Empire of Unreason (6 page)

They were brought food—boiled meat and parched corn, and corn bread steamed in shucks. It was good, and not that different from the fare Red Shoes was used to. He ate until his belly was no longer light, but he was still too wary to bloat himself.

As the night wore on, Red Shoes began to relax a little. Flint Shouting came and flopped beside him.

“They’ve heard things about where we’re headed,” he said, without introduction.

“What sort of things?”

“Some men went that way months ago to trade—they haven’t come back.

Strangers have passed through our country, fleeing something they won’t or can’t talk about, though one mentioned the Iron People. No one has ever heard of such a tribe. Also, certain dreams came to a few men here, telling them to go in that direction. They went and have not returned. What do you know about this?”

“Not much. There is a shadow there I cannot see into. I think that the greatest of dreams is moving there.”

Flint Shouting nodded. “Some of the old men think that the fourth age is upon us, the Time-When-Things-Run-Down. Do you think that’s what you see?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“I don’t know.”

“They say a four-faced giant will be involved.”

Red Shoes spread his hands, feeling slightly annoyed. “I don’t know,” he repeated. “That’s why I’m going to find out.”

“But you’ll stay here a few days, rest.”

“No. We’re leaving in the morning. You, too, remember?”

“Of course. I gave my word. In the morning, then.”

But in the morning, Flint Shouting, the scoundrel, was nowhere to be found.

The other Wichita were as good as their pledges, however. They exchanged horses, and for a little powder and shot and one trade ax, they threw in two more. Red Shoes hated to give up the ammunition, but he had the distinct feeling that where they were going, a few extra shots from a musket would not make much difference.

4.

A Ghost

It was twenty past three in the afternoon when Franklin answered a knock at the door of his laboratory and came face-to-face with a grinning ghost.

He knew the hour because the knock interrupted an experiment he had been at all morning, one that required careful notation of the time. He had already been distracted two hours earlier by the frantic pealing of bells all over the city EMPIRE OF UNREASON

—not on the hour or even half past it, as one might expect, but at precisely twelve after one. Irritated, he had done his best to ignore the hubbub—which probably signified some inconsequential holiday or anniversary he had forgotten. He had managed to get back to work, and after an hour or so the city-wide cacophony had ceased.

But now this knock at the door.

His impulse was to shout at the offender to go away—he wasn’t having a good day and had no time for anything he hadn’t planned. The matter of the captive warlock weighed heavily on him—he had wanted to question the fellow immediately, but it would put them on the wrong terms if Franklin seemed too eager. So he had resolved to keep him sequestered for the night and better part of the day, to perform the experiment he had already planned, then go out to Nairne’s plantation in the evening.

He didn’t need another interruption.

But people generally did not knock at his door without good cause. And so, rising, he cracked his knuckles, straightened his back, and strode toward the door, encouraged by the warm breeze that stole in through the open window.

A part of him distantly noted the odd silence outside. No conversation rode the zephyr in, no rattle of carts or thudding of hooves. Another curiosity, for on a Tuesday the street ought to be busy.

He opened the door and found the ghost, leering at him. A tallish, lean ghost with flashing, perpetually amused eyes, a narrow face to suit his frame, lips oiled by merry sarcasm.

“Mr. Janus,” the ghost exclaimed, bowing slightly, “how good of you to still be alive!”

Franklin was aware that he was gaping, and that gaping was an impediment to speech. It was not until the figure had grasped him in a hard embrace, favored him with a Gallic kiss on each cheek, and thrust him back with both arms that he was able to stammer anything.

“V-Voltaire?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“Your memory is nearly perfect!” his visitor rejoiced. “But I am not this ‘

Vuhvoltaire’—merely ‘Voltaire’!”

“You’re alive!”

“But how unfair! I accused you of that first! And not only alive, but sprung rather tall! Though your hair beats an early retreat from your forehead.”

“How did you—” Franklin had no idea what to ask first. “How did you find me?”

“Inhospitable, I must say, as you have not yet offered me a brandy.”

“Of course! It’s just that I am so stunned.”

“Not as stunned as I hope to be soon, I assure you, sir. The brandy?”

Franklin nodded vigorously, crossed the room quickly to the cabinet where he kept his spirits, chose a likely decanter and two small glasses, and returned to where the impossible Frenchman stood admiring the apparatus littering his tables. He poured the both of them a healthy drink. Voltaire tossed his down immediately, then—on second filling—held his glass at eye level.

“And now I forget myself, sir. Let us drink to the Newtonians.”

“The Newtonians,” Franklin murmured, and as their glasses clinked and sun glanced through the amber fluid, he saw them all in an instant, gathered around that table in the Grecian Coffeehouse in London. Voltaire the caustic wit; Maclauren the ever-serious Scot; the dour Heath; the traitor Stirling; Vasilisa Karevna, his first love—and himself, a boy of no more than fourteen years, a mote orbiting with planets about the obscure sun of Sir Isaac Newton.

The brandy touched his tongue, and he tasted again Vasilisa’s lips and alabaster skin, the hope and fear of extreme youth—the emotions of a giant straining in a pygmy frame. He remembered wonder and joy.

He remembered loss, failure, and despair. Maclauren dead, Stirling turned against them, Vasilisa’s sudden cruel change from lover to captor—and London, blasted to ash and memory, more lost than Atlantis.

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

He swallowed and poured himself another, too.

“Delightful stuff, brandy,” Voltaire observed, his eyes lidded.

“Please,” Franklin said, his trance breaking somewhat. “For God’s sake, tell me what you’ve been up to these twelve years.”

“Yes, what I’ve been up to.” Voltaire sighed, a hint of weariness creeping into his voice. As he folded himself down into the armchair indicated, Franklin noticed that time had indeed passed for the Frenchman. The mind had a way of tricking one with faces, of noticing the familiar first. But now he could see the marks of the calendar on Voltaire. Always skeletal, now his face seemed little more than paper drawn tightly over a skull. He was dressed in a fashionable brown coat and waistcoat, but if he had been wearing battered and dusty riding clothes he would not have looked more road weary.

“How long have you been in Charles Town?” Franklin asked.

“I arrived just after noon, in your splendid harbor down there.” He took some more brandy, this time with a little more patience. “I needed only to mention your name to find my way. You’ve earned some bit of fame here, I see, as you did in Venice.”

“You heard about that? Did you sail from Venice?”

Voltaire flashed his old, diabolical smile. “No, but I sailed from Cologne, where the magistrate had me thrown bodily out the gate. Some twenty feet I sailed.”

Though impatient for a real answer, Franklin could not repress his own smile.

“No doubt he had seen your mainmast full-sheeted and assumed you were ready to depart. His wife?”

“Sir! You have known me of old. Would I breach the holy institution of marriage?”

“I do know you of old, and think that you would breach whomever you took a fancy to.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Voltaire dabbed the lacy end of his steinkirk daintily against his upper lip.

“How offensive. In any event, his wife—while I’m certain she had a sweet disposition—was, alas, not endowed by our creator with more
figurative
virtues. No, it was a misunderstanding about a certain mistress which set me upon the road from Cologne.”

“From Cologne to Venice, then, and thence to here?”

“Oh, heavens. No, from Cologne to Krakow.”

“For the love of God, Voltaire, start at the beginning. And no quoting from Genesis!”

Voltaire waved his hand languidly. “Benjamin, I would dearly love to trade our stories, and I promise you we will. But indulge me first, I beg you. You speak to me, for I am weary and must replenish my strength. Be a kind host.”

Franklin forced himself to sit. “Very well,” he said. “I shall try to be a good host. But please—tell me first if Mr. Heath survived London as well.”

A shadow crossed the handsome features. “No, Benjamin, he did not. Please—I am happy now, seeing you here, alive, prospering. Keep me happy, if only for a little while. Do not make me speak of the crowd of skeletons walking behind me.”

That was something Franklin could understand well enough. “What will make you happy, dear Voltaire?”

“What makes us all happy? A lie or two, I should think. Tell me that after all of my wanderings I have found a place to rest—an El Dorado, an American paradise, an oasis from war.”

“Perhaps I need not lie,” Franklin replied seriously. “It is no paradise. Many did not understand how reliant on Mother England we were. There have been plagues and famine aplenty, and shortages of all goods. And yet we have come through it all with a greater strength. I have been about, too. In Venice, as you know, and two years in Bohemia. America is no Utopia, but it is a better place to be than those.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“War?”

“That is where we have been lucky, I think. Europe is torn by petty and great wars alike. Here, our wars have all been petty. Our Spanish and French neighbors were poorer than we, and it was best we all cooperate in some measure for each to survive. Since we opened the trade with Venice, we’ve had to ally to keep that route open and free of pirates. In all, it has been a test to measure the best in us.”

“But there has been fighting?”

“The French in the north are half-crazed with hunger and cold, as are their Indian allies. They have raided our northern colonies and our Iroquois friends.

As you might guess, we’ve had to make much tighter alliance with the Indians, since no army can come from England to quiet them should they become

‘grieved against us.

“Within the colonies there has been dissent, too, argument over the land held absentee by lords in England who will never claim it, and over the proper method of government.”

“And how did you settle that last?”

Franklin leaned forward, suddenly feeling flushed with brandy and not a little pride.

“Losing England was a harsh blow. And yet some good has come of it.”

“I have heard the rumors—that you colonies have become a democratic republic.”

“That goes too far,” Franklin replied, shaking his head. “But it may be one day.

When we knew England and England’s king were lost to us, we made do as best we could. Each colony was already in some measure self-governing. What was needed was only an o’erarching body to settle questions of the common good. There was a strong Tory sentiment to find a king, but none was to be had. King George and all the Hanover line are dead or remain lost in the EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Germanies someplace, probably under Muscovite rule. We have never heard a word of them. And the blue blood here in America is all so distant—and thin of royal corpuscles—that no one gentleman would concede to bow before another. And so we assembled a Continental parliament—makeshift I’ll admit, so much so that I myself sit in the Commons.”

“Congratulations. And this works?”

“It is a crudely forged thing, but in time I think it can be perfected, if we survive our enemies.”

Voltaire leaned forward, suddenly very intense. “And of kings?”

“We have no need of one. We have become quite Whiggish here. I think we have escaped kings at last. We see we have no need of them.”

“So you say.”

“What do you mean? When I first met you, you had been imprisoned and then exiled by the king of France. You had nothing but disdain for the institution of the monarchy, as I remember you.”

Voltaire shrugged. “The question is not what you or I might want, is it? No king has ever governed without that his people let him do it. People, it seems, are mightily fond of being told what to do and of having someone to blame for the sorry state of their lives.”

“This may be true of some nations, but Englishmen have a natural inclination to liberty, I think, and the Colonials most ofall.”

“Think you so?” Voltaire asked, almost sharply. “Well, in keeping with Newton’s method, I believe we shall see that tested.”

Before Franklin could ask what he meant, there came a rap at the door.

“Aye?” Franklin called.

“It’s me,” a woman’s voice answered. Pushing the already open door a bit EMPIRE OF UNREASON

wider, Lenka Franklin entered. She brushed back a lock of dark brown hair, which had escaped her lace bonnet and draped winsomely over one eye. Her blue eyes— the most intelligent sapphires that had ever been—lit on Voltaire.

“Lenka!” Franklin said. “Please, come in, meet an old friend of mine. Monsieur Voltaire, may I have the honor of presenting to you my wife, Lenka?”

“Oh,
enchante,
Madame,” Voltaire said, bowing deeply, and before she could react, stepping to her quickly and planting a kiss on her lips. Then she did step back, her face reddening. “I greet you in the English fashion,” Voltaire explained, “I find it preferable to the French kissing of hands.”

“I do not, sir,” Lenka replied, regaining her composure. “It is not a fashion I am acquainted or comfortable with.”

“Oh, dear, my pardon,” Voltaire said, grinning wolfishly. “Allow me then—” He reached for her hand.

“Now I see where you learned your manners with women, Benjamin,” Lenka said, deftly withdrawing her fingers from reach. She turned back to Voltaire.