Ars Magica [antikvár]

The monks' chanting had long since faded into silence. There was only wind keening about the stones of the tower, and the mighty stillness of the stars. But in that stillness, if one had ears to hear, was a thin high singing. Gerbert shivered without noticing that he did it. That was only his body. His mind was afire. "But don't you see? It rises in the east. It travels up the sky. Then it turns and retraces its steps. Then it turns again and goes on as before." "Wherefore," intoned his companion, "planetes, as the Greeks would say: wanderer.' " "Of course it wanders!" Gerbert stopped short. Brother Raymond was laughing at him, and not trying to hide it. "You are hardly dignified," he said severely, "magister." His teacher grinned and stretched. "Dignity is for overaweing farmers' sons when they fidget over their grammar. Not for perching on towers at high midnight, when God and the abbot know we should be sensibly asleep." "What's more sensible than astronomy?" Gerbert dropped back on the tiles and filled his eyes with stars. "If I could just show people how it works if they could feel with their own hands, see how it all moves, how it sings "