A Canticle For Leibowitz

by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  Now a Dark Age seemed to be passing. For twelve centuries, a small flame of knowledge had been kept smoldering in the monasteries; only now were their minds ready to be kindled. Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible — that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true only in the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God's and not Man's, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection.

  The Memorabilia was full of ancient words, ancient formulae, ancient reflections of meaning, detached from minds that had died long ago, when a different sort of society had passed into oblivion. There was little of it that could still be understood. Certain papers seemed as meaningless as a Breviary would seem to a shaman of the nomad tribes. Others retained a certain ornamental beauty or an orderliness that hinted of meaning, as a rosary might suggest a necklace to a nomad. The earliest brothers of the Leibowitzian Order had tried to press a sort of Veronica's Veil to the face of a crucified civilization; it had come away marked with an image of the face of ancient grandeur, but the image was faintly printed, incomplete, and hard to understand. The monks had preserved the image, and now it still survived for the world to inspect and try to interpret if the world wanted to do so. The Memorabilia could not, of itself, generate a revival of ancient science or high civilization, however, for cultures were begotten by the tribes of Man, not by musty tomes; but the books could help, Dom Paulo hoped — the books could point out directions and offer hints to a newly evolving science. It had happened once before, so the Venerable Boedullus had asserted in his De Vestigiis Antecessarum Civitatum.

  And this time, thought Dom Paulo, we'll keep them reminded of who kept the spark burning while the world slept. He paused to look back; for a moment he had imagined that he had heard a frightened bleat from the Poet's goat.

  The clamor from the basement soon blanketed his hearing as he descended the underground stairs toward the source of the turmoil. Someone was hammering steel pins into stone. Sweat mingled with the odor of old books. A feverish bustle of unscholarly activity filled the library. Novices hurried past with tools. Novices stood in groups and studied floor plans. Novices shifted desks and tables and heaved a makeshift machinery, rocking it into place. Confusion by lamplight. Brother Armbruster, the librarian and Rector of the Memorabilia, stood watching it from a remote alcove in the shelves, his arms tightly folded and his face grim. Dom Paulo avoided his accusing gaze.

  Brother Kornhoer approached his ruler with a lingering grin of enthusiasms. "Well, Father Abbot, we'll soon have a light such as no man alive has ever seen."

  "This is not without a certain vanity, Father," Paulo replied.

  "Vanity, Domne? To put to good use what we've learned?"

  "I had in mind our haste to put it to use in time to impress a certain visiting scholar. But never mind. Let's see this engineer's wizardry."

  They walked toward the makeshift machine. It reminded the abbot of nothing useful, unless one considered engines for torturing prisoners useful. An axle, serving as the shaft, was connected by pulleys and belts to a waist-high turnstile. Four wagon wheels were mounted on the axle a few inches apart. Their thick iron tires were scored with grooves, and the grooves supported countless birds'-nests of copper wire, drawn from coinage at the local smithy in Sanly Bowitts. The wheels were apparently free to spin in mid-air, Dom Paulo noticed, for their tires touched no surface. However, stationary blocks of iron faced the tires, like brakes, without quite touching them. The blocks too had been wound with innumerable turns of wire — "field coils" as Kornhoer called them. Dom Paulo solemnly shook his head.

  "It'll be the greatest physical improvement at the abbey since we got the printing press a hundred years ago," Kornhoer ventured proudly.

  "Will it work?" Dom Paulo wondered.

  "I'll stake a month's extra chores on it, m'Lord."

  You're staking more than that, thought the priest, but suppressed utterance. "Where does the light come out?" he asked, peering at the odd contraption again.

  The monk laughed. "Oh, we have a special lamp for that. What you see here is only the 'dynamo.' It produces the electrical essence which the lamp will burn."

  Ruefully, Dom Paulo contemplated the amount of space the dynamo was occupying. "This essence," he murmured, "—can't it be extracted from mutton fat, perhaps?"

  "No, no — The electrical essence is, well — Do you want me to explain?"

  "Better not. Natural science is not my bent. I'll leave it to you younger heads." He stepped back quickly to avoid being brained by a timber carried past by a pair of hurrying carpenters. "Tell me," he said, "if by studying writings from the Leibowitzian age you can learn how to construct this thing, why do you suppose none of our predecessors saw fit to construct it?"

  The monk was silent for a moment. "It's not easy to explain," he said at last. "Actually, in the writings that survive, there's no direct information about the construction of a dynamo. Rather, you might say that the information is implicit in a whole collection of fragmentary writings. Partially implicit. And it has to be got out by deduction. But to get it, you also need some theories to work from — theoretical information our predecessors didn't have."

  "But we do?"

  "Well, yes — now that there have been a few men like—" his tone became deeply respectful and he paused before pronouncing the name "—like Thon Taddeo—"

  "Was that a complete sentence?" the abbot asked rather sourly.

  "Well, until recently, few philosophers have concerned themselves with new theories in physics. Actually, it was the work of, of Thon Taddeo—" the respectful tone again, Dom Paulo noted, "—that gave us the necessary working axioms. His work of the Mobility of Electrical Essences, for example, and his Conservation Theorem—"

  "He should be pleased, then, to see his work applied. But where is the lamp itself, may I ask? I hope it's no larger than the dynamo."

  "This is it, Domne," said the monk, picking up a small object from the table. It seemed to be only a bracket for holding a pair of black rods and a thumbscrew for adjusting their spacing. "These are carbons," Kornhoer explained.

  "The ancients would have called it an 'arc lamp.' There was another kind, but we don't have the materials to make it."

  "Amazing. Where does the light come from?"

  "Here." The monk pointed to the gap between the carbons. "It must be a very tiny flame," said the abbot.

  "Oh, but bright! Brighter, I expect, than a hundred candles."

  "No!"

  "You find that impressive?"

  "I find it preposterous—" noticing Brother Kornhoer's sudden hurt expression, the abbot hastily added: "—to think how we've been limping along on beeswax and mutton fat."

  "I have been wondering," the monk shyly confided, "if the ancients used them on their altars instead of candles."

  "No," said the abbot. "Definitely, no. I can tell you that. Please dismiss that idea as quickly as possible, and don't even think of it again."

  "Yes, Father Abbot."

  "Now, where are you going to hang that thing?"

  "Well—" Brother Kornhoer paused to stare speculatively around the gloomy basement. "I hadn't given it any thought. I suppose it should go over the desk where, Thon Taddeo—" (Why does he pause like that whenever he says it, Dom Paulo wondered irritably.) "—will be
working."

  "We'd better ask Brother Armbruster about that," the abbot decided, and then noticing the monk's sudden discomfort: "What's the matter? Have you and Brother Armbruster been—"

  Kornhoer's face twisted apologetically. "Really, Father Abbot, I haven't lost my temper with him even once. Oh, we've had words, but—" He shrugged. "He doesn't want anything moved. He keeps mumbling about witchcraft and the like. It's not easy to reason with him. His eyes are half-blind now from reading by dim light — and yet he says it's Devil's work we're up to. I don't know what to say."

  Dom Paulo frowned slightly as they crossed the room toward the alcove where Brother Armbruster still stood glowering upon the proceedings.

  "Well, you've got your way now," the librarian said to Kornhoer as they approached. "When'll you be putting in a mechanical librarian, Brother?"

  "We find hints, Brother, that once there were such things," the inventor growled. "In descriptions of the Machina analytica, you'll find references to—"

  "Enough, enough," the abbot interposed; then to the librarian: "Thon Taddeo will need a place to work. What do you suggest?"

  Armbruster jerked one thumb toward the Natural Science alcove. "Let him read at the lectern in there like anyone else."

  "What about setting up a study for him here on the open floor, Father Abbot?" Kornhoer suggested in hasty counter-proposal.

  "Besides a desk, he'll need an abacus, a wall slate, and a drawing board. We could partition it off with temporary screens."

  "I thought he was going to need our Leibowitzian references and earliest writings?" the librarian said suspiciously.

  "He will."

  "Then he'll have to walk back and forth a lot if you put him in the middle. The rare volumes are chained, and the chains won't reach that far."

  "That's no problem," said the inventor. "Take off the chains. They look silly anyway. The schismatic cults have all died out or become regional. Nobody's heard of the Pancratzian Military Order in a hundred years."

  Armbruster reddened angrily. "Oh no you don't," be snapped. "The chains stay on."

  "But why?"

  "It's not the book burners now. It's the villagers we have to worry about. The chains stay on."

  Kornhoer turned to the abbot and spread his bands. "See, m'Lord?"

  "He's right," said Dom Paulo. "There's too much agitation in the village. The town council expropriated our school, don't forget. Now they've got a village library, and they want us to fill its shelves. Preferably with rare volumes, of course. Not only that, we had trouble with thieves last year. Brother Armbruster's right. The rare volumes stay chained."

  "All right," Kornhoer sighed. "So he'll have to work in the alcove."

  "Now, where do we hang your wondrous lamp?"

  The monks glanced toward the cubicle. It was one of fourteen identical stalls, sectioned according to subject matter, which faced the central floor. Each alcove had its archway, and from an iron hook imbedded in the keystone of each arch hung a heavy crucifix.

  "Well, if he's going to work in the alcove," said Kornhoer, "we'll just have to take the crucifix down and hang it there, temporarily. There's no other—"

  "Heathen!" hissed the librarian. "Pagan! Desecrator!" Armbruster raised trembling hands heavenward. "God help me, lest I tear him apart with these hands! Where will he stop? Take him away, away!" He turned his back on them, his hands still trembling aloft.

  Dom Paulo himself had winced slightly at the inventor's suggestion, but now he frowned sharply at the back of Brother Armbruster's habit. He had never expected him to feign a meekness that was alien to Armbruster's nature, but the aged monk's querulous disposition had grown definitely worse.

  "Brother Armbruster, turn around, please."

  The librarian turned.

  "Now drop your hands, and speak more calmly when you—"

  "But, Father Abbot, you heard what he—"

  "Brother Armbruster, you will please get the shelf-ladder and remove that crucifix."

  The color left the librarian's face. He stared speechless at Dam Paulo.

  "This is not a church," said the abbot. "The placement of images is optional. For the present, you will please take down the crucifix. It's the only suitable place for the lamp, it seems. Later we may change it. Now I realize this whole thing has disturbed your library, and perhaps your digestion, but we hope it's in the interests of progress. If it isn't, then—"

  "You'd make Our Lord move over to make room for prog—

  "Brother Armbruster!"

  "Why don't you just hang the witch-light around His neck?"

  The abbot's face went frigid. "I do not force your obedience, Brother. See me in my study after Compline."

  The librarian wilted. "I'll get the ladder, Father Abbot," he whispered, and shuffled unsteadily away.

  Dom Paulo glanced up at the Christ of the rood in the archway. Do You mind? he wondered.

  There was a knot in his stomach. He knew the knot would exact its price of him later. He left the basement before anyone could notice his discomfort. It was not good to let the community see how such trivial unpleasantness could overcome him these days.

  The installation was completed the following day, but Dom Paulo remained in his study during the test. Twice he had been forced to warn Brother Armbruster privately, and then to rebuke him publicly during Chapter. And yet he felt more sympathy for the librarian's stand than he did for Kornhoer's. He sat slumped at his desk and waited for the news from the basement, feeling small concern for the test's success or failure. He kept one hand tucked into the front of his habit. He patted his stomach as though trying to calm a hysterical child.

  Internal cramping again. It seemed to come whenever unpleasantness threatened, and sometimes went away again when unpleasantness exploded into the open where he could wrestle with it. But now it was not going away.

  He was being warned, and he knew it. Whether the warning came from an angel, from a demon, or from his own conscience, it told him to beware of himself and of some reality not yet faced.

  What now? he wondered, permitting himself a silent belch and a silent Beg pardon toward the statue of Saint Leibowitz in the shrinelike niche in the corner of his study.

  A fly was crawling along Saint Leibowitz' nose. The eyes of the saint seemed to be looking crosseyed at the fly, urging the abbot to brush it away. The abbot had grown fond of the twenty-sixth century wood carving; its face wore a curious smile of a sort that made it rather unusual as a sacramental image. The smile was turned down at one corner; the eyebrows were pulled low in a faintly dubious frown, although there were laugh-wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Because of the hangman's rope over one shoulder, the saint's expression often seemed puzzling. Possibly it resulted from slight irregularities in the grain of the wood, such irregularities dictating to the carver's hand as that hand sought to bring out finer details than were possible with such wood. Dom Paulo was not certain whether the image had been growth-sculptured as a living tree before carving or not; sometimes the patient master-carvers of that period had begun with an oak or cedar sapling, and — by spending tedious years at pruning, barking, twisting, and tying living branches into desired positions — had tormented the growing wood into a striking dryad shape, arms folded or raised aloft, before cutting the mature tree for curing and carving. The resulting statue was unusually resistant to splitting or breaking, since most of the lines of the work followed the natural grain.

  Dom Paulo often marveled that the wooden Leibowitz had also proved resistant to several centuries of his predecessors — marveled, because of the saint's most peculiar smile. That little grin will ruin you someday, he warned the image... Surely, the saints must laugh in Heaven; the Psalmist says that God Himself shall chortle, but Abbot Malmeddy must have disapproved — God rest his soul. That solemn ass. How did you get by him, I wonder? You're not sanctimonious enough for some. That smile — Who do I know that grins that way? I like it, but... Someday, another grim dog will sit in this c
hair. Cave canem. He'll replace you with a plaster Leibowitz. Long-suffering. One who doesn't look crosseyed at flies. Then you'll be eaten by termites down in the storage room. To survive the Church's slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then — when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and mutters, "Some of this garbage has got to go." The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five centuries of priestly bad taste, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.

  The abbot fanned himself with a fan of buzzard feathers, but the breeze was not cooling. The air from the window was like an oven's breath off the scorched desert, adding to the discomfort caused him by whatever devil or ruthless angel was fiddling around with his belly. It was the kind of heat that hints of lurking danger from sun-crazed rattlers and brooding thunderstorms over the mountains, or rabid dogs and tempers made vicious by the scorch. It made the cramping worse.

  "Please?" he murmured aloud to the saint, meaning a nonverbal prayer for cooler weather, sharper wits, and more insight into his vague sense of something wrong. Maybe it's that cheese that does it, he thought. Gummy stuff this season, and green. I could dispense myself — and take a more digestible diet.