Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “Oh, good, there you are,” Mrs. Barton said. “My uncle is expecting you. I have some business to attend.” Then she departed in the carriage.

  Left before Newton's open door, Ben knocked hesitantly and when no answer came, stepped gingerly inside.

  The door to the study—or laboratory—was ajar.

  “Sir Isaac?” he called. “Sir, it's Benjamin Franklin.”

  No answer, but he noticed a smell wafting through the door, something like tincture of iodine and something like that which had lingered after Bracewell fired his kraftpistole. The hairs on his neck pricked up, and he inched toward the door and peeked through.

  The study was now brightly lit. Books littered the floor and sprawled upon two wooden tables. The odd pyramid of metal and wire was now glowing, a red so deep as to seem almost black. On top of the pyramid shivered a sort of hollow sphere of sparks, scintillating in all the colors of the spectrum, from violet at the pole farthest from the pyramid to red nearest it. A jolt of horror went through him when he recognized what floated inside of the sphere: a red eye like the one that had accompanied Bracewell.

  Nearby stood a human shape, but Ben could not focus on it. From the corner of his eye, he got small impressions of a red coat, dark hair or wig in disarray, a penetrating hazel eye turned toward him. But when he looked at it full on, he only became dizzy and saw nothing.

  “Come in,” the nothing said in Newton's voice.

  Ben slammed the door closed and lurched back four paces, breathing hard. What in the name of God had he fallen into?

  His panic followed him outside, into the natural light of day, his mind spinning. What had he seen—or not seen? Nothing that made sense to his brain.

  Thirty paces from the house he stopped, keeping his eyes focused on the door, trying hard to think. How could he run away now, when he was so close?

  He took three deep breaths. These people were no better than him, just older and more learned. What man ever achieved anything without courage?

  Eyes fixed on the door, he walked back toward the house.

  “Sir Isaac,” he said, keeping his voice level.

  “What do you want?” the voice snapped. Ben turned to look. Newton was there, but Ben's eyes would not converge, would not let him see. He swallowed and said, “I'm Benjamin Franklin. You told me to come here today.”

  “Franklin, is it? The fellow who tuned an aetherschreiber?”

  “Yes, sir.” Since he couldn't focus on Newton, he looked at the eye again. He remembered the message from his aetherschreiber—I see you—and shuddered.

  “A useful equation,” Newton went on, as if they were merely two gentlemen discussing things, as if he, Newton, had not become some sort of illusion, some twist of air. “Somewhat crude, but I should like to include a note on it in my new draft of the Principia.”

  “That would be a great honor,” Ben said faintly. This might not be Newton at all. For all he knew, it was Bracewell or Beelzebub.

  Newton must have noticed him staring at the eye, for he was just able to make out the magus waving an arm toward the pyramid and the thing upon it.

  “Have no worry about the malakus,” Newton said. “It is harmless at the moment, unable even to communicate with its kind.”

  “Its kind?”

  “The rest of the malakim. Do you know of them?”

  “I have seen such a thing as this,” Ben said. “I did not know what it was called.”

  “The ancients called them many things. To Moses and Solomon they were the malakim, and so I call them that.” The blurry figure eased down onto a bench. “Do you know much about history, Mr. Franklin?”

  “Not as much as I would like,” Ben admitted.

  “Science has begun to neglect history,” Newton told him. “This is a shame, because anything we discover today—Boyle's perfections upon alchemy, Harvey and his anatomy, even my own work—is all merely reinvention of what the ancients knew.”

  “The Greeks, you mean?” Ben asked tentatively when Newton paused. The fact that the eye had a name suggested a reasonable explanation, suggested science, suggested that this all might make sense after all.

  “To some extent the early Greeks. Do you know who Hermes Trismegistus was?”

  “Legend has it that he was the founder of alchemy.”

  “Not entirely true, but he was a great man, so great that the Greeks made him a god. So did the Egyptians, who named him Thoth, as the Romans named him Mercurius. But even Hermes had only scraps of what Adam acquired when he ate of the Tree, of what Moses had when he stood upon the mountain— or even of what they taught in the colleges of Nineveh and Ur of the Chaldees. It is only now that we begin to return toward that more perfect knowledge. Ironic.”

  “Ironic, sir?”

  “Yes. It makes me wonder what scientific discoveries might have been made in Sodom and Gomorrah, just on the eve of their doom.

  “In any event,” Newton went on more distractedly, “you asked about the Greeks. Pythagoras and Plato, I think, had a good enough knowledge of the science I have rediscovered, but they made the mistake of enshrining it in mystical symbol. Aristotle and his Peripatetic followers failed to understand that, and their stupidity drew a shade over knowledge that has lasted more than two millennia.”

  Ben was having a difficult time following this. He did not possess enough knowledge to evaluate what Newton said, and trying to speak to this spectral image, this optical impossibility—

  Optical. Newton's earliest treatise had been on optics.

  He realized that Newton had paused, and almost without thinking, Ben took his chance. “Sir, this malakus—”

  “You have seen one before, haven't you?” Newton asked.

  “A man tried to kill me. He did kill my brother. One of these malakim was with him.”

  “With him? Bound up like this?”

  “No, sir. Floating behind him in a big cloud.”

  “Floating … Was this man a philosopher?”

  “I thought him a warlock,” Ben said, “but I only know that he was a murderer.”

  Newton laughed, a dry, harsh laugh. “This one was sent to murder me. Until recently, I knew not by whom. I suspected many.” His voice dropped somewhat. “I fear I have been ill. When one gets old …”

  Ben remembered what Stirling had said. This might be the only chance he got to introduce the subject of the orrery. “Sir, James Stirling asked that I speak to you on behalf of the society. The—”

  “That's why I wear the aegis,” Newton interrupted. “It protects me from many sorts of assassination.”

  Ben stopped, frustrated. He wasn't being listened to. Not that he wasn't interested in this aegis, which he took to be the cause of Newton's unorthodox appearance.

  “Sir, I really must tell you something.”

  “Eh? Then tell me, boy. What do you want me to do, applaud each new word so as to encourage you to go on to the next?”

  Not interrupting me would do nicely, Ben thought. But he began again anyway, telling Newton about Halley's visit, about the demand for the orrery.

  “Very well,” the philosopher said. “I will save my lecture on the ancients for another time. But while I have been locked in here with them, I have learned some things. You see my captive malakus and the aegis I wear. I have not been idle or completely mad. Tell them all this, Mr. Franklin. I choose you to be my messenger because you are new; you are the only one I do not suspect.” He stood and walked toward Ben, who found he had to close his eyes to keep from wobbling.

  A warm, smooth hand took his own.

  “Unclench your fingers and take this,” the magus said.

  Something round and cool was pressed into his palm.

  “Take this with you. One of you will understand what to do with it. Now turn around and go out. Wait to open your eyes until you turn, or you may lose your balance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Franklin. I will see you again. But next time I will visit the society at
Crane Court.”

  “When shall we expect you, sir?”

  “You will not, I hope,” Newton replied.

  “What of the orrery?”

  “The wheels of the court move slowly. I shall register an objection by letter today. That will slow things a week or so.”

  “Can't we stop them from taking it?”

  “No. But it doesn't matter.”

  “Sir?”

  “It doesn't matter,” Newton bellowed. “Now go!”

  Ben met the others at the Grecian at twenty after four—a bit late. They sat at the same table in nearly the same places as when he had first seen them.

  “Well, here approaches the apprentice,” Voltaire called out, raising his bowl of coffee.

  “Have a seat, Ben,” Maclaurin said. “Since you are informed of the situation, I've told the rest.”

  “What will Newton do?” Heath demanded. “You did speak to him, didn't you?”

  “Yes,” Ben answered. “He said that he was going to send a letter of protest today.”

  “Did he?” Maclaurin asked. “He seemed … lucid, then?”

  “More so than when last we spoke,” Ben said cautiously. “Still, he said the orrery doesn't matter—that he will see that we keep it another week or so, but that after that he didn't care.”

  “Why another week?” Vasilisa asked.

  Ben threw up his hands. “He didn't say. He talked about history and creatures he called malakim—”

  “Malakim?”Voltaire interrupted. “A Hebrew word for angels or genies or what have you.”

  Vasilisa's gaze flicked to Ben, and for an instant his heartsickness was forgotten as he remembered their conversation about such creatures. And was he imagining it, or did he see a warning there also?

  “Sir Isaac often riddles at such things,” Stirling said. “He believes such references in the Bible and other ancient books to be ciphers of a sort, cryptic ways of speaking of natural law. For him, malakim might mean the heavenly bodies or the forces that govern such bodies.”

  Ben remembered that thing atop the pyramid and knew that Stirling was wrong, but Vasilisa's implied warning had its effect, and he swallowed the explanation of what he had witnessed.

  “You know,” Voltaire said, “I once knew a fellow who claimed to have seen an angel. A pious fellow who never failed to repent after taking a mistress or losing at cards. He had discovered the key to opening the mind, you see—as an alchemist opens metal—and his elixir was, I believe, of one third brandy, a second part arak, another third wine—and a fourth third more brandy—”

  “Voltaire, dear, does this story have a point?” Vasilisa asked.

  “Only,” Voltaire said, “that we are taking this perhaps too seriously.”

  “Which ‘this’ would that be?” Heath snapped. “Our orrery being stolen or our mentor and benefactor being mad?”

  Voltaire regarded Heath levelly and said, “This angel came to my friend. He had six wings, but no head nor ass nor genitalia, and he resembled nothing at all, and he glowed like a lantern. He told my friend not to despair, because all was for the best. ‘Horses are made to be ridden,’ it said, ‘and so you ride them. Feet are made to wear boots, and so you have boots. You were made to contain vast quantities of wine and to empty your pockets and consort with the meanest of women, and you are admirably good at it. So have pity on yourself and cease basting in guilt!’”

  “And what became of your friend?” Stirling asked.

  “Oh, well, a few days after his celestial visitation, he was quite enthusiastically investigating the inner workings of a certain lady when her husband arrived home. My friend explained to the husband that married men were admirably suited to be cuckolded, that he had done his job quite well, and that he should be proud to be a part of such a lovely and orderly universe.”

  “To which the husband replied?” Vasilisa asked.

  “With a musket ball. The postscript is that skulls are wonderfully suited to being perforated by musket balls.”

  “And this Aesop's fable tells us what?” Maclaurin asked.

  “My friends, I only suggest that the usefulness of our philosophies is limited by our own powers of reason and sense. As I have admitted, I am no scientific man. But we cannot judge such as Newton on such scanty evidence as we have before us. What is mad is to think that because his behaviors seem to suit our image of madness, we are right.”

  “But the orrery!” Heath groaned.

  “There is more,” Ben said.

  “Oh?” Maclaurin and then the rest turned back to him.

  “Three things more. First, he said to tell you he has not been idle. He has invented a number of things. One was something he called an aegis. It made him appear blurry, hard to look at—”

  “The aegis is a sort of impenetrable armor the goddess Athena wore,” Voltaire volunteered.

  “Go on, Ben,” Maclaurin encouraged.

  “He believes that someone is trying to kill him.” As someone tried to kill me, he understood suddenly. What do he and I have in common?

  “Someone?” Stirling asked.

  “Yes. He apparently once suspected everyone, but now— you must all forgive me, he told me to say this—he says to tell you all he knows now who it is.”

  There was a general uproar, but Vasilisa banged on the table with her fist, silencing them. “Wait,” she said. “Benjamin, is that exactly how he said it?”

  Ben thought about it. “I don't think so.”

  “He did not imply that it was one of us?”

  “Oh. Why no, I suppose he didn't. It's just from the way he was going on, I thought—”

  “Think carefully,” Maclaurin said. “Don't let anyone lead you on. Did he imply that he suspects one of us of trying to murder him?”

  Ben closed his eyes, relived the conversation as best he could. “No. He once suspected all of you, and Halley, and Flamsteed and John Locke—”

  “Those last two are dead,” Heath growled. “Mad!”

  “He said himself he had been ill,” Ben told them, “but now he seems to think he is well again.”

  “To his health, then,” Voltaire said, lifting his bowl. The others imitated him a bit distractedly.

  “There was one more thing, Ben?” Maclaurin inquired.

  “Yes. This.” He withdrew the sphere from his pocket and handed it to Maclaurin.

  “He said that one of us would know what to do with it.”

  Maclaurin gave the object a long, thoughtful look. It was no larger than a marble but was oblong. Ben had examined it closely on the walk to the Grecian. Inscribed on its metallic surface were seven sets of three digits, each punctuated by an alchemical symbol, and a single set of two digits set apart in a square.

  Each of the philosophers examined the object in turn, as Ben watched their faces carefully.

  “Do any of you know what it is?” Ben asked, as Stirling, the last, turned it over in his palm.

  Each answered in the negative.

  “Well,” Ben said, trying as best he could to quash the flood of self-satisfaction that seemed to expand in his chest like a new heart, “I do.”

  16.

  Maneuvers

  Adrienne woke with a start as her sedan chair thumped suddenly to the ground. She blinked at the scene before her, trying to recall where she was. To her left, a number of men and women were dismounting. To her right was the king in his sedan chair, waving for her attention. He let down the window, signaling for her to do the same.

  “I shall be commanding a regiment personally,” he informed her, smiled, and then signaled his bearers to pick up and move on down the hill.

  A vast meadow spread out before them. On the field marched two armies.

  Yes, she remembered now. She had managed four hours of sleep before the king had sent for her. On a whim, he had decided to recreate one of the more famous early battles of the war. Once she might have thought such a spectacle interesting; now it seemed perverse. Her sedan chair was stiflingly hot.
She signed for her servants to open the door.

  The king was halfway down the hill, his chair and bearers looking like a fat, gilded beetle.

  Standing was better; a breeze soughed through the elm, oak, and maple along the ridge of the hill. The court began entrenching itself around her, their servants spreading blankets, opening wine, and erecting tents and sunshades.

  “Shall we set out your tabouret, Mademoiselle?” Helen asked.

  “No, thank you, Helen. I should like to walk along toward the forest a bit. If you could inform the guard?” Then, not waiting for them, she began to stroll that way.

  She could not keep Crecy's pronouncements out of her mind. If the creatures of tale and legend had some scientific basis, then what was it? The stories she remembered often took place in deep forests. Auberon and his fey followers held court in sunless places. But what she had seen had been in Versailles, and it had been a thing of fire and air. Could life be built of such insubstantial stuff? Could such animalcules as could be seen through microscopes form into something like that?

  Four Swiss Guards ran to catch up with her, and Nicolas, who was among them, shot her a dour look. The sight of him cheered her a bit.

  Then she noticed that Torcy was on a path to intersect her, one guardsman and a young valet coming close behind.

  “Good morning, dear Demoiselle,” he greeted her, kissing her hand. “I notice that you seek a somewhat different perspective on the king's battle. See, he has just reached his command.”

  Adrienne followed Torcy's indicating finger, and there Louis was, stepping out of his chair. When one was near Louis, he seemed a giant, towering above all others. At several hundred yards, he could be seen for what he was: a short fat man. For a score of heartbeats, she pitied him. He was so convinced of his youth and health, so sure that she must find him as beautiful as he had once been, the man shown in glorious portraits. From her present view, he looked so vulnerable …

  And then he moved. There was something so unlovable, so unsympathetic about his calculated, pompous motions that she almost shuddered.

  She had almost forgotten that Torcy was there. “I am sorry, sir,” she told him. “My mind wanders a bit today.”