THE System OF THE WORLD

by Neal Stephenson

  “I understand, Henry. What is more, I agree that neither you, nor any other man, can be asked to know whither rubbish has gone, after the rubbish-cart has disappeared from view. But I have a different question for you along the same lines, on which you must concentrate as intently as you can.”

  “I shall strain to do so, Dr. Waterhouse.”

  “At the time that Gresham’s was being cleared out, and the rubbish being carted away, and the treasures brought safely here-I say, at that time, was any rubbish taken away, or treasures produced, from other locations?”

  “Other locations, Dr. Waterhouse?”

  “Hooke. Mr. Robert Hooke. He might have squirrelled things away at Bedlam, or in the additions to the Marquis of Ravenscar’s house, or the College of Physicians-”

  “Why those places, sir?”

  “He built them. Or St. Paul’s, or the Fire Monument-he had a hand in those as well. He might have left things in those buildings; and just as the nuts, hidden in out-of-the-way places by a squirrel, are oft forgotten, and discovered later by others-”

  “I do not recollect anything coming from Bedlam, or any other place besides Gresham’s College,” Henry said flatly.

  Henry looked curiously red in the face. He had been simple enough to fall into the trap that Daniel had set by speaking of rubbish. But he was sharp enough to see it in hindsight. His response was to become angry rather than fearful. Daniel sensed immediately that to have this man angry at him was undesirable. He explained, in softer tones, “It is only that the Royal Society is so pre-eminent among the scientific academies of the world, that what is rubbish to us, would be esteemed treasure to some who are accounted savants in backward places; and as a gesture of friendship towards such countries, we could send them odds and ends for which we have no further use.”

  “I take your meaning now, sir,” said Henry, the flush fading from his cheeks.

  “Better for one of Mr. Hooke’s old clocks to be studied by a student in Muscovy, than for some Shadwell tinker to make the gears into jewelry.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “I have been asked by a colleague on the Continent to keep an eye out for any such items. It is probably too late for the dozens of cart-loads. Perhaps not for what might have been stowed by Hooke in other buildings to which he had keys.”

  “Sir Christopher Wren was an old friend of Mr. Hooke’s.”

  “That he was,” said Daniel, “though I wonder how you know it, since Hooke died seven years before you had any connection to the Royal Society.”

  Again Henry’s face flushed. “ ’Tis common knowledge. Sir Christopher is here all the time-why, he stopped in just this morning-and often speaks of Hooke with a kind of affection.”

  Henry got a wry distracted look which proved he was speaking truth. God and the angels might speak of Hooke with outright and unalloyed affection; but a kind of affection was the best that could be achieved by Wren, or any other mortal.

  “I should simply refer my inquiries to Sir Christopher, then.”

  “He has stated more than once that he would enjoy renewing your acquaintance, sir, whenever…”

  Henry trailed off and made a furtive glance at the doorway to the garret, near the top of the stairs.

  “Whenever I came to my senses. Consider me healed, Henry. And if you are seized by an urge to throw anything away, do make me aware of it, so that I can pluck out any items that would pass for wonders in Muscovy.”

  Daniel went out for a walk: a most imprudent act.

  Henry Arlanc had let it be known that if Daniel ever summoned the will to leave, for an hour or a day, he, Henry Arlanc, could arrange a sedan chair or a carriage. This was nothing more than simple common sense. The streets of London were a good bit more dangerous now than when Daniel had last walked them, and Daniel much more vulnerable. But on a morning like this, with the streets so crowded with well-to-do persons on the move, murderers and footpads were less likely to be encountered than pickpockets. And these would reap only the meagrest of harvests from Daniel.

  An odd notion had come in to Daniel’s mind: perhaps the intended victim of the Infernal Device had been, not Daniel or Mr. Threader, but Henry Arlanc.

  Now in his years of toil for the Royal Society, Daniel had become a stern judge of odd notions. There were abundant reasons to discard this one straightaway. Its most obvious defect was simply that Daniel had not the faintest idea why anyone would want to blow up the Royal Society’s porter. Moreover, the fog that had descended over Daniel’s mind since the explosion had made him susceptible to hypotheses of an extremely dark and frightening cast, and this seemed like one of those.

  But the Natural Philosopher in him had to admit that it was at least theoretically possible. And until it had been ruled out, Daniel liked to preserve, from Arlanc, some independence-he did not wish to get in the habit of relying on the Huguenot every time he stirred from Crane Court-and some privacy. ’Twas neither necessary nor desirable for Arlanc to know everything about his movements around London.

  His knees were still recovering from too long spent in bed, but they had become unlimbered by the time he reached the end of Crane Court and flung himself on the mercy of Fleet Street. He turned to the right, therefore moving in the general direction of Charing Cross, and worked his way cautiously upstream, prudently facing on-coming traffic, and with his right hand dabbing at the fronts of houses and shops in case he should be forced to save himself by diving into a door-way. Soon he had left St. Dunstan-in-the-West behind. The Inner and Middle Temple would be to his left, on the opposite side of Fleet, lurking behind a screen of newer buildings. These were largely occupied by pubs and coffee-houses that were continual targets of arch but confusing references, and cruel but murky satire, in newspapers.

  Soon he had passed through Temple Bar. The way-now called the Strand-forked into a main channel on the left and an inferior one to the right, creating a long central island with a couple of churches in it. Daniel took the narrower way-really a series of disjoint street-fragments crudely plumbed together-and grew convinced that he was lost. The buildings were held apart by splints of air, too narrow to deserve the name “alley,” that jogged crazily to the right and left, and did not run in straight lines even when they could have. The fire had stopped short of this part of the city, probably because the Rolls and the Temple, with their generous lawns, had acted as fire-breaks. Hooke, in his capacity as City Surveyor, had not been empowered to bring it out of the Dark Ages. These ancient rights-of-way were as sacred, or at least as unassailable, as the precepts of the Common Law. Somewhere among them was an old, therefore low-ceilinged room that had been acquired by a printer, Mr. Christopher Cat, and made into a thing called the Kit-Cat Clubb.

  I have spoken to Mr. Cat about you, Roger had let Daniel know, in a note slipped under his door. When you venture out, stop by our Clubb for refreshment. There had been a sketchy map, which Daniel now withdrew from his pocket, and tried to interpret. It was useless. But presently he was able to find his way to the Kit-Cat Clubb simply by following the carriages of Whig M.P.s.

  The building had clearly been thrown up in an epoch of English history short on food and building materials, because Daniel, who was of average height, could barely stand up without being bludgeoned by a joist. Accordingly, the paintings that Mr. Cat had commissioned to adorn the walls were all bizarrely wide and short. This ruled out portraits, unless they were portraits of very large groups as seen from tremendous distances. Of these, the largest and most prominently displayed was of the distinguished membership of the Kit-Cat Clubb. Roger was front and center in his best wig, which was captured as a horseshoe-shaped swipe of an overloaded paint-brush.

  “LET’S DO SOMETHING about Longitude!”

  He was the same Roger in a much older body. Only his teeth looked young, because they were; they could not have been carved more than a few months ago. He had deteriorated in every way save the Mental and the Dental. He made up for it with clothing.

  D
aniel blew on his chocolate for a few moments, trying to get it to cool without forming a wrinkled hide on the top. He could not hear himself think for all the Whigs in wigs shouting at each other. “The Queen opened Parliament only two hours ago,” he reminded Roger, “or so I’ve been told, and she forgot, entirely, to mention the trifling detail of who would succeed her, after her demise. And you wish to have a chat about Longitude.”

  The Marquis of Ravenscar rolled his eyes. “ ’Twas settled ?ons ago. Sophie or Caroline will succeed her-”

  “You mean, Sophie or George Louis.”

  “Don’t be a fool. Ladies run Europe. The War of the Spanish Succession was all women. In Versailles, Madame de Maintenon. In Madrid, her best friend, the Princesse des Ursins, Camarera Mayor of the Bourbon Court of Spain. She runs the place. Those two on the one side, fought it out against Queen Anne and Sophie on the other.”

  “I thought Queen Anne and Sophie hated each other.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Touche, Roger.”

  “Now if you insist on being pedantic, yes, George Louis is next in the queue after Sophie. Do you know what he did with his wife?”

  “Something horrible, I heard.”

  “Locked her up in a Schlo? for the rest of her life, for bed-swerving.”

  “So clearly he has the upper hand, at least-”

  “ ’Tis the exception that proves the rule, Daniel. By taking such a measure, he confesses his helplessness to the world. She made him a cuckold. Cuckolds cannot be unmade.”

  “Still, she’s locked in a Schlo?, and he isn’t.”

  “He is locked up in the Schlo? of his own mind, which, by all accounts, has walls so thick, as to leave very little room within. The leading lady of England will be the Princess of Wales-raised personally by Sophie and by the late lamented, by all accounts dazzling, Queen of Prussia; and tutored by your friend.” This Roger stressed ominously.

  “Er, getting back to the actual topic of conversation, don’t you think your time were better spent making sure the Hanoverians actually do succeed to the throne? Longitude can wait.”

  Roger waved his hand as if trying for the eleventh time to knock a particular horse-fly out of the air. “God damn it, Daniel do you really think we are so feckless, as not to have thought of that?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “We’re not letting the Pretender in! You were there at his so-called birth-you saw the sleight-of-

  hand involving the warming-pan-surely a man of your discrimination was not so easily deceived!”

  “To me it looked like a babe’s head coming out of the Queen’s vagina.”

  “And you call yourself a man of science!”

  “Roger, if you would set aside this quaint notion that countries must be ruled by kings who are the sons of other kings, then it would not matter whether the Pretender entered St. James’s Palace through a vagina, or a warming-pan; either way, to hell with him.”

  “Are you suggesting I become a Republican?”

  “I’m suggesting you already are one.”

  “Hmmph…from there, ’tis only a short step to Puritanism.”

  “Puritanism has its advantages…we are not so much under the thumb of ladies.”

  “Only because you hang all of the interesting ones!”

  “I am told you have a mistress of a distinguished family…”

  “As do you-the chief difference being, I get to sleep with mine.”

  “They say she is extraordinarily clever.”

  “Yours, or mine?”

  “Both of them, Roger, but I was referring to yours.”

  Roger did an odd thing then, namely, raised up his glass and turned it this way and that, until it had caught the light from the window the right way. It had been scratched up with a diamond. Several lines of script ran across it, which he now read, in a ghastly chaunt that was either bad reading or bad singing.

  At Barton’s feet the God of Love

  His Arrows and his Quiver lays,

  Forgets he has a Throne above,

  And with this lovely Creature stays.

  Not Venus’s Beauties are more bright,

  But each appear so like the other,

  The Cupid has mistook the Right,

  And takes the Nymph to be his Mother.

  By the time he had lurched and wheezed to the end, several nearby clubbers had picked up the melody-if it could be so called-and begun to sing along. At the end, they all rewarded themselves by Consumption of Alcohol.

  “Roger! I never would have dreamed any woman could move you to write even bad poetry.”

  “Its badness is proof of my sincerity,” Roger said modestly. “If I wrote her an excellent love-poem, it might be said of me, that I had done it only to flaunt my wit.”

  “As matters stand, you are indeed safe from any such accusations.”

  Roger now allowed a few silent moments to pass, and adjusted his posture and his wig, as if about to be recognized in Parliament. He proclaimed: “Now, when the attention of all Good and Forthright Men is fixed upon the controversies attending the Hanoverian Succession, now, I say, is the time to pass Expensive and Recondite Legislation!”

  “Viz. Longitude?”

  “We can offer a prize to the chap who devises a way of measuring it. A large prize. I have mentioned the idea to Sir Isaac, to Sir Christopher, and to Mr. Halley. They are all for it. The prize is to be quite large.”

  “If you have their support, Roger, what can you possibly want of me?”

  “It is high time the Massachusetts Bay Institute of Technologickal Arts-which I have supported so generously-did something useful!”

  “Such as-?”

  “Daniel, I want to win the Longitude Prize!”

  London

  LATE FEBRUARY 1714

  DANIEL WAS LURKING LIKE A bat in the attic, supervising Henry Arlanc, who was packing Science Crapp into crates and casks. Sir Isaac Newton emerged from a room on the floor just below, talking to a pair of younger men as they strode down the corridor. Daniel craned his neck and peered down the stairway just in time to catch a glimpse of Isaac’s feet and ankles as they flicked out of view. One of the men was Scottish, and sanguine, and fully agreeable to whatever it was that Isaac thought he should do. “I shall remark on the Baron’s remarks, sir!”

  Leibniz had published his latest salvo in Journal Literaire under the title “Remarks.”

  “I’ll use him smartly, I will!”

  “I shall supply you with my notes on his Tentamen. I found in it a clearly erroneous use of second-order differentials,” Isaac said, preceding the others down the stairs.

  “I perceive your strategy sir!” boomed the Scotsman. “Before the Baron presumes to pick the lint from oot o’ yoor eye he ought to extricate the log from oot o’ his oon!” It was John Keill: Queen Anne’s cryptographer.

  The three men stormed down the stairs and out into the streets, or so it sounded to Daniel, in whose failing ears their footsteps and their conversation melted together into a fusillade of hoots and booms.

  Daniel waited until their carriages had cleared the end of Crane Court, then went to the Kit-Cat Clubb.

  ONE OF THE REGULARS THERE was John Vanbrugh, an architect who made a specialty of country houses. For example, he was building Blenheim Palace for the Duke of Marlborough. He couldn’t help but be busy on that front just now, since Harley had just flung ten thousand pounds at the Duke. Most of his tasks, just now, had nothing to do with the drawing up of plans or the supervision of workers. He was rather shunting money from place to place and attempting to hire people. Daniel knew this because Vanbrugh was using the Kit-Cat Clubb as his office, and Daniel couldn’t go there and read the paper and drink chocolate without hearing half of Vanbrugh’s business. Occasionally Daniel would glance up to discover Vanbrugh staring at him. Perhaps the architect knew he had corresponded with Marlborough. Perhaps it was something else.

  At any rate, Vanbrugh was there wh
en Daniel walked down from Crane Court, and within a few moments he had a great deal more reason to stare. For Daniel had scarcely sat down before a really excellent carriage pulled up in front of the club, and the head of Sir Christopher Wren appeared in its window, asking for Dr. Daniel Waterhouse. Daniel obliged by coming out and climbing right in. The magnificence of this vehicle, and the beauty of the four matched horses that drew it, were sufficient to stop traffic on the Strand, which greatly simplified the task of getting it turned around and aimed back the way Daniel had come, eastwards into the city.

  “I sent a carter round to Crane Court, as you requested, to collect whatever it was you wanted collected. He shall meet us at St. Stephen Walbrook and then he is yours for the day.”

  “I am in your debt.”

  “Not at all. May I ask what it is?”

  “Rubbish from the attic. A gift to our scientific brethren in St. Petersburg.”

  “Then I am in your debt. Given the nature of my work, what a scandal it would raise, if Crane Court collapsed under the weight of beetles.”

  “Let us consider all accounts settled between us, then.”

  “Did you really go through all of it!?”

  “What I am really after is the residue of Hooke.”

  “Oh-er! You shan’t find it there. Sir Isaac.”

  “Hooke and Newton are the two most difficult persons I have ever known-”

  “Flamsteed belongs too in that Pantheon.”

  “Hooke thought Newton stole his ideas.”

  “Yes. He made me aware of it.”

  “Newton considered himself aggrieved by any such accusations. Hooke’s legacy could only support Hooke, and never exonerate Newton-so away with all such rubbish! But Hooke, being no less obstreperous than Newton, must have anticipated this-he would therefore have placed his most valuable stuff out of Newton’s reach.”

  Wren bore his eighty-one years as an arch supports tons of stone. He had been a sort of mathematical and mechanical prodigy. The quicksilver that had seemingly welled up out of the ground, round the time of Cromwell, had been especially concentrated in him. Later that tide had seemed to ebb, as many of the early Royal Society men had succumbed to a heaviness of the limbs, or of the spirit. Not so with Wren, who seemed to be changing from an elfin youth into an angel, with only a brief sojourn in Manhood. He wore a tall fluffy silver wig, and clothing of light color, with airy lace at the throat and wrists, and his face was in excellent condition. His age showed mostly in the dimples of his cheeks, which had lengthened to crevices, and in the fragile skin of his eyelids, which had become quite loose, pink, and swollen. But even this only seemed to lend him a placid and mildly amused look. Daniel saw now that Wisdom had been among the gifts that God had bestowed on the young Wren, and that it had led him into architecture: a field where the results spoke for themselves, and in which it was necessary to remain on speaking terms with large numbers of one’s fellow humans for years at a time. The other early Royal Society men had not recognized Wren’s wisdom, and so there had been whispers, fifty years ago, that the wonder boy was squandering his gifts by going into the building trade. Daniel had been as guilty of saying so as anyone else. But Wren’s decision had long since been vindicated, and Daniel-who’d made his own decisions, some wiser than others-felt no trace of envy, and no regret. Only a sort of awed bemusement, as their carriage emerged from Ludgate and circumnavigated St. Paul’s church-yard, and Wren parted a curtain with one finger to cast an eye over St. Paul’s, like a shepherd scanning his flock.