A Calculus of Angels

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “I love you,” Adrienne went on, “and yet I know you have lied to me about some things and obscured others. The time has come for an end to that, Veronique.”

  “I understand.”

  Adrienne blinked. “That easily.”

  “That easily. I have set myself as your protector and yet I have failed you. I may die, I am told, when we begin to move east, for my wounds may mislike the treatment of cart wheels. Once I thought to protect you by withholding, but now …” She closed her eyes. “Now I must trust you.”

  “Trust me? Trust me how?”

  “To be strong. To go forward.” She coughed. “I hardly know where to begin.”

  “Then let me suggest a place,” Adrienne replied. “Tell me how it is that I have the hand of an angel attached to my wrist.”

  3.

  Thief

  Ben grunted and swore as his hand slipped on the ornate cornice, desperately shutting his eyes as the world stirred itself into a kaleidoscopic vortex. Wearing the aegis at its highest calibration was worse than being blind. Even with his lids squeezed closed, prismatic annuli painted themselves in the hollows of his skull.

  By feel he renewed his hold on the ledge, hoping no one had heard his feet thrash against the wall. It was not likely that anyone would see him—with the aegis at this pitch he would appear as only a faint ripple in the air—but if he made too much noise they might guess he was there.

  The drawback being that, as the world was blind to him, he was nearly blind to the world.

  Finally hauling himself onto the ledge, he drew deep, deliberate breaths and forced his eyes open again. Prague reappeared, a silhouette etched black upon an iridescent background. It was as if he himself were a prism, splitting light with his nose.

  Once again, he wondered just what the hell he was doing breaking into a man’s house. Oh, he had convinced himself he had good reasons. Sir Isaac would be angry if he failed to bring the book. More important, if Newton was not mad, The Sepher Ha-Razim could be crucial to saving Prague.

  But, sitting on the ledge, fingers on the frame of the open window, he understood that that explained only why he had come back for the book, not why he had given Robert and Frisk the slip, waited until he saw ben Yeshua leave, and then essayed this crazy ascent. No, the truth was, it would have been humiliating to have to face the rabbi again, to admit that he had been tricked, to beg for the right book.

  Pride again. Pride that hadn’t let him check the book against the paper, pride now. Well, by God, he had learned his lesson this time. Josiah Franklin had not raised a complete fool!

  But since he had already made the climb, he reasoned, he might as well peek in the window.

  Below, the street was alive with conversation, laughter, vendors hawking in languages familiar and strange. Bread was baking somewhere, infusing the air with yeasty perfume, and his stomach testily reminded him that he had eaten no supper nor breakfast save a few sips of beer—and now it must be near noon.

  Sighing, he studied the room like a drunk, trying to sort sense into things that ought to be familiar but weren’t. That large thing might be a bed, he supposed, and that other a desk. Nothing seemed to be moving. Nothing seemed to be in front of the window. To be sure, he felt with his hands until they encountered the floor.

  He wondered how long the rabbi would be gone. After all, it wouldn’t hurt to take a brief look around. The fellow had said he would loan them the book—If he happened to run across the Sepher, taking it would not be theft, but merely the collection of a promise.

  Satisfied at this reasoning, he eased in over the sill as quietly as he could, listening, straining, holding his breath, though the only sounds seemed to be from the street. Warily, he removed the aegis key from his waistcoat pocket, blinking at the sudden burst of white as the rainbow folded in on itself.

  It was, as he had suspected, a bedroom, ascetically furnished. A door leading beyond stood an inch or so open.

  Gingerly, wincing at each creak in the boards beneath him, he padded to the door and peered through. Outside were a staircase and two more doors. Relaxing slightly at the continued lack of noise, he eased out of the bedroom and chose the left-hand door, remembering that ben Yeshua had come upstairs when he went to fetch the counterfeit Sepher.

  The second door revealed a library, and Ben’s heart whirled in ellipse—first the aphelion of finding it so quickly, to a low perihelion when he realized that there must be nearly a thousand volumes in it, most in Hebrew. Cursing under his breath, he quietly shut the door and made his way to the voluminous shelves, skirting a table of alchemical apparatus—beakers, mortar and pestle, what seemed to be a barometer—wondering pessimistically how long it would take to get through the books. Sighing, he began on the left-hand side of the room, scanning for the books beginning with the Hebrew “s.” He found one, compared the title against Newton’s scrawled Hebrew, and moved on.

  A clock ticking against the wall marked his time for an hour, and no Sepher Ha-Razim. He had moved through only a fraction of the library, and a growing suspicion told him that it was no use, anyway. What would he, Benjamin Franklin, do if strangers came demanding a thing he did not wish to give up? He would hide it, of course, and when the strangers came back for it, he would claim to never have owned it. With an imperial order they might search his shelves anyway—and not find it, leaving them no choice but to believe his lie.

  Why hadn’t the old man lied about owning it in the first place? But he probably presumed that it was his right to refuse loaning out his own property. Ben sympathized—a man’s things ought to be his own—but his greater concerns overrode that. Besides, the fellow should have dealt honestly with him.

  He turned away from the shelves, thinking now of hiding places. Did the rabbi have some clever strongbox about, some secret cabinet? He checked in the desk, beneath the rug, found nothing. He moved from room to room, confident now that no one was home, peeking into cupboards, boxes, on top of things, to no avail.

  Retracing his steps through the house—wondering again how long the fellow would be gone—something in the kitchen caught his attention. Dirt—gritty, black soil—was scattered here and there on the polished wood floor. It was the first trace of grime of any kind he had seen in the otherwise immaculate dwelling.

  On closer inspection it revealed itself as a faint trail, leading into the pantry. He had already searched the small storeroom, but now he did so with a new eye, and so noticed a small brass hook at the back of it. He twisted it between thumb and index finger, and with a click and a sigh, the back of the larder swung away from him into darkness.

  The pitchy blackness seemed to frighten the candle flame, so did it quiver. He mused that it had been long since he had touched a candle—though he had once made the wretched things as his father’s ’prentice. For a while they had been all but obsolete, but magical lanthorns were becoming less common these days. Most of them had been crafted in England and Holland, and both of those countries had other than strictly mercantile concerns at the moment. In any event, the candle did not show him much, only walls of sweating stone. His nose told him more, as the air smelled not only of grit, but of sulfur and ammoniac, the acrid scents of alchemy.

  The stairs ended at a dirt floor, and there the candle flame ceased its anxious wavering and stood bolder and brighter. He saw that he stood in a sort of cyst, a more or less domed structure some thirty feet in breadth, squatting claustrophobically low upon him. What had this place been?

  What it was now was clear enough. On a large stone table, curling Italian glass, porcelain beakers, a lamp of antique and Arabian figure winked his candlelight back at him. Moving carefully, he lit the lamp.

  In the brighter light, he noted two things immediately, chills crawling up his spine. The first was that the table was no table, but the stone lid of a sarcophagus. The other was that a handbreadth from the lamp lay a single slim book, no thicker than the width of his thumbnail. On its cover in faded gold leaf he read Sepher Ha-Razim.


  “There you are, my sweet,” he breathed, lifting it with both hands, marveling at the trouble he had gone through for such a tiny book. Isaac ben Yeshua must have had a good laugh, he thought, at Ben lugging off the cumbersome decoy.

  And now, away from here, he thought. Out of this tomb, this house, this strange quarter of the city.

  As a precaution, he activated the aegis on its lower setting, and that was when he saw something troubling.

  In the first glimpse, from the rim of his vision, he thought it some peculiar reflection of himself, some shadow-image limned in diffracted light. That was until it lurched toward him.

  The motion caught into him as if a spider suddenly sat on his lip. It was so absurd and horrible at the same time that he simply froze in incomprehension as it approached, a soundless apparition without face or sex. Only when it spread fingers like a fine film of oil upon dark water toward him did he react, and then too late, as the spectral digits brushed through his chest to his heart. A sheet of white flame wreathed suddenly around him, accompanied by a somehow inappropriate crackle, and for just an instant he felt tongs close on his heart and a terrible pain, as if a horse had stepped on his breastbone. A hideous scream filled the low chamber, so unnatural and high that it was only afterward that he recognized it as his own, and then the lightning and its puny thunder redoubled, this time flinging him against the wall and sending the phantasm hurtling another way, blue fire dancing upon it.

  The next thing he knew, he was at the head of the stairs, his lungs laboring and sharp pains in his shins as if he had climbed the treads by the sole use of those bones. The book, he noticed dimly, was still clutched in one hand. Groaning in terror, he slammed shut the false cupboard and made for the front door, any intention he might ever have had of exiting stealthily dismissed. It was like his dream of the night before—running, just an animal running to save its life. Except that his dream had seemed more real than this.

  When he burst into the street a dozen heads turned his way, but he did not wait to see their puzzled looks, their fear, their anger. The sunlight, the normal look of the street sickened him almost physically, for it all seemed a lie, a bright, cheerful painting on a rotten canvas. Science, the paint. The thing that followed him, the canvas. Painted his life, his beating heart—death was the reality, and it was coming behind him. He could feel it.

  At the corner he turned and looked back, and was sure he saw it emerge from the house, a colorful blur.

  His legs turned to stone before he reached the Charles Bridge, but they worked on regardless. The bright edge of his panic had blunted a bit, though he sickened whenever he noticed the thumping of his heart, now regular if accelerated, for he could only remember how it felt when it could not draw blood, gasped for blood as a blow to the belly made one gasp for breath.

  He had nearly died. He still might.

  But countless glances over his shoulder as he huffed across the bridge revealed no demon following him.

  It had reached through the aegis—not without consequence to itself, it seemed—but it had breached it. If it found him again …

  He set his mouth grimly and clutched the stolen book more tightly under his arm. Newton would talk to him now.

  “You say it touched you?” Sir Isaac asked, his eyes full of something that—in another man—might be mistaken for love.

  “It touched my heart,” Ben said, “my actual heart.”

  “And did you—Did it seem composed of a fiery substance or some subtle vapor?” He paced the length of his sitting room, hands clasped behind his back.

  Ben blinked. “It seemed composed of nothing at all,” he whispered. “It seemed an angel of death.”

  “Yes, but what predominate nature did it evince? What element embodied?”

  “I had scant time to perform experimentation upon it,” Ben answered. “Sir, it might have followed me here.”

  “And you believe it was guarding the book?” He held aloft The Sepher Ha-Razim.

  “Or haunting the tomb, or—I don’t know. I first saw it when I wore the aegis. Otherwise it was not visible. For all I know, it was aggravated by the sympathies of the device.”

  “No,” Newton said. “It was guarding the book.”

  “Are you—” Ben took a breath to keep from sputtering. “Are you saying that you knew this thing would appear when I took the book?”

  “I did not send you to steal the book, Benjamin, but to borrow it. You know that theft deserves its punishments.”

  “He would not loan it. Should I return it to him?”

  Newton hesitated an instant, his dark eyes flickering to the book and back.

  “Soon,” he replied.

  “Soon. Then you as good as stole it yourself, sir, and you should not upbraid me for a crime you share in.”

  “I would not that you stole it,” Newton insisted. “I never hinted that you should. And yet the damage is done—and I have need of this book. But in the future I will not have you sin for me, do you understand? Do what I ask, but keep the commandments.” He fingered the gold lettering. “I did not know I sent you into danger, Benjamin. You must not think that. And though you may have applied perhaps too much enthusiasm to your task, I appreciate your efforts.”

  “Well—thank you. But, Sir Isaac, I have more to tell you. After our audience yestereve, the prince of Savoy approached me.”

  “Death from the sky?” Newton paraphrased.

  “Yes. He sent you word?”

  “When you vanished, yes.”

  “I was in the observatory.”

  Newton nodded, understanding. “A pointless gesture. How would you have known it if you saw it?”

  “Then you think as I do? That the Muscovites have summoned another comet?”

  “It seems reasonable. They have had the time, and likely the knowledge.”

  “How will we stop them?”

  Newton paced a few steps, clutching the book in front of him, brows drawn tight. “In some few days I will tell you. Until then, keep a cool head.”

  “What if we have not so much time?”

  “We do.”

  “How can you know that, sir?”

  “I know. In fact, I assure you that we have, at the very least, a month and perhaps many more weeks than that.”

  “Sir, if you could but tell me how you know this, it would much set my mind at ease.”

  “The ease of your mind, Benjamin, is not my paramount concern. Your place is to trust my word, for now. When my new system is finished, I promise to disclose all to you. In the meantime, be calm. You and I shall have ample warning before any cosmic object strikes Prague. Until we must, I am loath to leave this place, for it is perfect for my present purposes—”

  “Leave?” Ben interrupted. “What do you mean, leave? I thought your system would protect Prague.”

  “Well, that it may, if I have time to perfect it to that degree, and if we have time to implement. If not, we shall have to go elsewhere.”

  “No. No, I do not agree to that, sir. Already London is destroyed, and look what the vapors and atmosphere of the comet have wrought upon the Earth in general. We cannot stand passive and allow another such bombardment!”

  Newton regarded him levelly. “My methods are as yet unready. They are not perfected. Until such time as they are, they are of no use.”

  “Then let me help you! Let me edit your notes or experiment, or—”

  “You have just been of immense help to me, and I have said it. How much compliment do you crave?”

  “I crave no compliment!” He was aware that his voice was rising. “I want only to save Prague!”

  Newton drew a deep breath, favored Ben with a steely glance, and then strode purposefully toward his study.

  “I am finished with you for the day. The emperor’s boatwright has a few questions for you. I suggest you go answer them. Good day, Mr. Franklin.”

  Ben’s protest was stifled by the slamming of the door.

  Halfway to his own
rooms he realized that he was crying. It felt as if something were quaking inside him that would soon shake him apart, an awful thing that had no name. He hated it, resented it, for it was weakness, childishness. He quickened his step, determined that no one would see him in such a state.

  Once in his room he hastily shut the door and staggered to his bed, nearly blinded by tears, where finally he sobbed aloud; once begun his eyes seemed as loath to stop as the clouds above Noah’s ark. But in time stop they did, leaving behind a sort of watery warmth in his chest. Laconically, he wiped his eyes and nose and set about wondering what to do next, and it was then, lifting his gaze, that he realized the little maid was in the room, sitting quietly on a stool in the corner.

  “You!” he said. “Why didn’t you make yourself known?”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “No, you would rather watch the great apprentice bawling like a child, so that you might spread the report. Well, go about it! What does it matter anyway?”

  “Why would I do such a contemptible thing?” she asked.

  Ben wiped his eyes again. “Do not pretend you have any love for me,” he muttered. “You made your feelings clear.”

  “Did I? Of course I admit I have no love for you, for I do not know you—”

  “Oh, but you seemed to know me well,” Ben snapped. “ ‘I have heard about you,’ you said. ‘They speak of you,’ you said.”

  “Well, then, tell me I was wrong,” she demanded, digging her fists into her hips. “Tell me that you were not after me to lie with you, and then thank you for the privilege of being your whore for a night. Tell me—I’ll take your word.”

  “Do not flatter yourself,” Ben returned. “I have beauties in Kleinseit enough to accommodate me, and you, if you pardon me, do not measure well against any of them.”

  She colored just a bit at that. “Yet still you do not deny. So you thought me ugly, and no great conquest, and perhaps all the easier for that. Deny it.”

  Ben opened his mouth, but in her set expression—or perhaps beyond it—he saw himself, parading about in nothing more than a shirt, whispering sly insinuations. This woman saw him, not as he wanted to be seen—not as most of his conquests saw him—but as he was. It was intolerable.