Newton's Cannon (46 page)
Authors: J. Gregory Keyes
“Above the rain?” Ben weighed these words for madness but kept his judgments in abeyance. He was, after all, flying in a boat. He wondered what a cloud would smell like.
Finally the rain stopped, and the wind did take on a peculiar smell: sharp, chemical,
burned
. Mixed currents of hot and cold air touched them. They were enclosed by an eerie silence, the only sounds their own breathing, the whisper of winds in the cables, and an occasional distant rumble of thunder.
“Oh, God,” Robert said, “look!”
Below
them, Ben saw lightning brightening the heart of one cloud, and then another. The endless mass beneath them seemed like some vast organism, its internal organs luminescing now and
then, shining through its convoluted skin. The clouds were hundreds of feet below.
Tremulously, Ben turned his gaze upward. “If we have risen above the clouds,” he asked, “shouldn't we see stars?”
But there were no stars, only the arcane radiance of the sphere that bore them. Ben felt a tickle of horror when he understood that the luminescence was patterned. The once-solid globe now seemed translucent, an egg held up to a candle, its yolk bright, an eye straining to peer through a cataract.
Ben slept briefly and restlessly in the damp bottom of the boat, his mind racing despite his weariness. He had just dozed for a second time when he saw new light.
“The moon but not stars,” Robert murmured beside him. “How very odd.”
The rising orb was ruddy and huge, spreading its light liberally upon the clouds below. In the dim luminescence, Ben could still see no end to them, a vast desert of mist.
“That's a bright moon,” Robert remarked, his voice unsteady. Sir Isaac, nearby, snored a noncommittal reply.
Ben stared in momentary incomprehension. “No craters,” he said. “No man in the moon. Robert, that isn't the moon. That's the sun.”
“The sun? But the sky is still so dark. It's so pale!”
At noon, it was brighter than the full moon, but one could still stare at it for a few moments without looking away. The sky was amber, shaded to a vile brown at the horizon. Newton, now awake, sighed.
“We have made the world different,” he said. “We can only hope God will forgive us.”
“I don't understand,” Robert admitted tightly. “I'm no philosopher, I … Couldn't this be the end? Armageddon?”
Newton kept looking thoughtfully at the sun. “My researches into history suggest that the last days are not upon us yet,” he answered. “But it could be. In a few days we shall know. Mr. Nairne, you are in good company, for I don't understand these things we see much better than you do—nor, I suspect, does Mr. Franklin. But I will tell you this. If this is
not
the time foretold in
the Revelation of John, it is a time of testing nevertheless. It is a time to use the minds God gave us, to decipher the phenomena around us. Most especially, we must stop this from ever happening again.”
“Again?”
“If one madman can call a comet from the sky, so can another. I mean to make certain that it cannot be done again. Mr. Franklin, I am sore in need of an amanuensis, a laboratory aide, a collaborator. In short, sir, I need an apprentice. May I interest you in the position?”
Newton's offer held only a vague hope of accomplishing too little too late, but it held the only hope that Ben saw left anywhere in the world.
“Yes,” he finally replied, not from eagerness or innocence, but from the beginnings of something wiser. “Yes, sir, I am interested.”
Adrienne woke to the tattoo of rain on a tile roof and tried to reconstruct from scant, disordered memories where she was.
Her last clear recollection was of fleeing through the woods with Crecy, of a throbbing pain in her wrist.
She raised her right hand and for a crazy second nearly laughed, because it looked so
odd
to have an arm ending in a wrist. She touched the clean bandage gingerly and was rewarded with pain.
She remembered fevered dreams of a filthy cottage, but now she lay in a large, comfortable bed in a small room. Outside a cracked window, the rain poured in a solid sheet. A faint sulphury odor wafted in from the open window, infusing the damp, metallic scent of rain.
She tried to rise and quickly discovered that she was too weak for that yet, and worse, she had a sudden, vicious bout of nausea. Fortunately, the chamber pot was on the side of the bed.
The noise of her being sick brought motion outside, and the door creaked open. Crecy entered, clad in a loose brown manteau somewhat short for her height.
“So!” Crecy said, kneeling nearby with a damp rag. “You're awake. How do you feel?”
“Veronique, where am I? How many days have passed?”
Crecy touched Adrienne's forehead lightly. “You have been very ill,” she said. “I thought you would die. You may have noticed your hand.”
“Yes.”
“It's been more than a week since we fled Versailles. You remember that?”
“Very well. And Nicolas …”
“Good. Then I don't have to explain.” She hesitated a moment and then added, “I
am
sorry, you know.”
“It was my fault. If I hadn't hesitated—”
“Then you would merely have lost your hand sooner,” Crecy finished. “Enough of that. We have other worries, and I will need you attentive to them, not frozen considering the past.”
“Other worries?”
“I'll get to that. When we fled the carriage, you didn't get far. I found a woodcutter and his wife; she had some knowledge of herbs and poultices. Your hand had to be removed.”
“The pursuit?”
Crecy smiled grimly. “The next day, Newton's cannon fired, and the pursuit seems to have quite forgotten us.”
“Truly?”
“Adrienne, the western sky lit up like midday, and then stones began to fall. Some of them were aflame, and the woods caught fire. A few hours after that, the sun was blotted out.”
“Blotted out?”
“By black clouds. It's been raining the most part of every day since, and the rain smells foul. I took you from the woodcutter's place to higher ground, for the lowlands are all flooding. I killed a gentleman and his driver, stole his carriage, and brought us here.”
“Where? Whose house is this?”
“Madame Alaran, one of the Korai. She received us, but we cannot stay here long. Her servants and tenants all think that the world has ended, and her fields are drowning.” She smiled sardonically. “Some of this is to our advantage. Many roads are washed out between here and Versailles. It will make our flight easier.”
Adrienne remembered her own calculation of the impact of the comet.
“I never saw all this,” she muttered.
“No matter,” Crecy said softly, “I did. It isn't the end of the world, I assure you. But it will be a very dark time, and you and I must leave France as soon as possible, while you are still well able to travel.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are with child, my dear,” Crecy replied.
She stood in the ruins of Versailles and knew that she dreamed or that somehow Crecy had given her the second sight, for she understood that she also remained in bed. Most of the great mansion still stood, but its windows were shattered, and the pounding of rain filled the empty halls like the sound of God's tears.
Through the downpour, she walked to the Grotto of Thetis, and there, with a mixture of pity and triumph, she regarded Louis' face on Apollo, the eyes now altered somehow so that the stone registered not a dread, sovereign gaze, but the sad eyes of a little child betrayed.
Her own face looked different, too. Older, and with something in the curve of the lips—something disturbing but not immediately recognizable.
Pain throbbed in her wrist, and it seemed now that she remembered why she was here. Approaching her statue, she gazed more closely, her eyes microscopes looking deeper and deeper until she spied the atoms that made it, the mathematical prisons that gave them form. She smiled and then laughed at the beauty of it.
Still smiling, she reached with her good hand and broke the stone wrist of Thetis, pressed the hard marble hand to her own stump. And then she wrote an equation the like of which had never been written before. She wrote it not with pen and ink but with atoms, the way God writes.
And then, dream or vision, it faded. She forgot much on waking, and forgot more each moment thereafter. But when she woke, she had two hands again.
The Angel of Kings
Peter Alexeevich, emperor of all the Russias, Livonia, Karelia, and Sweden, paced through the rooms of his modest Summer Palace like a caged tiger. At forty-eight, his tall frame trembled with the pent-up energies of a younger man, a man used to action and presently denied it.
How could he act when he knew nothing? Oh, he had a few reports, but most aetherschreibers seemed to have stopped working. He knew, at least, that the spectacular sights in the western and southern heavens of two nights ago, the subsequent darkening of the sun, and now the unseasonable storms rolling in from the west were small things compared to the cataclysms in the rest of Europe. Of two score ambassadors, merchants, and spies in the Netherlands, only one had so far contacted him, a short, panicked note that raved of fire from the heavens and the waves flowing over the dikes. Amsterdam, that most incomparable of cities, had been reclaimed by the sea. In France, the Sun King was dead, and all was chaos. There was no word from London. It was as if every agent in England had vanished.
Whatever horror had been visited upon his western neighbors had thus far spared Russia.
Thus
far.
He stalked into his turning room. He glanced at the yardwide dials on the wall, which registered the time and—through clever devices upon the roof—the direction of the wind and its force. Today, the dials told him the wind blew from the west, and it blew with great strength.
After a time, he found himself outside, gazing at the weird sky and the defiant, proud thrust of Saint Petersburg against the uncanny yellow clouds. Thus far, no damage had come to his
beautiful city: The water had risen slightly in the mouth of the Neva, but not so much as to drown anything. He felt, as he often did, a great swell of pride at his city—
his
city—which less than two decades ago had been a marsh without even a village to mark it. Now it was his capital, a bustling metropolis with more than forty thousand buildings designed by the greatest architects of Italy, France, and the Netherlands. A bright, shining,
new
city for the new age of the Russian Empire and of the world.
What threatened it? What should he be doing? His eyes searched the skies for an answer and found none. With a low growl he stalked off to see his philosophers again, but they had no clear answers. Finally, he went to Trinity Square, paused long enough to bestow one twitchy smile on the three-room cabin he had built and dwelt in so long ago, now dwarfed by great stone façades. Many thought it odd that Peter's subordinates had grander palaces than the tsar himself, but to Peter
his
palaces were Russia and Saint Petersburg. He preferred the airy Summer Palace with its fourteen rooms or Mon Plaisir, which was hardly bigger, where he could sit with his telescope and watch the ships, where he could enjoy his few precious moments alone with Catherine.
He entered the Four Frigates Tavern and was welcomed by the crowd with cheers. His searching gaze quickly found the French and Dutch ambassadors sitting with their staffs at opposite ends of the room. They greeted him wanly; they were well into their cups, and most had streaks of tears on their cheeks.
“Bring vodka and brandy!” Peter shouted. A profound silence settled on the usually noisy crowd as Peter positioned himself near the center of the room, downed his first glass, refilled, and then raised his voice again. “My friends, something terrible has happened, and we do not yet know the nature or the extent of it. God willing, we will soon. We have heard awful reports that our neighbors and brethren in the west have suffered terrible catastrophes. I wish to raise a glass in their honor, and in prayer for those who have died. We have heard Amsterdam has been inundated, but I give you the
Dutch
, gentlemen, and I tell you that in Holland, the sea never wins! If waves lie on that great city, it will be a short-lived victory for the sea!” He raised
his glass in salute, and there was a ragged cheer. The Dutch-men's eyes told him that he had touched them to the core.
His blood liked the feel of brandy in it, and he raised a fresh glass for a second toast. “And to my French friends, please know that my sympathies are with you as well. Russia stands ready to give her aid if it is needed.” He looked around. “And have my English friends any news?” he asked, but the Englishmen, grim faced, had no answer.
They all huddled there in the Four Frigates as the sky grew darker and colder, holding their grief and worry at bay with strong drink and brave words. And at last, beneath a lightless sky, Peter made his way back home and sought his bed.
And there he had a dream.
He was ten years old, shivering in a dark place. His mother, Natalya, crouched nearby. He could make out little of her face, but he remembered it as he had last seen it: stoic, brave, determined. Hours ago—when they had faced the mob of Strelitzi soldiers with their muskets, pikes, and axes—her grip on his hand had been tight, but her voice had been strong.
The Strelitzi, it seemed, had gone mad. The Strelitzi, who had been the personal guard of the tsar and his family since the time of Ivan the Terrible, now ran riot in the narrow, dark maze of the Kremlin itself,
hunting
the royal family, killing and looting, as Peter and his mother and his brother, Ivan, hid in a darkened banquet hall.
If I live
, Peter thought,
the Strelitzi shall pay for this. One day they shall know the judgment of a tsar.
The Kremlin, the palace of his father, had become a nightmare, a dark warren full of rats.
Late in the night, when she thought he was asleep, his mother rose to leave.
“Mother?” he whispered.
“I must know what is happening,” she told him, stroking his head. “Stay here and watch Ivan. Be very quiet.”
“They might kill you, too,” Peter moaned.
“That would be going too far,” she said. “Even the Strelitzi would not dare go that far. They will not kill me, Peter. Now be a good boy and stay here. Ivan needs you.”
Peter glanced at the sleeping form of his older half brother Ivan and nodded. Ivan was weak of body and spirit, nearly blind, and scarcely capable of comprehensible speech. “I will watch him,” he promised.
Some time later, Peter heard men singing in the halls and saw a yellow light approaching. Peter felt as if he could not breathe, and began to shake as his courage failed him. He saw, in the light of a flickering torch, the bearded face of one of the Strelitzi, spattered with blood, grinning like a wolf.
The torch was thrust into the banquet hall.
“Might be some silver in there,” someone said.
“Might be,” said another.
“Isn't that where the tsaritsa was holed up, a while back? Goddamn Naryshkins! Do you hear me in there? Goddamn Naryshkins!”
Peter felt as if he were underwater, with no place to get air. What could he do?
Then something soft and dark wrapped around him, something comforting. He couldn't see the Strelitzi anymore, but he didn't fear them, either.
“
Nyet
, see,” one said. “Nobody here. It's empty now.”
After a time they went away.
“Who are you?” Peter whispered, for he understood someone was there. He had been having this dream for many years. But this time in his dreams there was
something
, something dark and strong, a protector he had never really had.
“I am here to help you, Peter Alexeevich,” the darkness whispered. “For there are angels who protect kings, and I am such a one.”