The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  As though reminded by the infernal landscape, Leeuwenhoeck said: “I have noticed that the diertgens which live in pond water seem to vary in number between summer and autumn, and may continue to do so throughout the year. And that while a cow’s blood contains numerous globules, the aqueous humour of its eye contains none.”

  “I would be interested to hear whether the diertgens found in the human gut differ between men and women, or between sick men and healthful ones.”

  “Well, perhaps your British colleagues shall carry that investigation farther,” the draper replied indifferently. “I cannot restrict my researches to a single subject, and find the variety of the natural world more appealing than the fluids of the human corpus.”

  Which was certainly disingenuous, Malcolm reflected as he returned to his inn. It was likelier that Leeuwenhoeck had misgivings about conducting investigations into the human body. Malcolm knew that the Dutchman could not fear ecclesiastical persecution, but he might fairly worry about trespassing upon the privileges of physicians, who doubtless enjoyed a monopoly on medical research.

  “There’s a young man to see you,” said Vrouw Kluyver as Malcolm entered the inn. “A sailor, I think.” Malcolm blushed, then looked to the tavern room. Thanking the goodwife, he straightened his hat and crossed the threshold, to find nothing but two idle workmen sitting over tankards. Puzzled, he looked toward the back rooms, where cards were played in evenings and private parties sometimes convened. Unlit by day, they seemed poor sites for an appointment. His heart pounding, Malcolm poked his head round a corner and peered uncertainly into the gloom.

  “Look at you,” an unfamiliar voice, English, said out of the darkness. Malcolm blinked, and the outline of a man behind a table slowly took form. “Gone bloody Dutch, like a tabby back in the wild, eh?”

  “Who are you?” asked Malcolm, moving to block the light that disclosed himself. A coal glowed briefly, and Malcolm saw the face above the pipe: British features, expression insolent and knowing, beneath tousled black curls. “I’ve seen you before,” said Malcolm, as the man sat back and smiled. He was wearing a seaman’s jacket, and abruptly Malcolm recognized him. “You were on the ship that brought me over,” he said wonderingly.

  “Do you remember why you were brought over?” the man asked.

  Malcolm looked at him carefully, then glanced back at the tavern room. “I am about my business,” he said cautiously. “Have you a letter for me?”

  The sailor looked Malcolm up and down. “Even wearing Dutch spectacles, I see. Hoping to interest young scholars? What would Master Monckton think of such dissipation?”

  Malcolm caught his breath even as the blood surged to his face. “My English spectacles were broken, and by my own design, to get me entry to the Hague’s finest lens-makers. If thou knowst what I am about, thou knowst well why.”

  “Your report I have.” The man—Malcolm finally remembered his name was Skerrett—turned over several pages, which Malcolm recognized as not only the report he had sent to an Amsterdam address, but also a second one he had left unfinished in his room. “You were asked to learn more of Leeuwenhoeck’s tiny animals, but relate nothing.”

  “I was asked only after submitting that report,” Malcolm replied hotly. “Did that note come from you?” His only reply was the glow of the pipe. “I have come from Leeuwenhoeck directly,” he said finally, “and he has grown close on the matter of diertgens. I will not get more from him this day.”

  The sailor looked at Malcolm searchingly. “The Crown is preparing to offer peace, do you know that?” He was tapping the contents of his pipe onto the papers. “The Dutch flooded their own lands, like a frog pissing itself, and stopped the French dead. Their navy ventures nothing, sailing forth only when certain of victory. They draw allies throughout Europe, and if they are not stopped this season we shall have to sue. Or did your sailor friends not tell you this?”

  “You followed me in Amsterdam.” Malcolm was at once sick and enraged. “You know enough to know me guiltless, yet seek the vilest advantage—”

  Skerrett reached forward, faster than Malcolm could see, and grasped his wrist hard. “I seek advantage for England as vile as needs serve,” he said softly, his callused fingers tightening unto pain. “The Crown might e’en use such as thou, and throw it away afterward. Now hear me close: know’st thou the interwaarden between the stream feeding the brewery and its north embankment?”

  “Yes,” whispered Malcolm, trying to pull his hand free.

  “Meet me there tomorrow sunset, and bring thy report.” Skerrett abruptly released Malcolm’s hand, causing him to stagger. “Continue thy inquiries in Leeuwenhoeck’s work: They justify thy continued presence in Holland. And include them in the report, that it may look innocuous if seized.”

  He pushed back his chair and stood, glaring. “Englishmen die while thou dalliest,” he said, pointing at Malcolm. Malcolm caught a glint of light and realized that the finger extending toward his nose was a knife tip. “Bring us results directly, or feel my present wrath.” Something struck Malcolm’s chest lightly, then fell with a clang to the floor: coins. Skerrett was out the door, his footfalls receding rapidly.

  Malcolm stood long seconds in the dim light before he bent to retrieve the coins. Two half-guilders, sufficient for a few days’ lodging. His papers were left derisively on the table, and Malcolm took them up, folding them prudently into a pocket before quitting the room.

  Vrouw Kluyver was waiting for him in the tavern room. “You still want to go to Leiden?” she asked.

  Malcolm had forgotten his earlier plans. “Is there a boat?” he asked. The prospect of leaving town seemed suddenly attractive.

  “The snipschuit leaves twice an hour,” she said. “But you have to change boats in the Hague, and from there passage to Leiden is only hourly.”

  So Malcolm took the canal boat, a narrow covered craft drawn by horses along a trekvaart that had been dug straight as an avenue for the sole purpose of boating passengers between towns. He paid for his ticket in a booth overlooking the canal, where the snipschuit had just entered the lock from the upper reach. Canalmen, swinging the balance beam’s counterweight over the spectators’ heads like an immense slow scythe, shut the mitre gates with a water-muffled thump. Malcolm watched as they bent to lift the sluice-gates, releasing a gush of water into the sideponds. The boat, which filled the tiny lock like a loaf in a basket, slowly sank into the lock. By the time the lower gate was opened and the ship brought out like a toy from a box, Malcolm was queued up with the other passengers, burghers and prosperous tradesmen. He stepped into the canoe-shaped craft, which rocked gently as the passengers found their seats, and sat with a tentative smile next to a pipe-puffing gentleman leaning against the railing.

  “Eighty minutes,” the man remarked, taking his watch from his pocket and checking it.

  “To the Hague?” Malcolm asked. “How can that be?” The two horses had tightened the towlines and were pulling the boat forward, at a pace at once too fast for them to sustain yet too slow to make such time.

  “Watch,” said the burgher. A pair of mounted canalmen were riding alongside the towhorses, both (Malcolm noticed) looking back over their shoulders. Together they slowly raised their free arms, then brought them down with a sudden shout. The horses leaped forward, and the boat seemed to lift and jerk forward at the same instant. A few men around them cheered.

  “What was that?” asked Malcolm. They were now sailing much faster than before, while the horses were trotting easily.

  The Dutchman chuckled. “We’re riding the primary wave raised by the motion of the boat, which we caught as it overtook us. With the wave beneath us, the snipschuit can be hauled at less expenditure of energy than at faster or slower rates.”

  “That is astonishing.” Malcolm stood and tried to look over the side, but the canal was so narrow that the clearance between boat and wall was no wider than a doorsill. “The primary wave propagates down the canal without dissipating, doesn’t i
t?” He was trying to work out the physics.

  The burgher sighed happily. “Sounds like a bird flying behind itself to shelter from the wind, doesn’t it? Yet it works.” His pleasure at the found economy was evident.

  “Some say light is a wave,” said Malcolm, thinking of it passing down a telescope tube. “That it spreads from the sun like ripples expanding from a pond.”

  “Nonsense,” said the burgher comfortably. “Light streams like God’s grace from heaven. Does God’s grace waver?”

  * * *

  Leiden was a greater town than Delft, and its university (a long walk from the canal, which ran straight into the center of town like the Appian Way) seemed to contain as many foreigners as Dutchmen. Malcolm walked unremarked, a young Englishman among Germans, Frenchmen, and what sounded like Poles. Nobody knew the location of the observatory, so Malcolm presented himself at the university library, where he showed his letter of introduction to the Librarian, who seemed to find the matter highly irregular.

  “This letter is signed by two physicians of the town of Delft,” the venerable gentleman observed, glancing up from it reproachfully, “but you wish to speak to a Professor of Optics.”

  “Both the learned doctors are graduates of this university,” Malcolm pointed out. “I might be able to get a letter from Meynheer van der Pluym, if that would help.”

  “It says,” the Librarian continued, “that the physicians do not in fact know you, but are writing at the request of the Chamberlain of Sheriffs, Meynheer Leeuwenhoeck. The draper,” he said, looking up.

  “How did you know that?” asked Malcolm, startled.

  “He was here last month, asking to see our books on contagia,” the Librarian grumbled. “He had to have a student abstract the books’ Latin that he might understand it.”

  “I can read my own Latin,” Malcolm offered.

  “Oh, you shall have your admission, as the draper had his.” The Librarian scribbled something at the bottom of the letter and handed it crossly back. In the event, nobody asked to see the admission, and Malcolm wandered the library unchallenged.

  The Opticae Thesaurus was there, and Pantometria, the earliest book to describe an optical instrument, and British too. Two copies of Micrographia, as was just. No modern Dutch work, however; nothing to bespeak a “Eureka!” in optical design. Would the Dutchmen build a speculum horribilis and then not publish word of it? Perhaps they would, like an alchemist guarding the secret of the aqua vitae. Malcolm found it hard to believe, however.

  The Dutch published no journal of philosophical research, but it occurred to Malcolm that a university boasting its own observatory might have shelves devoted to astronomy books. Following directions, he located the wall of astronomical works, where a student stood perusing a folio. At Malcolm’s approach he looked up, and was Moete the telescopist. “The Englishman of the levee,” he said, closing his volume. “You wear new spectacles, I see.”

  “Better than before,” said Malcolm, touching his hat politely. “Your countrymen grind finer lenses than do mine, though it pains me to say’t.”

  “Better at glass than mirrors, I fear.” The young Dutchman pulled a long face. “The moons of Venus shall remain unobserved, unless our craftsmen learn to make a convex mirror of proper curvature.”

  “Perhaps the best craftsmen are otherwise occupied,” suggested Malcolm, hoping not to flush his game.

  Moete shook his head. “This is a small country, my friend, and the makers of sound lenses and mirrors are known to every astronomer by name. A good reflecting telescope requires a perfect parabola, else the light won’t come to a point. Van der Pluym’s model is the best they can do, and it is but indifferent good.”

  “Will you be pursuing astronomical observations tonight?” Malcolm asked.

  Moete gave a brilliant smile. “Tonight it is going to rain. I shall enjoy a leisurely dinner, and be in bed before ten.”

  Malcolm wished him well, then returned to the main reading room. Was it possible that he was being elaborately gulled, shown inferior instruments and told of inadequate skills while artisans quietly crafted mirrors to set the British fleet ablaze? All Malcolm could do was report his findings, which his overseers must interpret as they would.

  The Librarian eyed Malcolm suspiciously as he paged through the catalogue, which had been helpfully divided (in the French manner) into various classifications. Carefully Malcolm read down pages of book titles, looking for any that might suggest a treatise on optics or weaponry. Candidates he copied into his memorandum book. Most of the titles were in Latin, but some were in Mediterranean languages he scarcely knew. He stopped, frowning, at Lo specchio ustorio ouero trattato delle settioni coniche. “The Burning Glass”?

  Malcolm left his post and sought out the book, which was shelved, unpromisingly, under Mathematics. Bonaventura Cavalieri’s 1632 treatise seemed indeed to concern itself with conic sections, and Malcolm turned its pages bemusedly, wondering about the specchio ustorio. But when he saw Figura XXI and Figura XXII, he caught his breath: The drawings showed, unmistakably, designs for mirror arrangements that would set fires.

  Malcolm read slowly through the accompanying text, which he copied down for more expert translation. The first design focused the sun’s rays to ignite material in a cylinder, which then smoked at the top like a chimney, but the second arrangement sent a beam of concentrated sunlight across space like a bullet’s path. A large concave parabolic mirror, its vertex removed like a tip snipped from the finger of a glove, gathered the light like a funnel, and a small convex parabolic secondary mirror cast it outward in a parallel beam. At the drawing’s edge the beam terminated, meaningfully, in a curl of smoke.

  So an Italian geometer had designed Archimedes’s marvelous weapon, and forty years ago. Malcolm could see disadvantages to the design: The annular primary mirror lost most of the area it presented to the Sun to the opening in its center. Curious, he sketched a convex lens set like a jewel in the central space, which would bend the light passing through onto the same focus as the mirror. Would such a design—mirror and lens in conjunction—prove workable?

  The craft of making mirrors was certainly not equal in 1632 to building such a weapon; and Malcolm doubted that it was today. After two hours’ further search, however, he could confirm only that no other books existed on the subject.

  Before leaving he sought out the medical section, curious what “books on contagio” Leeuwenhoeck might have read. The books were ordered by no scheme that Malcolm understood, but by reading all the titles he came to De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis, published in 1546 in Venice by Hieronymus Fracastorius, a name that tugged at Malcolm’s memory. The book’s top was free of dust, unlike its companions to either side. What had Leeuwenhoeck sought here?

  Malcolm took the volume to a table and began to turn its heavy pages, which some past owner had marginally annotated. Fracastorius, it proved, had made a study of epidemic diseases, which (he proposed) were infections spread by imperceptible particles. Each disease is caused by a different species of particle, which multiply rapidly and travel from afflicted sufferers to new victims by one of three means: by direct contact, through the air, and by transmission through soiled clothes and linen.

  At the bottom of a page the annotator had noted in schoolboy Latin: “Cf. Marcus Varro, who warned in the c. before Christ against miasmal swamps ‘Because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float through the ayre and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious disease.’”

  Malcolm wondered at the significance of this. Did Antoni Leeuwenhoeck hope to discover Fracastorius’s minute particles with his microscope? The answer suggested itself a second later: The draper was wondering whether his “little animals” were the causes of contagious disease.

  The realization was faintly embarrassing. Malcolm hoped that Leeuwenhoeck hadn’t confided this hope to his physician friends, who had (he knew) taken seriously the tradesman’s resea
rches when scholars and academicians had not. So startling were the animalcula on first sight—and can Varro, or any sage of the ancient world, ever actually have seen them?—that their discoverer could be forgiven a moment’s wild surmise that he had uncovered the agent of all pestilence.

  Abruptly Malcolm remembered something about the author, a mental poke from a direction he could not identify. He returned to Moete, who was sitting peaceably at a table. “Pardon me, but have you heard of a scholar named Fracastorius?”

  “Girolamo Fracastoro?” The Dutchman seemed surprised at the question. “Of course, he was an Italian astronomer of the last century, colleague of Copernicus. Also a physician; wrote about plagues. I think we have some of his books.”

  Moete strode to the shelves, where he ran his hand along the ribbed spines before pausing and selecting one. “Homocentria,” he pronounced, looking at the title page. “Fracastoro believed that the planets revolved in circular orbits round a fixed point, although he did not identify that as the Sun.” A scrap of paper lay inside the cover, which Moete opened and read. “It says that Fracastoro also wrote a book about syphilis, in verse,” he said.

  “That’s it,” said Malcolm. “He gave syphilis its name, in a poem written in the classical manner. I had not known him for an authority on plagues as well.” Nor on the heavens, for that matter.

  Moete shrugged easily. “It was an age of great men,” he said. “So long as you did not mind being harried by the Church of Rome.”

  Malcolm felt such a surge of friendliness that he was suddenly tempted to ask Rudolf to dinner. Only the knowledge that the last boat back to Delft left before eight prevented him. He bid the Dutchman a pleasant farewell, urged him to read Philosophical Transactions, and set out with directions for the observatory, where (he was told) junior students could be found at this hour cleaning the instruments.

  Leiden University was sufficiently like Greenwich that Malcolm, after ten days in Delft or the Hague, felt at once comfortable and homesick. Some of the students he saw on the street were plainly British; they did not recognize him, Dutch-complected and -attired, as a countryman. He saw one, English but not dressed like a student, come round a corner and realized with a horrible start that it was Skerrett.