Leonardo's Secret by Peter David Myers

Author:Peter David Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mentoris Project

18

SLINGS AND ARROWS

The next day, Leonardo was still profoundly disturbed by what had happened with Lisa Gherardini. He took a walk to clear his mind and sat on a large rock near a pond. Picking up a few smaller rocks, he idly threw them into the water, one by one. Then he noticed the ripples made by the rocks. A wave made by one rock intersected with the wave made by another. He noticed how each series of waves moved through the others without changing their nature or direction.

Back in his studio, he recorded his observation in a notebook, then announced to Salai, “I believe that still water, disturbed by a rock, does not move.”

Salai looked at his master, wondering what would come next.

Leonardo continued, “The water only seems to move. Instead, it reacts like little wounds that open and close suddenly. It is more like trembling than movement across a distance.”

Salai shrugged. He had long since grown used to Leonardo’s musings. They were usually above his head.

Under Leonardo’s patient tutelage, Salai had become a passable painter. Realizing that was all he would ever be, he took perverse pleasure in pilfering from the studio or spending money on trifles that should have gone to necessities.

Leonardo knew that Salai was even less of a thinker than a painter. Still, he kept talking in Salai’s general direction. “Also, I sense that both sound and light travel through the air in the same way. But how does the eye see? What is the nature of light, beyond the possibility that it is made of waves?”

“Why do you ask questions that no one else bothers to ask?” Salai wondered aloud.

“Because I want to know everything, or everything I can know, so that I may one day gather and classify the whole of human knowledge, and then connect it,” Leonardo proclaimed.

Salai laughed. “You can’t do that in a day.”

“But I have begun,” Leonardo said simply. “And now I must do something that dismays me. I have no choice.” He took a sheet of paper and began to write.

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