Newton wanted to use his new freedom to learn about the mulefa by what he called “immersion,” which Hermann understood to mean “wandering around uselessly.” Newt claimed he had important inquiries to make, and said in fact “wandering” was not inaccurate—non-directional exploration was just his investigative style. Hermann was unimpressed. “We are guests here, not anthropologists,” he said. “We’ve got to help where we can.”
“Ah, I’d love to, Hermann,” said Newt with a sigh of regret, “But...”
He indicated his arm in its sling and winced exaggeratedly.
“I’m afraid that won’t get you out of anything,” Hermann said with satisfaction. “The mulefa have trunks. Your single-handed status is, if anything, normal here.”
“But it’s not my dominant hand!” Newt protested.
Twenty minutes later, standing knee-deep with their pants rolled up, unhooking fishing nets, Newt informed him that was fine, because he had trained himself to be ambidextrous.
“What luck,” said Hermann, showing him where to unhook the net. Each clasp was held in place among the rocks by a hook; the long net had to be unhooked, then unclasped to be opened.
“This is better immersion anyway,” Newton said, looking around. “This way I finally see how they work and live, up close.” He shook his head, grinning. He had been bluffing about not wanting to work, but Hermann could tell how excited he was. Fernweh, too, who was eagerly snuffling around the reeds nearby. Hermann was starting to see how the coyote expressed Newton’s moods.
“‘Finally,’” Hermann repeated, stepping over a rock. “Explain.”
“Hm?” said Newt, fishing around in the water for the next hook.
“You said you would tell me about your work when I untied you,” Hermann said. “You are untied.”
“Oh, you want to know how I knew about the mulefa, from before?” Newt said, looking back up at Hermann over his shoulder. Hermann raised his eyebrows. “Like I said, I study them,” Newt said. He found the hook and tugged the net out of the water. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said as he stood, pulling the section of net up so Hermann and his two functional hands could undo the clasp.
“If you don’t—”
“All right, all right!” Newton said. “Relax, Dr. Shortfuse.”
Hermann undid the clasp and together they moved on towards the next one.
“Like I told you, I’m a naturalist. I study mammals.” He picked his way over some small rapids. They were getting to the deep part now. “Among other things, I did some archaeological work in the North—mostly, my contacts in the field would send me samples.”
“North of what?” Hermann asked.
“Northern Europe,” Newt answered. “No interrupting.”
“But you are American,” Hermann said, watching him roll his pants higher in a futile effort to keep them dry.
“I grew up in New Amsterdam,” Newt said, switching to the other leg. “I moved to Oxford to be a Scholar. Did that for almost twelve years. Didn’t much care for it.”
They continued to the next hook.
“The mulefa don’t like getting their feet wet, do they?” said Newt, bending over to feel around for the next one. “How do they normally pull this net?”
“This net is new,” Hermann said. “Built by me, because I can navigate the water.”
“Helpful of you. Not that many fish in it, though,” said Newton. “Do you think it’s because of their balance issues?”
“That the mulefa avoid walking in water?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” said Hermann dismissively. “And they don’t have balance issues. Four legs is much more stable than two.”
“Sure, standing still,” Newt said, standing up, without the net. “But not walking. You’ve seen how the kids wobble around.” He wobbled demonstratively.
Hermann put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. It did not work. “A four-legged structure is still more stable,” Hermann insisted, “Even if it moves strangely. I am more steady because I have three.”
Newt kept bobbing. He shook his head. “No, man, I don’t think they have the same developed inner ear as us, because they’re naturally more stable. I think the moving water makes them nervous.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hermann said. “Even if it isn’t in their inner ear, they obviously have a highly calibrated sense of balance, because they ride on wheels at high speeds—without a sense of balance there would be no way—to perform the turns that they—will you stop—”
Newt grinned.
“It isn’t about balance, Newton! It’s about the oil.”
“Seedpod oil?” said Newt. He stopped.
“Yes,” said Hermann exasperatedly. “Please, will you get the net.”
Newt bent back down, feeling for the clasp. “They don’t want it to get washed off their feet? Is that what you mean?”
“That’s my hypothesis.”
Newt made an interested ‘Hmm’ sound.
“You were telling me about your career,” Hermann said. “Honestly I cannot imagine how you could have ever been an academic. Talking to you is like talking to an 8-year-old birdwatcher.”
Newt pulled the net up and stood. As Hermann unclasped it, he resumed: “No need to be rude. Where was I? Archaeological digs. I had a contact in the North who got his hands on a very unusual sample, one he thought I would be interested in. It was pretty hush-hush. Naturally, I was intrigued. This was about four years ago,” he added. Hermann nodded and they started moving to the next hook.
“So he sends the sample, Professor Newton Geiszler, care of Jordan College—”
Hermann stopped. “Jordan?”
“Yes, Jordan, that was my university,” Newt said, also stopping exasperatedly. “Are you going to keep complaining about how slowly I talk, and keep interrupting me?”
Jordan. Hermann racked his brains. He had heard that before... “Lyra!”
“Lyra?”
“Jordan College, that was in the universe where the little girl came from—Lyra, she said she grew up there...”
“My God,” said Newt. “I think I know her! Lyra Belacqua?”
“She said her name was Lyra Silvertongue.”
“That sounds like Lyra. She's trouble,” Newt said, breaking into a grin. “I tutored her for a few weeks at Jordan—me and every other Scholar. We would set up a lesson, she would arrive an hour late, and then her dæmon Pan would just goof off behind me for the whole lesson... She’s a good kid.”
“I didn’t see a dæmon, when I met her,” said Hermann uncertainly.
“Kids’ dæmons are different,” Newt explained. “They can shapeshift—change into anything they want. When you get older, they settle on one form. Pan was probably in her pocket being a mouse or something small, to hide.” Hermann had about sixty questions about that, but Newt was looking away, shaking his head in amazement. “Lyra... I can’t believe it. That’s bats. What are the odds?”
“I don’t know that odds come into it,” said Hermann with existential discomfort.
Newt’s eyes flicked back to his. They were still standing in the middle of the river.
“Oh, not the fate thing again, Hermann.”
“The odds are astronomically small,” Hermann said heatedly. “This was obviously engineered in some—”
“Come on,” said Newt, rolling his eyes. He turned around and resumed walking. “Why defend the fate explanation if you hate it?”
“I don’t understand what’s going on here Newton, but I don’t like it,” Hermann said, following.
“You’re just mad,” Newt said. “You’re mad you don’t get it. You can wait for an explanation to present itself, you know. It’s called the scientific method...”
Hermann’s cane slipped on a rock and he grabbed Newt’s shoulder.
“Whoa! Careful, man,” said Newt, grabbing his elbow.
“Thank you,” said Hermann. Newt made sure he was steady and let go.
They continued to the last clasp.
“So, where was I?”
“You were waiting for a mysterious package.”
“Right.” Newt bent down. “I get the sample. It’s a deer skeleton, preserved under the ice for a few hundred years at least. Only—” He got the hook out and pulled the net up. “—Only when we put it together, it isn’t any deer I ever saw.”
He held up the cord while Hermann undid the clasp. “No?”
“Diamond-framed body,” said Newt, shaking his head. “No spine. Nothing else like it in the fossil record. Absolute anomaly.”
Hermann finished opening the clasp. He wondered what the fossil record looked like in a world where evolutionary science was suppressed.
“Now, I know you’re wondering,” Newt said, “What does the fossil record even look like when the Church suppresses evolution studies?”
Hermann frowned at him.
“Aha, you were wondering!”
“Obviously.”
“Well it looks pretty spotty, and here’s why. I didn’t tell anyone what I had. It was just me and Fern, and our research assistant. This little diamond deer blew us away. We hardly slept. But not two days went by before the Church knocked on our door, asking kindly to take a look.”
“No one else knew?”
“Only my dig guy and my assistant. But the Church has ears everywhere, Hermann. And they do not like evolutionary anomalies.”
“I expect not.”
They were both pulling the net by its end and walking it, in a big slow arc, back to shore.
“I was already pretty unpopular with them, due to a certain paper I had published a few years before about chimpanzee-human commonalities,” said Newt. “Not to mention the whole being-Jewish-thing. After the first veiled threats, I realized they were going to suppress my work or snatch my skeleton. So I only had one choice—make it as public as I could.
“I started giving sensational interviews to every newspaper, gazette, tabloid, magazine, pamphlet writer I could find. I took photograms—a lot—of every bone, sent those off to the papers too. I made a plaster cast. I made a backup plaster cast. I petitioned Jordan to display the diamond deer prominently in their main building. Jordan said no thank you (the Jordan higher-ups are all Church busybodies—oh well). I made a fool of myself giving a very public presentation on it, just to get some headlines.”
Though this story contained new information, it was in no way surprising—Hermann felt like he already knew it. He pictured Newton kicking up a fuss to get in the public eye. He could picture it quite easily.
“It got a little buzz. Enough so I got a nickname in the press. Enough so that a disappearance would look suspicious. That bought me some time. I studied the hell out of that skeleton for almost a year, preparing my paper. Then came the hard p—”
“What was the nickname?” Hermann interrupted.
“The what?”
They reached the shore and dropped the net in the grass.
“Your nickname. In the press.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Newt said. “It’s not even a good one.”
“Newton, if you aren’t prepared to be honest with me—”
“You just want to tease me with it—it won’t work!” he said, holding up his finger. “No, no Hermann. Because first of all, you would love to be a renegade scientist, doing work so transgressive that you got notoriety for it, so don’t even pretend you aren’t extremely jealous. And because second of all, it isn’t a good nickname! So just drop it, all right?”
They spent the rest of the morning fishing. The mulefa were much more comfortable with Newt as a visitor than a prisoner—he had long dispelled any mistrust with his enthusiasm and aptitude. Hermann and Atal showed Newt how nets were hauled in, how the fish were sorted and which were returned to the water, and how those left were gutted. Newt was especially interested in the gutting, of course, and Atal showed him the special way the mulefa did it with one “hand.” After an hour or two of enthusiastic dissection, he spent the midday break examining the fish skeleton.
In the afternoon they helped with re-thatching some roofs. The mulefa were glad to have another roof-climber, but they were confused about where Newton’s cane was. Didn’t all humans need them? For stability? Newt looked at Hermann, then said, Only sometimes.
Such strange, stick-like creatures, one zalif commented to her friend. A wonder they walk at all.
That night they sat on the grass after their evening meal with the neighboring family. Newt was taking notes on fish anatomy in the notebook, making reference to a real live dead one that was starting to smell. Hermann had begun the notebook as his dictionary for the mulefa language, but Newt seemed to have decided it was a resource for research collaboration.
Speaking of which. Hermann cleared his throat.
“Newton, we need to talk.”
“Sounds ominous,” said Newt, not looking up. “I’m kind of in the middle of this...”
“It’s too dark and you know it.”
“I can listen and draw. Just talk to me.”
Hermann shifted to a more comfortable sitting position.
“In light of the experiment with the I Ching, and the message from the Dust consciousness, I think we can agree—”
“Bold assertion, already doubting where this is going,” Newt said.
“—I think we can agree,” Hermann pressed on, “That though we find ourselves in an extremely unusual situation, we’re in it together. And it would be best if we started working together.”
Newt looked up at him.
“I thought that’s what we were already doing.”
Hermann gave a clipped sigh. Of course: what he felt the anxious need to clarify, Newton already took as a given.
“I mean on everything.”
Newt put down his pen. “You mean your binoculars thing,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’re going to tell me what you’re doing,” said Newt.
“Yes.”
“Because you need my help.”
“No—”
“Oh, say it Hermann, you need my help.”
“I do not. I want your help. I believe you will have valuable things to say.”
“Aww. You bet I will.” Newt leaned closer. “In fact, I already know what you’re doing.”
“You do not.” Hermann meant it to sound like a shutdown, but it came out sounding plaintive.
“I do! You want to make a Dust lens.”
Hermann frowned.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
Hermann was still silent, racing to think of a way to continue the conversation without verbally confirming that he was correct.
“The mulefa—”
“Ah! Knew I was right.”
“—call it sraf. Atal compared it to the light seen on the ocean at sunset. This phenomenon arises from the splitting of the light rays. I know something about optics, so I’ve been trying to make a lens that will split rays in a similar way...”
“Interesting,” said Newt. “So the mulefa know about Dust too?”
Hermann explained what Atal had told him, about the oil and the consciousness of adulthood.
“So they can actually see it, huh? Wow,” said Newt. “That’s bats. Well listen, here’s my take. If there was a way to split the rays and see Dust with glass, the crazy Church scientists from my world would have figured it out. If they can see it, it must be something local. Maybe some chemical. We can’t dissect a mulefa’s eyeball, so that’s out. It’s a shame we don’t have any Iceland Spar...”
It clicked. “The lacquer!” Hermann almost shouted.
“Which?”
“Look—” He reached behind him and grabbed his cane. He laid it across both their laps. “No, damn, it’s too dark. But you can feel it.” Newt did so. “The lacquer they helped me put on this cane comes from the sap of a smaller tree the mulefa cultivate. Anku showed me a block of it. When the lacquer dries transparent, it splits rays just like Iceland Spar. I remember thinking the same thing when he showed it to me,” Hermann said excitedly.
“Then let’s try it!”
The next morning, Hermann and Newt went to talk to Anku. Newt was already better at the language, to Hermann’s chagrin, so he explained their idea, with Hermann “helpfully interjecting” several times. In the end, Anku figured how much lacquer they would need. It was a lot. For that much, they would have to tap the trees and harvest it themselves.
Newt followed the demonstration eagerly and got to tapping the trees. It was already late morning, so Hermann went to attend his duties. Newt did not mind. He and Fern roamed around the grove while the sap buckets slowly filled up, exploring nooks and examining wildlife.
“It’s so amazing here,” Newt said, watching some bumble-birds, as he had christened the bee-sized hummingbirds. “It’s like we walked into a dream. A dream with very consistent internal logic.”
“Isn’t it surprising, with everything else, that trees are the same?” Fern said.
“It’s surprising that anything is the same,” said Newt. “You saw those fish. Why would this world have evolved fish so similar to ours?”
A bird swooped and Fern barked, and chased it a few yards.
“I’m curious to see those big, evil swans that Hermann mentioned,” said Newt.
“We’d better hope we don’t see them,” Fern replied, trotting back.
“I guess,” said Newt, in a non-conciliatory tone. “We’re getting along better,” he said pensively, of Hermann.
“We’re not,” said Fern stiffly. “He never talks to me.”
“I don’t think he knows how,” said Newt.
“I find it rude,” Fern said.
“You can’t find it rude. He doesn’t have our customs.”
“I can consider rude whatever I consider rude,” Fern said.
Newt laughed at that. “I think you don’t like him because he’s like you,” he said.
“I don’t dislike him,” said Fern.
“I think I would dislike him, only he does remind me so much of you,” said Newt. “He does get annoyed with us sometimes, though. Sometimes I feel like he’s a fussy librarian whose stacks we’ve invaded.”
Fern chuckled.
“He’d be less high strung if he had someone to talk to, like we do,” Newt added.
“Maybe,” said Fern, sounding unconvinced.
“I know, there’s high-strung people with dæmons too,” said Newt. “But still. It’s healthier. It’s about processing. I feel like he has some stuff he isn’t processing.”
“What do you think she would be?”
“Don’t know... a cat?”
Fern made a noise of faux disgust. Newt laughed.
“You think his dæmon would be female, then?” Newt said.
“Maybe,” said Fern non-committally.
Newt shrugged. “Can we check the taps?”
“We just checked, man,” said Fern.
“Ugh! You’re no fun. Let’s go help Hermann.”
The sap ran so slowly that it took two days to get the volume they needed. Then they had to boil it down, boil it down, until the liquid was reduced almost 80%. It was a thick yellow-green liquid, but after many coats, it would dry in a transparent shade of amber.
The next thing they needed was a flat surface. The mulefa had no use for metal, and no way of mining it anyway. So they found a large rough board, a little larger than a record sleeve (“A what?” said Newt, and Hermann gave up trying to place the man’s universe in a comparable technological timeline to his own), and took turns sanding it down to flat. They used the same rough sandstone the mulefa used to sand their houses.
Sanding took another day, in between work. Newton seemed to find the work very satisfying. After he wiped the dust off with a wet cloth and dried it in the sun, he eagerly started painting. The first layer took about three minutes to paint on, and would take several hours to dry. Newt sat staring intensely at the board.
“Newton.”
“Hm?”
“What are you doing.”
“Well I was just thinking, if this lacquer has Dust in it, then it’s conscious, then it can sense me staring at it. So maybe it’ll hurry up.”
Hermann shook his head, to keep himself from laughing. “It doesn’t have Dust in it, it might allow us to see Dust—completely different—”
Newt looked at him. “Oh, is that what we’re doing? Thank you for explaining, Dr. Doesn’t Know What A Joke Is.”
Hermann rolled his eyes. “Go help with dinner.”
Newt took care of lacquering and sanding, because he found the process so satisfying and because Hermann still seemed skeevy about it. Newt discussed it with Fern as he lightly sanded one layer of lacquer before painting on another. They concluded Hermann was both attracted and repulsed by the Dust mystery, for personal reasons they had yet to uncover. “It couldn’t just be scientific skepticism,” said Newt, to which Fern replied, “He comes from a world without dæmons. There could be many things we consider normal, that he would consider mystical.”
They lost track of how many layers he painted on and smoothed out. After a few days, the lacquer was almost a half centimeter thick. Hermann and Newt argued about whether to add more—Newt wanted to, Hermann said it wasn’t necessary.
“Hermann, how can we look through it like a lens if the wood is blocking the back? We need to make it thicker.”
“We can cut the wood off the back,” Hermann said. “You just want to keep painting.”
Newt made a face but handed the board over. Hermann set about prying the wood off with his pocketknife.
It was slow, finnicky work. Hermann was just as engrossed by it as Newt had been with lacquering. He worked by sections, prying out the larger pieces with his knife, then the smaller splinters with the tweezers. When he looked up, two hours had passed. Newton was watching him work.
“What?”
“Nothing—sorry,” said Newton. “You were just really into it.”
Hermann couldn’t tell if he was being made fun of, so he went back to it.
“I meant that in a good way!” said Newt, but Hermann ignored him.
By the next day, Hermann had finished getting most of the wood off. They had to sand the remaining bits, and then polish that side as well. They took turns sanding again. When it was Newt’s turn, Hermann held it steady in place of Newt’s left arm.
It was late afternoon, the third or so round of sanding. Newt looked at Hermann, who was frowning at the board as he held it for Newt.
“What?”
Hermann looked at him. “Nothing,” he said automatically.
Newton raised his eyebrows. What was it about him that made Hermann so snappish? He felt like he had lost the ability to conduct a normal conversation.
“Excuse me. I’m feeling tired.”
Newt went back to sanding.
“I confess I was wondering... about Fernweh’s name.” Hermann glanced at the coyote, who was gnawing on a stick a few feet away.
“Why don’t you ask him about it?” said Newt.
Hermann looked at Newt in confusion, then back at the dæmon.
“I... wasn’t certain...”
“It’s all right, man,” said Fernweh. “It’s not rude.”
“Oh.”
“If you had a dæmon, he or she would have a rapport with him already,” Newt said, shifting his angle and sanding vigorously. “He’s me. If you talk to me, you talk to him. It’s cool.”
“Very well,” said Hermann, trying not to be weirded out by talking to a dog. The dog was Newton. This was fine and normal. “I’ve been curious about your name.”
“What about it?” The dæmon had a warm, deep voice, not at all like Newton’s.
“It’s German,” said Hermann. “It means a longing for faraway places one has never seen—the opposite of homesickness. I’ve heard it translated as ‘far-sickness’.”
“Yes,” said Fern. “Newt’s parents were German.”
“So it’s the parents who name the dæmon as well?”
“No, generally it’s the dæmons of the parents.”
“Good thing, too,” said Newt, still sanding. “My mom wanted to name him Darwin.”
“After the scientist?”
“No, the heretic.”
Newt stopped and looked up at Hermann. They frowned at each other.
“Don’t tell me,” said Hermann, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know the graphic details of Charles Darwin’s public execution in your universe.”
Newt shrugged and resumed.
“My mom was always starting trouble,” said Newt. “As if my dæmon being male wasn’t going to cause enough problems.”
Hermann frowned again. “Is that unusual?”
Newt looked up again. “Oh, yeah. Most people’s dæmons are the opposite. Women have male dæmons, men have female. Same-gender dæmons are rare. So, naturally, they’re frowned upon.” He shrugged. “Your turn.”
Hermann took the sandstone and the board and shifted his knees to make them flat. He started sanding.
“It’s seen as deviant,” Newt explained. He shook out his tired hand, then lifted it up. Fern padded over and Newt scratched him between the ears. “People hate that. Most people can’t tell right away, because he’s so pretty.” He smiled wanly at his dæmon, who nudged his hand for more scratches. “Usually they can’t tell until he speaks. But that kind of thing gets around once people find out. And it’s not like we’re going to hide it.”
“Hmm,” said Hermann, keeping his eyes intently on the sanding. He was trying to fit this into his understanding of where Newton came from. It made sense. But it also gave him a twinge of real sadness, like a thorn in his left lung. “That must have been difficult,” he said belatedly, looking up. He was not good with consolation. “Humiliating or... troubling, I imagine.”
But it did not seem to bother Newt. He shrugged. “We were fine. It’s just who we are.”
Hermann considered the naturalist, now scratching his appreciative dæmon under the chin. Something clicked into place about his abrasive manner. Newton didn’t care what people thought, and aggressively so. More than that, he embraced it. He liked putting them off. Hermann recalled his story about the press. Did it leave the two of them lonely? Hermann wondered if Newton’s unusual dæmon was the reason for that abrasiveness, or just an illustration of it. Would he be this way if he had been born with a normal dæmon? Or did inheritance dictate that such an unusual person had to have such an unusual dæmon?
“You know, when we were kids, we goofed around plenty,” said Newt reminiscently, still scratching the appreciative Fern. “We were just like Lyra and Pan. You notice people noticing, of course, but you still have fun. Sometimes he turned into a little pterrodact just to annoy the priest at our church. We always thought he would settle on something silly, like a parrot.”
Hermann gazed at him sadly. He had stopped sanding.
“Maybe he would have, if he hadn't been born a boy,” said Newt. “But we needed to protect ourselves. We grew up.”
Newt knew Fern didn’t mind hearing that. They had talked it over plenty of times between themselves. But it wasn’t the kind of thing he told others. People were so judgey. He felt oddly nervous to look at Hermann, whose gaze he could feel burning a hole in his cheek. Strange then that he should tell Hermann, who was just about the judgiest person he’d ever worked with.
But Hermann couldn’t be judgey about this when his whole context for it was Newt and Fern. Newt thought about that. As far as Hermann was concerned with that world, Newt was it. The whole world.
He looked up. No, it was not a judgmental look. Hermann looked really sad.
“It’s okay, man,” said Newt. “That’s life. You are who you are, and people don’t like it.” But his voice came out quieter than he wanted.
They finished sanding that day and next day began polishing, under the direction of the lacquer expert in town. She showed them how to buff it until it was as clear as glass.
“Look at that,” said Newt proudly, as they held it up between them. He held it up so the setting sun shone through it, then looked at the warm light it cast on the ground. “Like stained glass.”
“It looks like amber,” said Hermann.
Newt looked at him, confused.
“Hardened sap from pine trees,” Hermann said. “Do they not have have amber on dæmon earth? It hardens into a sort of stone. Some of the crystals are millions of years old. They’ve even found insects in it from the age of the dinosaurs—there’s this film—”
Suddenly, Hermann was overwhelmed with how much Newton would like Jurassic Park. He had no idea of its existence. This fact horrified Hermann. He absolutely lost interest in the amber glass for a second, he was so focused on this. It seemed so terribly wrong—because usually, it felt like they had always known each other. But they had not. There was so much Hermann knew that Newt did not. So much it almost choked him.
Newt was looking with narrowed eyes at the amber glass. “I think I know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Electrum.”
“Is that what it’s called where you come from?”
Newt looked at Hermann. “Are you okay? You sound weird.”
“We don’t call it electrum.”
“Well anbar is what powers machines and lights in my world,” said Newt, lowering the glass. “That’s why I was confused. Anbaric bulbs, all that.”
“Electric...” said Hermann. Their eyes met. So many bizarre differences between them, Newt thought. The places they came from... yet so much was similar. Wasn’t that stranger? They called these two things by opposite names, but they were the same things. He wondered if Hermann was thinking along similar lines. Sometimes their thoughts converged, the same as their two worlds.
“Well listen, Hermann, I hate to put a damper this moment of cultural exchange, but I’m looking through our window and uh...” He held it up between them and raised his eyebrows at Hermann. Two superimposed Hermanns looked back, nonplussed. “I’m seeing split rays, but I’m not seeing any Dust. What’s our next move, Dr. Optics?”
“We need refraction,” said Hermann. “We need to bend the light rays. We need a second pane.”
“You want to make another one?” said Newt, lowering it. “This took like a week, Hermann.”
“No, we don’t have to make another one,” said Hermann, grabbing it. “We can split this one in two.”
“I don’t think so,” said Newt, not letting go.
“The glass was my idea, so I do think so,” Hermann said, tugging. “I know how to do it.”
Frowning, Newt let go.
Hermann went inside and came back with his pocketknife and his metal hiking cane. He set the window on the grass, set the cane on top of it, and positioned it just past the halfway point. Sliding the knife along the straight edge of the cane, he scored the glass with his knife five or six times. Then he lifted the glass, laid the cane on the ground, knelt, set the glass on top of it, positioned the line directly over the cane, placed a hand on either side of the glass, and shoved purposefully down. The glass snapped cleanly in two.
Newt, watching, raised his eyebrows.
Wow. That was hot.
Hermann got to his feet, and held them both up to look at Newt. Nothing. No Dust.
“Ha,” said Newt, feeling turned on and annoyed about it. “Stupid idea.”
Hermann moved the two pieces farther apart, testing the focus, but nothing changed. He scowled.
“Do you want progress, or not?” said Hermann.
“Not if it means I’m wrong,” said Newt.
Hermann dropped his arms to his sides with a huffy sigh.
He was repairing nets with a zalif friend the next afternoon when he heard an approaching cry.
“Hermann! Hermann!”
Newton. Growing quickly louder.
He apologized to his weaving partner and stood stiffly up. Fernweh appeared over the crest of the slope. Newton appeared a second later, running and waving his arm.
“Hermann! Hermann, big breakthrough! Come quick! Quick!”
Newt turned right around and ran off, but Fern went slower, letting Hermann catch up.
“What’s going on?” said Hermann.
“Big breakthrough, I suppose,” said Fern. He wouldn’t say more, but his tail was wagging.
“So I was talking to Atal,” Newt explained back at the hut. “I was looking at her claws, because well—you know my diamond deer specimen?”
Hermann, still out of breath, nodded.
“Okay, so I brought the claw—you’ve seen it—”
“That’s what that claw is? A zalif’s foot?”
“No! Listen. I thought it was.” Newton’s words came tumbling over each other. “But it’s a different shape—it’s smaller and the lateral claw is a completely different proportion to the foot than Atal’s foot—I think it might be a grazer’s foot, but that’s not important, listen, that’s not what I need to show you!”
“What, then?”
“I got her seedpod oil on my hands. Then I picked up our glass, and got oil on it, and look, Hermann!”
He held the two panes up between them. Newton became blurry and double, then in focus and singular, and there it was—flakes of gold light, shimmering down around his face.
Dust.
Hermann stared in openmouthed awe.
“We did it!” said Newt, excited beyond belief. He was almost bouncing.
“We... It’s beautiful, my God,” said Hermann, watching the coruscations drift down around the naturalist’s face.
“It’s everywhere, Hermann,” said Newt, wheeling around with his arms out so they were looking through the glass in the same direction. “Look...”
It was. Newt leaned close against Hermann’s shoulder so they could both see. The trees, the grass, the town, the ocean beyond... Everywhere they could see the Dust filling the air, thick as pollen in the springtime. It was not borne on the wind but instead moved the way it wanted, which was mostly drifting down except where it rode on purposeful currents.
“Look, look,” said Newt. He pressed on Hermann’s shoulder and turned them together so they could look at the knot of mulefa talking intently nearby. The Dust was thick around them like snowfall, as it had been around Newton. It swirled around them in currents of intention and thought.
“And the kids...” said Newt, turning them again to look at a young zalif child walking along. She waved her trunk hello at Newt, who called out Hello! Hermann studied her through the glass and saw that though there was a bit more Dust around her than the empty air or the trees, it was nowhere near as thick as the cloud around the adults. It was full of little eddies.
“That’s what the Church fears,” said Newt in an undertone. “See that? Kids don’t have it, but adults do. What must that mean? Well surely it must mean something sinful,” he said sarcastically. “As any matter of difference means, surely.”
Hermann watched the Dust fall, peaceful but purposeful. He was so enchanted he had forgotten not to believe his eyes.
“It’s real, man,” said Newt, shaking his head, voice awed. “It’s real and it’s beautiful.”
“Yes... it is,” Hermann murmured. When he looked at Newton, still pressed close to his shoulder, the golden dust seemed to still be on him. He seemed to shimmer in the late afternoon light.
“How’s that crisis of faith doing?” Newt asked, looking back at him.
Hermann blinked slowly, wondering absently if the Dust illusion would come off his eyes. “Seeing is believing,” he said, the words coming slowly. “I am a scientist... It would be irresponsible, and egotistical, to... ignore what was before my eyes out of blind loyalty to my own ideals.”
Newt looked at him, shaking his head. “But Hermann,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what you do best.”
Hermann shoved his shoulder with his own. Newt laughed, stepping away to keep his balance.
It was then they noticed that the group of mulefa were coming towards them. Atal was among them.
Atal! Newton said. We did it! Because of you!
You can see it? she said. The sraf?
Yes, they said.
Then you are ready at last, she said. We have been waiting... You must come.
They exchanged a look. Ready? said Hermann. Come, she said, already turning. Do not be worried. You will come to no harm. This meeting is long awaited.
Hermann and Newt followed Atal. All around them, the town was moving—mulefa came from yards, houses, down roads, rolling steadily in one direction. They moved not unlike the currents of intention in the Dust.
Everyone rolled towards a mound on the outside of town, one they had noticed before but whose use they had never known. It had a ramp on either side, and a large crowd, at least fifty, had gathered. Hermann took hold of Newton’s arm above the elbow to keep together in the flow of people. Newt put his hand on Atal’s back.
Atal, what is happening? he said to her.
Sattamax will explain, she said, shushing him with her trunk. You must listen.
It was clear who she was speaking of—a large, eminent-looking zalif rolling slowly through the crowd. It parted respectfully around him. They could see that he was old, older far than any zalif they had met. Newt lifted the lacquer panes and saw a thicker cloud of Dust around him than anyone else, swirling and dancing with wisdom and intent. He and Hermann exchanged a look.
As Sattamax made his steady way up the ramp, the crowd stayed parted. Eyes flicked back expectantly towards Hermann and Newt, until they realized they were to follow. They walked slowly to the base of the mound, Hermann still holding Newt’s arm, and Fern trotting alertly behind.
Sattamax spoke. His voice was profound and colorful, and his trunk moved eloquently. The crowd was attentively hushed, and both men were still and rapt.
We have all come together to greet the strangers Hermann and Newt. Those of us who know them have reason to be grateful for their activities since they arrived among us. We have waited until they both had some command of our language. With the help of many of us, but especially the zalif Atal, the strangers Newt and Hermann can now understand us.
But there was another thing they had to understand, and that was sraf. They knew of it, but they could not see it as we can, until they made an instrument to look through.
And now that they have succeeded, they are ready to learn more about what they must do to help us.
Come here and join me, he said to them.
They made their way up the ramp, feeling many eyes on them. Fern led the way. Newt let Hermann keep holding him for support, his hand gripping his upper arm with its ever-surprising strength. He put a steadying hand under Hermann’s elbow until they reached the top.
It seemed right to speak—“You had better do it,” murmured Hermann, and Newt nodded, and began.
We thank you. You are a kind and generous people, and you have made us feel like friends. We come from worlds of anger and madness, but here, you are at peace with yourselves and your surroundings. I admire it. I believe we have learned much already. We are grateful for your help in seeing the sraf, which we have long been searching for. We are ready to help you however we can.
It was well-spoken, certainly better than what Hermann could have done under all those eyes. He squeezed Newton’s arm. Privately he marveled at his composure.
Sattamax said, It is good to hear you speak. We hope you will be able to help us. If not, I cannot see how we will survive. The tualapi will kill us all. There are more of them than there ever were, and their numbers are increasing every year. Something has gone wrong with the world. For most of the thirty-three thousand years that there have been mulefa, we have taken care of the earth. Everything balanced. The trees prospered, the grazers were healthy, and even if once in a while the tualapi came, our numbers and theirs remained constant.
But three hundred years ago the trees began to sicken. We watched them anxiously and tended them with care, and still there were fewer seedpods, and some trees died outright, which had never been known. All our memory could not find a cause for this.
The process was slow, but then, so is the rhythm of our lives. We did not know that until you came. We have seen butterflies and birds, but they have no sraf. You humans do, strange as you seem; but you are swift and immediate, like birds, like butterflies.
You realize there is a need for something to help you see sraf and instantly, out of the materials we have known for thousands of years, you put together an instrument to do so. Beside us, you think and act with the speed of a bird.
Hermann felt something great shift inside himself with a fearful thrill A bird? A butterfly? Newton perhaps, but no one had ever compared Hermann to a bird. He had always thought of himself as dogged, plodding forward slowly but steadily. That this quality they singled out was one he shared with Newton, simply by virtue of sharing his humanity—it moved him. It made him feel he could do this, this incredible task in this strange new world. It made him feel that they could.
Sattamax continued. But that fact is our hope. Perhaps it is in the way you speak between each other. Perhaps it is the way you humans work together. Together, you can see things that we cannot, you can see connections and possibilities and alternatives that are invisible to us, just as sraf was invisible to you.
And while we cannot see a way to survive, we hope that you may. We hope that you will go swiftly to the cause of the trees' sickness and find a cure; we hope you will invent a means of dealing with the tualapi, who are so numerous and so powerful. And we hope you can do so soon, or we shall all die.
The crowd murmured in agreement. Newt’s heart was thumping. Was he up to this? All those years in a dusty little office, writing papers no one read. All those months flying across the Northern snow, no one to look out for but himself and Fern. This was it. This was the journey the Dust had told Hermann he was preparing for.
He felt the weight of it descend on him like all the invisible Dust around them. Was Newt prepared? Were the mulefa mistaken? He was a solitary person—a lone wolf. No one depended on him.
He looked to Hermann, anchored to him by his hand. Did he want no one to depend on him, or was it just the historical reality?
Hermann was already looking at him. He saw the frightened look on Newton’s face. Hermann shook his arm bracingly. He nodded to him.
There was a confidence in his eyes with which no one had ever looked at Newt. He nodded back.
Mulefa, you put your trust in us, Hermann said, at last letting go in order to gesture to the crowd. We are grateful. Together we will do our best. Now that we have seen sraf, we know what it is, and we will find a way to fix it. You are kind and generous with your trust and we thank you for it.
The crowd nodded and cooed their approval. As they descended behind Sattamax, the mulefa touched them gently with their trunks. They moved along with the crowd, streaming out into the darkening streets of town. Newt touched Hermann’s arm, awed and intimidated by what lay before them.
“Tonight,” he said to Hermann, “I’m going to tell you my story, and you’re going to tell me yours.”