Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  Robert and Voltaire clumped back into the room. “Maclaurin is dead,” Voltaire said in the most subdued tone Ben had ever heard him use.

  “Stirling and his comrades were going to kill us all.” Vasilisa said icily, “I think you owe us an explanation, James.”

  “I answer to no one, least of all some Russian bitch,” James replied.

  The Russian guard struck Stirling so hard with the back of his hand that the chair nearly rocked over.

  “Misha!” Vasilisa snapped.

  “There are four more of them,” the man on the table groaned.

  “At your house?” Vasilisa asked, and Ben felt a glow of pride.

  “Yes.”

  Vasilisa snapped a few words to her two guards. They left the room. “They will do what they can, quietly,” Vasilisa assured them.

  “Just the two of them?” Voltaire asked.

  “No. I left ten more outside.”

  “Vasilisa, I had no idea.”

  She frowned. “My dear Voltaire, you know I was Tsar Peter's envoy to the Royal Society. Did you think he would give me no access to my embassy's resources?”

  “I want to know what was going on here,” Heath interrupted. “Who were those men, James, and what do you have to do with them? And who is he?”

  He thrust his finger toward the red-coated man, who had managed to drag himself to sit on the edge of the table. Beads of sweat stood out on his face, and pain still twisted his features, but he managed to grin briefly when he looked at Heath. “Mr. Heath,” he said quietly, “I am insulted, for we have met on several occasions. I am Sir Isaac Newton, of course.”

  The dumbfounded silence that followed made it clear that only Ben and Vasilisa had guessed.

  “Sir Isaac? But how can that be? You—” But Heath believed; Ben could see that much.

  “I am an old man? Quite right. But I told your young friend here, Benjamin, I had not been idle.”

  “An elixir of life?” Vasilisa said. “Or is this some illusory seeming?”

  “No, it's real enough. The cost was my sanity for a time. Or perhaps—” He wrinkled his brow. “—perhaps I had already gone mad when I invented it.”

  Ben found that he could not contain his impatience. “The comet,” he blurted out.

  “I'm sorry to have been so cryptic,” Newton said, “but I trusted none of you. I wanted to see how each of you reacted when my model was placed in the orrery.”

  “You were there?” Heath gasped.

  “Wearing the aegis,” Newton confirmed. “It can be adjusted to render one nearly invisible.”

  “Well, you smoked the snake from his hole,” Voltaire declared, with a poisonous glance at Stirling.

  “How did you know?” Stirling asked.

  “About the plot? My first hint of it was Mr. Franklin's letter, but I was deep in my … depression … at that time. Still, I recalled it a short while ago, when I received a most unusual aetherschreiber message.” He set his feet gingerly on the floor, managed the few steps to one of the chairs, and slid into it. “It came on a machine I have not used in many years, the mate to which I didn't even know still existed. A gift to a friend and student of mine, long ago. But the message was signed Minerva.”

  Ben started. “Minerva,” he repeated, under his breath.

  “This message was part equation and part warning. It seems that this former student of mine—” Here he paused, as if the wound in his shoulder had begun to throb with sharper, unexpected pain. “It seems,” he began again, “that the French king had managed to attract some philosophers of real talent. As Mr. Franklin guessed, it is they who have summoned this stone from heaven—this cannonball, as Minerva called it—to fall upon London. Minerva suggested that the French philosophers had English accomplices. I saw immediately that it had to be one or all of you. The orrery and the affinascope were both necessary to make the initial calculations. What I didn't know— still don't know—is how James could so betray his country.”

  “Perhaps,” Vasilisa murmured, “we can question him more thoroughly later.”

  “When I asked about the comet,” Ben clarified, “I meant how can we stop it? What can we do?”

  “I have a few ideas,” Newton said cautiously. “To tell you the truth, I have little faith in them, but they must be tried.” He cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and settled deeper into the chair. “Yes, in truth, I think we will fail, though I am fully prepared to stay here with the orrery and the observatory—”

  “Sir,” Voltaire said gently, “Stirling and his cronies have destroyed both.”

  Newton blinked, and for a moment his face slackened into utter defeat. “Well, that is even worse, but I must try. I still wish your help, of course.”

  “London must be evacuated,” Heath said, voicing what all of them knew.

  “Of course,” Newton agreed. “In an hour or two I will seek an audience with the king—”

  “And what?” Vasilisa interrupted. “Tell him you are Sir Isaac Newton? He will not believe you! He may even have you arrested. Certainly when the massacre here becomes known, some of us will be taken into custody. Do any of you wish to be locked in a prison cell, vainly trying to explain to your idiot captors that a celestial body is soon to settle your case? And what if you manage to convince the king to order an evacuation? Do you suppose that it will be peaceful? Looters will sack the city, mobs will riot, philosophers will be burned like witches.”

  “Vasilisa, what are you suggesting?” Ben asked.

  “That we all leave, right now. Take Maclaurin's notes, and this murderer here. Don't you understand? If this weapon can be used once, it can be used again. London in a few days—then Saint Petersburg, Amsterdam, Vienna. We have to develop a countermeasure. Sir Isaac and Benjamin must escape London— preferably with the rest of us.”

  “And you can provide this escape?” Voltaire asked.

  “I know of a locomotive ship that can leave within the hour.”

  “Young lady,” Newton began, “I understand your concern, but when the time comes, I, and whoever remains with me, will escape the devastation.”

  Vasilisa chewed her lip for an instant, and then her regard met Ben's. He almost gasped, for he saw only bleakness and determination there.

  “In that case,” she replied softly, “I must insist. I have your best interests—and the interests of the world—at heart, and I also have the men and guns with me to implement my will. Sir Isaac, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Heath, Voltaire, and you …”

  “Robert Nairne,” Robert clarified.

  “All of you are invited to be my guests. I will insist only on Sir Isaac and Benjamin. The rest of you will be free to go once we are on board the ship. Heath, if you wish, you may begin warning Londoners about their fate.”

  Heath didn't say anything. He just stared at Vasilisa.

  “Don't do this, Vasilisa,” Ben said, “please.”

  “Dear boy, it is for the best. You will see. A philosopher with your potential will be denied nothing in Saint Petersburg.”

  “Unless, perhaps, freedom counts as something,” Voltaire said.

  “What is freedom to such men as Sir Isaac?”Vasilisa snapped. “Sir Isaac, have you not been prisoned all of your life, hemmed in by fools? Have you ever been a free man, able to do anything whatsoever?”

  “You play at semantics,” Voltaire accused.

  “My sweet Voltaire,” Vasilisa said, “you have pleased me often and dearly these past months. Do not make it necessary to have you killed. I would not enjoy it, but I always do what is necessary.”

  As you did with me, Ben thought, with sinking heart. I was in love with you. Was she so coldhearted as to have made love to him only in the hopes that she might later gain some advantage from it? Looking at her now, he knew she was.

  “Mr. Franklin?” Sir Isaac said. “What do you say?”

  “I say that if we resist Vasilisa, we will lose. Over and above that, she makes sense.”

  “Good boy, Benjamin,” Va
silisa said.

  You wait, Ben thought. Keep thinking I love you, that you have me at your beck and call. One day—when it will do some good—this dog will turn on you.

  “Very well,” Sir Isaac said. “But there are some things I will need from my house.”

  “Sit still, please,” Vasilisa said. “Where is this aegis you spoke of?”

  “It was destroyed when Bracewell's malakus attacked me.”

  “Where are its remains?”

  “It was built into my coat.”

  “Make a list of your needs. I cannot risk you alone with your things. You might have another of these invisibility cloaks about. Ben and my men will pack what you need. And now, if all of you gentlemen will accompany me to the docks—”

  “I wish to remain,” Voltaire said. “I will not let an entire city perish without warning it.”

  “I also,” Heath added.

  “As you wish,” Vasilisa said, “but you still must board my boat. We will put you out in the Thames in a rowboat once we are under way.”

  22.

  Bridges

  Crecy reacted instantly, hurling the hilt of her sword at Gustavus. It struck him between the eyes, and his right-hand pistol roared. The tall redhead bounded toward him with catlike speed. From somewhere she had produced a dagger, and Gustavus barely got his arm in front of his face fast enough for it to receive the point instead of his eye.

  Adrienne was still blinking at the sudden appearance of the angel, a creature of wings and shadow but no discernible human features. With a sudden grim determination, she crawled across the blood-soaked bed toward the crystal cube that lay on the end table. Behind her, glass and porcelain shattered as Crecy and Gustavus exchanged blows. Where in heaven or hell was Nicolas?

  She pressed a tiny stud on the cube, and it clucked softly, producing a low, melodious note that began to rise in pitch. When the pitch stopped climbing, it would be time to place the sphere in its socket.

  Crecy and Gustavus slammed into a floor-length mirror, limbs writhing together, eyes flashing like red flames. Then they parted, Crecy's head snapping back as Gustavus caught the point of her chin with his fist. She sprawled roughly to the floor, and the Livonian paused to wrench her knife from his belly before rising, breath rasping horribly in his throat. His eyes, as red as Satan's, met Adrienne's, and she wondered if she weren't already in hell.

  “Bitch,” Gustavus coldly swore. “Do you think to ruin our plans so easily?”

  “Whose plans?” Adrienne managed, suddenly hearing the frantic pounding on the outer door.

  Gustavus laughed and, brandishing the knife, limped toward Crecy.

  The door burst open, and four of the Hundred Swiss rushed in, pistols and blades drawn.

  Thunder cracked as pistols fired, and then a cone of flame engulfed two of the guards. They fell, howling. Adrienne spun, confused. She could not hear the rising tone from her cube: The gunfire had nearly deafened her.

  Gustavus faced the remaining guards, a broadsword in hand.

  “They mean to kill the king!” he snarled at the guards. “You fools, can't you see? They are assassinating the king!”

  The guards hesitated only for a moment, for to them the situation must have seemed obvious.

  They charged Gustavus, and they died. He cut one's leg from below him and gutted the second man with the return stroke.

  Then Nicolas stepped in through the shattered window, face as merciless as death, a pistol in each hand, and shot Gustavus in the back. The Livonian screamed, turned, and raised his sword. Nicolas shot him in the face with his second weapon, and the blond man crumpled to the marble.

  For an instant they all stood looking at one another; Crecy rising shakily to her feet, Nicolas with his two smoking weapons, Adrienne panting, huddled against a wall, the cube and crystal clutched in her hands. Then Nicolas crossed the room in two bounds and wrapped his arms around her. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” he gasped, hugging her, kissing her hair. “I saw him coming toward the window—” He seemed suddenly to understand that she was naked, and cast about as if to find her something to wear.

  “Oh, my sweet God,” he said, as he noticed the blood, then the angel.

  The angel had said nothing, done nothing except to enfold the king and contemplate them with luminescent eyes. Its eyes were the king's—the king's new eyes had been angel eyes all along. In a day of horrors, that was somehow the most horrible.

  As if it were a world away, Adrienne suddenly noticed the sound of a single note from the cube: Her hearing had returned. Her device at last matched the king's harmonic.

  “Farewell, my lord,” she said, socketing the sphere. It incan-desced as the catalyst triggered aetheric vibrations matched to the king. The angel thinned like lifting fog, so that Louis' naked form was visible again. He groaned, hands cupped uselessly over his wounds.

  Faster than a bee's wing, the sublimating angel flew at her, and she had an impression of something mothlike. Ablack sickle or talon or something cut through the air toward her. Nicolas leapt between them, but the inky blade passed through his body as if he weren't there and bit painlessly through her own head.

  And agony blinded her as the cube became molten in her fist.

  She came back to consciousness borne between Crecy and Nicolas, hurtling through a nightmare of gaping courtiers, painted ceilings, marble floors, and flashes of red that were probably sparks of pain somehow running up from her hand to her brain. She gaped down at her body. The hand that hurt looked not much like a hand at all but like some sort of twisted, blackened—

  No. Save that for later.

  “Where are we going?” she panted.

  “A carriage. The marquis promised me a carriage,” Nicolas said.

  “No! No, we can't leave!”

  “She's out of her head,” Crecy said. “Look at her hand.”

  “No. Listen to me.” She had to make them understand. “I can stop it—the comet. I know how to stop it.”

  They had passed out of Versailles now, into night air that was yet torpid. Stars blazed above, and a dry breeze was blowing with a taste upon it like hot iron.

  “Adrienne,” Crecy said, “if we go back, we will be arrested and killed. Do you understand? We tried to kill the king and failed. We can't go back.”

  “I will then,” she said, trying to pull away from them, but they easily overpowered her.

  “They may already be after us,” Nicolas said. “More guards had already arrived, but with all of the bodies it was confusing. The courtiers will remember us and report where we went.”

  Adrienne realized that she wore a dressing gown that was thoroughly spattered with blood.

  Her head was clearing, and agony was sharpening her mind. The pain was all in her wrist. The hand itself was without feeling of any sort.

  The three of them approached the carriage. Adrienne relaxed, as if submitting to their judgment, but when she felt their grips loosen, she shoved them away and ran.

  She made it perhaps three yards and then sprawled.

  “Stupid girl!” Crecy shouted. “Come on! There is nothing you can do here! If you truly know how to stop the comet, then do it elsewhere!”

  “I need Fatio's laboratory!”

  “Then it cannot be done. Adrienne, it cannot be done! But if you live to work elsewhere, you can—”

  “What? What can I do? Reverse the course of time?”

  Then Nicolas clasped her tightly from behind, and they forced her into the carriage.

  She found herself crushed against Torcy.

  “For God's sake, get in and stop screaming,” he snapped.

  “We failed,” Nicolas told him.

  “Yes,” Torcy responded dryly, “I rather thought it went badly by the looks of you. Did you at least wound him?”

  Nicolas slammed the door of the carriage, and it lurched to a start. “He was wounded.”

  “Didn't your device work?” Torcy asked. “It worked on Martin.”

  “I—I didn't
use it,” Adrienne admitted.

  “Yes, she did,” Crecy contradicted.

  “I didn't use it in time. Torcy, I know how to stop the comet! I was trying to tell the king, trying to convince him.”

  “Oh, God,” Torcy murmured tiredly. “For nothing. All for nothing.”

  “She did use it,” Crecy repeated. “Belatedly, but she used it.”

  “It was that thing, that specter,” Nicolas explained. “It struck her hand.”

  “It struck you, too,” Adrienne said. “No, it struck the cube. I never considered that what I could attack through the aether might attack back. Stupid.”

  “Which means it couldn't have worked,” Crecy pressed.

  “Perhaps,” Adrienne agreed wearily.

  Near daylight, the carriage creaked to a stop. Torcy got out, brushed at his breeches, and straightened his wig and hat.

  “I bid you adieu,” he said. “The coach will take you to a small village in the Midi. There you will be given horses, provisions, and false documents so that you can cross into Switzerland. I have provided a map, that you may seek out an old friend of mine.”

  “Mademoiselle needs a surgeon,” Crecy said.

  “There will be one in the village. Beware of large towns and guardposts—Bontemps will have sent word ahead by aetherschreiber. The whole of France will be watching for you.”

  Adrienne tried to answer, but she felt feverish, lightheaded. The pain in her wrist was nearly intolerable.

  “Won't you be accompanying us, sir?” Crecy asked for her.

  Torcy smiled grimly. “I have betrayed my king and thus the Colberts. I have tried to save France and failed her, too. But I shall not leave her.”

  “You are a true gentleman, sir,” Crecy said, and she rose and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he replied. “And good fortune to you both. A small distance behind us is a bridge. My men and I will destroy it, which should break the trail of pursuit long enough for you to lose yourselves in the countryside. It is the last favor I can grant you.” With that he nodded and was gone.

  Adrienne counted ten men accompanying him, all in the uniform of the Black Musketeers. Then she noticed the expression of resolve on Nicolas' face.