Newton’s Fire

by Will Adams

  He looked up at Judit. ‘You’re to work on nothing else,’ he told her. ‘You’re to requisition any and all resources you need, but you’ll find out the extent of this as soon as possible. And then you’ll fix it. I’ll want briefings twice a day until you do; and immediate updates if anything new emerges.’

  ‘Yes, General,’ she said. ‘But, with respect, this happened under my command. This failure is my responsibility. I therefore wish to tender my-’

  ‘Not yet,’ cut in the Chief of the General Staff. ‘Sort this mess out first, then make the offer. I might even accept.’

  ‘Yes, General.’

  ‘Good. Now get to work.’ He watched her out the door, wondering who to take this to. By rights, he reported to the Defence Minister; but the Defence Minister was in South Africa this week, discussing nuclear security, of all things, and there was no time to waste. He picked up his phone, dialled an internal number. ‘I need to see the Prime Minister,’ he said.

  ‘She’s leaving for her speech in a minute,’ said her assistant. ‘I could fit you in afterwards or-’

  ‘Her speech will have to wait,’ said the Chief of the General Staff. ‘I’m coming over now.’

  II

  There was something about having the roof down. Rachel’s spirits lifted from the rush of open air and sunlight on her face, from the noise of the road and passing traffic. Her life had become drab with duty recently. That was the truth of it. To be whirled away from it, even under these extraordinary circumstances, felt bizarrely like release. And it was a pleasure, too, simply being with people that she liked. And she did like Luke and Pelham, she realized, rather to her surprise. She liked them a lot.

  They passed Aylesbury, traded A roads for country lanes. Pelham slowed to a more leisurely pace, allowing her to admire the landscape, quaint villages separated by woods, pastures and fields of grain. It grew cooler. The late afternoon sun began a little alchemy of its own, turning a line of leaden clouds low on the horizon into streaks of glorious gold. Rachel leaned forwards between the front seats, as much for a windbreak as anything, and squinted against the windscreen’s glare.

  ‘Don’t take this wrong, guys,’ she said, ‘but why on earth would a man like Newton fall for nonsense like the philosopher’s stone? He didn’t really believe transmutation was possible, did he?’

  ‘Just because a theory turns out to be wrong, doesn’t mean it was stupid,’ said Luke. ‘Alchemy was far more sophisticated than people think.’

  ‘And it was immensely productive too,’ added Pelham. ‘The scientific method is hypothesis, experimentation, observation, inference, peer review, replication. All devised or developed by the alchemists.’

  Rachel gave him a doubtful look. ‘Yes, but turning lead into gold …’

  ‘People didn’t understand the nature of matter,’ said Luke. ‘They were brought up on earth, fire, air and water, with no real concept of atoms or molecules. The alchemists were doing their best to come up with a better model. And forget the get-rich schemes; those were for the charlatans. Gold wasn’t even really seen as a precious metal by serious practitioners like Dee, Newton and Boyle. It was their symbol for light, for the sun, for the divine nature itself. Making it, for them, was like winning it for an Olympic athlete: not the accomplishment itself, merely proof of it.’

  Rachel smiled at the analogy. ‘So what were they after?’

  ‘A unified theory of everything,’ answered Luke. ‘How the earth and heavens worked, the nature of substance, the secret of life itself.’ He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘And don’t make the mistake of thinking the philosopher’s stone was some kind of magical gem. It was much more subtle than that. Alchemists also called it sacred fire or secret fire or even the animating spirit, all of which are far better ways of thinking about it. Newton originally thought it was magnetism or maybe even light. Ultimately he came to believe that it was electricity. And that isn’t remotely stupid, if you think about it. Frankenstein’s monster. The spark of life. Cardiac paddles.’

  ‘But electricity had been around forever,’ pointed out Rachel. ‘Lightning was the weapon of the gods, remember? Not exactly secret fire.’

  ‘Its nature was secret,’ said Luke. ‘No one understood it.’

  ‘Yes, they did,’ said Rachel, shifting in her seat to stop the wind whipping hair around her face. ‘Not perfectly, I agree, but surely enough to demystify it. You get static everywhere, for one thing. And they knew it was connected with magnetism. The word electricity comes from the Greek for amber, electrum, because amber attracts or repels other objects when you rub it. And what about those Baghdad batteries?’

  ‘What about those what?’ frowned Luke.

  ‘Baghdad batteries. You must have heard of them.’

  He shook her head. ‘What are they?’

  ‘There was this excavation near Baghdad just before the Second World War. They found these really weird earthenware jars with copper rods sticking up from their bottoms. Two thousand years old, give or take. Turns out they were most likely primitive electrical devices that used vinegar or some other acid to electroplate silver and other metals with gold.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ frowned Luke.

  ‘Of course I’m serious. You think I’d make them up?’

  But Pelham held up a hand for silence before Luke could answer. ‘Oddington, guys,’ he said, nodding at a sign. ‘We’re here.’ He slowed almost to jogging pace as he searched memory and the twilit lanes for Olivia’s house. ‘There she is,’ he said at last, swinging down a potholed track bordered by wild shrubberies before pulling up in front of a low thatched house of vivid pink that sagged perceptibly in its middle, so that the frame of the front door splayed out towards the foot, leaving gaps for the winter wind. They slammed their doors to give notice of their arrival, and Pelham rapped out Beethoven with the knocker.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked a woman warily. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me,’ boomed Pelham. ‘Pelham Redfern the Third. Your friendly neighbourhood alchemist, remember? All lead turned into gold.’

  Rustling inside, keys turning and bolts sliding and the door creaked open, revealing a tall, angular woman with silver hair swept back in a tight bun, reading glasses on a frayed grey string around her neck. ‘Pelham,’ she said, with the nervous warmth of a schoolmarm welcoming back some troublesome old boy. ‘Whatever brings you here?’

  ‘Hell of a story,’ he said. ‘I’m going to need a glass of your excellent whisky and water to help me tell it. But first let me introduce my two companions. This is Rachel Parkes of the great Caius College, Cambridge. And my old friend Luke Hayward, currently writing the definitive biography of Sir Isaac Newton.’

  Olivia frowned. ‘There was a flap in London last year about a Newton scholar called Luke Hayward.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Luke. ‘There was.’

  Olivia was silent a few moments, assimilating this information. ‘I knew your Vice Chancellor at university,’ she said finally. ‘He was a prick then, too.’ She stood aside to welcome them in, closed the door behind them, gestured them through. The passage was low with ancient beams, its walls crowded with portraits of the saints and religious curios. They reached a gloomy living room. She invited them to sit. ‘Now, then,’ she said, as they all settled into their various chairs. ‘Which one of you three wants to tell me what this is all about?’

  III

  The Israeli Prime Minister took the news better than the Chief of the General Staff had dared hope. ‘The Chinese, you say?’ she asked.

  ‘Most likely,’ he told her. ‘Maybe the Russians.’

  ‘You don’t think …’ She hesitated, unsure whether to voice her thought.

  ‘Yes, Prime Minister?’

  ‘You don’t think there’s any chance the Americans might have been behind it?’

  The General was surprised by the suggestion, but he took it seriously. Unlike many of his comrades, who mistook her dovishness for weakness, he respected his new Prime Minister
. Her character, if not her policies. Nor did he romanticize Israel’s relationship with the Americans, but saw it rather as the product of interests that were usually, but not invariably, aligned. ‘Why would you suggest that?’ he asked.

  ‘They have the best engineers. They know our systems better than anyone, and therefore its weak points too. And I’m about to announce a more pro-European foreign policy. Could this be Washington’s way of reminding us of just how badly we need them?’

  ‘Worms like these take years to design,’ he told her. ‘And we think infiltration was only made possible by the earthquake. Your speech is a coincidence.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked relieved. ‘But you’re about to tell me to put it back in my bottom drawer, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘I came here meaning to. But now I think that would be a mistake.’

  ‘I thought you abhorred my new policy.’

  ‘I do. But it’s been too well trailed. Drop it now and you’ll signal weakness. Whoever infiltrated the worm will know that we’ve found it, and that we’re worried. The less information we give them, the better.’

  The Prime Minister nodded. ‘I’ll take it down a notch.’

  ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’

  She sat back in her chair, stared up at the ornately plastered ceiling. ‘What’s your gut telling you?’ she asked. ‘About our neighbours, I mean. Is all their recent bluster and skirmishing just the usual nonsense. Or are they girding up for something?’

  ‘I think it’s the usual nonsense. A war would only work if they all came at us at the same time. They don’t trust each other enough for that.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Besides, their regimes are still too precarious. They need their people with them. And their people don’t want new wars. They want jobs, food, the promise of things getting better.’

  ‘Don’t rely too heavily on that,’ she said. ‘They’re frustrated and they’re angry; and it doesn’t take much to turn frustrated, angry people against a common enemy. A stray missile on a wedding party. A firebomb in a mosque.’

  ‘Some Third Temple fanatic taking down the Dome,’ smiled the Chief of the General Staff.

  She gave a little shudder, shook her head. ‘Don’t even joke about it,’ she said.

  ‘No, Prime Minister.’

  IV

  It was Luke who got the nod from Pelham. ‘I found something earlier today,’ he told Olivia. ‘A folder of lost Newton papers.’

  Her eyes glinted and she leaned forwards in her chair. ‘One of the Sotheby’s lots? How thrilling! But what do they have to do with me?’

  He passed her the relevant page of the printout and directed her attention to Newton’s cryptic message. Olivia put on her reading glasses, held it up to the light of an ebony lamp. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Received from E.A. — and you’re thinking Elias Ashmole?’

  ‘Newton wrote this in 1692,’ said Luke. ‘At least, that’s what the citations and watermark suggest. Ashmole died in May that year. So we think it was probably a bequest.’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘But why would Ashmole leave anything to Newton? They hardly knew each other.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Luke. ‘Not for sure. They could easily have known each other well through the alchemists’ network.’

  ‘The alchemists’ what?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘All the alchemists were in surreptitious contact with one another,’ explained Olivia. ‘They had to be, to trade their texts and furnaces, share their potions and theories. So we have overwhelming evidence for some kind of network, but sadly we know next to nothing about how it worked.’

  Luke got to his feet and went across to Olivia to point out the bottom line. ‘This is really why we’re here,’ he said. ‘This bit about “in Salomans House well concealed”.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘And you think that’s the Ashmolean he’s referring to?’

  ‘Actually, we rather assumed it was the Royal Society? Why? Was the Ashmolean known as Saloman’s House too?’

  ‘Oh yes. Everything was back then. It was a real bandwagon for a while. We brought out a history a few years back: Solomon’s House in Oxford.’ She pushed herself to her feet to go fetch it when she paused, squinted at him. ‘But why are you here if you didn’t know that?’

  ‘There’s an anagram,’ Luke told her. ‘Rachel spotted it. Saloman’s House comes out as Sous Ashmolean.’

  ‘Sous Ashmolean?’ Olivia looked at him with amused consternation. ‘You’re not suggesting there’s something beneath my museum floor?’

  ‘We’re suggesting that Newton’s note implies it,’ said Pelham, with uncharacteristic moderation. ‘Why? Don’t you think it’s even possible?’

  ‘No. I don’t think it’s even possible. The Ashmolean opened in 1683. It had been up and running for nine years by 1692. And the basement wasn’t some abandoned storage area. It was one of the world’s pioneering scientific laboratories. Then it became England’s leading anatomy lecture hall. Don’t you think someone might have noticed Sir Isaac Newton turning up one afternoon with a pickaxe over his shoulder? And don’t you think that, during one or other of our various refurbishments, someone would have spotted some trace of this mysterious-’ She broke off, put a hand to her chest, her breath suddenly coming a little faster. ‘Oh my lord,’ she murmured. ‘Oh my good lord.’

  ‘What?’ asked Luke. ‘What is it?’

  ‘No. No. It’s nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind telling us.’

  She shook her head reluctantly. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘It’s just that one of my predecessors as curator used to tell a story. But no one ever took it seriously. He was always telling stories.’

  ‘And what was this story?’

  She let out a long sigh. ‘His name was Conrad Josten. I knew him a little when I was an undergraduate. He was fascinated by Ashmole. He wrote his biography. Anyway, he oversaw a major refurbishment back in the 1960s. After the workmen had broken up and removed the old basement floor, but before they laid the new one, he ran a metal detector over it.’

  ‘He found something?’

  ‘So he claimed. Something big. Something iron.’

  ‘And he didn’t investigate further?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like to run a museum, have you? Deadlines to meet, exhibitions to put on, absurdly tight budgets. Dig up a floor on a whim like that and you’d better find Sutton Hoo or start looking for a new job.’

  ‘So whatever it was is still down there?’

  ‘If there ever was anything there, which I doubt. Conrad was quite capable of spinning the slightest anomaly into some great mystery. And metal detectors were dreadfully crude beasts back then, minesweepers really, nothing like as sensitive as the ones we have today.’

  ‘But that’s a brilliant idea!’ enthused Pelham. ‘You’re exactly right!’

  Olivia looked startled. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We need to run a modern metal detector across your basement floor. Something state-of-the-art. Something infinitely more sensitive than what Josten had. What an inspired thought.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant at all!’

  ‘Of course it was,’ Pelham assured her. ‘Maybe not consciously, but I’ll bet it’s what your id was thinking.’ He grinned wickedly at her. ‘Come on, Olivia. You know you want to.’

  ‘I can’t. I really can’t. What if we found something?’

  ‘What kind of attitude is that?’ protested Pelham. ‘Don’t I remember you giving a talk about the virtue of relentless curiosity? That was you, wasn’t it? My memory’s not playing tricks?’

  She gave him a look that could have burned toast. ‘It would never work,’ she said. ‘We’ve laid far too much concrete over the years.’

  ‘The latest remote sensing devices are extraordinary,’ said Rachel. ‘I spent two seasons mapping a site near Antioch with them. You wouldn’t believe how much we found, and how dee
p. Ten or even fifteen metres, some of it. And we could still make out what metals the artefacts were made from and how big they were.’

  ‘You’ve used them before, then?’ asked Luke. ‘You could do it at the museum?’

  ‘Sure. If it’s a model I know.’

  Olivia shook her head. ‘We’ve got a history of time running in our basement. I’m not moving all our exhibits and cabinets for this. I’m simply not. It’s too absurd.’

  ‘What kind of cabinets?’ asked Rachel. ‘Are they solid or on legs?’

  Olivia pulled a face, unwilling to cede ground. But she was too honest to lie. ‘On legs,’ she admitted.

  ‘Then they won’t be a problem,’ Rachel assured her. ‘We can sweep beneath them, like vacuuming under the bed.’

  Olivia gave a little wail. ‘Where would we even get a metal detector at this time of night?’

  ‘Come on, Olivia,’ said Pelham. ‘This is Oxford. You can barely walk down the street for archaeologists lugging around remote sensing devices. You must know someone.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said. ‘We could try Albie, I suppose.’

  ‘Perfect!’ said Pelham. ‘Albie’s exactly the man.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Not yet. And I never will, not unless you make the call.’

  ‘I knew I was going to regret this,’ said Olivia, ‘the moment I heard your voice.’ But her cheeks were flushed and there was a sparkle in her eyes as she went to her phone and flipped through her address book for Albie’s number.

  SIXTEEN