* * * *
III
When I was sure there was no chance of pursuit from Fred Partridge and his men, I slowed my pace to a walk, and began at last the purposeful part of my journey, heading down the rutted old Roman road toward Otterburn. The day was just as cold as those before, the ice holding fast to the land. But I was young enough and fit, and soon walked off the effects of my narrow squeak with the ice meteor and my night in the barn. I had my purse and had every intention of making a comfortable journey of it, lodging in inns and farmhouses with perhaps the bonus of a plump innkeeper's wife or two to keep me interested, and if I was lucky I might catch a coach service.
But these plans came to naught.
It was soon apparent that the icefall on Jedburgh had not been an isolated event. The country hereabouts, and even as I walked over Carter Bar into England, was pocked with craters, many of them tremendous pits that dwarfed the one that had almost killed me in Jedburgh. Too, I observed a multiplicity of the little ice crabs scuttling about the countryside, which would get under your feet when you were walking, particularly when the evening came on. I took no particular care about crushing the little pests. But I saw their greater brethren loom on the horizon, those lenticular bodies horizontal and their legs always dead straight and shuffling back and forth, and gleaming a cold blue when the rare sunlight caught their carcasses. And though I could not see them at it, I suspected they too moved about more at night, from the icy grinding that echoed across the dark country as I huddled for shelter in ditches or in woods.
In response to this invasion the villages on my route, Campdown and Byrness and Rochester, were abandoned like plague towns. It seemed the people had fled in panic, though where they had imagined to go I could not fathom, for the whole country was assailed by the beasts. It seemed to me that the monsters might not be interested in humanity at all, and that the damage they did to our communities might be as incidental to their purpose as the flattening of a molehill under the boot of a marching soldier. Still, there was often an empty cottage or two that offered me a bed, and a bit of bread or hanging meat or moldy cheese, and I got myself warmed up regularly.
When I came on Otterburn I had a choice to make. I could continue on Dere Street to the south and east making across the fell for Newcastle, or I could cut east and follow the valley of the Coquet toward Alnwick. Though I would come on the Great North Road further north than Newcastle, this latter course I decided on. I was not the only footsore traveler, and the villages were becoming increasingly emptied out, and I fancied I might provision myself with the fishing on the Coquet. And I fretted how things might be in the south if the vast population of England was taking flight from its cities. It might be better to make for the north and Edinburgh, where I would have to deal with an irate Presbyterian father-in-law, but better that than a mob of starving Londoners.
So I followed the Coquet as far as Rothbury, provisioning myself with fish from the frozen river, and then cut across the moor toward Alnwick. I repeatedly saw the ice monsters march in the distance, and saw more ice meteors crash to the earth.
Before I reached the town itself I came at last upon the Great North Road, that great old rutted artery of ours. I had traveled this way with my father from London to Edinburgh some years before; it and the rest of the Romans’ old routes are still the best roads in the country. We live in the shadow of a better past, and I have often believed myself born into a wrong age! The North Road, in fact, was at the time of the Ice War being improved for the first time since a legionary last wiped his backside on this island thirteen centuries ago, these enhancements being paid for by a system of tolls and turnpikes as legislated by Parliament. This system of maintenance I thoroughly approved, and I intended to tip my cap at each of the turnpike gates that I jumped over with my purse unopened.
But that day I did not have the road to myself. I was dismayed, if not surprised, by the volume of traffic thereupon.
I stood on a slight rise by the side of the road and considered it. There were stagecoaches and broughams and farmers’ carts, and people on foot and dragging barrows and the like that bore bundles of victuals, clothing, barrels of water, even furniture, tables and chairs and carpets. Some of these walkers looked as if they had never set foot upon a road in their lives, and yet were now as cold and mud-spattered as the rest. The odd thing was that while the bulk of this stream of people and horses and vehicles came from the south, perhaps originating in Newcastle and the southern cities, there was a counter-stream of it coming from the north. Standing there watching this great purposeless to-and-froing, I had to laugh.
“Sir, I'm glad in all this distress somebody manages to find something funny.”
I turned. A fellow had come to stand beside me. He was perhaps sixty and well enough dressed, though his coat was torn open at the back, his gaiters mud-splashed and his wig askew. He had a long nose and heavy eyebrows, and eyes that could pierce, but which rarely met your gaze. Behind him, as I noticed now, was a coach toppled over in the ditch, and boxes and cases tumbled in the road. By the side of the coach another man was crouching, and talking softly to somebody within.
I said, “By the look of you, you've come out of that spill.”
He brushed at his grimy coat. “So I have and I'm grateful for no more than a knock or two.” He had the thin tones of the Londoner. “And you, sir, laughing your head off !”
“Oh, not at your upturning—I did not witness it, I assure you.”
“Then what?”
“At all this.” I indicated the crowd. “People fleeing this way and that like ants from a broken-open nest.”
“Ants, eh? You have a lofty view of humanity, sir. It's worse in the south, I can tell you—we've come from London, and even the capital is in a ferment as the Phoebeans burst from the Thames clay. The road is a river of suffering! Can you not see that?”
“Ants,” I repeated. “If the ice monsters are everywhere, what earthly use is fleeing?”
His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “That's just as Swift says.”
“Swift?”
“The Dean, my companion.” He indicated the man by the coach. “You must have a heart as cold as his. Your name, sir?”
I bridled a bit at his peremptory tone, but I gave him my “Jack Hobbes” readily enough. “And you?”
He extended a hand. “Defoe. Daniel Defoe.”
I shook his hand in something of a daze. “Really? Then that's a remarkable coincidence, for I read a book by a namesake of yours not six months back: ‘The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of—'”
“That was one of mine,” he said, and he nodded, adopting a rather superior expression.
I was quite enthused, for I had enjoyed the book. “A rattling tale, sir. Although I never quite believed that a man as self-reliant as your Crusoe would start bleating about Providence. What Providence need he but his own hands?”
“Ah, but my purpose in writing the yarn was wider than moral fabulating. I am greatly taken by the tales the travelers bring back from the unexplored corners of our world. It seemed to me that such an adventure as Crusoe's might never have happened to any man before in the whole history of the world, for never have explorers sailed so far and into such unknown domains, not even the Phoenicians. My story is a new genre that explores novel possibilities: what if this were so?”
I nodded. “I enjoyed the passages of his endurance. He changed his island forever, as the Romans made Britain.”
Defoe gestured at the road. “And we live in their shadow yet. But no Roman ever saw the Americas, man! We live in an age of a great unfreezing of the mind, of the transforming of the fortunes of man—”
“Oh, for God's sake don't let him debate his vulgar scribblings.” This was the fellow Swift, who came clambering up to join us. He was a bulkier man with a rather clipped accent, perhaps a few years younger than Defoe.
Defoe sneered. “Going to press your old Tory pamphlets on him, are you, Swift?”
�
��For something to read when he's finished wiping his arse on your Crusoe, perhaps, Foe—for that is his name, you know, sir, the ‘De’ being the affectation of a man born in Cripplegate....”
And so they bickered, two gentlemen of letters preening at the side of a road full of the destitute, while their coach lay in the dirt. I could not help but laugh again.
“Look here,” Defoe said to me. “You look strong enough, and you are evidently no fool if your reading tastes are anything to go by. You must help us.”
Swift seized on that. “Yes! You can see how we're fixed; our wretched coachmen took off on our horses and left us helpless. We're neither of us men of vigor, and we must get to Edinburgh, for the sake of the King, the country—for all mankind, I wouldn't wonder! Now the first task is to get poor Isaac out of the coach. When that is done you can find us some alternative transport. And then—”
“And then,” I said, tipping my hat, “I will flap my wings and fly up to yon Comet, for there's as much chance of my doing that as buttling for you. Good day to you, gentlemen.”
Swift was outraged. “We three and others were convened at the orders of King George himself—the King! We are a Grand Council of Mathematicians, Alchemists, Astronomers, and other Philosophers—the Great Minds of the age, salted by a few traveler types like this fraud Foe here. Our commission is to find a solution to the blight of the Phoebeans. Having been forced to flee London our destination is Edinburgh, a city with a great concatenation of scholars and yet, according to accounts, less afflicted by Phoebean assaults. Now our coach is overturned, we are abandoned by our men—it is your duty to help us, sir, duty as commanded by the King!”
“A fat lot of good the King has ever done me. And as for duty, mine is to preserve my own life, not to jump to the tune of codheads however high-born.”
Defoe grinned. “Ah, a cynic! A man after your own heart, Swift. Well, then, sir, what will induce you to help us? The Crown is not without means.”
“What use is money? Those—what did you call them?”
“Phoebeans. For some had thought they came from the moon.”
“Ask them their price to forsake the earth for the sky from whence they came.”
Defoe laughed. “A cynic indeed, but a man who's honest even to himself. You should read Swift's ‘Tale of a Tub,’ sir, though it pains me to recommend it. Then if not for duty or money, what would motivate you to look in our carriage? How about curiosity? No man as intelligent as you can be without a smidgen of that. Could you walk away without ever knowing who's in there—eh?”
I eyed him. “You have me there, Mister Defoe. Very well.”
And so, escorted by the two eminent gentlemen, I walked toward the overturned carriage.
Inside, on his back where he had been thrown by the crash, lay a portly man of great years—he might have been eighty. His hair was long and flowing, and truth be told if it was a wig it was as great an artifice as I have seen. His nose was fleshy, his mouth small, and he had an odd, wary look about the eyes. He peered up dimly; I must have been silhouetted against the sky. “Who's there? Is that you, Maclaurin?”
“No, Isaac,” Defoe called, not unkindly. “We've had something of a tumble, and it's rather a long haul to Edinburgh yet.”
“Then who is this young man?”
Rather rudely I snapped back, “My name is Jack Hobbes, if it's your business. More to the point—who, pray, are thee?”
Defoe dug me in the ribs. “Good God, man, this is Isaac Newton! Have you not read the ‘Principia'? Thou art in the presence of greatness!”
I had taught at some good schools and studied at better, and was not ignorant of modern Philosophy. “Of course! You are the vortex fellow, are you not?”
“No,” Newton said icily. “That was Descartes.” As of course I knew, but I could not resist tweaking his tail. “Will you help me out of this damn box, or not?”
Grinning, I could hardly refuse.
* * * *
IV
It took the three of us, the others pulling, me down in the coach pushing, to haul poor Isaac's bulk out of that tipped-over coach; fleet his mind may have been, nimble his great body certainly wasn't. And as we worked, I was aware of a certain shiftiness in the light, of pivoting shadows that brought unpleasant associations to my mind.
At last we had him out by the side of the road. Newton looked about at the ragged, fleeing people and the icebound landscape with his eyebrows raised; he habitually had a rather supercilious expression. “It seems to me self-evident that we must hail one of these carriages, or a cart would do, and continue our journey post-haste.”
Defoe and Swift immediately started arguing about what category of vehicle would suffice, and how much of their luggage they, or rather I, should try to salvage. And all the while, entirely unnoticed by them, our shadows shifted below our feet.
I cut through the chatter. “I humbly submit that we adjourn this meeting to the ditch yonder. Or else your three eminent heads are likely to be stove in by that.” And I pointed to the sky, from whence fell another Cometary fragment, this one a blazing ball that looked to dwarf the piece I had seen fall in Jedburgh.
People started screaming and scattering, picking up their children and running off the road, while helpless elderly folk stumbled as they could. As for the scholars, I never saw before or since three men with a combined age of one hundred and ninety-two years hop in a ditch with such alacrity.
And the fragment struck.
* * * *
As the ground shook, Swift and Defoe to their credit took care to cushion Newton in the ditch, elderly fellows both but putting aside their own discomfort, Defoe lending an arm as a pillow, Swift offering his cloak as a blanket. Newton, though, seemed oblivious; he had a battered leather-covered Bible that he produced from a coat pocket, and he began to thumb through this, muttering verses from the Book of Daniel.
When all seemed calm, I crept up out of the ditch.
The latest icefall had dug a new hole in the earth, bigger than any I had seen before, that pretty neatly cut the Great North Road in two. I learned later that this was near the village of Shilbottle, if you know it. I could see nobody living; everybody who was able seemed to have fled north or south, depending on which side of the hole they happened to be on.
And others, caught up in the tremendous impact, had been scorched, crushed and, worst of all, dismembered. I do not pretend to be a strong man, and the sight of scattered limbs and burst-open guts on the road reminded me of what a fragile bit of clockwork housed my own soul. Aside from that, there were overturned carts and scattered bundles of possessions littering the road—an unrolling carpet of quite good quality, a poor horse with a broken back that neighed pitifully as it tried to raise itself.
In the crater, eggs were already spitting out of the carcass of the fallen bolus, a new generation of chilly colonists come to our frozen world. Not only that, I saw, looking wider, more of the great ice beasts, which Defoe had called “Phoebeans,” were sliding across the landscape, mighty structures like cathedrals on the move—toward us.
I scuttled back into the ditch and reported my findings. “We're the last breathing humans within half a mile, I should judge,” I said. “And the Phoebeans are on the way here, I know not why.”
Defoe said, “We should scarper like the rest. Perhaps we can fix an abandoned cart to give Sir Isaac a ride.”
Without looking up from his Bible Newton pronounced: “No.”
I near exploded. “What means ‘no'?”
But Swift counseled patience. “A moment, Hobbes. What is your thinking, sir?”
“The Phoebeans, whether sentient or no, are a presence in our world now—that seems clear enough. They are a force like the weather, and if we run from them we will be as animals in the field, or as savages in the Indies who flee the storm. We will deal with the Phoebeans as we deal with nature's other challenges, by the power of reason.”
Swift, to my dismay, was nodding enthusiastically. “Yes
—yes, reason, that's the key.”
“But reason relies on observation,” Newton declared from the ditch. “I was able to deduce the law of universal gravitation from Tycho's masses of astronomical sightings, rendered by Kepler into his rules of planetary motion. Now we must similarly observe these Phoebeans.”
“Us?” moaned Defoe. “Why us?”
“Is that not the King's commission?” Swift thundered. “Did we agree to serve on his Council, did we take his shilling, on condition there would be no risk to our persons?” Shuffling in the mud, he bowed from the waist to Newton. “You know I have issues with your over-reliance on Mathematicks, sir, and the reduction of the world to a few computations.” He raised his muddy arms. “We degenerate creatures pronounce one System of the World after another, all based on whimsy and fumes, and each contradicting all the others! What hubris. But I side with thee in your championing of reason. I will be honored to be your Tycho.”
Defoe sneered. “You pompous popinjay. Why, you wouldn't even be on the Council if I had not persuaded Walpole of it, after the way you pamphleted agin him—”
I got to my haunches. “I'll leave the debate to you, gentlemen. I'm off.”
Defoe grabbed my arm. “Wait, Jack. For all our bluster—if you go we three will surely die here.”
“That's of no concern to me, for many men will die before this episode is done. Can I save them all?”
Swift gestured at Newton. “But you could save this man. If he were to die here in this ditch could you live with your conscience?”
“Blame the Phoebeans, not me!”
I spoke defiantly—yet I was not being honest. The truth was that his pomp and piety penetrated my defenses; Swift, a churchman, reminded me too much of my father, damn his eyes.
Defoe, wiser than the others and a wheedler, was still hanging on to my arm. “Just stay a while, Jack. Help us get sorted out before you go.” He glanced at the sky. “It will be dark soon enough. Let's go and have a rummage in the spill on the road, man, you and I. Do you remember how my Crusoe plundered his wrecked ship for provisions? Let's you and I do the same—eh? It will be an adventure.”
Asimov's SF, September 2008 Page 18