Age Of Unreason - Newton's Cannon Part 1

NEWTON'S. CANNON.

The Age of Unreason.

J. Gregory Keyes.

Acknowledgments.

My thanks to: My readers.

Pat Duffy, Nell Keyes, Heli Willey, Nancy Ridout Landrum, Joe Sneuer, Tracey Abla.

Ken Carleton-for general eighteenth-century minutia. Dr. Thomas Poss-for ironing out the Greek pa.s.sages. Maitre d'Armes Adam Adrian Crown-for his expert opinions on eighteenth-century weapons and fencing.

Any mistakes herein are not theirs, but mine.

Kuo-Yu Liang, Amy Victoria Meo, Richard Curtis, and Marga de Boer for support and encouragement; Veronica Chapman for working harder than an editor ought to; Martha Schwartz for doing the hard things; Dave Stevenson, Min Choi, Alix Krijgsman, and all the other folks who make books read and look like books should.

... it may also be allow'd that G.o.d is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to s.p.a.ce, and perhaps different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe.

-Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query 31

Prologue.

Jupiter Flying on His Eagle.

Humphrey wiped the sweat from his forehead and paused briefly in his working of the bellows. He glanced nervously at Isaac, who was staring into the red maw of the furnace with all of the intensity of a lover-or a madman.

"Isaac, should you not rest?" Humphrey pleaded. "How many days have you been at this?"

Isaac did not even deign to glance at him. He stepped instead to the worktable and emptied the contents of a mortar into a beaker. Then, he attacked his notebook with pen, scribbling furiously. "I do not know. What day is it?"

Humphrey stared at his friend, whose stained shirt clung to his emaciated frame like parchment. "And how long since you have eaten?" he persisted.

"Work the furnace, Humphrey," Newton growled. Humphrey had seen him like this before, going days without eating or sleeping, utterly consumed by thoughts that even other scholars could only vaguely guess at. If Isaac were merely deluded, Humphrey would not stand here pumping the bellows like a slave, but Newton was not insane. He was that rarest of creatures. He was a genius. Holding the coveted Lucasian professorship at Cambridge at the age of thirty-nine, Newton was virtually without peer.

"Now," Isaac muttered, gripping up the iron tongs from his bench. He flung open the furnace. A blast of greater heat rushed out into the room, so that the last of the cool breeze wafting through the open windows was banished. Newton squinted against the heat, but his hand was sure as he reached in with the tongs and withdrew the effulgent crucible.

With a more considered motion, Isaac tilted the stoneware cylinder over a thick beaker. Humphrey winced, expecting a molten fluid to pour spattering from the spout, but instead a small silvery sphere tumbled out. He had a glimpse of it before an acrid cloud of steam erupted from the beaker. As Humphrey coughed into his handkerchief, Isaac calmly reached over and closed the furnace.

As the heat diminished, the room was momentarily still. With the shuttering of the furnace, everything suddenly seemed quite ordinary. For the past ten hours, Humphrey had felt engulfed by an alchemical nightmare.

"Now," Isaac muttered, "we shall see. We shall see if Jupiter rides his eagle."

Humphrey was not well versed in the arcane hermetic language of alchemy. He knew, though, that jupiter was a metal of some sort, said to be useful in producing philosopher's mercury-the original, truest metal of all, the source of all other metal.

Newton peered into the flask. "And the menstruum carries it up," he said, quite matter-of-factly. Humphrey watched Isaac dash off a few notes.

"May I see?" he asked.

Newton nodded impatiently, biting the end of his quill.

Humphrey ventured to gaze into the flask. A sphere of some metal rested in what remained of the yellowish fluid. He recognized the smell now-the sharpness could only be ammonia. But what was that swirling, those flashes? The latter suddenly increased dramatically.

"Isaac," he began, when suddenly the flaring redoubled, tripled. He staggered back from the workbench. A tree trunk of lightning suddenly grew up from the beaker, pa.s.sing through the air where his face had been. It grew, fluorescing between red and blue, and shuddering the room with thunder. Humphrey screamed and turned his back on the terrible flame. He could not see; brightness etched across his eyes like acid spilled on copper. He tripped, sprawled, fell over a table.

Strong arms pushed up beneath his and lifted, and he opened his eyes. The light was brighter still, the flaming sword of an archangel, and he squealed once more with terror before fainting.

Humphrey came to himself lying on cool gra.s.s, the spots before his eyes fading. Dazed, he looked around. He lay in the garden just outside of Isaac's laboratory. Overhead the heavens were mild and blue, cottony with clouds. Isaac sat a few feet from him, writing furiously in a notebook. The air crackled with a sort of tearing sound.

A serpent of flame rose through the roof of Isaac's shed and writhed high into the sky beyond sight, a Jacob's ladder.

"What?" Humphrey groaned, pleased that he could hear his own voice again.

"And the menstruum carries it up," Newton explained, as if to a child. "But how could I

have known? This changes all.""That lightning-"Newton nodded his head furiously. "Yes! Yes! It is the air, decomposing. Lux, liberated by the true mercury! The very aether is exposed, Humphrey. We have touched the nature of matter. Do you understand what this means?"

"Yes," Humphrey replied, faintly. "It means that you need a new roof."

The Angel of Kings.

Louis flinched at the faint rattle of musket shots he heard through the thick gla.s.s. Following them, the mob suddenly erupted in renewed shouting. At the window, Phillipe began to wail.

"Come away from the window, Phillipe," Louis told his eight-year-old brother. What if one of the b.a.l.l.s were to find its way into the Palais Royal itself?

Phillipe turned a tear-streaked face toward him, his dark eyes wide with terror.

"Louis, they are going to kill us!" he moaned. "They will burn the palace down and they will- Where is Maman?"

"Mother is about the royal business," Louis said. He strode across the gallery and took hold of his younger brother by the sleeve.

"Come," Louis insisted, "your king commands you." He said it with as much authority as he could muster.

It worked. It always worked, if people knew in their bones that you were the king. The trick was in convincing them of that. Especially with Cardinal Mazarin around, always telling him what to do. Mazarin thought himself king.

As Phillipe came away from the window, Louis took a quick glance outside. He saw the mob below and the ghost of his own face on the gla.s.s, the pale image of a ten-year-old monarch. Was it set and determined enough, or did his eyes, like Phillipe's, parade his terror?

His features seemed composed. He remembered the set of his mother's lips, the brave light in her eyes, and copied it as best he could.

"Here, Phillipe," he said sternly, "come beneath my arm. I will protect you."

"Where is Maman?" Phillipe repeated. "Where are the soldiers?"

"The soldiers are guarding the doors."

Louis remembered the terror in the eyes of the handful of guards. He remembered what they had said to his mother. " We shall all die at your doorstep." Perhaps they had meant to sound brave, but they had sounded defeated. Louis doubted that they could be counted on should the mob burst through the doors.

"Who will guard us?" Phillipe asked.

Louis drew his sword. It was a tiny thing, a toy. But gesture was more powerful than reality. He took Phillipe under one arm and held the little rapier with the other. "Your king will defend you," he promised. "Now, let us go to one of the rooms without windows."

They made their way into a darkened salon lit by a single lamp. There Louis sat on a gilded settee and drew his little brother against him. "Here we shall be safe," he said, knowing it was a lie. "And should the mob come through the door, they will learn how a king defends his brother."

"G.o.d is with us, is he not?" Phillipe asked, trying to sound brighter but only managing to sound pitiful.

"G.o.d is with us," Louis a.s.sured him.

"Then why is Monsieur Cardinal dressed in gray?"

Louis bit back a retort. He, too, had seen Cardinal Mazarin forsake his red robes for gray, anonymous clothing. What a fool! What a coward! But to Phillipe, he said, "The cardinal knows what he is doing. Hush, and think of more pleasant things."

"I will, Louis," the younger boy promised.

More faint reports, and Louis battled once again with his own fear. It was all coming apart around him, but he was the king. Had he no control over his kingdom? How could Paris be rising up against him?

How he hated Paris.

"I will build us a great palace," he told Phillipe idly, "in the country, far from here, from these mobs."

But Phillipe was asleep, and Louis realized that he spoke to comfort himself.

And now shots rang closer-they were in the hall! The thud of boots and the clamor of rough soldiers' voices were outside. Louis tightened his grip on his toy sword. If he behaved the king, he was the king, was the king... He repeated it, saying it to make it real.

Now the door burst open, and there stood John Churchill, the duke of Marlborough, ruddy face haughty above his adamantium breastplate, long black coat swept around him like raven wings. Marlborough, the thrice d.a.m.ned, the devil, come here to burn Versailles around him.

But this wasn't Versailles. It was the Palais Royal, and he was only ten, and Versailles only barely a dream.

"Your Majesty," Marlborough smirked in his heavily accented French. "Your Majesty may put away his toy." He did not even bother to raise the barrel of his kraftpistole.

"Get out of my palace," Louis demanded, but Marlborough only laughed. He saw through Louis, knew him for a fraud...

This was all wrong. Louis ran, the laughter echoing behind him. A shriek tore from his lips, and a wave of humiliation flooded him. He wanted to wake from the nightmare...

Louis XIV, the Sun King, awoke in the seventy-second year of his reign to a reality far more bitter. Pain flamed in his leg, coursing through his groin and belly, seeking his very heart. Though his bedclothes and person had been doused in flower-scented perfume, the sickly corrupt smell of gangrene lay heavily in his nostrils. He was, he remembered, in Versailles-in that splendid country palace he had dreamed of in his youth. He could see that he was surrounded by his family and courtiers, even now, on his deathbed.

"His Majesty is awake," someone whispered. Louis recognized the voice of his dear wife, Maintenon. Her tone made it clear that she had not expected to see his eyes open again.

"Sire? Is there aught we can do for you?" That was f.a.gon, his physician.

"Indeed, f.a.gon," Louis managed. "You can preserve my life."

The elderly doctor's voice trembled. "Sire, if there was anything I could do..."

"My dear family, my friends," Louis began. He drew a shuddering breath. "It is good that you are all here now. It is strange, for I had resigned myself to death. I was willing to meet my G.o.d. My confession has been received, and I have said my good-byes." He could see Maintenon's face, thickly caked with powder, the tracks of her tears channels upon her cheeks. Despite that and her seventy-five years, she was still beautiful, still the woman for whom he had given up all other mistresses. The sight of her encouraged him to continue.

"But now, you see, I know I must not die. Marlborough has returned, bent on our destruction. I cannot leave my young heir with that burden. I cannot leave France with that burden."

A general gasp arose. So they knew, too. They had been keeping it from him. With Marlborough leading the allied armies, France would fall. "f.a.gon, bend near," he commanded, feeling his strength already ebbing. "In the cabinet du Roi, there is a bottle..."

"The Persian elixir?" f.a.gon whispered, incredulous. "May I remind Your Majesty that even if this dubious potion should have any effect, it may endanger your immortal soul merely to think of resorting-"

"I am your king, commanding you," Louis replied, trying to keep his voice pleasant. "Do as I bid."

"Majesty," f.a.gon murmured, and limped from the room.

Maintenon bent close now. "You have sent for the elixir presented you by that horrible little man from Persia?"

"He was the amba.s.sador of the shah of Persia, Madame."

"That wretched, ill-formed man? His other gifts-what were they, some blemished pearls and turquoise? What makes you believe that this elixir has any more worth than those pitiful baubles?"

Louis felt a bubbling in his throat, an acid taste in his mouth. "Because-" He gasped. "-my scientific philosophers have tested it. It is effectual."

Maintenon stared down at him in dismay. "You did not deign to mention this to me?"

"To what purpose?" He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I had decided against using it. I was weary of being king, Maintenon, weary of everyone I know dying. I hoped, at least, to precede you to the grave. I hoped to see my dear niece again, my brother..." Maintenon's face was suddenly obscured by a dark fog. Her voice piped like an oboe, but it carried no sense to him as he drifted back down into oblivion.

He hoped that his decision had not come too late.

Louis dreamed again of his childhood years just after his father died, when he himself was like a mannequin, brought out to play king and then returned to its dark box. Whole days pa.s.sed without anyone speaking to him; his own servants scoffed at his commands.

In this dream he was drowning in a garden pool. He could not swim.

He reached the side easily enough, shouting now, but no one answered his calls. He began to cry out of humiliation. No one cared in the least if he drowned.

Now, in his dream, someone lifted him from the pool. Warm winds enfolded him and dried his clothing, whispering to him.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Hush," a voice told him. "There are angels who protect kings, and I am such a one. And you shall be the greatest king of all."