The Shadows of God

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “Some. I'm sure many think they serve me. I was kept from the sight of the men when held captive.”

  “Then you are worth keeping alive, despite your crimes,” Philippe told him.

  “A noble sentiment,” the tsar said ironically.

  “These are not noble times. They are desperate ones. I will want to hear your story soon.”

  “You will have it.”

  “One question first, however. If you don't lead your country in this war—who does?”

  Peter's eyes narrowed to black slits. “Don't you know? It is the angels— of heaven or hell I do not know nor care.”

  “So Mr. Franklin said,” Philippe replied, his voice weak. “You confirm it?”

  “I do. I have seen them. I have known them.”

  The French king looked imploringly at Franklin. “How can we fight angels?”

  “I destroyed my own,” the tsar rumbled. “It cost me my wife and all my crew, but I am rid of him. If they can die singly, they can die by the thousand. If I can be rid of one, we can be rid of them all.”

  His own? Was the tsar like Euler? Like Bracewell and Sterne? Franklin pulled out his aether compass, but it did not point at Peter. He remembered that it had indicated Euler, even though the fellow no longer had a malakus with him.

  “And what will God do, when we have killed his angels?” Philippe asked, his voice shaking as if for the very first time he believed who their true foe was.

  “One thing at a time, Your Majesty,” Franklin told him. “One thing at a time.”

  The troops from Azilia arrived three weeks later, a weary, bedraggled-looking lot numbering around four thousand, including some two hundred warriors who had joined them in Apalachee. They were led by Thomas Nairne and a man named Martin from Newbern. Oglethorpe was not with them. They were welcomed in grand style, with fife and drum and trumpet, which seemed to cheer them considerably. Don Pedro insisted on getting out of bed to greet them, though the doctors much advised against it. He whooped and hollered and only occasionally clutched the bandages at his side.

  Franklin clasped Nairne warmly at the approach to the chateau. The man had aged considerably since Franklin had last seen him; he walked with a limp and his shoulders seemed somehow more sloping.

  “Mr. Franklin,” he acknowledged. “You seem to have done your job.”

  “As best I could, Governor, as best I could.”

  “Can you bring me to date?”

  “Of course. Let us find you quarters, first.”

  “Mr. Franklin, your wife, Lenka. I fear—I fear I have misplaced her.”

  “Never fear, she is found, or she found me. Though that presents its own problems.”

  Nairne nodded. “As long as it's off my shoulders.”

  New Paris and Franklin had not been idle, awaiting the troops. The capital of Louisiana would not be taken from the sea, as the English colonies had—at least not without hideous cost. The harbor was mined all the way to the open ocean, and more sparsely for miles up and down the coast. The fortress had been reinforced with depneumifiers, as well, to separate any airships or underwater boats from the malakim that powered them.

  On the landward side, a perimeter of towers was erected, hidden amongst the huge pines and dense cypress, depending on the terrain. These were furbished with devil guns as well, and together constituted a wall through which no ordinary malakus-driven machine should be able to pass. That left only the thousands of enemy soldiers and warriors marching their way, apparently from east and west.

  The newly arrived Carolinians were put immediately to work in shifts, digging and building more mundane sorts of fortifications. Scouts went north, west, and east to gather intelligence. New Paris swarmed with men building defenses like an ant nest some child had kicked— or so Franklin thought, remembering his earlier observations of those insects.

  Nairne watched all this with weary resignation.

  “I fear it will not be enough,” he said. “This has never been a real battle, just rats trying to bark at the hounds.”

  “Keep heart,” Franklin cautioned, “or pretend to. When Oglethorpe arrives with King Charles, things will look better.”

  “Oglethorpe is his own luck charm,” Nairne replied, “but he went back toward the lion's maw. I would not count on him to return. Too much stands in his way, and too many acts of God. Consider; he must learn to sail those amphibian ships well enough to slip through the sound, beneath the nose of Fort Marlborough. Then, on the open sea, he must find Charles before the fleet dispatched to sink him does. Then he must convince Charles that he is a friend and speaks for us, though he swims with Russian fins. If it can be done, Oglethorpe will do it. But it may be that it cannot be done.”

  “Then we will find victory without him,” Franklin said softly. “We must, you understand.”

  “I understand. I'm just tired.”

  “Rest, then. We've still got time, God willing. Something has delayed the army from the west. Each second is another bullet in our guns.”

  “As you say,” Nairne told him. “I'm just tired.”

  In that week and the week that followed, Lenka never once spoke to Ben, though he sought her out every day. She continued to dress as a soldier, working at the fortifications like the others. To make matters worse, he saw her often with Voltaire, who also didn't seem to be speaking to him. The whole situation was ridiculous, but if they were going to behave like spoiled children, so be it. He had too much to do.

  One of those things was working on the countermeasure with Vasilisa, something that became more frustrating every day.

  “There's something missing,” he told her, pacing across the laboratory, hands clasped behind his back. “Why can't you tell me what it is?”

  Vasilisa stood near a window, suffused in grayish light, her eyes slits of pearl. Beyond her, treetops lashed at a sky pregnant with tempest. Thunder snarled in the distance.

  “Because it isn't my formula,” she said with a trace of irritation. “As I told you, I copied it from the notes of Swedenborg. I don't understand all of it. That's why I needed you. I tried to kidnap you, remember, for that very reason.”

  “How did you expect to carry me, if I may ask?”

  Her lips bowed slightly. “Please, Benjamin. How difficult do you think it was to persuade a couple of musketeers to my point of view?”

  “Ah. Couldn't those same musketeers have helped you escape, after we caught you?”

  “They offered. I refused. This is a stupid place to make a last stand, but where else should I go, alone? The Ottoman empire? China? No woman would ever be listened to there, even if they weren't as thoroughly under the spell of the malakim as Russia—and they are, I assure you. And since I am committed to live or die here with you and your beggar's army, I also assure you I'm not holding back. You say something is missing—I believe you. But I don't know what it is. I couldn't copy all of his notes, after all.”

  “Why me? Why didn't you take this to one of your Russian colleagues?”

  “Oh—there is one who might have helped, though I rather fear her. But I did not have that option. Benjamin, I was on the tsar's ship when it fell. They spared my life only because I pretended to be with them, traitor to my tsar. I was convincing— even now he will not speak to me.”

  “That upsets you,” he noticed, with some surprise.

  “Of course it does. He thinks I betrayed him.”

  “But you didn't?”

  “No. I stole Swedenborg's formula. When the tsar escaped, I took advantage of the confusion to steal an airship. I tried, at first, to find him, but their pursuit proved too much a danger to me. I knew the English colonies were under attack by then, so I came here.” She turned back to him. “All of this wastes time. What do you see as missing?”

  “Your other ‘angelic’ devices all have, at their hearts, an articulator. Though they vary in detail, all are premised on Sir Isaac's design. That is what the depneumifier attacks—it disrupts the chime and thus severs the
contact. I thought at first all we would need here was a very powerful depneumifier, but that's not the case.”

  “Are you saying you have no ideas at all?”

  “I'm saying I was hoping to make these things go poof and vanish, but see no way to do so. Can't you recall anything this Swedenborg might have said that will help?”

  “He wasn't present when I was there— one of his assistants was. They were expecting him, but I fled before he arrived. But I think …” She paused. “This prophet of theirs seemed necessary for the actual creation of the engines. Swedenborg was coming with the perfected formulas, and together they were going to —”

  “Wait. The perfected formulas? These are not them?”

  “I thought you understood that, Benjamin.”

  “No, I most certainly did not.” He closed his eyes, trying to will the irritation away and unclog his mind for proper functioning. “You say Swedenborg needed this holy man?”

  “And certain devices. But the prophet—the Indians called him ‘Sun Boy'—was the key.”

  “Well. That is important. Did you know that the Indians of this country have a method of creating spirits by carving off bits of their own souls?”

  Her glance told him she not only didn't know it, she didn't believe it either.

  He shrugged. “It's true. I've examined the phenomenon.”

  “What could that have to do with this?”

  “I don't know. This talk of a prophet—ah, well. I wish Red Shoes were here.”

  She didn't ask who Red Shoes was, though she was clearly curious. He left her so.

  “In any event—it's almost as if there is no connection between these Swedenborgian engines and the aether. But if there is no interlocution—if they are not motivated by the malakim—how can these devices be ‘angelic'?”

  She spread her hands.

  “Well,” he murmured. “Let's leave that aside. If we cannot simply dissolve them, perhaps we can draw their teeth.” He spread the diagrams and pages of symbols out on the table. “The problem, again, is that I don't see what sort of teeth they have. Are you certain that these things exist? Or could it be that this Swedenborg is deluded, and has deluded you as well?”

  “Swedenborg is not natural—he is strange, perhaps mad. But he is a genius. He believes these engines will function, and I believe him.”

  “His notes speak of great conflagration, yet I see nothing here that resembles combustion. Very much the opposite, in fact. From what I can tell, this takes ash and puts it back together.”

  “I … didn't understand that part.”

  “I comprehend it, I just don't understand what it's supposed to do. The engine attracts the graphite—carbonis, he calls it here—which is present in many things. It crushes the ferments together and another substance—he calls it niveum— is formed.”

  “Perhaps it is poisonous, this substance.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps—” A terrible thought occurred to him. “Perhaps the purpose is not to make this new substance but to destroy the old. Oh, dear heaven, that's it.”

  “I still don't understand.”

  “Carbonis is present in all living things, Vasilisa. Where these engines pass, nothing will remain alive.”

  “How?”

  “I suppose all would just crumble apart. Or, no, let me figure this.” He took to paper with his pen and worked through the formula. He stared at the results for a second, frowned, and started over. “That can't be right,” he muttered.

  It came out the same way a second time. He did it a third.

  “I must be making some faulty assumption.”

  “How so?”

  “Two things. First, only a fraction of the carbonis attracted undergoes transformation. That doesn't make it less dangerous, because most of the carbonis within its radius—which looks like miles—is attracted, which still means death. But the amount of niveum produced is negligible. Why do it at all?”

  “And the second thing?”

  “Some of the matter disappears during the process. It just goes away. You see? Carbon is made up of four atoms of damnatum, four of phlegm, three of lux, one of gas. This new substance ought to have double all that, yes? Because he's crushing them together. But it isn't so. Two damnatum atoms are missing, and he accounts for them nowhere. It makes no sense. If there were two lux left over, that might explain the ‘furnace’ he talks about, though it would be more like a match, I think. But here, you see, he talks about a great number of lux atoms released—a very great number—though there are none left over. They come from nowhere.”

  “Benjamin?” Vasilisa's eyes had gone dreamy.

  “What?”

  “What if the damnatum atoms are changed into lux?”

  “That shouldn't be possible. Atoms themselves are unchangeable and irreducible.”

  “So Newton thought. What if Newton was wrong?”

  “There's no proof he was wrong, just this crazy formula.”

  “Benjamin, even if you are skeptical, how can we take that chance?”

  “Maybe this is all a distraction, something to keep us from working on the defenses we know will work.”

  “I don't think so. That is not Swedenborg's nature.”

  “If either Newton or Swedenborg has to be wrong, I know who I choose to trust.”

  “Really, Benjamin, Newton was at least as mad as Swedenborg—probably more so. Do you trust a dead man?”

  That stung a little. It was what he had told d'Artaguiette, turned against him.

  “I'll think about it some more. The most important thing— if these devices are indeed real—is to make it so that they cannot attract graphite ferments.” He began to doodle. “We could make our own attractors—”

  “Which would kill just as surely as theirs.”

  “Of course. But we could use them to create something like a firebreak, a zone where they would have no sustenance.”

  “Why not make a repulsion against the new substance, the niveum?”

  He blinked at her. “Of course. Of course, that is the answer, Vasilisa. By God, you still have a wonderful mind.”

  “Why, thank you, Benjamin.” She actually seemed pleased. “That's a compliment indeed, from you.”

  They were close, bent over the same sheet of paper. He could feel her breath. “We are the only ones left,” she said. “We are the only Newtonians still alive.” Her eyes were bright with tears.

  It was the last thing he had ever expected from her. The very last thing.

  It took twelve years off his life, made him a boy again, as when Voltaire had proposed his toast …

  “No,” he said huskily. “There is Voltaire.”

  She snorted and turned away. “He was never one of us; he said it himself. He never much understood Newton's theories or any of our own. Maclauren, Heath, Stirling—and me, I like to think. And you, of course, the greatest one of all.”

  “The others had no opportunity to become great. I—”

  It caught him like an explosion, this thing he had learned to keep bottled up so well. He choked on it as it came out. “Dear God, Vasilisa. What did we do to the world? What did I do to it?” He was weeping too, like a little boy, as he hadn't in years.

  She reached for him, and for an instant he forgot everything—her great betrayal, her attempt to kidnap him only scant weeks before. He remembered only what it was like when the world was wonderful, full of possibilities. That she knew and understood what he had done, what weight lay on his shoulders, and that she shared some of it.

  And did not hate him for it.

  He clutched her to him so tightly that after a moment he was afraid he might break her. He held her that way for a long time.

  Finally, the terrible thing in his chest subsided, ebbed enough to be put back in its bottle and to be stoppered tightly. He released her gently.

  “Come,” he murmured. “There is still time to make amends. What's done is done. We have a new problem to solve.”

  “Can we be friends,
Benjamin? Can you ever forgive me, and be my friend again?” She stroked his cheek.

  “I think so,” he replied, his voice unsteady. “I think I can do that.”

  They worked the rest of the day on various proofs, seeking the repulsion for niveum. Swedenborg had described the material in some detail, which gave them a good starting point, but it was still no easy task.

  Vasilisa fell asleep, slumped over her notes; and Franklin, rubbing his eyes, noticed it was sundown. He stood and stretched, then went to find a servant to conduct Vasilisa to her room.

  He went out into the cooling air and walked into the briny wind from the sea, following the mud-puddled road to Fort Condé. What remained of the thunderheads rolled over, painted gold and flame by the retiring sun, and once he was out of New Paris, the salty air mingled with the heavy perfume of flowers and the lingering scent of the rain. A whippoorwill started to sing, the cicadas chirped, and he almost felt he might have been walking along the edge of Roxbury Flats on a particularly hot summer night in his native Boston.

  Very ordinary. Very pleasant.

  As a boy ordinary and pleasant had bored him to tears. His real life always lay around some approaching bend, when he would go to college, or take to the whale roads like his brother, or run off to apprentice in the new sciences.

  Well, his road had taken a number of bends, hadn't it? And always, somehow, even with everything that had happened to him, he still imagined that his real life was just about to start. That he would soon find his real position in life, his real home, his real—

  He stopped, watched the sky ebb darker. His real wife.

  That was the trouble, wasn't it? It had nothing to do with any defect in Lenka. It was his flaw, his …

  Up ahead, at the fort, a bell suddenly began to ring. He stood for a second, wondering what it could mean, then began to run as quickly as he could in the near darkness.

  Fort Condé loomed ahead, a brick and timber structure some three hundred feet square. At the moment it was aglow with lanthorn light, and a lot of the lanthorns were in motion.

  The soldier on duty at the gate challenged him and recognized him at about the same moment, but Franklin gave the password anyway as he hurried past, through the yard, and into the command post, breathing heavily.