Quintessence Sky

by David Walton

  An idea wormed its way into Matthew's mind, taking shape despite his fury. There was a way. There was still salt in the soil—a lot less than there should be, but it was still there, all around them, underneath the hooked feet of their manticore enemies.

  "Tell everyone to be ready to go," Matthew said. "We head for the mountains."

  EVER since the snow lilies' salt production had waned, salt farmers had been forced to find better methods to meet the needs of the colony. Their latest technique had been invented by Catherine's father using fire buffalo bones. A buffalo jaw and a connected piece of its skull were separated to make a long quintessence thread. These threads were stretched out radially from the cluster of buildings, through the soil, to form a large circle around them some two hundred paces away in every direction.

  When fire buffalo grazed, they drew salt up out of the ground through the roots of the grass. The grass itself had salt content, like the rest of Horizon life, but they needed more to fuel their daily pyrotechnic displays. Inside one of the buildings, a circle of buffalo jaws could be manipulated to perform the same function, drawing the salt up out of the ground along the line of the quintessence thread that normally connected the jaw to a portion of its skull. The only difference was that the colonists had stretched that line to be two hundred paces long.

  The salt farmers would manipulate the jaws in the morning, which, once the dew dried, would leave a crystalline layer of salt across the ground like a gigantic white wagon wheel. They spent the rest of the day collecting it, then unearthed the skull bone fragments and buried them slightly farther along the circle, so as to draw salt from different lines of earth the next day.

  Of course, salt-drawing was not the only thing a fire buffalo could do. For safety, certain portions of the jaw had been removed, but Matthew knew how to get at those spots anyway. He prepared each one, having no way to test it, but fairly confident he had it right. If he was wrong, then even more colonists would die, but he couldn't let himself slip down that mental path again. He thought about Catherine, dying alone in a black pit, and his anger grew hot again.

  "Tell them all to go," he told his father. "Run due north and don't look back." Then he pressed all the jaw mechanisms at once.

  Lines of fire erupted from the ground in every direction as the salt was consumed. This was quintessence fire, white and bright. It gave off little heat, but it was deadly, and caught on any quintessence-formed material with uncanny speed. If any manticores had been patrolling, they were likely already dead, or at least trapped between two walls of silent flames, unable to cross to see where the colonists were escaping.

  Matthew pushed out of the building just as it, too, erupted in flame, and raced north after the others.

  CHAPTER 16

  FOR the second time, the king and his officers gathered at Ramos's request in a field outside London. Carillo was there again, his cream doublet laundered, as were a dozen others of the king's trusted men.

  "On your left are six trained soldiers," Ramos said. "Veterans of many wars. As you can see, they are armored and hold weapons with which they have killed before. I do not know these men, and they were not told ahead of time what to expect. We are going to stage a melee. These six men . . . "—he paused for effect, then drew an ordinary carpenter's hammer from his belt and brandished it—"against me."

  He expected laughter and was not disappointed. He was not an imposing figure. He was neither strong nor tall, and to be honest, he had developed a bit of a paunch from eating the king's food. But that was the point. They were meant to understand beyond doubt that what they were seeing wasn't the result of skill or physical strength.

  The men ranged about him in the traditional tournament style, laughing and readying a variety of weapons: sword, mace, and axe. Ramos removed his priest's robe, leaving only a long undertunic.

  "This is a farce," Carillo objected. "He's paid these men to take a fall for him."

  "Ten gold sovereigns to any man who spills the priest's blood," the king said calmly. It was much more than Ramos could possibly have offered them.

  Ramos's adversaries grinned broadly. Ramos swallowed. This had better work. "Begin," he said.

  Generally, this kind of fight was staged for entertainment, to show off the prowess of a champion who could defeat two or three men at once. No one man could defeat six, however strong and skilled. As his adversaries approached, sneering and clearly enjoying the idea of being paid a fortune to beat a priest bloody, Ramos started to have second thoughts. If this went sour, he doubted these men would let him go with just a scratch.

  The first approached, a square-jawed brute at least two span tall, and drove a spiked fist into Ramos's gut. Ramos flinched, but as intended, the blow went right through him as if he were made of smoke. The soldier, off balance, fell on the ground, and Ramos struck him on the side of the head with the hammer. It was an awkward blow, but hard enough to make him howl in rage and pain.

  In an instant, the others were on him. Ramos swung the hammer with abandon, heedless of the other men's weapons. Swords and axes passed through him without harm, but his hammer blows fell with crushing force. His biggest danger was that the hammer might be yanked from his grasp, so he held onto it with all his might.

  The fight ended quickly. Wiser men might have regrouped or even run from such an invulnerable adversary, but these soldiers had been trained from childhood that cowardice was worse than death, and unyielding, savage onslaught was the only way to survive. They battered futilely away until Ramos had five of the six lying unconscious on the ground.

  The sixth must have been cleverer than the rest. He was the smallest, carried a short sword, and probably survived by his wits on the battlefield more than brute strength. As Ramos delivered a final blow on the fifth attacker, the sixth darted forward and grasped the pouch at Ramos's neck. With a mighty yank, he snapped the leather cord and threw the pouch far away.

  Ramos knew he was done for. He tried to run, but he tripped over one of the prone bodies and sprawled to the ground. His attacker was there in an instant, fury twisting his face. He stepped hard on Ramos's wrist, and lifted his sword high to strike off his arm. Terrified, Ramos tried to roll away, but he was held fast.

  It was the king who saved him. One moment, the brute's sword was swinging down toward him; the next a jeweled and shining blade was buried in his neck. The soldier toppled and fell in a gurgling rush of blood, revealing Philip standing behind him.

  "I can't have my brightest inventor losing an arm," he said. He held out a bloody hand to Ramos. Ramos clasped it, and Philip hauled him to his feet. "Besides, I have no desire to waste ten gold sovereigns."

  The watching generals applauded. A page retrieved Ramos's pouch and returned it to him, and Ramos demonstrated once again how his body could be completely insubstantial while appearing just as solid as ever. Even Carillo approached and slapped him on the back, and exclaimed as his hand passed through Ramos's shoulder. After that, they all had to reach a hand through him, staring in wonder as they felt no resistance. Some were disturbed by the experience, crossing themselves and murmuring wards against witchcraft, but no one dared denounce it in light of the king's clear approval.

  Afterwards, the king dismissed his advisors, all except Barrosa, and made Ramos explain how it worked.

  "I figured it out from the bird, Majesty," Ramos said, bowing low.

  "That invisible one that makes such a racket?"

  "Yes, Your Grace. We can't see it or touch it, but somehow it's there. We might think it a spirit, and yet it eats the seeds we give it. I wondered where the seeds went when the bird ate them."

  King Philip laughed. "The room is probably littered with bird droppings that we can't see or touch."

  "Just so. And I found them."

  "How?" Barrosa said.

  "I embedded tiny iron filings in the seeds that I fed to the bird. Then, after a time, I searched for them with a lodestone."

  "If you could neither see nor feel them, how
did you know you had found them?" the king said.

  "The lodestone weighed more."

  The king's eyebrows shot up. "The filings are no longer material . . . and yet they weigh more? It makes no sense."

  "They are still a part of the material world—the bird can eat and digest the seeds, after all. It's just that something has been done to them. Two things, in fact. They have been changed so that light will pass through them unhindered, and they have been changed so that other matter will pass through them unhindered."

  The king nodded. "And today, you duplicated the second feat. Can you also duplicate the first?"

  "Alas, no. Not yet, Your Majesty."

  "But how did you do it?" Barrosa demanded.

  "I obtained a quantity of the bird's saliva," Ramos answered, enjoying the consternation on the faces of both king and friend. "Yes, I know the objections. How did I extract saliva from an invisible bird? How could I possibly get enough to cover my body with it? It was the obvious step, though, you see. Something in the seeds' passage through the bird caused the change. Since we did not see the seeds, after they were eaten, sliding in mid-air down the bird's throat, I concluded that it must be its saliva."

  King Philip grinned and squeezed Ramos's shoulder. "It's enough for me. You are a genius, and you will be rewarded."

  Barrosa's face showed clearly that the explanation was not enough for him, but he could hardly say so until the king had left.

  "It still requires a shekinah," Ramos said, shrugging. "So it is only of limited use."

  "That may soon change," the king said. "Continue this great work. You are the sword of God, bringing light to the world."

  Barrosa was beside himself with impatience while the king and his retinue prepared to leave. When they were finally gone, he rounded on Ramos, who couldn't contain a smirk. "Tell me the rest!" Barrosa said. "My curiosity is not so easily satisfied."

  "You mean the part where I got the bird to kiss me?" Ramos said, grinning.

  Barrosa punched him on the arm, but of course, his fist passed right through. He grunted in frustration. "Come now, it's amazing. How did you do it?"

  "It's like a conjuror's trick. If I tell you, you'll realize how simple it is, and you'll lose all your wonder for the trick itself."

  "Just tell me!"

  "Collecting the saliva required no miracle. I floated the seeds in a measure of water. The bird plucked them up, naturally leaving a tiny amount of saliva behind in the water."

  "And you isolated it?"

  "No. The water itself took on the quality of the saliva. When I dipped a rod into it, the rod became insubstantial. It can, apparently, be greatly diluted and still have the same effect. Only a tiny amount is sufficient."

  "But then, why didn't you turn invisible?"

  "I don't know. Maybe that's accomplished through a different means. Maybe the saliva needs to be less dilute to achieve invisibility."

  "Can you change back? Now that the saliva is on you, can you become substantial again?"

  Ramos laughed. "It would be a big problem for me if I couldn't. No, I tested that on the rod before using it on myself. It takes a lot of scrubbing, but it can be taken off. Besides, it wears off by itself in a few hours. Evaporates, or just loses its potency."

  Barrosa gripped his head and shook it as if trying to dislodge something inside. "But it doesn't make any sense. If only your skin has touched the saliva, why didn't one of those swords pass through your skin only to pierce your heart?"

  Ramos lifted his hands and shrugged. "Perhaps it's not allowing things to pass through my skin, exactly. Perhaps it simply deflects the sword into another space when it touches one side of my skin, and then back into our space on the other side."

  "Another space? What are you talking about?"

  "A space behind the material world. The void behind the atoms."

  Barrosa grew quiet. "That's atomism," he said. "It's not orthodox church doctrine."

  Ramos brushed the idea aside with an awkward motion. "Just an example," he said. "There are many explanations. Which one is the right one, well . . ."

  "Next thing you know, you'll be reading Copernicus," Barrosa said.

  There was a tense silence, then Barrosa laughed and Ramos joined in with him. "I can't believe you put on this show," Barrosa said. "If you had missed a spot with that stuff, you could be bleeding out on the grass."

  Ramos relaxed. "Something else interesting I found with the rods. If you dip two of them in the saliva water, then strike them together . . ."

  "They touch each other," Barrosa guessed.

  "They do."

  "Even though either one of them would pass through any other material thing."

  Ramos nodded. "As if both were material after all."

  "Or . . ." Barrosa couldn't finish the thought.

  Ramos did it for him. "Or as if both, encountering the saliva on the other rod, were deflected into a space outside the elements of the material world around them, and there struck each other, just as materially as ever."

  They looked at each other. The Church had opposed ideas like this for centuries. Atomism was at its root an atheistic philosophy. It suggested that the world was a machine, a mere byproduct of atoms crashing together in random ways, and that everything that we called a tree, a chair, a star, or a man, was bound by the same rules and governed by the same random interactions. If the universe was nothing more than a machine, then what room did that leave for God?

  It was a chilling, dizzying thought, and Ramos felt his heart racing. If heretical musings like this were heard by the wrong people, he could go up against the Inquisition. Much worse, however, was the question of what he, Ramos, believed in his heart. Did he really think the world worked in such haphazard fashion? Didn't that go against the whole idea that God had made the Creation exactly as it should be, with all the mountains and oceans and stars perfectly in place? But then, he had already seen the stars change. Perhaps the mountains and oceans could change, too, given enough time.

  Ramos pondered these things, disturbed, as they made their way back to Whitehall. No sooner had he returned, than a liveried runner found him to say that the king wanted to see him, alone, in his privy chambers.

  KING PHILIP was never alone. He had menservants to dress and shave and coif him, cupbearers and waiters to bring him food and drink, a chief groom of the toilet to see to his necessaries; he had bodyguards and door sentries, scribes and translators and harbingers, a chief historian to record his life story (which twice already he had burned in pique), and jugglers and minstrels and clowns. His most favored friends and advisors rarely left his side. Today, however, he was in his most privy chambers, alone, without even the most lowly servant to attend him.

  Ramos trembled with anticipation. Such an honor was unheard of, and would be buzzed about the court for days, since all those who had been sent out of the room would be jealous to know what had transpired, and fearful for what it might mean for them. If he were an ambitious man, he could easily turn such a meeting to his political advantage, by hinting this, suggesting that, or intimating that favors done for him might mean a favorable word in the king's ear. Ramos had no such intentions, but he still quaked to think of what difficult or dangerous task the king might ask of him.

  The king sat in a straight-backed chair. To his left, on a small service stool, sat a porcelain dish and a tiny pair of silver scissors. Ramos understood that he was meant to assume a duty generally performed by the groom of the king's toilet, that of clipping the king's fingernails. For any other man, this would be a lowly task, but for the King of Spain, Portugal, and England, it was an honor, a private intimacy that involved touching the king's own person. It was a mark of the king's favor and trust.

  Ramos knelt by the tool and took up the silver scissors, terrified that he might mangle the job or cut the king's hand by mistake.

  "You have shown your faithfulness and devotion," the king said.

  "Thank you, Your Grace." Ramos took the king's
fifth finger in his own trembling hand and delicately snipped off the edge of the nail. Better to leave too much, he thought, than to cut too short.

  "I have another service to ask of you," the king said.

  "Only speak it, and I will fulfill it to the best of my humble abilities."

  "Have you ever met the Princess Elizabeth?"

  "Never. I only saw her once, on el Domingo de Ramos."

  "Ah yes. Her secret arrival in the city." The edges of Philip's mouth turned up slightly. "To which everyone in the kingdom turned out."

  "Just so, Your Grace."

  "Elizabeth is a conundrum. She appears innocent and guileless to the people, yet she is shrewd as a snake. She knows more than she should, and she manipulates those around her—even her jailors—like a master puppeteer. If there is anyone in this kingdom who threatens our sovereignty, it is she, and yet I cannot kill her, lest the people revolt. The best would be to marry her off to a Spanish nobleman, thus nullifying her claim to the throne, and yet this, too, would strain our command of the English people, who hate foreign rule. She is a spark from which the fires of rebellion can spring, and yet I cannot be rid of her."

  Ramos finished trimming the nails on one hand, but the king did not offer his other. Ramos noticed a file partly obscured by the bowl, and picked it up, tentatively running it along the nails to smooth out the rough edges. "What would you have me do, Your Grace?" Ramos said.

  The king frowned down at him. "Put some strength in it, man."

  "What? Oh. Yes, Your Grace," Ramos said and applied the nail file more vigorously.

  "I want you to hear the Lady Elizabeth's confession," the king said.

  Ramos waited to hear more, but the king was silent. "She is a Protestant," Ramos said. "Will she not refuse to confess?"

  "Your task will be to convince her."

  "Does England have no priests? Surely she would sooner confess to one of her own countrymen, if to anyone at all."