Age Of Unreason - Newton's Cannon Part 29

vindictiveness. "Superst.i.tious, churchish pretenders..."

"So you see, Ben," Maclaurin said, sipping his coffee and speaking loudly enough to drown out Voltaire's continued muttering, "when I told you that there were many who wished to join our ranks, I lied. You're the most likely candidate we've had in a month." Ben felt a little flare of hope, but the rest of them either chuckled or smiled. Now they were playing with him.

"There's also the other matter..."Vasilisa began.

Maclaurin nodded. "We'll ha't' talk a few things out in private, Benjamin, now that we've heard your story. Come around Crane Court aboot noon, day after tomorrow. Do y' know the place?"

"Yes, sir!" Ben replied. "But if the Royal Academy is dissolved-"

"The charter is dissolved, true enough, and our funds cut off. But the laboratories and halls at Crane Court are ours. Sir Isaac bought them outright, years ago. Now go on. We'll see you Thursday."

Ben stood awkwardly and then bowed. "Thank you all for your time," he said.

The miracle was that he survived the walk home. A locomotive might have come up from behind without his noticing. At one point he was sent reeling against a wall by the burly bearers of a sedan chair, and he didn't even bother to curse after them, he was so deep in thought.

The dissolution of the Royal Society was an unexpected development, but he quickly saw that it presented him with an opportunity. The older, more famous philosophers would probably have paid him little mind. But these Newtonians were not unlike his brother's Couranteers back in Boston. They were young, full of wit and sarcasm, ready to fight the Crown or anyone else for what they wanted.

Remembrance of (he Couranteers summoned his brother's ghost, however, and from Charing Cross on, he returned to the guilt he thought he had buried on the long sea voyage. The worst was not James. The problem was John Collins, who might be alive and might not.

He knew he should write him, but he remembered Bracewell. If Bracewell knew where he was, he would come for him, Ben was certain of that. Could he find him in London? Yes, because he would know where to look-Crane Court.

Which was where he was going the day after tomorrow. The thought brought a little chill.

As ridiculous as the notion was, once it entered his head, he could not force it away. He wasn't able to sleep until Robert returned sometime after midnight, staggering and reeking of gin.

The next day, Ben took himself down to a bookstore he had noticed-The Archimedes Gla.s.s and Bookshop-and bought two books with money Robert reluctantly paid him. The first was Occult Philosophy by Cornelius Agrippa, a general text on magic written in prescientific times. It was concerned somewhat with fantastic beings-demons and the like. He felt ashamed to spend good money on such rubbish, but no more scientific book had given him any clue to Bracewell's weird nature. And Bracewell was real, his abilities and strange companions were real. If scientific philosophy did not account for such beings, perhaps occult philosophy did.

Another book caught his eye-a thin chapbook ent.i.tled The Secret Commonwealth by a Reverend Kirk with a "studious" note by a T. Deitz. He pulled it down and thumbed through it.

A line on the first page caught his attention: ... are said to be of a midle nature betwixt man and Angell (as were daemons thought to be of old); of intelligent Studious Spirits, and light changable bodies (Lik those called Astrall) somewhat of the nature of a condens'd cloud, and best seen in twighlight.

The words "condensed cloud" brought the image of Bracewell's familiar-or whatever it was-vividly to mind.

He read the entire book on the way home. That night he slept dreamlessly, the inchoate terror held at bay by the beginnings of a hypothesis.

Despite his worries, he reached Crane Court without anything unusual happening. The court itself was so narrow as to be almost a lane, a canyon with four stories of handsome red brick for walls. A fifth floor of a darker, almost black brick surmounted the older building. From his narrow prospect, Ben could just make out what appeared to be a hemisphere on the roof. Was it an observatory?

He was surprised to be greeted by Vasilisa at the door.

"Good day, Benjamin," the Russian said. She wore an indigo dress with black lace, the cut of which seemed somehow Oriental. He felt an embarra.s.sing rush of desire for her that he hoped did not show.

"Good day," he said.

"The others aren't here yet," she informed him. "They all have their own homes, but I stay here."

"I'm a little early," he admitted. "I suppose I'm overeager."

"Believe me, I understand," Vasilisa told him, casually linking her arm with his. "Imagine how I felt. A poor girl from Kiev, reading what bits and pieces of Sir Isaac's work I could get. I never in all of my life dared hope that I might come here and meet him, work with his students." She smiled, and Ben was gloriously aware of her arm in his, of the occasional pressure of her hip against his own.

Don't be stupid, he thought. He had seen how all of the other men-especially Voltaire- watched Vasilisa. They were all infatuated with her. Perhaps she was even involved with one of them. What could she ever see in a boy?

"This is one of the meeting halls," she said, gesturing through an open set of double doors at a s.p.a.cious room. Ben gazed in with a certain awe. Who had spoken in that room-Boyle? Huygens? Of course, Newton himself had, and his presence made itself known in a pair of portraits.

"Come here," Vasilisa urged, tugging on his arm. "When I first saw this, I thought I would faint."

Ben didn't come near fainting when they reached the next room, but he did grin ear to ear.

"An orrery," he gasped. "I've never really seen one."

"I love just to watch it move." Vasilisa sighed.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the clicking of clockwork.

The sun in the center of the orrery glowed with a gentle radiance, save where it was marred by darker spots. Ben felt a little thrill at such accuracy. Nearest the sun raced Mercury, a grayish sphere, its...o...b..tal movement visible. Next out was Venus, then their own Earth, Mars, and finally the giant globes of Jupiter and Saturn. Earth's moon was

present, as were the moons of the larger planets.

Ben had seen drawings of such models of the solar system before, but in those, the bodies were supported by armatures. Here, all floated freely, as the glowing stone had floated above Bracewell's head.

"Most remarkable," Ben breathed. Then a thought struck him.

"Where is the clockwork I hear? What drives these around?"

Vasilisa smiled and pointed up to the ceiling. There, behind a plate of gla.s.s, a ma.s.s of

gears clucked and clattered.

"The planets are attuned to those rods, which attract them just enough so that they do

not fall. Their spin and orbit is imparted internally-each orb has been taught to spin of its own accord."

"It's unbelievable. Who built this?"

"James did, for Newton and Halley."

"James? The quiet one?"

"Quiet but brilliant. I'm told he did not sleep for five days, working out just the basics

of this."

"And it is accurate? The movements are all correct?"

"Not perfect, but the corrections required are so tiny that it can run for months without

need of adjusting, at least when it is running at 'real' speed. Right now it's going about triple the speed of the true solar system: Colin and James are trying to place more bodies into the structure."

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't a toy," Vasilisa replied. "We use it to experiment with the motions of bodies.

These, for instance." She gently relinquished her hold on him and strode over to the orrery. "Of course the size of the orbs is proportionally too large for the distance between them," she explained, "else the planets would be too small to see. But all of that can be

corrected for. Now, see this?"

She pointed to something Ben had not noticed before: a marble-sized object suspended in air near Saturn but too far away to be one of the moons.

"A comet?" he asked.

"Oh, wonderfully done," Vasilisa said.

Ben walked around the orrery now, frowning. "Why, there's another," he muttered,

"and another. And there, between Jupiter and Mars, a whole belt of them."

"Actually, those seem different," Vasilisa remarked, stepping in toward Mars. "See,

these have more circular orbits, like the planets. The comets and black comets stream in elliptically."

"Black comets?"

"They do not develop tails of flame as comets do." She dimpled. "They cannot be seen

through a telescope."

Ben gestured vaguely around him. "Then how-" he began.

"A new device," she said. "You will not have heard of it. But these comets are the least

of things. Much more major additions will have to be made to the orrery than that!"

"What? What are you saying?"

"Too much," Vasilisa said. "I should wait for Mr. Maclaurin to explain all this to you. I

have been a bit impertinent, I'm afraid."

"Well, finish explaining about the uses of this," Ben pursued stubbornly.

Vasilisa nodded. "I don't see the harm in that," she admitted. "As you probably know,

each heavenly body has some small effect on every other. The gravity of Jupiter bends slightly the orbit of Mars, and so on. The motion of no one planet can be calculated without reference to another."

"Yes, that I understand," Ben said.

"Well, then, taking into account everything we know, we make this orrery and set it running, and we find that in a short time it deviates from reality. Do you see what that means?"

"It means that there are unseen bodies amongst the seen," Ben replied. When Vasilisa

beamed at his answer, he felt a surge of satisfaction.

"Of course. So we try to account for them by adding things. We can test our hypothesis here until we have a model of the solar system that runs precisely correctly. Then we shall know we have it right."

"But you imply that you have some other way of detecting these unseen bodies."

"I did, didn't I?" Vasilisa grinned. "But you have dragged enough from me today. Let us

retire to a sitting room and have some chocolate. It will be our secret that I showed you this in advance."