I don’t know much about it, but I grew up believing in motherhood, apple pie, and the constancy of c.”
“Question of scale,” Sharon explained, waving an impaled cucumber at him. “Duhem wrote that a law satisfactory to one generation of physicists may become unsatisfactory to the next, as precision improves. The slope falls within the band of measurement error, so c is constant ‘for all practical purposes.’ Hell, for most practical purposes, we can still use Newton… But if we go back to the Big Clap and arm-wrestle with flatness, or the horizon problem… You know,” she said,making a sudden conversational right turn “Dirac almost found the same thing, but from a different direction.”
“Wouldn’t that be a different Diraction?”
Sharon really was a somber sort of creature and Tom’s bent to spontaneous low humor could rub her the way cat fur rubbed amber. “Be serious, would you,” she said. “Dirac found that the ratio of the electric force to the gravitational force of an electron-proton pair is roughly equal to the ratio of the age of the universe to the time it takes light to traverse an atom.”
Tom laughed. “I’ll take your word on that one.” He filled both their wine glasses again. “Okay, but the age of the universe isn’t a constant. It’s increasing…”
“At the rate of one second per second. Who says time travel’s impossible? It’s the speed and direction that’s a problem.” Sharon did have a sense of humor. It was more deadpan than Tom’s. The Marx Brothers were more deadpan than Tom. The wine was warming her quite nicely. If Tom was a bumbler, still he meant well, and there were too many who did not to remain angry at one who did. “Have some more fish,” she said. “It’s brain food.”
“Two helpings, then…”
They had not laughed together in several weeks, and the release was palpable. Problems could be obsessive, but worse, they could be solitary. It was good to connect again.
“So, there’s only one point in time when Dirac’s ratios could be equal,” he prompted.
She nodded. “Coincidence is the usual explanation. The Anthropic Principle says that the age of the universe is what it is because that’s how long it takes the universe to assemble physicists capable of estimating it. But think… If space and time can contort for the sole purpose of maintaining a constant ratio — velocity of light — why can’t the rest of the universe be as cooperative?”
“Uh…?” he prompted. Not the most incisive question, but questions weren’t in it. Sharon was on a roll. Nothing like wine for lubricating the words so they tumble out faster.
“Dirac set his two ratios equal and solved for G, the gravitational constant; but his theory of slowly evaporating gravity was eventually ruled out by experiment.”
“So… you solved his equation for c,” Tom guessed.
She nodded. “And c is a function of the inverse cube root of time, which…”
“Which gives a decreasing speed of light,” he finished. “But the asymptote is zero, not Einstein’s constant, ne c’est pas?”
Sharon wiggled her hand. “Haven’t worked it all out yet, but the coefficient involves the rest masses of the electron and proton.”
“Which means?”
“The coefficient isn’t constant, either. Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction. If c is decreasing, what happens to mass?”
“Beats me.”
“Come on, this is grade school stuff. As velocity increases toward c, mass increases. Everyone knows that. So, switch frames. What’s the difference if c decreases toward velocity?”
“Hunh, none, I suppose.”
“Right, so the universe is becoming more massive.”
Tom patted his stomach. “I thought it was your cooking.”
Sharon gave him The Look, but he grinned until finally she had to grin, too. “Okay, I’ll connect your dots.” She pushed her dinner plate to one side and leaned forward with her arms on the table. “Velocity is distance over time, right? High school physics.”
“They taught it just after the Lorentz-Fitzgerald stuff.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“Can’t help it.”
“Well, the universe is expanding.”
He almost patted his stomach again, but caught himself in time. “Big Bang. The universe started as a little ball and exploded, right? And it’s been expanding ever since.”
“No! That’s wrong! That’s newspaper science. The ur-block ‘exploded!’ The ur-block ‘exploded!’ What did it explode into, for crying out loud? You’re thinking of stars and galaxies being flung out into space; but the ur-block was space. Galaxies are racing away from each other, not from a common center. They aren’t flying farther out into space; space is expanding between them. The cosmological fluid. Get it?” A part of her — that part able to stand outside herself — could see that she had maybe drunk too much of the wine. She was babbling, and she wished she could stop, but she was goddam, freaking happy, and didn’t want to.
Tom shook his head. “Cosmological fluid…” He had a sudden, Aristotelian vision of the universe as a plenum, rather than empty space.
Sharon pressed him, eager that he should understand, for she wanted to share her joy. “Look, imagine galaxies as dots painted on the outside of a balloon—”
He slapped the table in triumph. “I knew we’d get to the balloon eventually!”
“Picture yourself as a little flat bug somewhere on the balloon. That should be easy. Now inflate the balloon. What happens to all the dots?”
Tom looked up at the lamp that hung over the dining table and tugged at his lip. “Can I see around the curve of the balloon?”
She nodded. “Yes. But it’s curved Flatland, and you can’t see up, or down into the balloon.”
Tom closed his eyes. “All the dots are racing away from me,” he decided.
“And the dots that are farthest away?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her with a grin. “They’re receding the fastest. Son of a bitch! So that’s why—”
“—Astronomers use red shift velocity to estimate distance. Now plunk yourself down somewhere else on the balloon. What do you see now?”
He shrugged. “Simil atque, obviously.”
She picked up the little pepper mill from the table and set it between them. She pointed to it. “So how can the same galaxy be receding from point A…” She touched herself. ” — and from point B?” She pointed to him.
Tom squinted at the surrogate galaxy. “We’re living on the surface of a balloon, hein? Space is expanding between us, so each of us sees the other as drifting farther away.” He was more right than he knew.
“The three-dimensional surface of a very weird balloon. I call it the ‘perceived universe’.”
“And your ‘polyverse’ includes the inside of the balloon.”
“Right. Quantum dimensions, they’re called. They’re literally inside the perceived universe. I’ve been studying their orthogonality under Janatpour’s hypothesis.”
“And the speed of light?”<
br />
“Right.” She set the salt cellar next to the pepper mill. “Mark off a kilometer on the surface of the balloon. Light will take, oh, maybe a third of a microsecond to cross it. The kilometer fixed to the balloon’s surface and a kilometer stick inside the balloon are the same. Blow up the balloon and what happens?”
“Umh. The distance on the balloon gets longer but the distance inside doesn’t.”
“And if light speed is constant in the polyverse, how far does the light get in a third of a microsecond?”
“As far as the original kilometer… Which falls short of your kilometer mark.”
“Right. So a beam of light takes longer to cover the ‘same’ distance than it did before.”
Tom pulled on his lower lip and studied the lamp again. “Cute,” he said.
She leaned farther across the table. “It gets cuter.”
“How?”
“I can only account for half the estimated decrease in light speed.”
He looked at her and blinked. “Where’d the other half go?”
She grinned. “Distance over time, lover. What if seconds were getting shorter? A ‘constant’ beam of light would cover fewer kilometers in the ‘same’ number of seconds. All that stuff about ‘rods’ and ‘clocks’… They’re not privileged, not outside the universe. When I couple the expansion of space with the contraction of time and extrapolate backward to the Big Bang — I mean, the Big Clap — I get infinaly…I mean, infinitely long second — and in-fi-nite-ly fast light speed — at the decoupling; and tha’s… Well, it’s innersting, because of Milne’s kinematic theory of relativity. E-spare-men’ly… Ex-per-i-men-t’ly, you can’t tell Milne from Einshtein. ’Til now. Here’s t’me.” This time, she did toast herself, draining the last of her wine. When she upended the bottle over her glass to refill it, she found that it was empty.
Tom shook his head. “I always thought the years went faster as I got older.”
* * *
Sharon woke up with a headache and a warm, fuzzy feeling. She wanted to lie in bed. She liked the feel of Tom’s arm across her. It made her feel safe. But the headache won. She slipped out from under him — not that anything short of Krakatoa would wake him — and tip-toed to the bathroom, where she shook two aspirin into her palm.
“Newton,” she said to the tablets. She rattled them like dice, as she studied her reflection. “What are you smiling about?” She was a woman who put great store in her dignity, and she had behaved the night before in a decidedly undignified manner. “You know what you’re like when you drink too much,” she scolded her image.
Of course, you knew, her image smirked. That’s why you did it.
“Nonsense. You’ve got the causal arrows backward. I wanted to celebrate my discovery. What happened afterward was spin-off.”
Yeah, right. She swallowed the aspirin, washed them down. Then, because she was already up, she went to the living room and began gathering her clothes. The dishes in the dining alcove reproached her for the food hardened upon them. Now she remembered why she didn’t cook more often. She hated disorder. She’d spend all day cleaning now, instead of doing physics.
“Newton…” Now why on Earth was Sir Isaac on her mind? He was passé, the old clockwork physics. Einstein had made him a special case, just as she would make Einstein a special case. But Newton had said that a change in velocity requires a force to explain it.
So, if time were accelerating…
She straightened abruptly, scattering all her clothes. “Why, what a very peculiar place this universe is!”
* * *
IX. October, 1348
The Freiburg Markets
During the two weeks that followed Hans’ terrifying revelation, Dietrich again avoided the krenkish encampment; nor did Hans call him over the far-speaker, so at times, he could almost forget that the beasts were there. He tried even to dissuade Hilde from visiting them, but the woman, taking by now an unseemly pride in her ministry, refused. “Their alchemist desires I bring more divers foods, to find those more to their taste. Besides, they are mortal beings, however repulsive.”
Mortal, yes; but wolves and bears were mortal, and one did not approach them lightly. He did not think Max could protect her should the Krenken turn and bite.
Yet, the Krenken spoke, and devised clever tools, so they clearly owned an intellect. Could there be a soul with intellect, but no will? These questions perplexed him, and he wrote an inquiry for Gregor to take to archdeacon in Freiburg.
The Herr had announced on St. Aurelia’s day that he would send a train of wagons to the Freiburg markets to sell his wine and hides and to purchase cloth and other goods. And so a frenzy of activity consumed the village. The large four-wheeled wagons were brought out, trucks and wheels inspected, harnesses repaired, axles rubbed with tallow. The villagers meanwhile studied their own stores for marketable goods, and assembled consignments of hides, tallow, honey, mead and wine as their wit and possessions dictated. Klaus had named Gregor to drive the commune’s wagon.
Dietrich found the mason in the green, seeing to the stowage of the wagons. “Be sure that barrel is tied tight,” Gregor warned his son. “Good day, pastor. Have something for the markets?”
Dietrich handed him the letter he had written. “Not to sell, but give this to Archdeacon Willi”
The mason studied the packet and the red wax seal into which Dietrich had set his signet. “This looks official,” he said.
“Only some questions I have.”
Gregor laughed. “I thought you were the one with answers! You never go into town with us, pastor. A learned man like yourself would find much interest there.”
“Perhaps too much,” Dietrich answered. “Do you know what Friar Peter of Apulia once answered when asked what he thought of Joachim of Flora’s teaching?”
Gregor had ducked under the wagon bed and began greasing the axles. “No, what?”
“He said, ‘I care as little for Joachim as for the fifth wheel of a wagon.’ ”
“What? A fifth wheel? Haha! Ay, thunder-weather!” Gregor had banged his head on the cart’s underside. “A fifth wheel!” he said, sliding out from under. “That’s funny. Oh.”
Dietrich turned to see Brother Joachim stalking off. He started after him, but Everard, who had been overseeing the estate wagons, took Dietrich by the arm. “The Herr has summoned three of his knights to serve as guards,” he said, “but he wants Max to lead a troop of armsmen. Falkenstein won’t plunder the train going down. What does he need with honey — save to sweeten his disposition? But the return might prove too tempting. All that silver would jingle like the preparation bell at Mass and his greed may overcome his prudence. Max is gone to the lazaretto. Take one of the Herr’s palefridi and go fetch him back.”
Dietrich gestured toward his departing houseguest. “I must speak to…”
“The word the Herr used was ‘now.’ Discuss it with him, not me.”
Dietrich did not want to visit the talking animals. Who knew to what acts their instict would drive them? He glanced at the sun. “Max is likely returning even now.”
Everard twisted his mouth. “Or else he’s not. Those were the Herr’s instructions. No one else has his leave to go there, God be thanked, to deal with… them.”
Dietrich hesitated. “Manfred’s told you, hasn’t he? About the Krenken.”
Everard would not meet his eyes. “I don’t know which would be worse: to see them face to face, or to imagine them.” He shivered. “Yes, he’s told me about them; and Max, who uses his head for more than helmet padding, swears they are mortal. For myself, I have a wagon train to organize. Don’t bother me. Thierry and the others arrive on the morrow, and I’m not ready.”
Dietrich crossed the valley to the stables, where Gunther already waited with a fine roadhorse. “It sorrows me,” Gunther said, “that I cannot offer you a jennet.”
Jennets, or palfrey mules, were bred for use by women and clergy and owned a mule’s more stolid disposition.
Nettled, Dietrich ignored Gunther’s cupped hands, and mounted from the stirrup. Taking the reins from the startled maier domo, he danced the horse a few paces to show it he was master, then kicked with his heels. He had no spurs — for a commoner to wear them would violate the Swabian Peace — but the horse accepted the thesis and set off at a walk.
On the road, Dietrich took his mount to a trot, enjoying the rhythm of the creature and the feel of the wind on his face. It had been a long while since he had ridden so fine a beast as this, and he lost his thoughts for a time in sheer animal pleasure. But he should not have let his pride master him. Gunther might wonder how a mere parish priest had won such horse skills.
Manfred no doubt had his reasons, but Dietrich wished he had not told Everard about the Krenken. Word would leak out in the end, but there was no point augering holes in the bucket.
* * *
At the place where the trees had been blown down, he spied the miller’s jennet, picketed by the stump where Hilde used to leave the food. No other mount was near, but since Max would not have abandoned Hilde, he must have ridden ‘the shoemaker’s black horse.’ Dietrich dismounted, slipped a hippopede onto his palfrey’s hind legs, and set forth on the track that Max had blazed.
Although the day was high, he was soon enveloped in a green gloaming. Spruce and fir reached into the sky, while the more humble hazel, shorn now of their raiment, huddled naked beneath them. He had not gone far when he heard soft, womanly gasps echoing off the trees, as if the forest itself moaned. Dietrich’s heart beat faster. The forest, always menacing, took on a more sinister aspect. Groaning dryads reached to embrace him with dry, naked fingers.
I’m lost, he thought, and he looked about in panic for Max’s signs. He turned and a branch scratched his cheek. He gasped, ran, crashed into a white birch. He twisted away, desperate now to reach his horse. Coming to a swell of ground, he slipped and fell. He pressed his head against the ancient leafy mat and musky earth, waiting for the forest to grab him.
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