Hermann did not operate best under the eyes of an anxious audience, and certainly not in physical feats. But after ten slow minutes, he remembered that none of the mulefa could climb. So his slowness was unknown to them—it was no slowness at all. He was going at the average speed of a climber in this world, for he was the first one.
With that in mind, he ascended the rope steadily. It took more than half an hour, but he at last reached the thick branch and pulled himself up.
Catching his breath, Hermann looked around in awe. Around him a lateral forest of limbs wove up and curved towards the sky. At the end of the branches, the huge, hand-sized leaves shushed and swayed like prairie grass. Rivers of blue sky shifted between the moving shell of leaves. It felt like he was inside the metal spokes of a vast umbrella.
It was incredible. It was beautiful and hushed except for the wind, which sounded like the sea. Hermann thought of his childhood dreams of being an astronaut. Was this so different?
The tree was so enormous that he would have had to climb another twenty feet to see out of the canopy, and he did not think he was up to that. He would make his measurements from this limb.
Hermann chanced a look over the edge. He could see Newton and the mulefa some eighty feet below, like he were leaning out an eighth-story window, but they were tiny and inaudible. His rope was getting shaken in a way that seemed like a communiqué from Newton (urgent and incomprehensible). Hermann took out the notebook. He wrote a tiny note, found the broken bit of arrow still stuck among the twigs, and tied the note to it. Then he dropped it.
Something small and white was flipping down from the tree. Newt dropped the slack and hurried over to get it. It was a note from Hermann:
Made it.
—HG
Newt laughed at his research partner’s formality, but felt reassured.
Hermann stayed up until the late afternoon. He set up the gyroscope like Newton had showed him, and let it calibrate. While it did, he crawled carefully out on the branch to get a better view of the leaves. He could see little white flowers hidden among the branches, absurdly tiny in the vast tree. He made notes on the flowers for Newton. Though he did not know what they meant, he also took note of the gyroscope’s movements, for Newton. Then he took out the binoculars and watched the Dust.
He had spent a lot of time looking through the amber glass since their breakthrough a week before. It was soothing, almost hypnotic to watch. The particles behaved so strangely. Part of him still could not believe what he was seeing, but in a strange way, he still liked seeing it.
Hermann watched the dust filter through the leaves, falling aimlessly to the earth. He looked up at the sky and watched it drift towards the sea. It seemed to move faster up higher, but it was hard to tell. He had simply installed the double lenses in the empty tubes of his binoculars—the magnification of real binoculars was impossible without mirrors and special lenses. Perhaps he would have to find a way to magnify, to better assess the Dust’s behavior.
After an hour of watching the Dust in the late afternoon sky, he felt certain that the upper current was flowing towards the sea. That draft was at the canopy level, too high to see from the ground. This could not have anything to do with real wind or climate factors, because Dust did as it pleased. Or so they thought. More observation was necessary.
As the sun sank, Hermann wrote another note and tied it to his pencil, then dropped it.
Ready to come down.
—HG
It was determined the best solution for long-term study was to build a platform in the tree. With characteristic industry the mulefa set about it. When the platform was done a few days later, Hermann climbed back up and installed pulleys, and they raised it up with Newton and Fern sitting on it. The two humans spent a day installing the platform in a web of thick ropes. When it was secured, they sat on a raft in the darkening canopy. Fern, who had been anxiously watching his human scramble around high branches with one arm all day (as had Hermann), lay on his side on the slats. Hermann and Newt sat on the edge, watching the sun go down outside the leaves. They were silent. Tomorrow, their study would begin in earnest. Tonight, they watched the future come without moving to meet it.
So began their research. Each morning, Newt took gyroscope readings from the ground, then they went up to the platform and he took readings there throughout the day. In the evening, he took measurements on the ground again. They were different on the ground and in the canopy, but they did not yet understand, or interrogate, the significance of this. They simply catalogued it.
Hermann meanwhile continued to tinker with the binoculars. He wanted to wrangle some keplerian optics out of their amber lenses, but he needed mirrors. First he tried the lenses and magnifying mirrors from his original binoculars, but they interfered with the amber and prevented him from seeing the Dust. Newton, watching him fiddle with the mirrors on the third morning of their canopy study, suggested an amber mirror.
“That would require a silver backing,” said Hermann, glancing up. “Neither we nor the mulefa have any silver.”
Newt pensively chewed a small twig.
“What if you—”
“Newton, I am trying to concentrate—”
“No, no, listen. You have a silver backing. Take the glass off the tiny mirrors from your original binocs. Put some of the leftover lacquer glass over the silver back. Voila. Amber mirror.”
To Newt’s loudly proclaimed delight and Hermann’s secret but equal delight, this worked. They now had binoculars that magnified as well as showing Dust.
With this advancement, it became certain that the upper current of Dust was moving significantly faster and thicker than the rest. This view of the current gave Hermann a powerful unease. They had no empirical proof this was not normal, but in his gut he disliked seeing it. If he had to make an unscientific guess of it, he would have said this was the problem. But he was not satisfied with unscientific guesses, and neither was Newt.
Newt had an inkling of an idea. Not really enough to go on. But it struck him while he was lying on his back on the raft, on day six, head turned, gazing past his quietly writing research partner at the sashaying leaves and the tiny, tiny flowers.
So tiny.
Why?
He turned his head slowly, panning around the inside of the canopy. Newt had looked several times, and his eyesight was not to be depended upon, but he was pretty sure their tree had no growing seedpods. Absolutely none. This seemed impossible, or very dire. Newt really wanted to examine a seedpod in development. He did some quick math about the number of seedpods harvested and the number of trees in the grove. Maybe it was not dire; maybe they only grew one at a time, like those tiny, cultivated trees that still grow one regular size fruit. What were those called?
“Hermann,” he said.
“Yes?”
“What are those tiny trees called?” he said. “The ones people mutilate so they stay small.”
“Bonsai trees.”
“Hmm.” That didn’t sound right to Newt.
“They don’t mutilate them,” Hermann added, looking up. “Have you ever seen one?”
“Don’t think so.”
“They are carefully trimmed and twisted into their ideal form,” said Hermann. “It is a discipline of great care.”
Sounds like something the child of a religious zealot would say, Newt almost said. Fern, hearing that thought, sat up and looked at him sharply. Well, I didn’t say it, he thought to his dæmon.
“Have you seen any seedpods in our tree?” Newt asked.
“No,” said Hermann. He took off his glasses. They hung from a cord around his neck, which Newt found very funny and took every opportunity to tease him about. “I noticed their absence as well.”
Newt turned a little to scan a nearby area of the canopy. “Do you think the trees only produce one at a time?”
Hermann, now following the train of thought that had led to the bonsai question, shook his head. “I considered it. But I’ve seen several fall at once from one grove. This tree should have some.”
“Ah... and it does,” said Newt. He sat up. He pointed. “Gotcha.”
Hermann squinted in that direction, then picked up the binoculars and looked. “Oh yes. Reassuring.”
“Sort of,” said Newt. “I’m going to take a look.” He stood up, and before Hermann could stop him, snatched the binoculars from his hand.
“You’re what?”
Newt stepped to the edge of the platform. The seedpod was a few yards away—at the edge of comfortable Fern-separation territory, but still within it. Fern growled. He did not like this idea.
“Absolutely not,” said Hermann sharply. “It’s much too dangerous.”
“Too late,” said Newt, and with his good hand he reached for the closest vertical branch and stepped off.
“Newton!”
He heard Hermann scramble to his feet, and quickened his pace. He reached for the next limb, a little further, and took a little leap to reach the next foothold. The jump was small but he knew Hermann couldn't make it.
“Newton! Get back here!”
Fern barked.
“Newton!”
Newt kept going without turning. The seedpod was above a sloping branch only a few more yards away. He balanced carefully on the slanting limb, keeping his body low. He was almost there now. He could see the seedpod was still green, as much like a young coconut as it would soon be like an old one. Big coconut danishes. The fate of this planet rests on your shoulders, danishified coconuts, he thought. Try to hold on a little longer. Behind him, Fern was still barking. Newt was starting to feel the pull of separation, but he was pretty close now. Hermann had stopped calling his name; that did not bode well.
Finally, he came within touching distance of the seedpod. Fern’s barks had a whining edge to them now, because both of them were in pain. For the sixtieth time since they had started climbing into the canopy, and the tenth time that day, Newt saw a violent image of one of them dropping and leaving the other in the canopy, both of them dying before the traitor hit the ground. This taste of that pain was an unwelcome warning.
He squinted through his glasses, trying to focus over the ache. The little white flower was pointed at the sun, and almost wilted, while below it hung the green, danish-sized seedpod. Newt reached out and felt the seedpod, very lightly so as not to disturb it. He touched the center. No oil yet. Yet?
Fumbling, he pulled the binoculars around their strap. He peered in, adjusting the magnification to zero, and looked at the flower. A paltry dusting of Dust wafted down into the cupped-upward petals.
No oil. Not much Dust. Connection?
Newt pondered for a second, then leaned on his elbow and pointed the binoculars at the next closest flower, a yard away in the leaves. This one grew upwards too. He zoomed in closer. A tiny bit of Dust was falling into that one too. But way up here, most of it was flowing laterally.
He realized he had been thinking about the Dust like pollen, drifting through the air from flower to flower. But, he thought, why not? Maybe that was why the seedpod oil had special properties. Because the trees were “pollinated” by Dust.
Now something clicked into place. Newt hurriedly pointed his binoculars to the sky, even though he knew what he would see there. Yes. He scanned the rest of the canopy in his eyeline. He looked until he was sure he had it.
The canopy was full of flowers, waiting to be “pollinated” by Dust falling from the sky. But it was not falling now: most of it was flowing away, horizontally. It washed by the flowers without falling in. That was why the trees were dying.
Newt shimmied backwards. It took a lot of focus to keep his balance when all his internal alarms were telling him to yell, I have it! Climbing was important. More important than what he had discovered. He needed to focus on climbing so as to relay said discovery.
Newton reached the horizontal branch and let himself down. Hermann watched, twisting his hands together anxiously. Yelling was not going to help, even though it was all he wanted to do. He did not want to startle Newton. When the man’s feet were on the solid platform, then he would yell. Oh, would he yell. Fern was spinning anxious circles on the platform next to him, whining quietly.
When Newton was a branch away, he finally looked up at them. “Guys,” he said breathlessly. “I got it! The Dust—”
Hermann took in a big breath to begin shouting, but as Newton took the last leap, distracting himself with his own speech, his foot slipped.
“Oh—”
“Newton!”
Newt gasped as his chest smacked the edge of the platform, only one elbow on top, his center of gravity very much not in the safe zone, and Fern was barking like crazy and clamping his jaws around Newt’s forearm, and his legs were kicking at the ropes but not gaining purchase, and two strong hands were reaching under his armpits and heaving him up, scraping his whole torso along the rough edge of the boards.
He kicked until his legs were safely on the platform and then collapsed onto his stomach. Both men were panting like they had nearly drowned. Fern was whimpering and licking the top of his head frantically. Newt could feel his arm bleeding from Fern’s bite. The adrenaline coursing through him downgraded that to a minor concern. He realized he was lying on Hermann’s leg but he could not move. It was the kind of adrenaline that just paralyzed you, it seemed like. That was fine.
Hermann sat back on his hands, chest heaving. He tipped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut.
God. God, god, god.
Newton was lying on his leg. Hermann could feel his heartbeat thumping against his calf. He let that ground him. When it felt safe to open his eyes, he did so. Fern was licking Newton all over the head and face, snuffling anxiously, for all the world like a regular dog.
Hermann jogged his leg. Slowly, Newt rolled over onto his back. He looked up at Hermann from the platform.
“You...”
“Thank you,” Newt said hoarsely. “Before you start cussing me out and telling me what a goddamn idiot—”
“You—”
“—I just wanted to say it, but now, go ahead—”
“—bloody idiot—you are the most irresponsible, asinine, birdbrained, thoughtless, disastrous, most idiotic—”
“Oops, you said that one twice,” Newt interjected, raising a shaky finger. “Doesn’t count—”
“—person I have ever worked with, no, person I have ever met in my life, it is an absolute mystery to me how you have survived this long—”
“Just living by my wits, baby,” Newt said to the canopy, letting his head roll back onto the wood.
“Your nonexistent wits,” Hermann snarled.
Newt rolled his head to the side to look up at him.
“You done?”
Hermann looked at him with wild eyes. “No, I am not!”
“Okay,” said Newt, closing his eyes. “Continue.”
But Hermann did not. He looked down at the scientist, flat on his back. His good arm was bleeding, his legs were shaking visibly, and where his shirt was torn, Hermann could see serious scrapes.
“I figured out what's wrong with the trees, by the way,” said Newt hoarsely, eyes still closed. “Dust isn't falling down into the flowers.”
Hermann made no reply. Instead he reached out and put his hand on Newton’s chest. Newt sighed. He could feel Hermann’s hand still shaking.
After a moment Hermann removed his hand, but Newt only had a second to feel its absence before two hands appeared on his good arm. They gripped him tightly.
“You gonna break this one too?” Newt murmured without opening his eyes. “Go on. You know I deserve it.”
He heard a hesitant sigh.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. But he did no more to encourage Hermann to let go, and he did not for a long time.
It took a couple days for Hermann to let the two of them back on the platform, and when he did, he was still cagey. For Newt’s part, he was glad to rest on the ground for a few days. He was terribly sore. He did fishing duty with Atal while Fern lay in the sun. Later he sketched his plants, which were all growing nicely. In the evenings he made Hermann dinner when he came back, and they bickered over their data while Hermann fussed over his injuries.
When they went back up, all three, Hermann was surprised at Newt and Fern’s ease. “Aren’t you... worried?” Hermann said. Newt was letting him fix the new bandage on his right arm, the one over his bite.
“Just sore,” said Newt. “Are you?”
The look on Hermann’s face answered that question. Newt shrugged.
“Don’t be,” he said. “Can’t get worried every time someone drowns, or we’d never ride a boat again. Sometimes the dangerous things are worth doing.”
Hermann muttered something about an insane person is someone who tries the same thing over and over expecting a different result, but Newt pretended he hadn’t heard. Privately, Hermann was again impressed by Newton’s fearlessness. He acted like it made him more anxious for his safety, but in truth, it reassured him. He felt he had no such bravery himself; but strangely, because Newton had it, it was as if he didn't need it.
The second week in the canopy, they started spending nights. Newt wanted to get nighttime readings on the gyroscope. Hermann wouldn’t hear of him staying alone, even though, of course, Newt was never alone. But he welcomed Hermann’s company even though he pretended it was an inconvenience, and so they brought up mats and food and camped out.
The longer they spent on their little raft, the more the fear of falling faded. It was replaced by a peaceful awe. At night, with the gently shifting branches below, the bright alien stars overhead, and the whispering leaves all round, it was like a childish dream. They talked the same questions over endlessly, theories about the trees, Dust, consciousness, the mulefa, humankind. Their conversations led nowhere, cycling into the echoless night, night after night. But in the years after, when either of them recalled their time in the world of the mulefa, it was those nights they thought of.
It was the fourth night, an hour or two after the moon had begun to rise. They had exhausted serious topics and now Hermann was explaining how “television” worked. Newt was lying back on his elbow watching him. He was talking sitting up straight, his legs dangling over the edge, and his face full of moonlight. Television sounded neat. Probably. Newt was not really listening to the words his research partner was saying, he realized. He was just staring at him in the moonlight. It was nearly bright as day. Or maybe Hermann just looked glowy. He was gesturing as he spoke, shaping a box and now a vee shape above the box and now he was clicking imaginary buttons with his long fingers. He looked beautiful, Newt thought, in the moonlight. Anyone would, he thought. Under this moon, anyone would be beautiful enough to fall in love with.
But it was Hermann; so fate had dictated.
As the second week wound to an end, Newton began getting restless. They had spent six nights on the platform, going down into town during the day to help with chores and restock on food. He said they were making no progress. Hermann found his frustration curious. He was usually so optimistic, he thought. Then he thought, perhaps he isn’t. Perhaps he is an impatient researcher. How would I know? Hermann frequently had to remind himself that he had worked with Newton for weeks, not years. Frequently, he reminded the naturalist that it felt like decades.
Hermann gazed at him, imagining being his research partner under normal circumstances. Of course they never would have been, because biology and physics were so distant. But like lonely people everywhere, Hermann had an imagination rich with lives he would never live. Newton was chewing a blade of grass as he drew some rough graphs out front of their house. Hermann pictured him chewing a ballpoint pen cap across the desk from him in an underfunded lab. He pictured making Newton endless cups of dreadful instant coffee; he heard Newton asking him late at night if he wanted anything from the vending machine. In this unlikely reality, they ate fresh fruit and fish with aliens, and Newton had no idea what a vending machine was.
Hermann spent an unpleasant moment considering the future. Because he did expect to go back, eventually. Hope often snuck up on him, asking if he could perhaps... take Newton back into his world with him. Fernweh would be hard to explain, but not impossible. It was just that Newton seemed to recall his own world so miserably. In Hermann’s mind this was almost a rescue. Newton’s world did not have religious freedom or sexual acceptance, it did not have Jurassic Park. To varying extents, Hermann’s world did.
He tried to imagine suggesting this to Newton. He didn’t think Newton would take it badly, he just didn’t know how to bring it up. ‘Though it may not appear so from the outside, we work so well together... it would be a shame to lose our rapport now.’ ‘Are you asking me to move into your universe, Dr. Gottlieb?’
But Hermann did not like thinking about the future. And usually he could avoid it, because despite everything, all the mystery and danger, he felt satisfied with the present.
Newton spat the grass out and crumpled his paper.
“This is useless,” he said. “These graphs tell us nothing.”
“You are the one drawing them,” said Hermann.
Newt sighed huffily.
“Perhaps we need a new approach,” said Hermann.
Newt looked up at him. “You mean the I Ching?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You wanted me to say it, though,” Newt said, scrambling to his feet.
“I absolutely did not,” Hermann called after him as he ran into the hut to fetch it.
They sat in the grass and repeated the ritual that had unbound Newton so many weeks ago. Hermann was quicker this time, accessing the trance more easily.
You voluntarily offered to take a task, but things proceeded unexpectedly and you began to feel upset. Fortunately, no disaster occurred.
Sit on a big tree in a ravine and keep secluded for three years.
Newton made a thoughtful sound.
“Sounds like it’s telling me to relax,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
“Three years,” Newton said. “Do you think it means that literally?”
“Probably not,” said Hermann.
“I mean... I would happily stay here for three years,” Newton said. He gestured around, as if to say, who wouldn’t? “But I feel like there are things happening back home that we would miss out on.”
“Things?”
Newton chewed his grass. “Sky split open, remember? End times? I’d like some assurance that’s getting fixed.”
Hermann nodded. “Ah.”
“But if the angels tell us we have to stay for three years, well...”
“I doubt that it’s literal,” said Hermann stiffly. “If the quantity was important, there would be more than one matching response, with different quantities.”
“Hmm,” said Newt. He looked at Hermann. “You seem awfully calm about all this.”
“About reading the I Ching?”
“Yeah,” said Newt. “You used to hate talking to angels.”
“Well, there isn't any proof angels are speaking to us through these st—”
“Oh, give it a rest, Hermann,” said Newt. “You know what I mean. I feel better knowing our mission is still approved by the forces—angelic or non-angelic—who sent us out on it. But do you?”
Hermann considered the yarrow stalks quietly.
“I do not feel differently,” he said.
“Than before?”
“Than before the reading.”
“You don’t feel reassured?”
“I didn’t need to be reassured,” said Hermann.
Newt looked quickly at him. “Why not?”
Hermann’s chest felt strangely tight. “Because I feel that I’m in the right place. For the first time, I am not wondering.”
Fern, sitting next to Newt, nudged his hand with his nose. Newt petted his dæmon slowly on the head.
“You mean, for the first time since you left Oxford?” Newt asked quietly. “Or like, in your life?”
Hermann was having difficulty holding Newton’s gaze. “I couldn’t say,” he said, equally quiet. He didn’t say that how strange it would have been, a few months ago, to trust his life to a feeling. Now, it did not feel strange at all.
That night, Hermann dreamt of Lyra and her friend Will. They were coming.
The assassin Father Gomez walked east until he reached the sea. He met no one. He saw bizarre deer-like creatures, diamond-shaped and unnatural. God had had no hand in this world, he felt. Yet he knew this was not possible. For God had created all. His job was merely to execute one more piece of His will. God had created him, and his task. And these deer as well, in His infinite and mysterious wisdom.
On the sea, he saw sailboats. He hailed them, wishing to speak to the people of this world, but as they approached he realized they were great birds. Their elegant speed had a malevolence to it. But Father Gomez was not afraid. His beetle dæmon buzzed in the air beside him. God, and his rifle, would protect them.
The first to land sprang onto shore and, waddling slower than it had swum but still quite fast, lumbered towards him. Father Gomez saw the evil flint of its eye. He calmly cocked his rifle and fired, shooting the thing dead from fifty yards. It dropped. Its companions halted at the edge of the water.
These animals now knew fear. And well, if he could teach them to fear him, he could teach them to obey him.
Newt’s calm did not last long. He became restless again, in a different way, and his agitation infected Hermann now. Though they continued their study, the expectation of Lyra’s arrival hung over them, making it feel like they were in a waiting period before a sea change.
They alternated survey days and mulefa days. There was not much change in the canopy data. On the ground, they did fishing and net weaving. They got into a rhythm of weaving together, and spent afternoons arguing about nothing as they worked.
Newton took up other small projects. He would take notes on flora and fauna and bounce evolutionary theories off Hermann, which Hermann would obligingly poke holes in. Or Newton would disappear for an afternoon, to examine some younger seed-pod trees. He spent each evening filling pages in the back of the notebook.
“What are you writing?” Hermann asked one night.
“None of your business,” said Newt. He looked up. “For now. No peeking.”
Hermann resisted looking, with difficulty. He felt something changing already. It was as if his admission of existential calm had brought about its end.
One afternoon, Newt said he and Fern were going to spend the night on the platform. Hermann offered to join, but Newton said he didn’t have to. Hermann ate with Atal. He watered Newton’s plant collection, which seemed to multiply of its own accord, and then he went to bed and lay awake, hearing the silence.
He tried to understand Newton’s withdrawal. Newt did not speak to Hermann differently, but he spoke to him less. Hermann guessed at why: he could feel the end approaching. So could Hermann. But that did not make Hermann want to withdraw, it made him want to...
It was so quiet in the hut alone. He stared at the plants on the windowsill, shivering in the moonlight. He had gotten used to falling asleep with the sound of Newton’s breathing close by. And Fern’s, he supposed, though it was softer. This was his first time falling asleep without them in weeks. Newt claimed Hermann snored. Would he be able to fall asleep without that? Probably, Hermann reflected. The night sounds of the canopy were enough to lull the most obstinate child to sleep. Even Newton.
But maybe the sound of your dæmon’s breathing was company enough. And then Hermann understood. When they parted ways, as Newton seemed to assume they would, Hermann would go back alone. Newton would not be alone. He never was. He was withdrawing to the familiar shelter of his un-alone solitude.
With a sinking heart, Hermann wondered how many times this had happened. If he had a dæmon, he had no doubt he would hide in the same way. How easy did it become to withdraw from risky, vulnerable human relations when you always had someone to talk to anyway? Was the world of the dæmons perhaps, despite everything, lonelier?
He realized if he was going to ask Newton to join his world instead, he had to do it soon. That night, he dreamed of one of the great trees toppling to the earth. When he woke, he had forgotten the dream. But he rose and walked to the grove nonetheless.
The morning dawned under cover of mist. When Newt awoke, it was dark; but by the time they reached the forest floor, the world was a bright silvery gray, and he could not have said when the sun had risen.
They walked back towards town as the fog rose from the prairie. He could only see a few yards ahead of him in the mist, but Fern scented all sorts of creatures stirring. Newt was hoping he might yet be early enough to eat breakfast with Hermann. It had been kind of lonely up there. He felt a little strange. He kept feeling like he heard someone speaking to him, a voice, maybe Hermann’s; but there was no one out there but him and his dæmon.
And then there was. A figure was walking unevenly towards them across the prairie. Newt smiled. Hermann.
Fern barked and ran forward to meet him. Newt kept on at the same pace, but Fern’s excitement gave him away. Hermann looked anxious and a little sad. His eyes were kind of bright, sharp the way they were when he was focusing on something small and finicky. Newt realized he was still smiling like an idiot—it just felt like he hadn’t seen him in such a long time.
He reached Hermann. The dew was soaking through his pants and shoes. The mist was so thick the sky was lost, making it impossible tell if it would be a sunny day or a cloudy one. Hermann stopped, leaning on his cane. Newt stopped in front of him. Fern circled around, sniffing the ground.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Hey,” said Newt finally.
“Good morning,” said Hermann. “How was your night?”
“It was fine.”
Hermann raised his eyebrows.
“Kind of lonely, to be honest,” said Newt.
“Oh?”
“I thought I’d come down early and have breakfast,” Newt said. “With you,” he added.
“I understood,” Hermann said in his don’t-be-an-idiot voice, but a softened version. His eyes looked soft. Maybe it was the fog. There was a strange tension in the air. He reached for Newt’s right arm and Newt lifted it automatically. Hermann took his wrist and started unwinding his bite bandage.
“Is it just me,” said Newt, “Or is there something kind of Wuthering Heights-ey about this misty moor right now?”
“Brontёs exist in your universe, then?” said Hermann, examining the bite. It was healing well.
“Evidently,” Newt said in his best Hermann voice. Then he frowned. “What are you doing out here so early?”
Hermann tucked the end of the bandage back in. “Coming to meet you.”
“But... how did you know I would be coming?”
Hermann looked like he hadn’t thought about that.
“Well, you had to come eventually,” he said. “If you hadn’t been down yet, I suppose I would have waited.”
“Of course you would’ve.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” said Newt. “Not—I don’t know. In a good way. I’m glad you came.”
Hermann looked at him. He was still holding his wrist up.
There was a pause.
“I think we need to talk,” Newt said carefully.
“Yes,” said Hermann.
“Now?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
There was another pause. The mist was starting to clear, revealing a cloudy sky. Hermann still held Newt’s wrist. He seemed to be holding it more gently, less like an examiner, but maybe that was Newt’s wishful thinking. Then Hermann lifted his other hand and enclosed Newt’s hand in both of his. He squeezed once, and then let go. The cold air closed in immediately where Hermann’s hands had been for but a second.
Hermann turned and started walking back, but Newt stood still for a moment before following.
“Are you wearing my shirt again?” Hermann asked as Newt caught up.
“Maybe,” said Newt. He balled up the hem of the flannel sleeve, which was so long it hung past his hand, and squeezed it. The mood had suddenly gotten heavy, and he was going to lighten it. “Do you think I need a haircut?” he asked.
Hermann looked at him sideways. “Yes.”
“Do you have scissors?”
“I don’t know how to cut your hair,” Hermann said.
“Well I sure don’t.”
“I need one as well,” Hermann said, touching the back of his own cropped head. Newt made a face.
“In what universe?” he said. “It’s barely an inch.”
Hermann grimaced.
“I don't think I've seen my own reflection in more than two months,” Hermann said. “Isn’t that strange?”
“It is, but I like it,” said Newt. “Death of the ego.”
“I suppose.”
Newt thought about the fact that Hermann was the only human person who knew what he looked like right now, and he was the only one who knew what Hermann looked like. That felt strange and delicate, like a soap bubble in the air. The people they were right now, in this strange time and place, they only were for each other.
“Hermann—”
“Yes?”
Newt hesitated. “...Nothing.”
Fern listened but did not intervene. He just led the way through the grass as the mist rose away, revealing their little town in dim, cloud-muffled sunlight.
Every day they spent waiting seemed to pass slower, but this one passed slowest and strangest yet. They did not speak much, argued less; they helped fish and cook, and Hermann took gyroscope measures, and Newt tended to his plants, and still they found themselves looking down the length of an empty afternoon.
“Well,” said Hermann, standing in their yard, at a loss. “I suppose you have some mysterious notes to attend to?”
“Hmm?” said Newt. He fiddled with the stalk of grass he was nervously chewing. “No.”
“Oh.”
Silence stretched unbearably. One of many in their long day.
This would be the last, Hermann decided.
“I have a book,” he said.
“A book?”
“Yes.”
“Hermann...” Newt spat the grass out. “You have had a book all these weeks... And you never... thought to mention it?”
Hermann never knew he could be so relieved by his companion’s annoyance. “Yes. Only one.”
“All this time?”
“I was not aware you were so bored, Newton,” said Hermann acidly. “If you had told me sooner how tedious you find my company, I would have of course given you the book.”
Newt waved his words away. “Don’t even start with me, Gottlieb! Surrender the book.”
It was the complete works of Oscar Wilde. Hermann was at first perturbed when Newt said, “Who?” Then he thought that meant one of two things: either there was no Oscar Wilde in dæmon earth, or there was but he had not found fame, and so perhaps not met the same end. So he let that question be.
Up on the platform, they read out loud until the light was gone. Passing the book back and forth they read The Importance of Being Earnest, with Hermann reading Jack and Cecily’s lines and Newt reading Algie and Gwendolen’s. When Hermann, being Cecily but flatly refusing to affect a voice, read, “‘Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about,” and looked pointedly at Newt, Newt laughed so hard he almost fell. When it got too dark to read, they talked about the play and the author.
“So he’s really that famous?”
“Absolutely,” said Hermann. “Shame for your world, really. His dæmon would have been something else.”
Newt, who was lying with his head on Fern, huffed a laugh.
“Probably something enormous and unmistakable,” Hermann said, staring absently at Newt’s profile in the semidarkness. “Like a bear. Actually, I have been wondering—is there a size limit to a dæmon? Could someone have, say, a giraffe? A whale?”
“Is there a size limit to a person?” said Newt. “No. There’s just normal variation. But people get taller all the time.” He hoisted himself up on his elbow. “I knew a guy once who had a horse.”
Hermann laughed in spite of himself. “A horse? Good God! Did he... ride it?”
Newt laughed too. “Ride her? God, I don’t know. I hope not...”
Their laughter, not sardonic or suppressed, rang unnaturally to Hermann’s ear. He felt a return of the hushed tension from the morning descend over their half-lit raft. The moon was not yet up. Maybe the tension arose from the anonymous dark. But even in the dark he could still see Newton. He could see every lock of unruly hair, every tooth of his grin, the bright colorless gleam of his eyes. He seemed unable to look away.
“But there are other historical figures who exist in both worlds,” Hermann said, trying to pull himself back to himself by the sound of his own voice. “Think about it, Newton. Our worlds diverged eons ago, at the very evolutionary level. How could we have any events in common in our societies? Never mind entire human beings in common? It goes beyond statistical improbability. It seems virtually impossible.”
“Whoa. Lots to unpack there,” Newton said pointedly. “First off, diverged at the evolutionary level? How do you figure that, Hermann?”
“Dæmons, Newton,” he said. “Where else would they come from?”
“That seems like a question of Dust, not evolution, to me,” Newt said.
“What proof do you have of that?”
“Well obviously Dæmons have to do with Dust.”
“But how? And how do you know? Fernweh does not have any Dust on him. We’ve checked. Your assertion that the emergence of dæmons has anything to do with Dust is categorically baseless.”
“Rude, first of all,” said Newt. “And it isn’t baseless. Dust settles on adults, dæmons settle as adults. Coincidence?”
“Is there a ‘coincidence’ between getting acne and adolescence?” Hermann said hotly. “Obviously not. It is causally linked.”
“Then I’m right!” said Newt.
“No, you are not. We are simply listing normal processes of growing up. You grow taller. You become malodorous. Your dæmon settles, in some worlds. These things are caused by growing up. They do not cause each other...”
“I just don’t think it was evolutionary,” said Newt. “I don’t accept your framework.”
“Do you have an alternate framework to propose?” demanded Hermann.
“Yes,” snapped Newt. “But you won’t like it.”
“Oh?”
“No.”
“Well?”
The moon was rising. A hole in the leaves lit the left side of Hermann’s face.
“Dust. Conscious complexifications of Dust known, colloquially, as angels...”
“Oh, good God...”
“...intervening in human development. Intervening in a different way, in my world.”
“Newton, please.”
“They told you this.”
“‘They’ told me nothing of any—”
“Nothing of any importance?” said Newt. He hoisted himself up to fully sit, and jabbed an accusing finger into Hermann’s chest. “You threw your whole life away to do exactly what they said.”
Hermann almost smacked his hand away. “Excuse me?”
“Seriously, Hermann. Do you listen to yourself? You talk about fate and improbability and how, apparently, extremely improbable events are proof of fate, instead of what they are, which is just very improbable events. But you still can’t stand the idea of fate because it makes you nervous—maybe it’s a control issue, maybe it’s a leftover hangup from your excommunication, I don’t know—”
“Newton! I was not excommunicated!”
“—but you know what Hermann? You’re a big hypocrite. You talk a big game about fate but when it came knocking, you rolled right over and did exactly what it told you to do.”
“You...” Hermann broke off. Part of him was offended by what Newton said; but part of him was attuned to the man's tone, and the dim, desaturated version of his face that he could see. Newton was genuinely upset about something. About what?
Hermann frowned at him. Newt was taken aback by his silence.
He withdrew his hand, which had been hanging awkwardly between them.
“What?”
“You really believe in free will, Newton?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course I do. What else would I believe in?”
“You come from a godly world,” said Hermann. “It is a reasonable question.”
“I don’t consider fate possible. Hermann, it isn’t rational. You come from a rational world. Tell me why you believe in predestination.”
“You tell me first why you do not.”
“The burden of proof lies with you, but fine, I'll go first. There’s just no power that could control or foresee all those variables. You’re a math guy, Hermann. You know how many variables it is. It’s literally infinite. Now, if we accept the many-worlds theory—and I think we might have to, given our circumstances—there is a world for each possibility. A world for each and every teeny, tiny, finicky, infinite possibility. Doesn’t that negate fate, control, God? No fate but every single possible fate.”
Hermann saw the loophole and pounced. “Oh, Newton. Perhaps it would. Had not these angels intervened in the course of some histories. Wouldn’t you say?”
Newt reflexively raised a didactic finger and said, loudly, “No, I would not, Hermann.” Hermann could see him doing some very quick, out-loud thinking as he fumbled his way to a rebuttal. Unfortunately, that variety of bullshit was Newton’s forte. “Would you really say the angels constitute fate? Or are they just a form of consciousness, previously unknown to us, intervening of their own free will and interacting with you, to encourage you to take a course they, personally, saw as productive? No different than Lyra interacting with you. She was previously unknown. Many actors, each working to their own goals. Their own freely chosen goals. I seem to recall you saying your angels were rebel angels?” Newt smirked. What a save. “I rest my case.”
“You rest what?” Hermann scoffed. “All you’ve done is speculate wildly about creatures about whom we have no proof other than their word...”
“Oh, but their word seems to hold enough weight with you,” Newt said, poking his chest again. “You smashed up your lab and ran off to another world, Hermann!”
“A mistake, I suppose?” Hermann said heatedly. “Is that what you think?”
“Obviously not!”
“What, then?” said Hermann. “You seem to take issue with my actions, yet, had I not listened, I would never have come to the world of the mulefa, and I would not be stuck on this platform with you!”
“Right, so that’s how you see this!” Newt said loudly. “Stuck! Are you stuck here, with me, Hermann? Thus fate dictates, so you just sigh and accept your destiny, however tiresome and illogical he is?”
“Newton—”
“I’m going to be honest, Hermann,” Newt said, sounding it. “No, really. I’ve been half-kidding, but sometimes I get the feeling that’s what you really think of me—that I’m just someone you were destined to be stuck with, and if you had a choice you would just go—”
“Newton!”
“—and meanwhile, I’m driving the free will train full tilt, and you know where I drove it, Hermann? Did you notice where I drove it? Here! With you! And I don’t—”
Hermann grabbed Newt by the front of the shirt and kissed him.
A wave seemed to crash over Hermann’s face, chest, lips, heart. Newt made a muffled noise of surprise. His hand fluttered and landed on Hermann’s hand, on his shirt, and gripped it. Hermann slid his other hand around Newt’s cheek and behind his neck. He was committed now—hesitation was dead—and Newton did not seem to mind.
“You—really are the stupidest man I’ve ever met—” Hermann said breathlessly, and kissed Newt again— “if you think that’s what I—”
The obvious end of his sentence was lost as Newt wrapped his good arm around Hermann’s neck and kissed him like a war had ended. If he had hesitated at first, it was only a matter of habit. But in this world, it did not matter. In this world they were safe. He kissed Hermann back with unmistakable, joyful enthusiasm, like he had been waiting, waiting, waiting.
As indeed he had been.
In a strange way he felt he had only realized this morning, but that he had been waiting for weeks. And as he held Hermann close he thought, perhaps hyperbolically, he would have waited however long it took.
For Hermann, it was his rarest sort of moment, when rattling thoughts and concerns were overtaken by the moment itself, and he was lost, completely lost, to the experience. He was absorbed by the feeling of Newton’s closeness, his agile and eager mouth, his rough stubble, his nose, his hand, his breath. Every quick inhale and sighing exhale, warm, smelling familiar but stronger, headier, broke against Hermann’s lips and cheek and nose and filled him with a fierce indefinable joy.
Newt spread his hand open against Hermann’s face and cupped his cheek, tipping his chin back to pull away and breathe for a second. Hermann chased his lips like a tireless or intoxicated teenager. In that uncalculated gesture Newt suddenly saw how far gone Hermann was. All stiff, strict Gottlebian restraint was obliterated: he was committed absolutely, lost helplessly. Newt realized it with a swelling, swaying intensity that moved and frightened him.
Newt kissed him again, gently, and then put his hand on the back of Hermann’s head and pressed their foreheads together. For a moment they breathed.
“Hey.”
“Yes?”
“You good?”
Hermann nodded, moving both their heads. His range of perception was slowly expanding again, against his wishes. From Newton’s face looming against his like a planet hanging close in the sky, the warmth of his breath, to his shoulder touching Hermann’s and his hand on the back of Hermann’s head, to the platform beneath them, to the umbrella of branches above. All he wanted was to stay in this bubble, but the moment was trickling away as quick as Dust. Now he could hear the leaves swish again and see the stars above and feel the future that had always lain ahead, feel it circling again.
Hermann shook his head slightly. Newt wished he knew what his research partner was thinking.
“Don’t be scared,” he murmured, not knowing why. Maybe it was more to himself.
Hermann closed his eyes.
“Do you remember, um...” Newt lifted his hand and began stroking Hermann's hair absently. He felt it important to fill the airwaves with something, for both Hermann’s sake and his own. “Do you remember when I said I ‘decided’ it was you? That you were the one I was supposed to find?”
“Yes,” said Hermann softly.
“I said it was when you told me about Dust?”
“Yes.”
“I was lying. It was before that.”
Hermann opened his eyes, which were so close Newt could hardly focus on them. He didn’t try. Instead he kept running his fingers, with equal parts anxiety and fondness, through Hermann’s hair.
“It was a day or two before that. You were still pretty cagey, but I got you to tell me about your cane. You told me how Anku helped you make it. The whole process: picking the stick, sanding it, lacquering it. I liked the way you talked about it. You thought about the process like an investigator and like an engineer, and a bit like an artist. And I just thought...” Newt sighed. “I don’t know, I just thought you were someone I could work with. I guess I was right.”
Hermann smiled. “First time for everything,” he said.
Even in the dark up-close he could see Newton's eyes roll and lips quirk. “Excuse me,” he said. “I am always right.”
Hermann closed the little distance and kissed Newton again. He felt his impulsiveness wearing off, but he was afraid to lose it. Newt kissed him back slowly.
“Extravagantly inaccurate, as usual,” Hermann murmured, pulling away.
“You love it,” said Newt, chasing his lips. Hermann let himself be caught.
They talked deep into the night. When they slept they lay side by side, Newt curled so the bend of his back touched Hermann’s mast-straight side, infinitely close like a curve and its tangent.