The Year of Rice and Salt

Khalid took a lump of dusty cinnabar in his one hand, and shook it before Bahram. 'Why? I'll tell you why! Look at this! All the great alchemists, from jabir to al Razi to Ibn Sina, all agree that all the metals are various combinations of sulphur and mercury. Iwang says the Chinese and Hindu alchemists agree on this matter. But when we combine sulphur and mercury, as pure as we can make them, we get exactly this: cinnabar! What does that mean? The alchemists who actually speak to this problem, who are very few I might add, say that when they talk about sulphur and mercury, they don't really mean the substances we usually call sulphur and mercury, but rather purer elements of dryness and moisture, that are like sulphur and mercury, but finer! Well!' He threw the chunk of cinnabar across the yard at the river. 'What use is that? Why even call them that? Why believe anything they say?' He waved his stump at his study and alchemical workshop, and all the apparatus littering the yard outside. 'It's all so much junk. We don't know anything. They never knew what they were talking about.'

'All right, Father, maybe so, but don't burn the books! There may be something useful in some of them, you need to make distinctions. And besides, they were expensive.'

Khalid only snarled and made the sound of spitting.

Bahram told Iwang about this incident the next time he was in town. 'He burned a lot of books. I couldn't talk him out of it. I try to get him to see the love filling everything, but he doesn't see it.'

The big Tibetan blew air through his lips like a camel. 'That approach will never work with Khalid,' he said. 'It's easy for you to be full of love, being young and whole. Khalid is old and one handed. He is out of balance, yin and yang are disarranged. Love has nothing to do with it.' Iwang was no sufi.

Bahram sighed. 'Well, I don't know what to do then. You need to help me, Iwang. He's going to burn all his books and destroy all his apparatus, and then who knows what will happen to him.'

Iwang grumbled something inaudible.

'what?'

'I'll think it over. Give me some time.'

'There isn't much time. He'll break all the apparatus next.'

Aristotle was Wrong

The very next day Khalid ordered the blacksmith apprentices to move everything in the alchemical shops out into the yard to be destroyed. He had a black and wild look as he watched it all shed dust in the sunlight. Sand baths, water baths, descensory furnaces, stills, cucurbits, flasks, alumbixes, alembics with double or even triple spouts; all stood in a haze of antique dust. The largest battery alembic had last been used for distilling rose water, and seeing it Khalid snorted. 'That's the only thing we could make work. All this stuff, and we made rose water.'

Mortars and pestles, phials, flasks, basins and beakers, glass crystallizing dishes, jugs, casseroles, candle lamps, naphtha lamps, braziers, spatulas, tongs, ladles, shears, hammers, aludels, funnels, miscellaneous lenses, filters of hair, cloth and linen: finally everything was out in the sun. Khalid waved it all away. 'Burn it all, or if it won't burn, break it up and throw it in the river.'

But just then Iwang arrived, carrying a small glass and silver mechanism. He frowned when he saw the display. 'Some of this you could at least sell,' he said to Khalid. 'Don't you still have debts?'

'I don't care,' Khalid said. 'I won't sell lies.'

'It's not the apparatus that lies,' Iwang said. 'Some of this stuff could prove very useful.'

Khalid glared at him blackly. Iwang decided to change the subject, and raised his device to Khalid's attention. 'I brought you a toy that refutes all Aristotle.'

Surprised, Khalid examined the thing. Two iron balls sat in an arna ture that looked to Bahram like one of the waterwheel triphammers in miniature.

'Water poured here will weight the rocker, here, and the two doors are one, and open at the same time. One side can't open before the other, see?'

'Of course.'

'Yes, obvious, but consider, Aristotle says that a heavier mass will fall faster than a lighter mass, because it has more of the predilection to join the Earth. But look. Here are the two iron balls, one big and one small, heavy and light. Place them on the doors, set the device level, using a bubble level, high on your outside wall, where there is a good distance to fall. A minaret would be better, the Tower of Death would be better yet, but even from your wall it will work.'

They did as he suggested, Khalid climbing the ladder slowly to inspect the arrangement.

'Now, pour water in the funnel, and watch.'

The water filled the lower basin until the doors suddenly fell open. The two balls fell. They hit the ground at the same time.

'Ho,' Khalid said, and clambered down the ladder to retrieve the balls and try it again, after hefting them, and even weighing them precisely on one of his scales.