Newton's Aliens: Tales From the Anti-Ice Universe

by Stephen Baxter

Defoe sneered. ‘Going to press your old Tory pamphlets on him, are you, Swift?’

  ‘For something to read when he’s finished wiping his arse on your Crusoe, perhaps, Foe – for that is his name, you know, sir, the “De” being the affectation of a man born in Cripplegate …’

  And so they bickered, two gentlemen of letters preening at the side of a road full of the destitute, while their coach lay in the dirt. I could not help but laugh again.

  ‘Look here,’ Defoe said to me. ‘You look strong enough, and you are evidently no fool if your reading tastes are anything to go by. You must help us.’

  Swift seized on that. ‘Yes! You can see how we’re fixed; our wretched coachmen took off on our horses and left us helpless. We’re neither of us men of vigour, and we must get to Edinburgh, for the sake of the King, the country – for all mankind, I wouldn’t wonder! Now the first task is to get poor Isaac out of the coach. When that is done you can find us some alternative transport. And then -’

  ‘And then,’ I said, tipping my hat, ‘I will flap my wings and fly up to yon Comet, for there’s as much chance of my doing that as buttling for you. Good day to you, gentlemen.’

  Swift was outraged. ‘We three and others were convened at the orders of King George himself – the King! We are a Grand Council of Mathematicians, Alchemists, Astronomers and other Philosophers – the Great Minds of the age, salted by a few traveller types like this fraud Foe here. Our commission is to find a solution to the blight of the Phoebeans. Having been forced to flee London our destination is Edinburgh, a city with a great concatenation of scholars and yet, according to accounts, less afflicted by Phoebean assaults. Now our coach is overturned, we are abandoned by our men – it is your duty to help us, sir, duty as commanded by the King!’

  ‘A fat lot of good the King has ever done me. And as for duty, mine is to preserve my own life, not to jump to the tune of codheads, however high-born.’

  Defoe grinned. ‘Ah, a cynic! A man after your own heart, Swift. Well, then, sir, what will induce you to help us? The Crown is not without means.’

  ‘What use is money? Those – what did you call them?’

  ‘Phoebeans. For some had thought they came from the moon.’

  ‘Ask them their price to forsake the earth for the sky from whence they came.’

  Defoe laughed. ‘A cynic indeed, but a man who’s honest even to himself. You should read Swift’s “Tale of a Tub”, sir, though it pains me to recommend it. Then if not for duty or money, what would motivate you to look in our carriage? How about curiosity? No man as intelligent as you can be without a smidgen of that. Could you walk away without ever knowing who’s in there – eh?’

  I eyed him. ‘You have me there, Mister Defoe.’

  And so, escorted by the two eminent gentlemen, I walked towards the overturned carriage.

  Inside, on his back where he had been thrown by the crash, lay a portly man of great years – he might have been eighty. His hair was long and flowing, and truth be told if it was a wig it was as great an artifice as I have seen. His nose was fleshy, his mouth small, and he had an odd, wary look about the eyes. He peered up dimly; I must have been silhouetted against the sky. ‘Who’s there? Is that you, Maclaurin?’

  ‘No, Isaac,’ Defoe called, not unkindly. ‘We’ve had something of a tumble, and it’s rather a long haul to Edinburgh yet.’

  ‘Then who is this young man?’

  Rather rudely I snapped back, ‘My name is Jack Hobbes, if it’s your business. More to the point – who, pray, are thee?’

  Defoe dug me in the ribs. ‘Good God, man, this is Isaac Newton! Have you not read the “Principia”? Thou art in the presence of greatness!’

  I had taught at some good schools and studied at better, and was not ignorant of modern Philosophy. ‘Of course! You are the vortex fellow, are you not?’

  ‘No,’ Newton said icily. ‘That was Descartes.’ As of course I knew, but I could not resist tweaking his tail. ‘Will you help me out of this damn box, or not?’

  Grinning, I could hardly refuse.

  Chapter IV

  It took the three of us, the others pulling, me down in the coach pushing, to haul poor Isaac’s bulk out of that tipped-over coach; fleet his mind may have been, nimble his great body certainly wasn’t. And as we worked, I was aware of a certain shifting in the light, of pivoting shadows, that brought unpleasant associations to my mind.

  At last we had him out by the side of the road. Newton looked about at the ragged, fleeing people and the icebound landscape with his eyebrows raised; he habitually had a rather supercilious expression. ‘It seems to me self-evident that we must hail one of these carriages, or a cart would do, and continue our journey post-haste.’

  Defoe and Swift immediately started arguing about what category of vehicle would suffice, and how much of their luggage they, or rather I, should try to salvage. And all the while, entirely unnoticed by them, our shadows shifted below our feet.

  I cut through the chatter. ‘I humbly submit that we adjourn this meeting to the ditch yonder. Or else your three eminent heads are likely to be stove in by that.’ And I pointed to the sky, from whence fell another Cometary fragment, this one a blazing ball that looked to dwarf the piece I had seen fall in Jedburgh.

  People started screaming and scattering, picking up their children and running off the road, while helpless elderly folk stumbled as they could. As for the scholars, I never saw before or since seen three men with a combined age of one hundred and ninety-two years hop in a ditch with such alacrity.

  And the fragment struck.

  As the ground shook, Swift and Defoe to their credit took care to cushion Newton in the ditch, elderly fellows both but putting aside their own discomfort, Defoe lending an arm as a pillow, Swift offering his cloak as a blanket. Newton, though, seemed oblivious; he had a battered leather-covered Bible that he produced from a coat pocket, and he began to thumb through this, muttering verses from the Book of Daniel.

  When all seemed calm, I crept up out of the ditch.

  The latest icefall had dug a new hole in the earth, bigger than any I had seen before, that pretty neatly cut the Great North Road in two. I learned later that this was near the village of Shilbottle, if you know it. I could see nobody living; everybody who was able seemed to have fled north or south, depending on which side of the hole they happened to be on.

  And others, caught up in the tremendous impact, had been scorched, crushed and, worst of all, dismembered. I do not pretend to be a strong man, and the sight of scattered limbs and burst-open guts on the road reminded me of what a fragile bit of clockwork housed my own soul. Aside from that there were overturned carts and scattered bundles of possessions littering the road – an unrolling carpet of quite good quality, a poor horse with a broken back that neighed pitifully as it tried to raise itself.

  In the crater, eggs were already spitting out of the carcass of the fresh-fallen bolus, a new generation of chilly colonists come to our frozen world. Not only that, I saw, looking wider, more of the great ice beasts, which Defoe had called “Phoebeans”, were sliding across the landscape, mighty structures like cathedrals on the move – towards us.

  I scuttled back into the ditch and reported my findings. ‘We’re the last breathing humans within half a mile, I should judge,’ I said. ‘And the Phoebeans are on the way here, I know not why.’

  Defoe said, ‘We should scarper like the rest. Perhaps we can fix an abandoned cart to give Sir Isaac a ride.’

  Without looking up from his Bible Newton pronounced: ‘No.’

  I near exploded. ‘What means “no”?’

  But Swift counselled patience. ‘A moment, Hobbes. What is your thinking, sir?’

  ‘The Phoebeans, whether sentient are no, are a presence in our world now – that seems clear enough. They are a force like the weather, and if we run from them we will be as animals in the field, or as savages in the Indies who flee the storm. We will deal with the Phoebeans as we deal with nature’s
other challenges, by the power of reason.’

  Swift, to my dismay, was nodding enthusiastically. ‘Yes – yes, reason, that’s the key.’

  ‘But reason relies on observation,’ Newton declared from the ditch. ‘I was able to deduce the law of universal gravitation from Tycho’s masses of astronomical sightings, rendered by Kepler into his rules of planetary motion. Now we must similarly observe these Phoebeans.’

  ‘Us?’ moaned Defoe. ‘Why us?’

  ‘Is that not the King’s commission?’ Swift thundered. ‘Did we not agree to serve on his Council, did we not take his shilling, regardless of risk to our persons?’ Shuffling in the mud, he bowed from the waist to Newton. ‘You know I have issues with your over-reliance on Mathematicks, sir, and the reduction of the world to a few computations.’ He raised his muddy arms. ‘We degenerate creatures pronounce one System of the World after another, all based on whimsy and fumes, and each contradicting all the others! What hubris. But I side with thee in your championing of reason. I will be honoured to be your Tycho.’

  Defoe sneered. ‘You pompous popinjay. Why, you wouldn’t even be on the Council if I had not persuaded Walpole of it, after the way you pamphleted agin him -’

  I got to my haunches. ‘I’ll leave the debate to you, gentlemen. I’m off.’

  Defoe grabbed my arm. ‘Wait, Jack. For all our bluster – if you go we three will surely die here.’

  ‘That’s of no concern to me, for many men will die before this episode is done. Can I save them all?’

  Swift gestured at Newton. ‘But you could save this man. If he were to die here in this ditch could you live with your conscience?’

  ‘Blame the Phoebeans, not me!’

  I spoke defiantly - yet I was not being honest. The truth was that his pomp and piety penetrated my defences; Swift, a churchman, reminded me too much of my father, damn his eyes.

  Defoe, wiser than the others and a wheedler, was still hanging on to my arm. ‘Just stay a while, Jack. Help us get sorted out before you go.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘It will be dark soon enough. Let’s go and have a rummage in the spill on the road, man, you and I. Do you remember how my Crusoe plundered his wrecked ship for provisions? Let’s you and I do the same – eh? It will be an adventure.’

  I gave in. ‘For you and your book, then,’ I said to Defoe. ‘For I do believe all the rest is nonsense.’

  ‘Good man,’ Defoe said, and he started to move. ‘Come on. Help me out of this damn ditch before I freeze in place.’

  So Defoe and I crept out of the ditch.

  In the abandoned luggage that littered the road we found much that was useful – clothing, blankets, flagons of beer, victuals like cheeses and salted meats – and much that was not. I was startled to discover what people will carry with them when they flee for their lives: we found a trunk entirely full of hat boxes; and we found a spinet, carefully wrapped up in a blanket. Well, the fond owners of these pieces were learning to get by without them now.

  Defoe watched me working through this stuff. ‘You have a ruthless way about you with other people’s possessions, Jack.’

  Having had my conscience poked by Swift, I wasn’t in the mood for any more. ‘I have never been a thief to any great degree. A wastrel, a faithless lover and a coward, yes. But I cannot believe that the owners of these items will ever return to collect them.’

  ‘Quite right. So we have a moral right to make use of them, do we not?’ That sounded like sophistry to me, but I did not remark on it. ‘Come. Let’s lug our haul back to the scholars.’

  For all their elevated intellects, both Newton and Swift fell on the meat and cheese readily enough, and spread blankets over their legs. Swift in fact had used a pocket flint to start a fire, of timber from a smashed-up trunk. I fretted over this, worrying that the smoke might give away our location, but Swift sneered at me. ‘You aren’t dealing with highwaymen, boy; you must set your instincts aside. The Phoebeans are another order of creature entirely. You might as well try to hide from the Eye of God.’ I had no convincing counter-argument.

  And Newton sat upright like an elderly bear waking from hibernation, and he pointed. ‘In this changed world, even a scrambled-together bonfire has lessons for those with eyes to see.’

  I looked where he was pointing, and saw there was an ice crab in the ditch with us, only a few inches high, like a milking-stool built for a doll. It was stuck in a kind of gully in the frozen mud, and to emerge it would have had to pass by the fire, and this it was remarkably reluctant to do. When at last it inched towards the flame it grew sluggish and then immobile. But when, at a gesture from Newton, Swift shielded the beast from the heat with his hat, it quickly revived and scuttled away.

  ‘It doesn’t like fire,’ I breathed.

  Swift snorted. ‘Nor would you if you were made of ice.’

  Newton said, ‘Indeed it seems to suffer a kind of heat paralysis – a calenture, if you like.’

  Defoe mused, ‘Yet they arrive in heat, in those steaming projectiles that fall from the sky.’

  Newton said, ‘You, sir, entered this world through a birth-passage of flesh and bone; if I were to stuff you back there now it would surely kill you.’

  ‘And my mother,’ Defoe murmured, but the point was made.

  Swift declared, ‘Sir Isaac has shown us the way by example. We must observe, observe! That is our task.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘There is light yet for the two of you to return to the road and study our visitors – whatever they are up to in their pit.’

  Defoe and I glanced at each other. Defoe asked, ‘And why not you, Jonathan?’

  ‘I have the fire to attend to. Besides, Defoe, spying comes naturally to you, does it not?’

  Defoe glared at him. But he said to me, ‘Are you game for a bit more adventure, lad?’

  I was reluctant to leave the warmth of the fire, but I grabbed a handful of cheese and a small keg of beer, and led the way out of the ditch.

  Chapter V

  We crept out of sight along the road until we came to a tipped-over coach. We hid inside its carcass, thus sheltering from the raw wind, and feasted on cheese and beer while we peeked out through broken slats at the Phoebeans. To inspect them we used my father-in-law’s Pocket Perspective, which we passed from one to the other.

  The pit their latest bolus had dug out was a nest of industry. Phoebeans from miles hence were sliding across the country to converge on this place, which appeared to be of importance to them, and many of them already stood over the crater. Some were wider than they were tall, if you can picture it, like immense tables with that characteristic lenticular shape to their tops, but a few towered over the others. When they were at rest they were entirely still, with no signs of life, and the gang of them together gave you the impression of some fantastic city, with those tall fellows like the water-towers you see in some dry countries. But others moved constantly, even clambering in and out of the pit, as if engaged on some vast construction work.

  ‘When they walk,’ Defoe said, ‘that sound – I have met travellers who have visited the Frozen Sea, and chill Tartary. They describe the groan of the ice that plates the sea, and of the ice rivers that pour down from the mountains. Swift mocks my interest in such fellows and their tales – he says he is planning a travel book of his own, entirely mendacious, that will spite my Crusoe and the whole genre - let him! If not for such interviews I would not know of the sound of ice en masse, which is just that noise the Phoebeans make.’

  ‘But nothing more purposeful,’ I said.

  He glanced at me. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They have no voice I can hear. They do not even bellow like oxen, the calls of the dumb animals. They are silent save for the grind of their icy limbs.’

  ‘That’s a good observation,’ Defoe said. He fumbled for a battered journal and, with a bit of charcoal, made a note. ‘No apparent communication. Look, though.’ He passed me the Perspective. ‘Can you see a sort of light playing about their limbs when they
move?’

  In the darkling light, I discerned a sort of sparking about their tall legs when the creatures were in motion, and especially the seamless joints where the limbs slid under the icy carapaces. ‘I have seen such sparks before,’ I murmured.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘It is a kind of Electrick. If you rub a bit of amber with a cloth, it might spark, and will pick up scraps of paper.’ I used to perform such tricks in my classes, trying to induce an interest in the world’s phenomena in the generally cloddish minds of my students. I felt an odd pang, then, for those rows of innocent faces in Edinburgh and Jedburgh – more dependents you have abandoned, Jack, in a lifetime of selfish flight, and think too of Constance in Jedburgh with her unborn child, and poor Millie in Edinburgh with hers born dead – think on and have done with it!

  Defoe made more notes. ‘Old Newton will pat our heads for this.’

  I ventured, ‘The Dean said you were suited to life as a spy.’

  Defoe snorted. ‘Spiteful old fool. It’s true it’s an adventurous life I’ve had, lad – perhaps you know something of my biography?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  He looked offended, and while we were stuck in that broken box he whispered to me more than I wanted to know about his life: his birth to dissident Presbyterians, the dowry he gambled away, his career as a merchant that ended up with him arrested for debt, and then his pamphleteering that got him pilloried and put in prison, from whence he was hoiked out by a Tory minister on condition he spy for the English government. His greatest triumph had been in Scotland, where he had spread doubt and division in the Scottish parliament during the negotiations that led up to the Act of Union with England.

  ‘If I’d been exposed the Edinburgh mob would have torn me apart! I’m nervous enough in going back there even now. So you see, Jack, yes, I have spied, Swift is right about that. But life has a way of compromising one. Few of us have the luxury he does of indulging his damnable Augustan superiority from his seat in Saint Pat’s in Dublin …’