“You broke me out of Hungerford jail,” Kelley said, regretting that it sounded more like an accusation than an expression of gratitude.
“Yes I did,” said the metal-faced creature, its voice clear although its polished lips barely moved. “I hoped to warn the others before the Puritans made their move, but I was too late to reach Drake, and might only have succeeded in exposing Master Smith to greater risk.”
“Master Smith?” echoed Dee, skeptically.
“That is the name by which my erstwhile companion is known in London,” the metal-faced individual stated.
Kelley could not see Dee's face very clearly, but he took note of the shock of realization that came upon it. “De Vere's an Elizabethan, damn it!” Dee said. “If it were not enough to have the Church Militant arrayed against us, we now have the Queen's enemies in our camp.”
“You do not know who that man was,” the other reminded him, its red eyes glinting in the candlelight. “So far as you are aware, Edward de Vere is dead, and you have had no contact whatsoever with any kind of treason.”
“More to the point,” said Kelley, “who—or what—are you?”
“An ally to the creature who calls himself Aristocles, for the moment,” the other replied. “I'm a sentient machine—an automaton, if you like—designed by the Lunars to operate in the toils of excessive affinity. You might have heard my kind called by the name hardcore, because our supportive skeletons are contained within our flesh rather than armoring it without—you're hardcores too, by that reckoning. You might think me monstrous, but the Lunars would consider the two of us very much alike, intrinsically horrid in exactly the same fashion: mollusks turned inside-out.”
Bruno called out to Dee before the mathematician could demand further explanation, and the dutiful master hurried back to his injured servant. Kelley and the metal man followed him into the room. Brother Cuthbert, who had stayed behind Kelley throughout the exchange, stayed in the doorway with Ann.
Dee knelt down beside the servant, who was still conscious, although his jerkin and hose were stained with a great deal of blood. “Master Drake sends his apologies, sir,” the servant said, in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “He will take to sea, if he cannot win the fight on land, but he will send a messenger to you, if he can, when he reaches safe harbor.”
“Aye,” Dee murmured, “but where to?”
“If Foxe can persuade Suffolk and Northumberland to send the Queen's men in support of Field's,” the injured servant whispered, “the dockland rabble will melt away like the spring thaw—but the Golden Hind won't be obstructed as she sails down the estuary. Once she's gone, alas, the Church Militant will certainly come here. They'll not molest your wife and children, Master Dee, but Master Smith was right to advise you that you and Kelley must go.”
“If he is wise,” the metal man put in, “the man who escaped from Hungerford with Kelley will go too, and this man too.” This man was Bruno, who was staring at the automaton as curiously as Dee had, with the same surplus of wonderment over anxiety.
Kelley was more concerned about Ann than Brother Cuthbert, while Dee's sideways glance demonstrated his anxiety for his own Dominican guest—but it was the most urgent question of all that Dee voiced: “Where can we find safety, now?”
“I cannot tell you that,” the metal man said. “I can help you along the road, but I cannot tell where you might find safe haven.”
“If I could get to the Queen...” Dee began.
“No, sir,” the hardcore cut him off. “You cannot go to London.”
“It's true, Master,” the servant said. “It's far too dangerous. If you escape by boat, as Master Smith suggested, you must not go downriver. Even if you were able to reach the Tower, you'd be putting your head in a lion's mouth.”
“The Queen is an exceedingly clever woman,” Dee told the metal man, “and no Puritan. She's perfectly capable of listening to reason.”
“If this were a matter of intellect and sanity,” Bruno put in, “you might be right—but it's a matter of fear and panic, the like of which I've already seen in more than one continental city. I don't know what resources your Church Militant has to compare with Master Kelley's magic stone, but there seems to be something telling its zealots that the Devil is at hand and must be crushed.”
“Aye,” Dee agreed, reluctantly. “Foxe may not believe Field's rants about demons, but he seems to be grateful for the excuse to let his loyal Churchmen flex their muscles. The one thing that unites all the Lords whose ambition the Queen keeps in delicate balance, alas, is their fear of the Elizabethans, and the rumor that de Vere is alive is all over the city. My past association with him will further taint me in their fearful eyes. For now, at least, we must retreat.”
“If I understood the angels right,” Kelley put in, “we must find a safe place to build more ether-ships, and to prepare to resist an invasion.”
“It's all very well for the ether-dwellers to dictate orders,” Dee replied, churlishly, “but if it's England we're supposed to defend, we can hardly set sail with Drake for the Americas or the south seas, even if we can reach him.”
“We must go,” the automaton said, flatly. “The ethereal is right: the Lunars will strike here, even if Master Dee is removed. The mere fact of the ether-ship's ascent convinced them that England's New Learning is the forefront of human progress. The Lunars will attempt usurpation, however, before they resort to annihilation. Their ultimate war is with the Great Fleshcores, against whom they will need armaments of every kind, and an army of natural hardcores might be as useful to them as to the Arachnids.”
“But if Drake was telling the truth all along about his adventure among the stars,” Dee objected, “we surely have nothing that the Empires of the stars could possibly want. You're the proof that they already have machines that mimic our form—machines that are more powerful than we are, even on our own terrain.”
“That's not true,” the automaton retorted. “I have access to rudimentary chemical technology even here, but I suffer the burdens of weight exactly as you do; I'm no Titan. In any case, you're a greater prize than you might imagine, given your mathematical skills. Don't imagine that Aristocles and I are acting out of pure altruism, and have no delusions about the Arachnids. The Lunars could destroy you very easily if they wished, but they will only do that if all else fails, to prevent you from becoming part of a powerful alliance against them. We do not have time for this—Doctor Dee and Master Kelley must flee, and must preserve the black stone and the red powder at all costs. I will help you, but I cannot tell you where to go.”
“I can,” Giordano Bruno put in. “I can, at least, make a suggestion as to who would surely hide you, and defend you if need be.”
“Who?” asked Dee. Kelley judged by the wariness in his voice that he did not want to surrender himself to the care of the Dominican Order—but neither, Kelley strongly suspected, did the renegade Bruno.
“Philip Sidney's sister—Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke,” Bruno said. “She's expecting me.”
Dee nodded. “George Herbert was formerly married to the Queen's sister,” the mathematician said, presumably to enlighten Kelley, Ann, and Cuthbert, “but he was never admitted to the inner circles of the court because his father had been too much involved with the Tudors, and was suspected of sympathizing with Mary Tudor's bid to seize the throne. The Earl maintains a diplomatic absence, fighting in the Netherlands with Sidney, but the Countess keeps a little empire of her own at Wilton, near Salisbury. It might make a good hiding-place—and as good a base as any to begin any project we might feel inclined to undertake, if we decide to take the ether-dwellers’ advice.”
Kelley pursed his lips. He had passed within twenty miles of Wilton the day before he had fetched up at the Black Bear and been thrown into Hungerford jail. He had had such a hard time getting here from there that the thought of retracing his steps was not particularly attractive. “Better to head for the south coast,” he opined, “where
we might make a rendezvous with Drake.”
“Wherever you end up,” the automaton said, “You must make rapid preparations now to depart.”
It seemed, however, that they had already delayed too long, for there was another knock on the door then, considerably less polite than Master Smith's, followed by a call to open up in the Queen's name.
The automaton looked directly at Kelley then, his red eyes glinting in the candlelight. Unhuman as the creature was, Kelley had no trouble deciphering the message in that glance. John Dee was fifty-five years old; the two friars were not fighting men, and the stricken manservant was too weak to lift a finger. If there was fighting to be done, Kelley and the metal man would be the only ones capable of bearing arms effectively—and neither of them was carrying so much as a kitchen-knife.
Dee called out to the men beyond the door, telling them to wait.
“Fetch the stone and the powder,” the automaton whispered to Kelley. “We must go out at the back of the house and head for the river. Your wife must stay here—you and I will have difficulty enough keeping Dee safe.”
“You cannot leave me here!” Bruno whispered, urgently.
“Nor me,” Brother Cuthbert was quick to add, while Kelley leapt into the library to secure the stone, which he wrapped in a cloth. Ann had followed him. “Don't leave me again!” she begged.
“I must,” he told her. “Fetch the powder first, though—I'll see to the stone. Jane Dee will shelter you as best she can, and the Puritans won't harm her.”
Ann did not like it, but she nodded her head like the obedient wife she was, and went to fetch the packet of powder that might, it seemed, enclose an alchemical touchstone capable of making gold.
There was another complication already, because a new voice could be heard outside the front of the house, demanding to know what the men who had knocked were doing. Someone else had evidently arrived in their wake.
Kelley heard Dee murmur: “Francis Bacon! He came this afternoon, to see Bruno. He has no authority over Foxe's men, though.”
The man who replied to Bacon that he had been sent to arrest John Dee replied so faintly and querulously, though, that he was obviously not confident of his own authority.
“They're hounds, not foxes!” Dee was quick to infer, his voice still audible to Kelley as he ducked into the library. “Nor have they come in force. The Church Militant is fully occupied in London and Greenwich, it seems, and nothing has reached Mortlake but a command that the local constables have no great enthusiasm to carry out.”
When Kelley returned to the corridor Dee was sliding back the bolts. He joined the mathematician and helped him lift the bar.
There were only two constables outside; their superior had not thought it worthwhile to rouse and arm a stronger force. When the man who had shouted the demand to open up saw how many people were grouped inside the door—the automaton, who had raised his hood again, must have appeared to him to be a person, but quite able-bodied—his lantern trembled, testifying to his consternation. Sir Francis Bacon was behind them, wearing a sword and accompanied by a manservant equipped with a heavy staff. The constables only had cudgels.
“Have you a warrant, constable?” Dee asked, holding up his own candle as if to challenge the constable's lantern.
The senior constable did not even have that; Kelley guessed that his superior had never intended the two men to make an arrest, but had sent them as a tacit warning, while carefully protecting his own virtue. It would suit the local officials more were Dee to make his escape than it would to imprison him on behalf of John Foxe and John Field. Puritan sympathies did not run particularly high in Mortlake.
Dee put on his most imperious voice to order the two men to go away, and to come back when they had proper authority to arrest him—nor did he promise to wait for them. Bacon, meanwhile, had his hand on the hilt of his sword, and he looked like the kind of young aristocrat who might take delight in giving a couple of hounds a tumble.
The constables withdrew, in some haste. Bacon moved swiftly to Dee's side. “I came to warn you and Master Bruno, sir,” he said. “All hell has broken loose in the city. The Tower's ablaze with candlelight and humming like a beehive; the members of parliament are being rooted out of the brothels, and no one is sure that the navy will not fire upon the army in defense of the Queen's privateers. Foxe may be sleeping content in Canterbury, but the hullabaloo is loud enough to wake him. In a better world, he'd turn on Field and disown him, but I fear he'll find himself committed now, whether he likes it or not. You must hide, at least for a few days, until the state of play is clear. I'll look after your wife, and your library, as best I can.”
“Thank you, Francis,” Dee said. “Master Bruno and I will take a little trip upriver, I think. I'll send word to you when I can.”
Bacon's gaze had already slipped sideways, to study Edward Kelley and the hooded individual. The suspicion in his expression was quite obvious; the young nobleman obviously felt no need to hide his feelings from men whose dress revealed them to be commoners, apparently poor.
“These men are with us,” Dee stated. “They are more vital to our cause than you can possibly estimate.”
Kelley guessed that what Bacon understood by “our cause” and what Dee meant by it were two very different things.
“Go with God,” Bacon said, with a slight bow to Dee. “Be sure that you're safe by daybreak, though. No one can tell where the balance of power will lie by then.” He waited for everyone else to go into the house before following them. It was Bacon who bolted and barred the door this time.
It did not take Dee and Bruno long to make up their packs; they were obviously prepared to depart at short notice. Kelley had only to grab the satchel that Ann had brought him, check that the powder was safe inside it, place the stone within it too, and embrace his wife regretfully. “I'll be better for knowing that you're safe here,” he told her. “Don't fear for me—I have good friends.”
She whispered in his ear: “That metal face is no mask.”
“I know,” he told her. “There was a man of bronze in ancient times, I think, set to guard Crete, who was said to be the last survivor of an entire race, but Roger Bacon found another like it. If that race is come again, it is to aid us, not to hurt us. I could not wish for a better shield.”
He had to leave then, to follow Dee and the automaton out of the kitchen door, through the garden and down to the Thames. Dee's own boat was a mere cockleshell, incapable of carrying five men away, but Dee knew his neighbors well. There was a boatman already awake, making ready for the dawn aboard a ferry-skiff that could seat half a dozen. Dee gave him half a sovereign, and he set to work with a will, ready to row all the way to Twickenham if need be.
* * * *
7
Bruno sat down beside Dee, facing the oarsman, as if he were entitled to that place. Brother Cuthbert sat down beside his fellow Dominican, rather fearfully, leaving Kelley to sit with the hooded man in the stern of the boat, so that the latter might be hidden from view to the extent that it was possible. Kelley was by no means dissatisfied with the situation, being very enthusiastic to seize the chance he had not been given before to interrogate his rescuer.
“Did the angels send you here to help us?” he asked, in a whisper.
“My brethren were intent on sending emissaries to your world as soon as they learned of its existence,” the automaton told him, speaking in a similarly low tone. “We were the first to understand the necessity, before the ethereals fell out—and I still do not know why the ethereals should have fallen out with one another, or why they care about you at all. Since they seem to be siding with us, however, I'm willing to accept their guidance.
“You can talk to them, then, without the aid of a skrying-stone?”
“They can reach me, if they exert enough effort, and I consent to listen—but the contact disturbs me, and I am obliged to be careful.”
Even automata, it seemed, were not immune to the side-effects of comm
unication with the angels. “They said that there is a plan,” Kelley said. “Do you know what it is?”
“I'm not privy to the ethereals’ secrets,” the automaton replied, curtly. “It was not easy for me to reach the surface of your world; we were smuggled into the moon easily enough, butzwe had no shuttle capable of making a gentle descent, and had to improvise, just as the ethereals improvised in sending the stone and the catalyst. The fall was long and the friction fierce. I don't know whether the others came down safely, but the fact that I've had no word is ominous. I know that I must frighten you, but I swear to you that my kind are the best friends you have in all this confusion.”
“You don't frighten me,” Kelley said. “I've seen miracles, and have heard the voices of angels. Whether there was a race of metal men on Earth before or not, I'm not afraid to discover that there is one now. But I need to understand why you're so intent on being my friend, when so many of my own kind, as well as half the inhabitants of Heaven and almost all of the greater Creation, seem to be arrayed against me.”
“Although I resemble humans in form, your kind is unique,” the automaton told him, “and I am bound to side with its defenders.”
“Unique?” Kelley queried.
“Unique in fleshy form,” the automaton elaborated, “and, in consequence, unique in the specifics of its intelligence. Your sensory apparatus, and your brains, are quite distinct from those of all the members of the True Civilization, and their Arachnid rivals. The ethereals, whose intelligence seems to be fundamentally parasitic, might be interested in you for that reason, although their motives are largely unfathomable to creatures of what they call trivial matter. Given that ethereals find it at least as difficult to operate in a weighty environment as softcores do, in spite of their contempt for our kind of matter, any connections they can build are bound to be tenuous, but even tenuous connections can be valuable, and perhaps warrant conflict among their makers. When even ethereals go to war, softcores are bound to be anxious. Ten years of slow and patient labor in the caverns of the moon have now given way to a period of desperate haste.”
Asimov's SF, July 2008 Page 19