Newton’s Fire

by Will Adams

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Scout’s honour. He was convinced he had a destiny. Loners often do, of course; particularly the brilliant ones. And he was born on Christmas Day, which can’t have helped. He kept it to himself, of course, along with his Antitrinitarianism and his other heresies, because you couldn’t exactly go around talking about that kind of thing, not in polite company; but it’s implicit in his private papers.’

  Rachel was only half listening. Her mind had moved on. Or, more accurately, back.

  ‘Anagrammatic pseudonyms,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t have a pen, do you?’

  ‘A pencil.’ He rummaged through the glove compartment, handed it to her, along with a notepad. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Probably nothing.’

  ‘Come on. Share.’

  ‘Okay. You said earlier that Bacon deliberately misspelled “Solomon” as “Salomon” by changing the first “o” to an “a”. That’s right, yes?’

  ‘Yes. So?’

  She tapped the page. ‘That’s not how Newton spells it here.’ She held it up for him to see. ‘He’s changed the final “o” of Solomon to an “a” as well.’

  ‘I wouldn’t read too much into that,’ said Pelham. ‘Spelling was pretty arbitrary back then. An honourable tradition that I choose to follow myself.’

  ‘Yes, but Salomon was deliberately misspelled. That’s what Luke said. Newton would surely have known that. And he’d surely have known how Bacon had misspelled it too. Anyway, why put it all in capitals and then underline it if you don’t want to draw attention to it? And isn’t there something odd about the construction of that whole bottom line?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I know crosswords didn’t exist back then, but doesn’t it read almost like a cryptic clue? And when you were talking just now, I couldn’t help notice that the letters in Ashmole are also in Saloman’s House.’

  Luke frowned and looked closer. ‘You’re right,’ he said.

  ‘I know I’m right,’ she said. ‘That’s why I said it.’

  ‘And if you take those letters out? What does that leave?’

  Rachel jotted SALOMANS HOUSE down on the pad, struck out the letters A S H M O L and E. ‘A, N, S, O, U and another S,’ she said. They looked at it together, but nothing leapt out. ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I really thought I was onto something.’

  ‘You are,’ said Luke. He leaned over and took the pencil from her, his fingers just brushing her skin. ‘But it’s not Ashmole,’ he said. ‘It’s Ashmolean.’ He struck out the A and N, underlined the four remaining letters left sitting there already in the right order, just begging to be read out.

  ‘Sous Ashmolean,’ murmured Rachel, meeting his gaze with something akin to awe. ‘Beneath the Ashmolean.’

  III

  Avram was in his bedroom when he heard his nephew Uri finally returning from work. He zipped up the second holdall then went down to greet him. ‘Good day?’ he asked.

  Uri shrugged. ‘Shimon wants to open in Haifa. We haven’t even got Jerusalem running smoothly yet.’

  ‘Shimon is an ambitious man,’ said Avram. ‘That’s a commendable thing.’ He beckoned him upstairs, put a finger to his lips, pointed to the bedside telephone and the ceiling light socket. He picked up a pad of plain paper and wrote on it: ‘They may be listening. Take off your clothes.’

  Uri frowned. He was about to say something but Avram shook his head and pointed again to the telephone and the light socket. Then he jabbed the tip of his pencil in emphasis against the words he’d already written.

  Uri nodded and began to strip. When he was down to his underwear, Avram handed him a clean shirt, some workman’s overalls and a new pair of sandals. He put them on. They picked up a holdall each and then Avram led him out the rear door onto the communal terrace. Whenever their neighbour Paul was away lecturing in America, as now, Avram kept an eye on his home. They went in through his kitchen, emerged from his front door out into the alley that ran parallel with their own.

  ‘What’s going on?’ murmured Uri.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Avram, and led him through the familiar Old City maze.

  The evening air was pungent with saffron, cinnamon and other spices as stallholders closed for the day, gloomy from lack of customers. A Hasid freewheeled with indecent glee down the narrow cobbled street, arms upraised to the Lord. They passed through Jaffa Gate. A helicopter rattled low overhead, as much to remind people of its presence as to do anything useful. They reached the car park. Avram didn’t know precisely where Ephraim had left the truck, and there were several candidates, so he tried door handles until finally one opened. He felt beneath the driver’s seat and found the keys.

  ‘Whose is this?’ asked Uri.

  ‘A friend’s.’ Avram handed him the keys, gestured for him to take the wheel. ‘He does removals. He lends me a van from time to time.’

  ‘So what’s going on?’ asked Uri, climbing in. ‘All that business with my clothes?’

  ‘They can bug everything these days, so Shlomo says. They can even trace clothes and shoes. Apparently, they have transmitters so small that they can sew them into your hem without you noticing; yet they can still track you wherever you go.’

  ‘But why would they? Are we under suspicion?’

  Avram nodded. ‘Shlomo thinks one of his men may have been talking.’

  Uri looked shocked. ‘Does he know who?’

  ‘No. Not for sure. But if anyone can find out, Shlomo can. And don’t be too alarmed. He swears that none of his men know anything about me, let alone you. But it’s only sensible to take extra precautions until we can be certain.’ He smiled and patted the truck’s dashboard. ‘Especially when we have important business to attend to.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Uri. ‘I was going to ask.’

  ‘New supplies have just been delivered. Communications equipment.’

  ‘You’re showing me our supply route? I thought you didn’t want anyone to know.’

  ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ said Avram. ‘You’re the only one I can trust completely.’

  Uri nodded soberly. ‘Thank you, Uncle. I won’t let you down.’ He belted himself in, turned on the ignition, began to pull out of his space, paused. ‘Where to, then?’ he asked.

  ‘South,’ Avram told him. ‘We’re going to the Negev.’

  IV

  Pelham pulled onto the hard shoulder of the dual carriageway, the better to look at the anagram for himself. ‘Sous is French,’ he said. ‘Did Newton even speak French? I thought it was all English and Latin back then.’

  Luke nodded. ‘He taught himself so that he could read St. Didier in the original.’ He turned to the first page to show them the citation from Le Triomphe Hermetique.

  ‘This Museum of the History of Science woman of yours,’ said Rachel. ‘Olivia, wasn’t it? Can we talk to her?’

  ‘I don’t know her number.’

  ‘But she’s in Oxford, yes?’ said Luke. ‘Why don’t we go see her? It’s pretty much on our way.’

  ‘It’s Sunday. Her museum will be shut by now.’

  ‘Don’t you know where she lives?’

  Pelham shrugged. ‘I know where she lived back then. Odd-something. It seemed so apt for her. Oddminster, maybe. Oddhampton.’

  Luke typed the first three letters into the SatNav and let its predictive software go to work. ‘Oddingley or Oddington,’ he said.

  ‘Oddington. That’s it.’ Pelham looked at them both. ‘What do you reckon? Worth a visit?’

  ‘Damned right,’ said Luke. ‘These people know who we are. The police and counterterrorism and god-knows who else are on their side. They’ll be watching our friends and families, probably monitoring the Internet and the media too. They’ll find us eventually. I say we fight back while we can. If we can find out what they’re looking for, we can take the story public and maybe even be believed.’

  Pelham nodded. ‘Rachel?’


  She nodded emphatically. ‘The sooner we get started, the better. Oxford will be safe enough as long as they’re still searching Crane Court.’

  ‘Good,’ said Pelham. ‘We’re unanimous.’ He pulled a lever and the roof began to pack itself away in his boot, prompting Luke to give him a look. ‘They’re after a car with its roof up,’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Luke. ‘This’ll fool them.’

  The papers began to rustle and flap on the back seat as they moved off. Rachel passed them to Luke to stow in the glove compartment. ‘Sous Ashmolean,’ she smiled. ‘What on earth’s down there? What was Newton working on when Ashmole died?’

  ‘In May 1692?’ replied Luke. ‘Not much. He was still recuperating from the Principia.’ It was understandable enough. Writing it had been arguably the greatest sustained intellectual effort in scientific history. And it had left him utterly exhausted. ‘But he began working again towards the end of the year. On alchemy.’

  ‘Triggered by whatever Ashmole left him,’ suggested Pelham.

  ‘The dates fit,’ agreed Luke. ‘And he worked himself sick over the next twelve months. And I do mean sick. He had a pretty severe mental breakdown, writing bizarre letters to Samuel Pepys and John Locke, accusing them of all kinds of fantastical stuff. Then he wrote them profuse apologies, blaming exhaustion and fumes from his experiments.’

  ‘Two letters hardly constitutes a breakdown,’ said Rachel.

  ‘There were plenty of other indicators too,’ said Luke. ‘For one, it looks like that year broke him. He published some ground-breaking work afterwards, particularly Opticks, but his breakthrough thinking was largely done. And then he wrote this notorious paper called Praxis that …’ He broke off, frowned.

  ‘What?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Luke. ‘Just coincidence. It has to be.’

  ‘What has to be?’

  ‘This paper he wrote. It’s not dated, but we’re pretty sure he wrote it in summer or autumn 1693, because it doesn’t make sense unless he was going through some kind of crisis at the time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘That’s the thing. He claimed in it that he’d achieved multiplication.’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘Multiplication?’

  ‘It’s the ultimate goal of the alchemist,’ said Pelham, answering for Luke. ‘Newton was effectively claiming that he’d discovered the philosopher’s stone itself.’

  FIFTEEN

  I

  Office of the Chief of the General Staff, The Knesset, Jerusalem

  It was the kind of briefing that the Chief of the General Staff Ysrael Levin had hoped he’d never have to be given, yet there was some little part of him that was perversely gratified despite that. People didn’t make careers in the Israeli Defence Forces unless they enjoyed a good crisis. ‘And you’re quite sure about this?’ he asked Judit Hafitz, his head of nuclear programmes.

  ‘We’re quite sure that we’ve found bits of code that shouldn’t be there,’ she told him. ‘What we don’t know yet is how they got there, or what they do. What we don’t know yet is whether they’re malicious or effectively benign. What we don’t know yet is what they mean for our warheads and delivery systems.’

  ‘How can you not know things like that?’

  ‘Because it’s the nature of such worms to separate into a million little pieces, each bit of which then embeds itself out of sight. If this truly is a worm, then it’s brilliantly designed, better than anything we’ve got. It doesn’t respond to simulations. We think it’s been designed to lie dormant until launch commands are given for real. Only then will we be able to see exactly how extensive the infection is, what its effects will be. If we’re lucky, it will be like the millennium bug: all anxiety and then nothing.’

  ‘And if we’re not lucky?’

  ‘Then it could be …’ She closed her eyes for a moment, as though trying to think of the right words: ‘… truly significant.’

  ‘And what does truly significant mean? You can’t seriously be suggesting that this … this worm could deprive us of our missile defence?’

  ‘General, I’m saying that, for all we know, we could launch a strike at Tehran, only to hit Tel Aviv instead.’

  Ysrael Levin could feel the blood draining from his face. No more did he feel that small thrill of gratification. All he felt in the pit of his stomach was an extraordinary dismay. ‘When will you know for sure? When will you have it fixed?’

  ‘With respect, General, I only just learned of this myself. I assumed you’d want to know at once. I’m here to advise you that we have a problem, not yet to tell you the solution.’

  ‘How widespread is it? Will it affect our submarines?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘The only way to tell quickly is by running diagnostic programmes. But we fear they may be one source of infection. If we run them, therefore …’

  ‘You’ll only spread the infection further.’

  ‘Yes, General. My advice is that we close down everything while we study the code itself to learn precisely what we’re dealing with. It’s not as if we’ll be completely without nuclear defences. We still have our artillery and our planes.’

  The Chief of the General Staff didn’t bother to say what they both well knew. Their guns only reached sixty kilometres and their few aircraft capable of delivering nuclear payloads were a generation out of date. ‘How long before you fix this?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t say. Maybe days. More likely weeks or months. Possibly years.’

  ‘Years?’

  ‘General, it’s possible that we’ll never be able to fix it, not to the level of confidence we need for nuclear warheads. It’s possible we’ll have to strip out our systems and start again.’

  The Chief of the General Staff shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. I thought we designed our systems in silos precisely to make sure this kind of thing couldn’t happen.’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Then …?’

  ‘Someone got lucky,’ said Judit. ‘At least, we think that’s what must have happened. The earthquake damaged several of our locations, and took out our firewalls, exposing our systems to infiltration. We think they must have had the worm ready, then took advantage. And then of course we ran our full suite of diagnostics to see if we’d suffered any damage.’

  ‘Spreading this worm throughout our network?’

  ‘That’s what we suspect. But, as I say, we don’t know anything yet. Not for sure.’ She shook her head ruefully. ‘If one of our technicians hadn’t been on the ball …’

  A moment of stillness, rage building inside. ‘Who did this? Was it the Iranians? Is this payback for Stuxnet?’

  ‘It’s possible. The technology is light years beyond anything we thought Tehran had, but they’ve been building up their capability fast. My money would be on the Chinese, though, or possibly the Russians. You’d know better than I who’d benefit most from something like this.’

  The Chief of the General Staff put a hand to his head. ‘Will they know how much harm they’ve done?’

  ‘They’ll likely know that they’ve successfully infiltrated their worm into our systems. They probably won’t know how far it’s spread, whether we’ve spotted it, what our countermeasures are like or how long it will take us to sort it out. Not unless there’s some other vulnerability in our system we haven’t yet identified.’

  ‘And what’s the likelihood of that?’

  ‘At this time yesterday I’d have told you that there was no possibility whatsoever of there being a worm like this in our system.’

  The Chief of the General Staff sat back in his chair. This would have been disastrous news at the best of times; and this was far from that. Three weeks ago, on May 15th, Arabs here and across the broader region had started making trouble, rioting and throwing stones in protest at the anniversary of Israel’s independence. Usually, these Nakba protests lasted a day or two before fizzling out, but
the earthquake that had wrecked their nuclear defences had also put fissures in the Dome of the Rock, sparking a massive increase in the scale, intensity and duration of unrest.

  Marches in Damascus, Amman and Cairo and along their borders had turned into violent anti-Jewish riots — though quite how the Jews were to blame for the earthquake had never been made clear. Missiles had been lobbed into Jewish towns and villages from the Gaza strip and southern Lebanon. Israel’s own forces had had no choice but to strike back. They’d bombed Hamas and Hezbollah positions in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, had sent in ground-troops to take prisoners. Alert levels had gone up on all sides, army groups had moved closer to their borders. Firebrand politicians and religious leaders had cursed each other from behind the safety of TV cameras. And everyone had been intensely aware that this was all prelude to the region’s other great anti-Jewish anniversary: the week long festival of hate and rage that commemorated the Six Day War, which had kicked off earlier today.

  Until now, however, this had all seemed to him part of the usual theatre: alarming, certainly, yet essentially manageable. But what if there was more to it this time? What if this were part of some larger plan?

  He stared down at his desk. For some forty years, Israel’s strategic defence had ultimately relied on nuclear deterrence. Their Arab neighbours, for all their bluster, had never truly contemplated Israel’s destruction, lest Israel take the whole region down with her. Now, at a stroke, they’d effectively been reduced to conventional forces. And while Israel was a theoretical match for its neighbours’ combined armies, hot wars chewed up armour and aircraft at a terrifying rate, depleting stocks of petrol and munitions rapidly. The Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese and Jordanians could all expect swift if surreptitious resupply from Iran, China, Pakistan and Russia. Israel, by contrast, would be almost entirely dependent on the US. Yet tonight their Prime Minister was making a major foreign policy speech seeking stronger ties with the European Union at the expense of Washington, not least because they didn’t want to be too reliant on a US administration led — since the botched assassination attempt — by a thin-skinned crazy woman who believed in the imminence of the Rapture.