The Shadows of God

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “No. There are others—the point is, the enemy does not know how many—”

  Adrienne interrupted her with a laugh that sounded mad even to herself. “Even—angels don't know how—how— many angels dance— on the—head— of a pin?”

  “What has happened to you?” Vasilisa asked, staring at her as one might stare at an unexpected boil on one's arm.

  “I am learning a sense of humor, that is all. Go on.”

  “The danger is near, that is all I meant to say. Franklin and I have assembled a device—it might work or it might not. At the very best, it will give us a little time to find our way to the final solution.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Don't you know? They didn't tell you?”

  “No. They seemed to think it best to keep me in ignorance. I suppose such habits are difficult to break, after a few thousands of years.”

  Vasilisa closed her eyes for a moment. “I should not tell you this. Not if they did not.”

  Adrienne uttered another weak laugh. “But you will, or you wouldn't have brought it up.”

  “I— Do you know how I came into the tsar's service?”

  “I never have known.”

  “He was on a tour of his Siberian provinces. He found me buried up to my neck in the ground. I had been married, you see, when I was thirteen, to a man who took a great deal of pleasure in my pain. One day, when he approached me, I threw a pan of boiling grease in his face. It stopped his heart. So lawkeepers and the priest of our village took me and they buried me in the ground.”

  “And the tsar saved you.”

  “Yes, at the urging of his wife, Catherine. She was a daughter of Athena. They washed me of my nightmare, Adrienne. They made me clean and they taught me what is good, and they gave me power, something I never had before. You know how that feels.”

  “I do,” Adrienne said softly. “And I'm sorry for what you went through.”

  Karevna's gaze danced from point to point, as if afraid to settle. “I don't tell you this to get your pity. I just want you to understand—the Korai are everything to me, and I do not disclose our greatest secret lightly. I also care for you, whether you believe it or not, and I fear this will cause you pain.”

  “Tell me. Please. I am inured to pain.”

  Karevna finally looked her full in the face. “The Korai created you, Adrienne. We created you to bear your son. You are not altogether … human.”

  “Created me? Out of what—snow?”

  “Out of a hundred marriages. Out of a thousand subtle manipulations—alchemical treatments administered in secret throughout your life— especially at Saint Cyr.”

  “Saint Cyr?”

  “Yes, of course. Madame de Maintenon was no Korai, but she was manipulated by them, from the day she met Ninon de Lenclos, decades ago. It was a place designed to reveal—you. And to perfect you.”

  “Father Castillion taught at Saint Cyr.”

  “Father Castillion?”

  “The priest, the one who joined me in New Moscow.”

  “I didn't—” She spun on her heel as the door creaked open, and Castillion stood there, regarding them.

  “You told her,” he said.

  “I had to,” Vasilisa replied.

  “God have mercy on you, then. She was not to know.” Vasilisa raised her chin. “Who are you?”

  “As she said, I am Pierre Castillion. I taught at Saint Cyr, many years ago. I was one of those men—adjunct to the Korai, let us say.”

  “A Rosicrucian? A Freemason?”

  “No, but it doesn't matter. I am the last of my order. The rest of us perished in China.”

  “So you knew—this all along, and did not tell me.”

  Castillion knelt next to her. “The time was not right. I knew it would only anger and confuse you.”

  “What else have you lied about?”

  “Most of what I have told you is true. There are some details I left out.”

  “It was no accident we met in New Moscow.”

  “No. I had been following your son. In fact, my order sent me to kill him.”

  “The Jesuits?”

  He shrugged. “Yes and no. Again, it does not matter. I knew I could not. Should not. Instead, I found you.”

  Adrienne closed her eyes, wishing them both away.

  “Too many questions, too many lies. Take four steps back. I was created, you say. Am I like Crecy, then? But I don't have her strength, her speed.”

  “You have some of her toughness,” Castillion said. “What you've been through in the past few months should have killed you, though I helped when I could. But, no. You are of a very different sort and order than Crecy. Her sort were the beginning, and they spring ultimately from the same blood. But Nicolas, your son, is the omega. Joining you with the Bourbon line was the masterstroke. It was the prospect of that marriage which began all this, set everything in motion. And it is that child who will bring victory to one side or another.”

  Words of denial came into Adrienne's mouth and stayed there. Denying it all seemed even more absurd than hearing it, somehow.

  “Damn you,” she said instead. “Damn every last one of you to the lowest pit of hell. Damn— Did Crecy know?” The last she shouted, furious at the mere possibility.

  “No,” Karevna said. “Only seven living ever know—in France it was Madame Castries. Crecy was their pawn in this as much as you.” Her eyes narrowed. “But you know, Castillion. How?”

  “I am not a woman. There were also seven of us.”

  Karevna opened her mouth to reply, then apparently thought better of it.

  Half an hour passed, and no one spoke. Adrienne thought of her mother and father. What had brought them together? The marriage had been arranged, as most marriages were in noble families. She tried to remember if Castries or Orléans had had a hand in it, and could not.

  Finally she pushed the thought as far back in her head as it would go. “It doesn't matter if this is true.”

  “Of course it does,” Karevna said. “It means you and Nicolas are the key. Not a key, but the key. One of you is with them, but one of you is still with us.”

  “As you say. But what lock am I supposed to turn, Vasilisa? Your story does not say. Castillion?”

  “I don't know either,” the priest admitted.

  “I can answer that question, I think,” another voice said, from the still-open door.

  Adrienne turned to see the Indian.

  “Hello, Red Shoes,” Adrienne said. “Who else is in line out there? Usher them all in, please, and I will serve the chocolate and cakes.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Indeed.”

  Red Shoes shrugged. “We are beyond that now. Your friends are right— our time is short. Even now I can sense the Sun Boy giving birth, creating the giants of old that will wipe all of our races from the world.”

  Red Shoes hummed with power. In her angel sight, he was a chord of plucked strings. But he wasn't like she had been, or as Vasilisa had been. He was like the woman in the Siberian forest, a thing unto himself but unraveling into many strands. Like Nicolas, who split pieces of himself to make new angels. Had he hidden this from her before, or had she been too weary to notice?

  She was still weary. She had lost Hercule and her son. Father Castillion, who had once been a reminder of a time when her life had seemed at least genuine, now showed himself to be a liar and, worse, revealed that her entire existence was a lie.

  What did she care if the petty race of humanity vanished from the world? All of the good examples of mankind she had ever known were dead.

  “Leave me alone,” she murmured.

  “I would if I could,” Red Shoes said, “but we cannot do this without you.”

  “Do what?”

  “Crack the roof of the world. Return it to the way it was in the beginning.”

  “You do know.” Vasilisa gasped.

  “Explain it, then,” Adrienne said, “for it makes no sense to me
.”

  “Remember the Korai legend?” Vasilisa said excitedly. “That God, unable to enter the world, sent his servants into it. But after creation was done, most of them went renegade, and God changed the law from without, subtly, to deprive them of power.”

  “Ah. I see. You are all mad. You think we can undo what God did.”

  “Yes!” Castillion interjected with uncharacteristic fierceness. “It will free them—they have been trapped here for millennia. Once free, rejoined with God, they will bother us no more.”

  Adrienne folded the bedclothes back, smoothing them flat with her palms. “Let us follow this insane little discourse a bit further, shall we? Supposing what you say is true, and it is in our power to defy God Almighty and give the malakim back the power they had at creation. Why do most—indeed, now it would seem all—of them resist us in this? Why hasn't this been their unified aim from the beginning? Come—any of you.”

  All three were silent.

  “As I thought. You are mouths for their lies, as unaware as a pen of what it writes on the page. Leave, all of you, and trouble me no more with this.”

  “Adrienne,” Vasilisa said, “I beg you to reconsider. You are the key.”

  “Find another.”

  “There is another,” Red Shoes said. “He will serve less well, but he will serve.”

  “You mean my son?”

  “I mean me. Your son is the lock, and I was not meant to turn him. But I might be able to. Against his will—he might not survive it.”

  “I have seen his power, and I have seen yours. I have little question as to who will succeed,” Adrienne said.

  “I would have beaten him but for you.”

  “You took him by stealth, from within. That won't happen again.”

  “You really don't care?” Vasilisa said. “You really don't care if we all live or die?”

  “No,” Adrienne said, “I don't think I do. And even if I did, as I told you, I am powerless now. Would that I had always been.”

  “You don't mean that.”

  “I mean it precisely, Vasilisa Karevna. You may have bred my family like racehorses for a thousand years, for all I care, and Father Castillion may have put the juice of the philoso-pher's stone in my table wine every day for ten years—the power that came from that is all spent, wasted. I am done with it, and it is done with me. Now, leave me before I call my guard to throw you out.”

  “Yes,” Red Shoes remarked, voice heavy with sarcasm. “Quite powerless, you are.”

  But they left, no doubt to plot another try later.

  She settled back into the bed and closed her eyes—in search, finally, of rest.

  The next day brought no news, and Franklin spent it instructing the craftsmen who were building the niveum repellers. Vasilisa, on the other hand, spoke for a considerable time with Red Shoes and the students of the Montchevreuil woman, going over pages of equations. Indeed, a small Russian contingent seemed to have formed, for both the tsar and his daughter, Elizavet, put in appearances, all clucking in a language Franklin did not know. Of the murderess herself, he saw no sign, for which he was grateful.

  “Benjamin, could you come here a moment?” Vasilisa asked, after several hours of tacitly excluding him.

  “I'm rather busy.”

  “This is important. Could you come here, please?”

  “Very well.” He strode over to where they were working.

  “What do you think of this?” she asked, pointing at a string of calculations and accompanying text in Latin. He read it, at first with some irritation—it was clearly nonsense—but after a few moments, he began to see a sneaky sort of logic in it.

  “Whose work is this?” he asked.

  “It belongs to Monsieur Lomonosov,” she said, indicating a young man. The fellow perked up at his name and leaned to shake hands. Franklin responded with reluctance.

  “Can he speak English or French?”

  “I'm afraid not. I can translate. But you understand his theory—that matter as such is not real but merely the least perfect of affinities?”

  “Yes, well, I can find no flaw in his figuring, but it must be there. The idea is absurd.”

  “Why? Because Newton did not know it?”

  “Don't speak his name.”

  She stared at him. “Benjamin, are you angry with me?”

  He noticed the others were staring at him.

  “Let us speak in the hall,” he said.

  “Very well.”

  In the hall she faced him with her arms folded. “Well? Where does this rudeness come from?”

  “Rudeness? Call it reserve. I had almost forgotten your treacherous nature, but your friend Montchevreuil reminded me. You were there, too, when Newton was killed. Did you have a hand in it?”

  “For pity's sake, Benjamin, don't be such a child. Adrienne and I only did what we had to. What would you have done if some madman were causing your airship to fall from the sky with all of your friends and your infant son?”

  “None of it would have happened if you and yours had not launched an unprovoked attack first on Prague and then on Venice.”

  “Well, then, it is the tsar's fault. Go lay it at his feet, not mine. To answer your question, I did not have the power or the knowledge to do what Adrienne did, but if I could have done it, I most certainly would have. Newton was a casualty of war, Benjamin. That is the way of nations, the way it always has been. What have you been doing these past few months if not exerting every effort—honest and dishonest—to bring to your side nations you formerly fought against, convincing them that their old blood debts are now overshadowed? Are you become hypocrite?”

  That seemed to run her out of breath and composure, both of which, in his experience, were things Vasilisa usually had in tremendous supply.

  He wanted to reply in kind, in words of justified fury.

  Instead, he realized that she was on the mark—if not for a bullet, then at least for a grenado.

  It hurt too much to admit it, though, so he stood silent for a few seconds and said, “Let's have another look at that formula. And you'll explain to me why such a theoretical question matters in this time of crisis.”

  She relinquished her fierce expression and beckoned him back into the room.

  “It matters because, if it is true, the problem of dissolving Swedenborg's engine may not be exactly as you phrased it before. You wanted to disrupt the connection between aetheric forces and matter—but what if they are the same, like different notes of the same musical scale? What if the difference between them is only the difference in how tightly the string on a violin is tuned?”

  “I'll grant it for argument.”

  “Then if we change the pitch—”

  “The pitch of what, the universe?”

  “Yes.”

  “It's insane.”

  “No, it isn't. Come here—give me time to convince you.”

  He studied her face, wondering why she would bother with such an outrageous lie.

  “I'll give you two hours to convince me. It's all I can spare.”

  “It's enough.”

  After an hour he was completely engrossed in the idea, and began adding suggestions of his own.

  “Even if we rough out the shape of this theory,” he cautioned, “it remains to propose experiments by which we might support it. And a device which might actually alter the very harmony of the spheres—I still see it as impossible, but what if it isn't? How could we predict what that alteration might bring? If we make it so the Swedenborg engines cannot exist, what else might cease to exist, or come into being? The planets themselves might fly away from one another or explode in noxious fumes!”

  Vasilisa wrinkled her forehead. “We are all agreed it is a matter of last resort—but if it is the only thing we have for defense against the engines, isn't it worth the chance?”

  “End the universe if we cannot save our lives? At least you think grandly, Vasilisa.”

  Red Shoes lifted his hands and interr
upted. “When death is the only choice, why not take a death of our choosing— one that might bring ruin to our enemies as well?”

  “Still, it is moot. This is not a simple harmony we speak of retuning, like that between unmatched aetherschreibers,” Franklin said.

  Red Shoes and Vasilisa looked at each other, as if sharing a private thought. The Indian voiced it.

  “We have the device already,” he said. “It is only a matter of knowing how to use it.”

  “What device is this?”

  “The same device that makes the engines,” Vasilisa said, “the Sun Boy.”

  Franklin looked from one to the other. Both seemed sincere. But Vasilisa was not to be trusted. And Red Shoes— even Tug was wary of Red Shoes now. There was certainly something different in his manner.

  But they might reach a point when the maddest of possibilities was their only hope.

  He sighed. “Explain,” he said reluctantly.

  But Vasilisa was looking beyond him, at the door. “You have a visitor, Benjamin,” she said.

  He turned, and found Lenka watching them.

  “I'm glad you finally came to see me,” he told her, as they passed from the hall into the weed-ravaged botanical garden. “Though this is not a good time.”

  “You will not make time to speak to me?” She had discarded her Apalachee warrior's clothing and now wore a gown of blue satin. She was achingly beautiful in it, reminding him vividly of when they first met. He remembered, too, twining her in his arms, the feel of her flesh, the look of her face when close for kissing, watching her sleep in the morning light, covers pulled back to reveal a form more cunning than any sculptor— even the fabled Pygmalion— could imagine, much less render.

  “Lenka, I can take a moment. But there are very important matters afoot.”

  “More important than me? That is always true, isn't it? I'm not a fool, Benjamin Franklin. I understand what is at stake, despite your having kept what you could from me.”

  “I kept nothing—how could I? You haven't spoken to me. I've tried to seek you out.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “Of what?”