Walter Miller A Canticle For Leibowitz

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been several earlier false alarms. Clearly no one had informed the illustrious
thon that a marvelous invention awaited his inspection in the basement.
Clearly, if it had been mentioned to him at all, its importance had been
minimized. Obviously, Father Abbot was seeing to it that they all cooled their
heels. These were the wordless significances exchanged by glances among them
as they waited.
This time the warning hiss had not been in vain. The monk who watched from the
head of the stairs turned solemnly and bowed toward the fifth monk on the
landing below.
"In principio Deus," he said softly.
manned the treadmill. The fifth monk hovered over the dynamo. The sixth monk
climbed the shelf-ladder and took his seat on the top rung, his head bumping
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the top of the archway. He pulled a mask of smoke-blackened oily parchment
over his face to protect his eyes, then felt for the lamp fixture and its
thumbscrew, while Brother Komhoer watched him nervously from below.
"Et lux ergo facta est," he said when he had found the screw.
"Lucem esse bonam Deus vidit," the inventor called to the fifth monk.
The fifth monk bent over the dynamo with a candle for one last look at the
brush contacts. "Et secrevit lucem a tenebris," he said at last, con-
tinuing the lesson.
"Lucem appellavit 'diem,'" chorused the treadmill team, "et tenebras
'noctes.'" Whereupon they set their shoulders to the turnstile beams.
Axles creaked and groaned. The wagon-wheel dynamo began to spin, its low whir
becoming a moan and then a whine as the monks strained and grunted at the
drive-mill. The guardian of the dynamo watched anxiously as the spokes blurred
with speed and became a film. "Vespere occaso," he began, then paused to lick
two fingers and touch them to the contacts. A spark snapped.
"Lucifer!" he yelped, leaping back, then finished lamely: "ortus est et primo
die."
"CONTACT!" said Brother Kornhoer, as Dom Paulo, Thon Taddeo and his clerk
descended the stairs.
The monk on the ladder struck the arc. A sharp spffft!--and blinding light
flooded the vaults with a brilliance that had not been seen in twelve
centuries.
The group stopped on the stairs. Thou Taddeo gasped an oath in his native
tongue. He retreated a step. The abbot, who had neither wit-
nessed the testing of the device nor credited extravagant claims, blanched and
stopped speech in mid-sentence. The clerk froze momentarily in panic and
suddenly fled, screaming "Fire!"
Bright as a thousand torches, breathed the scholar. It must be an
ancient--but no! Unthinkable!"
He moved on down the stairs like a man in a trance. He stopped beside Brother
Kornhoer and gazed at him curiously for a moment, then stepped onto the
basement floor. Touching nothing, asking nothing, peer-
ing at everything, he wandered about the machinery, inspecting the dy-
namo, the wiring, the lamp itself.
"It just doesn't seem possible, but--"
The abbot recovered his senses and descended the stairs. "You're dispensed
from silence!" he whispered at Brother Kornhoer. "Talk to him.
I'm--a little dazed."
The monk brightened. "You like it, m'Lord Abbot?"
"Ghastly," wheezed Dom Paulo.
The inventor's countenance sagged.
"It's a shocking way to treat a guest! It frightened the thon's assis-
tant out of his wits. I'm mortified!"
"Well, it is rather bright."
"Hellish! Go talk to him while I think of a way to apologize."
But the scholar had apparently made a judgment on the basis of his
observations, for he stalked toward them swiftly. His face seemed strained,
and his manner crisp.
"A lamp of electricity," he said. "How have you managed to keep it hidden for
all these centuries! After all these years of trying to arrive at a theory
of--" He choked slightly, and seemed to be fighting for self-control, as if he
had been the victim of a monstrous practical joke. "Why have you hidden it? Is
there some religious significance-- And what--" Complete confusion stopped
him. He shook his head and looked around as if for an escape.
"You misunderstand," the abbot said weakly, catching at Brother
Kornhoer's arm. "For the love of God, Brother, explain!"
But there was no balm to soothe an affront to professional pride--
then or in any other age.
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initials carved in the summit rock--and the rival hadnt told him in advance.
It must have been shattering for him, Dom Paulo thought, because of the way it
was handled.
If the thon had not insisted (with a firmness perhaps born of embar-
rassment) that its light was of a superior quality, sufficiently bright even
for close scrutiny of brittle and age-worn documents which tended to be inde-
cipherable by candlelight, Dom Paulo would have removed the lamp from the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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