WATERHOUSE, WAIT STILL: 1675–. Son of Praise-God in Boston. Graduate of Harvard College. Congregational preacher.
WEEM, WALTER: 1652–. Husband of Emma Waterhouse.
WHEELWRIGHT, JANE: see Waterhouse, Jane.
WILHELMINA CAROLINE: see Caroline, Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach.
WILKINS, JOHN (BISHOP OF CHESTER): 1614–1672. Cryptographer. Science fiction author. Founder, first chairman, and first secretary of the Royal Society. Private chaplain to Charles Louis, Elector Palatinate. Warden of Wadham (Oxford) and Master of Trinity (Cambridge). Prebendary of York, Dean of Ripon, holder of many other ecclesiastical appointments. Friend of Nonconformists, Supporter of Freedom of Conscience.
WILLESDEN, EARL OF: see Waterhouse, Sterling.
WILLIAM II OF ORANGE: 1626–1650. Father of the better-known William III of Orange. Died young (of smallpox).
WILLIAM III OF ORANGE: 1650–1702. With Mary, daugher of James II, co-sovereign of England from 1689.
WINTER KING: see Frederick V.
WINTER QUEEN: see Stuart, Elizabeth.
WREN, CHRISTOPHER: 1632–1723. Prodigy, Natural Philosopher, and Architect, a member of the Experimental Philosophical Club and later Fellow of the Royal Society.
YORK, DUKE OF: The traditional title of whomever is next in line to the English throne. During much of this book, James, brother to Charles II.
DE LA ZEUR: Eliza was created Countess de la Zeur by Louis XIV.
Acknowledgments
A WORK LIKE THIS ONE hangs in an immense web of dependencies that cannot be done justice by a brief acknowledgments page. Such a project would be inconceivable were it not for the efforts of scholars and scientists dating back to the era of Wilkins and Comenius, and extending into the present day. Not to say as much would be unjust. But in a work of fiction, which necessarily strays from historical and scientific truth, acknowledgments can backfire. Serious scholars mentioned below should be applauded for their good work, never blamed for my tawdry divagations.
The project would not have happened it all were it not for serendipitous conversations several years ago with George Dyson and Steven Horst.
The following scholars (again in alphabetical order) have published work that was essential to the completion of this project. While eager to give them due credit, I am aware that they may be chagrined by my work’s many excursions from historical truth. Readers who want to know what really happened should buy and read their books, while blaming the errors herein on me: Julian Barbour, Gale E. Christianson, A. Rupert Hall, David Kahn, Hans Georg Schulte-Albert, Lee Smolin, Richard Westfall, D. T. Whiteside.
Particular mention must go to Fernand Braudel, to whose work this book may be considered a discursive footnote. Many other scholarly works were consulted during this project, and space does not permit mentioning them here. Of particular note is Sir Winston Spencer Churchill’s six-volume biography of Marlborough, which people who are really interested in this period of history should read, and people who think that I am too long-winded should weigh.
Special thanks to Béla and Gabriella Bollobás, Doug Carlston, and Tomi Pierce for providing me with access to places I could not have seen (Bollobás) or worked in (Carlston/Pierce) otherwise. George Jewsbury and Catherine Durandin and Hugo Durandin DeSousa provided timely assistance. Greg Bear lent me two books; I promise to return them! And for talking to me about gunpowder, and listening equably to the occasional rant about Alchemy, thanks to Marco Kaltofen, P. E., of the Natick Indian Plantation and Needham West Militia Companies.
Helping in many ways to make this possible on the publishing end, and exhibiting superhuman patience, were Jennifer Hershey, Liz Darhansoff, Jennifer Brehl, and Ravi Mirchandani.
Jeremy Bornstein, Alvy Ray Smith, and Lisa Gold read the penultimate draft and supplied useful commentary. The latter two, along with the cartographer Nick Springer, participated in creation of maps, diagrams, and family trees. More detail is to be found on the website BaroqueCycle.com.
Copyright
Refracting sphere illustration from the facsimile edition of Robert Hooke’s Philosophical Experiments and Observations, edited by W. Derham.
Published by Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., London, 1967.
Flea illustration from Robert Hooke’s 1665 Micrographia reproduced by permission of Octavo, www.octavo.com.
Illustrations from Isaac Newton’s 1729 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy courtesy of Primary Source Microfilm.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
QUICKSILVER. Copyright © 2003 by Neal Stephenson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780061792779
Version 12132013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
FIRST EDITION
Stephenson, Neal.
Quicksilver / Neal Stephenson.—
p. cm.—(The Baroque cycle; v. 1)
ISBN 978-0-380-97742-0
1. Adventures and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Seventeenth century—Fiction.
3. Eighteenth century—Fiction. 4. Scientists—Fiction. 5. Alchemists—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3569.T3868 Q53 2003
813’.54—dc21 2002035752
Map
Dedication
To Maurine
Thanks
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE TO BE THANKED
for their help in the creation of the Baroque Cycle of which this book, The Confusion, is the second volume. Accordingly, please see the acknowledgments in Quicksilver, Volume One of the Baroque Cycle.
Author’s Note
THIS VOLUME CONTAINS two novels, Bonanza and Juncto, that take place concurrently during the span 1689–1702. Rather than present one, then the other (which would force the reader to jump back to 1689 in mid-volume), I have interleaved sections of one with sections of the other so that the two stories move forward in synchrony. It is hoped that being thus con-fused shall render them the less confusing to the Reader.
Epigraph
When at the first I took my pen in hand,
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book
In such a mode; nay, I had undertook
To make another, which when almost done,
Before I was aware, I this begun.
—JOHN BUNYAN,The Pilgrim’s Progress,
THE AUTHOR’S APOLOGY FOR HIS BOOK
Contents
Map
Dedication
Thanks
Author’s Note
Epigraph
BOOK 4: BONANZA
Barbary Coast
Book 5: The Juncto
Dundalk, Ireland
The Dunkerque Residence of the Marquis and the Marquise d’Ozoir
BOOK 4: BONANZA
Throne Room of the Pasha, the Kasba, Algiers
Book 5: The Juncto
Château Juvisy
Dunkerque Residence of the d’Ozoirs
Cap Gris-Nez, France
Letter from Daniel Waterhouse to Eliza
Letter from Eliza to Daniel
La Dunette
BOOK 4: BONANZA
The Gulf of Cadiz
Off Malta
Book 5: The Juncto
> Eliza to Leibniz
Leibniz to Eliza
Schloß Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony
Ireland
A Hay-rick, St.-Malo, France
Château d’Arcachon, St.-Malo, France
Eliza to Lothar von Hacklheber
Eliza to King William III of England
Eliza to Monsieur le Chevalier d’Erquy
Café Esphahan, Rue de l’Orangerie, Versailles
Daniel Waterhouse to Eliza
Roger Comstock, Marquis of Ravenscar, to Eliza
Leibniz to Eliza
Eliza to Samuel de la Vega
Eliza to the Marquis of Ravenscar
Eliza to Samuel Bernard
Samuel Bernard to Eliza
Cabin of Météore, off Cherbourg, France
London
Gresham’s College
BOOK 4: BONANZA
Ahmadabad, the Mogul Empire
The Surat-Broach Road, Hindoostan
Book 5: The Juncto
Mrs. Bligh’s Coffee-house, London
Bonaventure Rossignol to Eliza
Eliza to Rossignol
Eliza to Pontchartrain
Rossignol to Eliza
Pretzsch, Saxony
Pontchartrain to Eliza
Eliza to Pontchartrain
The Dower-house of Pretzsch
Jean Bart to Eliza
Leipzig
Eliza to Jean Bart
BOOK 4: BONANZA
Southern Fringes of the Mogul Empire
Malabar
Book 5: The Juncto
The Thames
Dunkirk
An Abandoned Church in France
Winter Quarters of the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards Near Namur
The Track to Pretzsch
A House Overlooking the Meuse Valley
Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover
BOOK 4: BONANZA
Japan
Book 5: The Juncto
Berlin
BOOK 4: BONANZA
The Pacific Ocean
Book 5: The Juncto
Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin
BOOK 4: BONANZA
Mexico City, New Spain
Mexico City
Qwghlm
Book 5: The Juncto
Hôtel Arcachon
BOOK 4: BONANZA
En Route from Paris to London
Credits
Copyright
Book 4
Bonanza
So great is the dignity and excellency of humane nature, and so active those sparks of heavenly fire it partakes of, that they ought to be look’d upon as very mean, and unworthy the name of men, who thro’ pusillanimity, by them call’d prudence, or thro’ sloth, which they stile moderation, or else through avarice, to which they give the name of frugality, at any rate withdraw themselves from performing great and noble actions.
—GIOVANNI FRANCESCO GEMELLI CARERI,
A Voyage Round the World
Barbary Coast
OCTOBER 1689
HE WAS NOT MERELY AWAKENED, but detonated out of an uncommonly long and repetitive dream. He could not remember any of the details of the dream now that it was over. But he had the idea that it had entailed much rowing and scraping, and little else; so he did not object to being roused. Even if he had been of a mind to object, he’d have had the good sense to hold his tongue, and keep his annoyance well-hid beneath a simpering merry-Vagabond façade. Because what was doing the waking, today, was the most tremendous damned noise he’d ever heard—it was some godlike Force not to be yelled at or complained to, at least not right away.
Cannons were being fired. Never so many, and rarely so large, cannons. Whole batteries of siege-guns and coastal artillery discharging en masse, ranks of ’em ripple-firing along wall-tops. He rolled out from beneath the barnacle-covered hull of a beached ship, where he had apparently been taking an afternoon nap, and found himself pinned to the sand by a downblast of bleak sunlight. At this point a wise man, with experience in matters military, would have belly-crawled to some suitable enfilade. But the beach all round him was planted with hairy ankles and sandaled feet; he was the only one prone or supine.
Lying on his back, he squinted up through the damp, sand-caked hem of a man’s garment: a loose robe of open-weave material that laved the wearer’s body in a gold glow, so that he could look directly up into the blind eye of the man’s penis—which had been curiously modified. Inevitably, he lost this particular stare-down. He rolled back the other way, performing one and a half uphill revolutions, and clambered indignantly to his feet, forgetting about the curve of the hull and therefore barking his scalp on a phalanx of barnacles. Then he screamed as loud as he could, but no one heard him. He didn’t even hear himself. He experimented with plugging his ears and screaming, but even then he heard naught but the sound of the cannons.
Time to take stock of matters—to bring the situation in hand. The hull was blocking his view. Other than it, all he could see was a sparkling bay, and a stony break-water. He strode into the sea, watched curiously by the man with the mushroom-headed yard, and, once he was out knee-deep, turned around. What he saw then made it more or less obligatory to fall right on his arse.
This bay was spattered with bony islets, close to shore. Rising from one of them was a squat round fortress that (if he was any judge of matters architectural) had been built at grand expense by Spaniards in desperate fear of their lives. And apparently those fears had been well founded because the top of that fort was all fluttery with green banners bearing silver crescent moons. The fort had three tiers of guns on it (more correctly, the fort was three tiers of guns) and every one of ’em looked, and sounded, like a sixty-pounder, meaning that it flung a cannonball the size of a melon for several miles. This fort was mostly shrouded in powder-smoke, with long bolts of flame jabbing out here and there, giving it the appearance of a thunderstorm that had been rammed and tamped into a barrel.
A white stone breakwater connected this fort to the mainland, which, at first glance, impressed him as a sheer stone wall rising forty or feet from this narrow strip of muddy beach, and crowded with a great many more huge cannons, all being fired just as fast as they could be swabbed out and stuffed with powder.
Beyond the wall rose a white city. Being as he was at the base of a rather high wall, he wouldn’t normally expect to be able to see anything on the opposite side thereof, save the odd cathedral-spire poking out above the battlements. But this city appeared to’ve been laboriously spackled onto the side of a precipitous mountain whose slopes rose directly from the high-tide mark. It looked a bit like a wedge of Paris tilted upwards by some tidy God who wanted to make all the shit finally run out of it. At the apex, where one would look for whatever crowbar or grapple the hypothetical God would’ve used to accomplish this prodigy, was, instead, another fortress—this one of a queer Moorish design, surrounded with its own eight-sided wall that was, inevitably, a-bristle with even more colossal cannons, as well as mortars for heaving bombs out to sea. All of those were being fired, too—as were all of the guns spraying from the several additional fortresses, bastions, and gun-platforms distributed around the city’s walls.
During rare intervals between the crushing thuds of the sixty-pounders, he could hear peppery waves of pistol-and musket-fire rolling around the place, and now (beginning to advert on smaller things) he saw a sort of smoky, crowded lawn growing out of the wall-tops—save instead of grass-blades this lawn was made up of men. Some were dressed in black, and some in white, but most wore more colorful costumes: baggy white trousers belted with brilliantly hued swathes of silk, and brightly embroidered vests—frequently, several such vests nested—and turbans or red cylindrical hats. Most of those who were dressed after this fashion had a pistol in each hand and were firing them into the air or reloading.
The man with the outlandish johnson—swarthy, with wavy black hair in a curious ’do, and a knit skullcap—hitched up his robe, and sloshed out to see i
f he was all right. For he still had both hands clamped over the sides of his head, partly to stanch the bleeding of the barnacle-gashes, and partly to keep the sound from blowing the top of his skull out to sea. The man peered down and looked into his eyes and moved his lips. The look on his face was serious, but ever so slightly amused.
He reached up and grabbed this fellow’s hand and used it to haul himself up to his feet. Both men’s hands were so heavily callused that they could practically catch musket-balls out of the air, and their knuckles were either bleeding, or else recently scabbed over.
He had stood up because he wanted to see what was the target of all of this shooting, and how it could possibly continue to exist. A fleet of three or four dozen ships was arrayed in the harbor, and (no surprise here) they were all firing their guns. But the ones that looked like Dutch frigates were not firing at the ones that looked like heathen galleys, nor vice versa, and none of them seemed to be firing at the vertiginous white city. All of the ships, even the ones that were of European design, flew crescent-moon banners.
Finally his eye settled on one ship, which was unique in that she was the only vessel or building in sight that was not vomiting smoke and spitting flame in all directions. This one was a galley, very much in the Mohametan style, but extraordinarily fine, at least to anyone who found whorish decoration appealing—her non-functioning bits were a mess of gold-leafed gewgaws that glowed in the sun, even through drifting banks of powder-smoke. Her lateen sail had been struck and she was proceeding under oar-power, but in a stately manner. He found himself examining the movements of her oars just a bit too closely, and admiring the uniformity of the strokes more than was healthy for a Vagabond in his right mind: leading to the questions, was he still a Vagabond, and was he in his right mind? He recalled—dimly—that he had lived in Christendom during one part of his sorry life, and had been well advanced in the losing of his mind to the French Pox—but he seemed all right now, save that he couldn’t recall where he was, how he’d gotten there, or anything at all of recent events. And the very meaning of that word “recent” was called into question by the length of his beard, which reached down to his stomach.
The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World Page 119