The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World

by Neal Stephenson

  Jack laughed. “If it’s privacy you want, you’re in the wrong subcontinent.”

  “So you say—and yet there is more here than meets the eye, no?” said Enoch Root, staring Jack in the eye.

  Jack rode back to his zamindar and said, “That gentleman over there is a buyer of saltpeter from Amsterdam.”

  “Is that the best you could come up with!?” answered Surendranath.

  “’Twill serve, for now…I am going to take him on an inspection-tour of the dirt-mines. Dismiss the khud-kashtas with my compliments. Tell them not to give the potato-woman any grief. Meet me at the Royal Palace this evening, unless the roof has been blown off again, in which case, meet me by the tree.”

  “Sire, the dirt-mines are situated in a rowdy and treacherous pargana, quite infested with stranglers. Are you quite certain you do not want me to send the rowzinders?”

  Jack sized up the two horsemen who had arrived with Enoch Root. “What do you make of them?”

  “Mercenaries. Judging from their coloration, most likely Pathans.”

  “That was my guess, too, until I got closer. Methinks they are Christians with tans. They are barely even twenty years of age, but weathered like veterans, and they returned my gaze insolently.”

  “They handle their weapons like drilled musketeers,” said the zamindar.

  “They’ve made it all the way here, from Christendom…”

  “But perhaps they are the last remnants of a whole Regiment.”

  “I believe I will be safe in their hands,” Jack said.

  “THAT’S FOR ME MUM!” said the one.

  “She’s me mum, too, give ’im another!”

  A large, bleeding fist filled most of Jack’s visual field, getting rapidly bigger. Then lights flashed and a loud popping noise went off in the base of his skull.

  “You can do be’er’n that, Jimmy!” said one, shoving the other aside. “Let me show you—now, how’s about that! An’ that! For our sainted mum!”

  Suddenly they got six feet taller—either that, or Jack’s head was resting on the ground. The one called Jimmy wound up for a kick.

  “That is for mayakin’ it neces’ry for us to travel all the way out to the butt o’ the world to beat the bejesus out o’ ye!”

  Enoch hovered nervously in the background encouraging them to stop, or at least slow down—but they were having none of it.

  “That is for bein’ a friggin’ shite-head!”

  “Can you be more specific?” Jack said (he had found that a bit of levity sometimes worked wonders in these situations). But the words came out all a-mumble, for his lips stuck together whenever they got near each other—and they’d ballooned to the point where they were always near each other. But somehow the one named Jimmy understood, and went wide-eyed.

  “Oh, you want specificity!? Danny, he’s requested we wax specific at this time!”

  Jack got up on all fours, then staggered to his feet. Being on the ground only tempted them to kick him, and that was worse, in the long run, than being punched.

  “That is specifically for tayakin’ up with another lady when the urth on Mum’s grayave hadn’t even been tamped down yet!”

  “That is specifically for tradin’ in yer French jools on a shite-load o’ malarkey!”

  Jack tumbled backwards into a stand of bamboo, and Jimmy and Danny—perhaps fearing cobras—did not come in after him. They stood where they were for a moment, getting their wind back. For the first time since Jimmy had tackled him out of the saddle a few minutes ago, it occurred to Jack that he was armed with a serviceable Janissary-sword, and knew a thing or two about how to use it; but cutting up his own flesh and blood wouldn’t be right. Instead he eased it quietly from its scabbard and swung it into the base of a bamboo cane about as thick as his wrist, easily cutting it through. Then he staggered out of the thicket dragging it behind him.

  “Powers o’ Darkness!” Jack exclaimed, focusing his one eye that hadn’t swollen shut on a point in the middle distance. “I do believe that elephant is fookin’ that camel up the arse—or is it t’other way round?”

  Jimmy and Danny turned around to look. Jack yanked on the bamboo, bringing it forward into his hands like a pike, and jammed the butt of it into Jimmy’s left kidney, which caused Jimmy to topple backwards clawing at his lower spine with both hands. Danny turned round to see why Jimmy was screaming. Jack got the bamboo between his knees, sending him a-sprawl, and just as the young man’s legs made a broad V in the air, Jack brought the cane down smartly. It was impossible to miss.

  Stillness descended on the scene, save for the twittering of exotic birds and the groaning of the two lads.

  “Enoch, if you could just keep an eye out for snakes, stranglers, and hordes whilst I give my boys a brief talking to.”

  “Glad to—but please do be brief.”

  “Now, Jimmy and Danny. Thank you for coming all the way out to Hindoostan to catch up with your dear father. You’re probably afraid I’m going to be angry that you beat the shite out of me. But really it gives me no strong feelings one way or the other. I don’t hold it against you that you turned out Irish, either. I wasn’t there to make Englishmen of you, and so it’s Irish you are, by default. That’s all right; that can be remedied. But I must take exception to your saying—what was it? ‘A shite-load o’ malarkey.’ You underestimate me, lads. Which you’ve plenty of reasons to do, I admit, since this is the first time you’ve ever laid eyes on me, and Mary Dolores’s folk have been filling your heads with venom. I want you to understand that when I set forth on my trading voyage, twelve or thirteen years ago, I did it for you. And I’m still doin’ it for you—I’m just not finished yet, is all. I’ve had diverse treasures to steal and Dukes to assassinate and pirates to escape from. But no voyage is finished until the ship drops anchor in London or Amsterdam—and you’ll admit we’re a hell of a long way from those places!”

  Danny was the first to struggle to his feet. Still bent over at a right angle, he dug Jimmy’s hand out of the brush and tried to heave him to his feet. “C’mon, now, Seamus, we’ve had our say—let’s turn round an’ head for Whitechapel now.”

  “Go if you must,” Jack said, “but if you can bring yourselves to stay for a little while, I believe I can offer you transportation.”

  “SHAHJAHANABAD IS A BASKET of asps,” Jack remarked the next day, as they were all riding through some wooded hills in the southeastern quarter of his domain. “Most of the Mogul’s omerahs go there and become entangled with the intrigues and doings of other omerahs, not to mention diverse courtiers, concubines, eunuchs, Banyans of the sodagar and the katari class, Brahmins and Fakirs of diverse Hindoo sects, spies and intriguers from wild ’stans to the Northwest, the agents of the French, Dutch, and English East India Companies, and anyone else who just happens to be hanging around. Aurangzeb has a great palace there, which he stole from his pa and his brothers. So you see, lads, you’re not the first men to violate the Fourth Commandment in Hindoostan—”

  “ ‘Remember the Sabbath?’ ” quoth Jimmy, incredulous.

  “Beg your pardon, I must’ve meant the Seventh.”

  “ ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery?’ ” said Jimmy and Danny in unison.

  “I can see the Papists have left their mark on you lads—again, my fault.”

  “His Royal Highness meant to say the Fifth—honor thy father and mother,” hollered Enoch Root—who, along with Surendranath, had been dropping farther and farther behind them, but who was still within earshot.

  Danny made a sort of throat-clearing noise. “We came here to do that specifically—honor our mum, that is. It’s just that in order to do it, we had to settle a score wi’ Dad.”

  “Well, now that you’ve settled it,” said Jack, pointing to various large swellings on his face, “shut up, because I’m trying to educate you. Before we embarked on theologickal disputations, I was talking about the Palace of the Great Mogul in Shahjahanabad, outside Delhi. It rises above the flood plain of a riv
er, and on that plain, the Great Mogul stages mock-battles between armies of hundreds of elephants, and as many horse and camel. The expense, for elephant-feed alone, is damnable.”

  “Let’s go! I ha’ to see it!” exclaimed Jimmy, all starry-faced.

  “Doahn’t be such a shite-for-brayans!” said Danny. “Cahn’t you perceive, he’s tryin’ to payant a picture of Oriental decadence?”

  “I can perceive it as clearly as your ugly fayace! But I ha’n’t rode all this friggin’ way to beat up Dad an’ then go hoahm! I’d not be above seein’ a wee sahmple of Oriental decadence afore I leave—assoomin’ that’d be all right wi’ ye, Parson Brown.”

  “You’ll see Oriental decadence and then some, if you’ll only shut up—but you won’t see it in my kingdom. Because the point I was leading up to is as follows. Among those omerahs is a fair sprinkling of Christian artillerymen—renegadoes and Vagabond soldiers from the armies of King Looie and the Holy Roman Emperor. Aurangzeb needs ’em, you see, because they’ve mastered the al-jebr, which is a sort of mathematickal sorcery that we had the good sense to steal from the Arabs. And by wielding this al-jebr they can predict where cannonballs will land, which is a useful thing to know in a battle. Consequently, Aurangzeb simply cannot make do without ’em.”

  “What has this t’do wi’ you, Dad, who doahn’t know al-jebr from jabber?” said Danny.

  “In the clouded and furious imaginings of the Great Mogul, I am just another Frankish sorcerer. Which is to say that I could be reclining on a silken pillow in Shahjahanabad right now while some Hindoo lass played knick-knack on my chakras. But instead I am here!” And at this point Jack was secretly glad that his sons had been interrupting him the whole way, because the timing had worked out just as in some reasonably well-produced theatrical production: He spurred his donkey forward to the bare top of a hill and swept out a vast arc with his arm. “Look well and carefully upon these domains, my sons—for one day, they will not be yours!”

  “Fook it in that case—we’ve already seen ’em,” said Jimmy. “Which way to Shahjahanabad?”

  “As you can see, my jagir resembles one of those large earthenware trays in which we make saltpeter. It has a flat hard bottom caked with salty mud, in which what little grows is immediately eaten. The sloped sides of the tray, then, are these ranges of hills that surround it on all sides—save in one place, down below us here, which—in this similitude—is the spout of the tray. It is a stretch of marshes, a sort of Reptile Paradise, that leads eventually to the Bay of Bengal.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, Dad, but your royal highness’s rayan lasts another—what—four months?”

  “One hundred sixteen days and counting.”

  “Then whoy should me ’n’ Danny give a fook?”

  “If you would shut up for ten consecutive minutes, I’d get to that,” said Jack, and took advantage of his altitude to try to find Surendranath and Enoch Root—who seemed to think that the only purpose of going on journeys was to wander about and gawk at all and sundry. Not long after they’d all left the Royal Palace at Bhalupoor (Jack’s summer capital, up in the hills), the Banyan and the alchemist had fallen into conversation. Not long after that, they’d evidently lost all interest in the incessant banter of the Shaftoes, and in the last few minutes they had dropped out of the caravan altogether. A retinue of spare palanquin-bearers, bodyguards, aides, and other wallahs had come along with them, and these were spreading out as the gap between Jack’s and Enoch’s group widened, trying to maintain some sort of contact; Jack could barely see the closest one, and could only hope that that fellow could see the next. The danger lay not in getting lost (for Surendranath knew the way better than Jack), and not in wild animals (according to Jimmy and Danny, Enoch could take care of himself), but in Thugs, Dacoits, and Maratha raiding-parties. Today’s journey was taking them along the southern rim of the metaphorical Tray, and at no point were they more than a few miles away from some Maratha fort or outpost.

  Jack realized with mild astonishment that Jimmy and Danny were actually listening to him.

  “Oh, yes. Precisely because the Great Mogul hands out his king-ships on a strictly limited three-year term, every king must devote his energies, from the first day of his reign, to preparing for the day when he will be a king no more. Now here I could speak to you of details for twelve hours, and those of you who are fascinated by tales of Oriental decadence would hear much to marvel at. Instead I will summarize it as follows: There are two approaches to being a king. One, remain in Shahjahanabad and maneuver and strive against all the others in hopes that the Great Mogul will reward thee with another kingship at the end of the three years.”

  “I can guess two,” said Danny. “Avoid Shahjahanabad as if ’twere a plague-town. Go dwell in your jagir and do all you can to suck it dry, so you can get out wi’a shite-loahd o’ money…”

  “Just like an English lord in Ireland,” Jimmy added.

  Jack heaved a great sigh; sniffled once; and wiped a tear from his eye. “My sons, you do me proud.”

  “That is the course you be steerin’, then, Dad?”

  “Not quite. Sucking this jagir dry is like getting blood from beef jerky. My illustrious predecessors have been sucking it dry for millennia. Really it is one great sucking apparatus—there is a zamindar or chief tax collector, who does the sucking on behalf of whomever is king at the moment.”

  “That’d be the wog in the palankeen, then…”

  “Surendranath is my zamindar. His agents hover over the markets in my two cities—Bhalupoor in the hills, where we stayed last night, and Dalicot on the coast, where we are going now. For those are the places where the produce of the earth or sea is exchanged for silver. And since I must pay my taxes to the Great Mogul in silver, that is the only place to collect it. The tax rate is fixed. Nothing ever changes. The jagir produces a certain meager income, and there is no way to increase it.”

  “So what’ve you been doin’ all these years, Dad?” Jimmy demanded.

  “My first move was to lose some battles—or, at the very least, fail to win them—against the Marathas.”

  “Why? Y’know how t’make phosphorus. You could’ve scared those Marathas shitless and driven ’em into the sea.”

  “This was tactical losing, Danny boy. The other omerahs—I mean the intriguing types in Shahjahanabad—had heard tales of that phosphorus. It was in their nature to look on me as a dangerous rival. If I’d gone out and started winning battles, they’d’ve begun sending assassins my way. And I already have my hands full with French, Spanish, German, and Ottoman assassins.”

  “But by makin’ yerself out to be a feckless Vagabond shite-for-brayans, you assured yourself of some security,” said Jimmy.

  “Moguls and Marathas alike want me to stay alive—for another one hundred and sixteen days, anyway. Otherwise I never would’ve lasted long enough for you boys to journey out and beat me up.”

  “But what then, Dad? Have you done anything here besides losin’ battles and mulctin’ wretches for pin-money?”

  “Ssh! Listen!” Jack said.

  They listened, and mostly heard their own stomachs growling, and a breeze in the trees. But after a few moments they were able to make out a distant chop, chop, chop.

  “Woodcutters?” Danny guessed.

  “Not just any wood, and not just any cutters,” said Jack, spurring his donkey down off the hilltop and riding toward the sound. “Mark this tree over here—no, the big one on the right! That is teak.”

  “Tea?”

  “Teak. Teak. It grows all over Hind.”

  “What’s it good for?”

  “It grows all over Hind, I said. Think about what that means.”

  “What’s it mean? Just give it to us straight, Dad. We’re no good at riddles,” Jimmy said; at which Danny took offense.

  “Speak for yourself, ninny-hammer. He’s tryin’ to tell us that nothin’ succeeds in eatin’ this type o’ wood.”

  “Danny’s got it,” Jack s
aid. “None of the diverse worms, ants, moths, beetles, and grubs that, sooner or later, eat everything here, can make any headway against teak-wood.”

  SEVERAL TALL TEAKS HAD BEEN felled in the clearing, but even so, Danny and Jimmy had to peer around for a quarter of an hour to realize what the place was. In Christendom there would have been a pit full of wood-shavings, and a couple of sawyers playing tug-of-war with a saw-frame the size of a bed-stead, slicing the logs into squarish beams, and looking forward to the end of the day when they could go home to a village some distance down the road. But here, a whole town had sprung up around these fallen trees. It had been a wild place before, and would be wild again in a year, but today, hundreds dwelt here. Most of them were gathering food, cooking, or tending children. Perhaps two score adult males were actually cutting wood, and the largest tool that any of them had was a sort of hand-adze. This trophy was being wielded by an impressive man of perhaps forty, who was being closely supervised—some would say nagged—by a pair of village elders who had an opinion to offer about every stroke of the blade.

  The village’s approach to cutting up these great teak-logs had much in common, overall, with how freemasons chipped rough blocks of stone one tiny chisel-blow at a time. At the other end of the village, some of them were scraping away at almost-finished timbers with potshards or fragments of chipped rock. Some of these timbers were square and straight, but others had been carved into very specific curves.

  “That there would be a knee brace,” Danny said, looking at a five-hundred-pound V of solid teak.

  “Do not fail to marvel at how the grain of the wood follows the bend of the knee,” Jack said.

  “It’s as if God formed the tree for this purpose!” said Jimmy, crossing himself.

  “Aye, but then the Devil planted it in the middle of a million others.”

  “That might’ve been part of God’s plan,” Danny demurred, “as a trial and a test for the faithful.”