Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVII

More silence. Then a despondent, "As you will. Lucas?"

Lucas moved past Rothmaler. Within moments shutters were thrown back and the noonday sun poured into the room. Furniture and other obstacles seemed to be scattered around the room. Rothmaler picked his way carefully through scattered clothing, books, travel bags and empty wine bottles. Lucas bustled over and removed a cloak from the chair that sat across the table from where Master Schutz sat leaning and pressing his forehead against a dark green wine bottle. The pastor sat down. Long moments passed, moments during which Lucas quietly moved about the room bringing order to it.

Finally, Schutz spoke without opening his eyes. "Well, what is this so very important matter that requires you to intrude into my privacy?"

The despair and despondency in his voice was so thick it was almost tangible. Pastor Rothmaler looked at Lucas one more time; once more he was gestured to continue.

"Master Schutz…"

"Call me Heinrich."

"Master Heinrich, then. I… um… your assistant, Herr Amsel, came to me with an account that you appear to be suffering from some spiritual illness. He grew gravely concerned and attempted to find someone in Grantville to counsel with you, but to no avail. Finally, Herr Gary Lambert advised him to seek me out. And so I am here. I have heard what Herr Lucas has told me. I am here to help as I can, as God provides. Can you tell me what ails you?"

Schutz's eyes opened wide. Pastor Rothmaler almost recoiled. The whites were very red, which lent an almost demonic air to the disheveled appearance of the master musician.

"What ails me? What ails me?" Schutz straightened up, and for the first time emotion made an appearance on his face and in his voice. "Why, my good Pastor Rothmaler, Grantville ails me. The future ails me. God ails me." He lifted the bottle and finished the dregs it contained, then tossed it over his shoulder. Rothmaler winced, expecting it to shatter on the floor, but Lucas nimbly captured it in mid-air.

"Elucidate, please, Master Heinrich."

Schutz focused his baleful gaze on the clergyman. "Very well. At your insistence. Three days ago, I was suddenly confronted with evidence that music exists that I had written, yet I had not written-music that was supposedly written in the year of Our Lord 1647-supposedly written by myself. How can this be?" Schutz charged on, allowing no room for a response. Rothmaler schooled himself to patience.

"How can I already have written that which I have not written? How can I do the impossible?" Master Heinrich was almost raving. "But if I have, if all of my great music has already been written, then what is there for me to do in the future if it has already been done? Where is the worthy place for Schutz in that?"

Breathing heavily, Schutz paused for a moment. "I left the place of that revelation and wandered through Grantville. It was as if a gale blew through my mind. My thoughts were whirling, spinning, as a leaf caught in a storm. I know not how long I wandered, but eventually I found myself in front of a building named a library. For lack of some other profitable action to take, I entered. When an attendant approached, I asked if they had anything about the life of one Heinrich Schutz. He led me to a table where he opened what he called an 'encyclopedia.' Then he pointed to an account printed in it that purported to describe my life.

"My history was traced correctly, if somewhat briefly, until the present. My years in Venice studying with Gabrieli and Monteverdi; becoming the Kappellmeister for the Elector of Saxony; my marriage to Magdalena, the birth of my daughters, and her death. It even mentioned some few of the works I had written during those years.

"In truth, I was impressed that I was remembered by that much from a time supposedly over 350 years in the future. But then, it began to detail the further events of my life. It seems I am to die many years from now, serving the somewhat less than appreciative Elector until his death. My daughters will both die many years before I do. I will have no progeny. My only memorial will be music… music that has already been written by me, but not by me."

The master leaned over the table and asked in a dead tone, "Tell me, Pastor Rothmaler. You are a theologian. Are the Calvinists right? Is everything totally fore-ordained? Predestined? Are we all just actors treading the boards and reciting lines scripted for us by another? If so, of what worth are we? If my music has already been written, if my life has already been lived, then of what purpose am I?"

Rothmaler shivered. The master musician's monologue had distilled all the many issues that Grantville created for the theologians and philosophers of Europe, himself included. Many of them were affronted not only by the existence and claims of Grantville, but by the very tangible evidence that the town and its people did indeed come from a very different time and place.

But there was a fundamental difference between the objections of the philosophes and the raw pain of a man who was questioning whether his lifework, his art, his very existence, mattered in the face of Grantville's revelations. Rothmaler sat for long moments praying to God for wisdom to share with this obviously tortured man. "Master Heinrich," the pastor began, "it is pure hubris, the purest arrogance, to believe that we can fully know the mind of God. We can know as much of it as He has revealed in Holy Scripture, and perhaps a little more if He chooses to make a direct revelation to one of us. But the mind that can conceive of the world in its order; the mind that can contain the power to speak it into being; that mind is as far above ours as we are above the worm within the soil. So, we do not understand many things.

"Chiefest of these things is how and why Grantville is among us. We have no better explanation for their origin than the one they have offered since their first arrival, that they have somehow been ripped from the future and placed here. Why would God either direct or allow such disruption in the order of things? We have no answer. His word contains no prophecy about such coming to pass. Yet the very senses which God created in us, our taste and sight and touch and smell and hearing, they all testify to the reality of Grantville. The very ability to reason and deduce which the Almighty instilled in us takes the testimony of those senses and can arrive at no other conclusion than that Grantville is real, its people are real, its mechanics and sciences and, yes, its arts, are as real as our own. Real, but oh, so different in so many ways. And so, however objectionable the explanation, we are unable to propose one that is any more acceptable than what the Grantvillers say."

Pastor Rothmaler leaned forward and placed his own elbows on the table. He steeled himself to look directly into Master Schutz's eyes. "However, the Grantville men of science all say that the future from which they came is not the future that will be ours, that their very arrival will make so many fundamental changes in the courses of the church, of societies, and of history, that the future that will happen will be a very different future than the one recorded in their books."

Master Schutz's eyes widened, his eyebrows climbed. He puffed either in surprise or disbelief.

"Oh, yes," the pastor assured him. "And it has already started. With my own eyes I have seen in their books that in their history Gustavus Adolphus was killed six months ago in the battle of Lutzen, yet all know that he is alive and facing his enemies. So the changes have already begun."

Pastor Rothmaler leaned back. "And what this means to you is the future of which you read may or may not resemble that which will grow from the life you are living now. The Grantvillers have a very odd term for the concept. They call it the 'butterfly effect.' I do not pretend to understand their explanation-it seems foolish to me-but perhaps another image will serve.