Armageddons

by Jack Dann

  This only infuriated them the more.

  "I maintain," someone shouted from the back of the hall, "that the earth is no less than . . ."

  They yelled him down.

  To make matters worse, the argument began to eddy and splinter around the main one. The gradualist uniformitarians, who thought the land masses had been uncovered from a once all-pervading ocean, were yelling at the catastrophic vulcanists who were gathered in one corner of the hall.

  ". . . The earth has been made over," yelled one of the latter in the face of one of the former, "by terrible volcanic upheavals something approaching twenty-seven consecutive times!"

  "Faddle."

  "Hear, hear!"

  Across the aisle, a catastrophic neptunist climbed atop his chair and shouted at both groups. "You people can't use your own eyes to see that the rocks of the Northwest Territory were carried there by the action of a series of deluges, more than seven, but no more than ten in number, as has . . ."

  Instantly, members of all the other factions turned on him.

  The president kept gaveling for order.

  Sir Robert Athole, mounting the platform, shook hands with Curwell, who was smiling and watching the uproar he had caused.

  "They really are in some mood tonight," said Lawrence Curwell, who was a young man with a broad handsome face.

  "It's really too bad you gave them no points to dispute in your presentation, which was quite remarkable," said Sir Robert.

  They were bumped from behind by a black man who was taking models and equipment to the raised stage, where the gavel kept pounding and having absolutely no effect on the turmoil.

  "Sorry, sir, so sorry," said the black.

  Curwell took no notice.

  "Thank you for the compliment," said Curwell. "I've already turned the results over to your Maritime Commission. I hope no more tragedies of the kind which took the Bon Apetit and the Lucie Marie to their watery graves will occur again because of my researches."

  There were dull thuds from the back of the room. The two men turned to watch cane-brandishing men be pulled apart by their friends to the uttering of great vile oaths and epithets.

  "Shall you be visiting the States long?" asked Sir Robert to Curwell. "If it's at all possible, I should like you to come visit and see the progress of my researches. They might interest you."

  "I'd love to. I hear you're doing splendid things. I look forward to your presentation tonight."

  Sir Robert Athole began to bow, but paused to turn and watch as one of the more elderly philosophs bounded across the aisle and began to vigorously choke a younger man. They were absorbed in the crowd.

  Then "oohs" and "ahhs" raced from the front of the room toward the back. It became very quiet and somber, and some bowed their heads.

  For up on the dais, the president of the Society had signaled for the sergeant-at-arms to bring in a small square box and place it in the center of the president's desk.

  "Franklin 's spectacles," whispered someone. The whisper susurrated through the room. Persons righted their overturned chairs, straightened their wigs, took their seats.

  "Order," said the president. The two raps of his small gavel now sounded like the slamming of the great gates of a fort in the still hall.

  "The next item on the agenda," he said, "will be a presentation by Sir Robert Athole on the absolute nature of phlogiston."

  The room itself was old, huge, and dark. It was lit by chandeliers and by candle sconces along the walls. The odor of wig powder, soot and sweat filled the hall. Through several doors leading in, household servants could be seen coming and going, preparing the traditional meal which would end the monthly meeting of the Lunatick Society.

  Velvet and brocade rustled as the men moved about in their upholstered chairs. A snort, sniff and occasional sneeze broke the quiet as one or another of them took snuff. A cane rolled from a lap and clattered loudly to the floor.

  The black man indicated to Sir Robert that the models were ready. He came a little closer. "Go easy on the cylinder," he said. "I think it might have cracked a little on the way over in the wagon."

  "Very good, Hamp," said Sir Robert, and nodded to the president. There was polite applause for him as he stepped to the rostrum, on which sat a whale-oil lamp smoking quietly.

  He looked out at the mass of faces and wigs flickering slowly in the dim light, and saw them as bubbles in the darkening pudding that was the world. No matter. He smiled and began.

  He started with the history of combustion and with mention of the works of Becher and Stahl.

  "Phlogiston is thought to permeate all things in finely inseparable parts. It is characterized by setting up a violent motion within substances in the presence of heat. This motion results in flame, and as long as the air is not kept from it, the motion will continue until only earthy ash remains."

  He then described terra pinguis and the fatty earths, and the search for the phlogistic principle itself. His audience continued to listen intently, even a little restlessly. So far he had told them nothing new.

  "Recently Cavendish thought he had found the most highly phlogiston-charged substance in his inflammable gas, which is lighter than common air, and is used to lift aerostatic vehicles to heretofore unheard-of heights. Inflammable gas burns violently in air, sometimes to the point of detonation. But, as others, including Dr. Priestley, have shown, a mixture of inflammable gas and eminently respirable air explodes, but leaves as residue a wet liquid, indistinguishable from common water.

  "And water, as you know, is the enemy of phlogiston. It seems to me therefore, that a mixture of phlogiston and any other substance could not give a residue of its exact opposite. Cavendish, however . . ."

  "Question!"

  Sir Robert looked up.

  "Yes?"

  "According to the leading French theorists, eminently respirable air is . . ."

  "The French," said someone else, "are a bunch of rabble who cannot even carry out a revolution in the accepted manner, as did we."

  There was a matter of agreement.

  "You were going to say," said Sir Robert to his questioner, "that the French New Chemistry, which denies the phlogistic principle, attributes other causes to combustion and calcination. Most of these concern the properties of the eminently respirable air, or oxygine, as it is named. Instead of phlogiston being given off by substances in combustion, the New Chemistry says substances combine with this oxygine in the presence of heat. And you are asking what I think of this theory?"

  "Yes."

  "Not much," said Sir Robert. "I have read the French Chemistry. If you must deal with the devil, first you must know him." There was hearty applause from the back. "I have decided to ignore most of these theories, insofar as is possible. For I believe it is now within the power of science to isolate phlogiston itself."

  "No! No! Impossible! Wrong!" they shouted.

  Oaths crossed the air again as others took his side.

  Sir Robert raised his hand for quiet.

  "I have come here tonight to outline my plans and to show you models of the operations by which I intend to carry out . . ."

  "Phlogiston . . . ," said a voice, ". . . is present to some extent in all matter, and indivisible. Might as well try and weigh or separate sunlight itself!"

  "Hear! Hear!"

  Sir Robert looked them down. A tremor passed through his hand then, something he had noticed as happening more often since he began experimenting with his mercuric pneumatic troughs. He raised it as the tremor passed. "Some say phlogiston drifts down from the shooting stars through the aether. Others say it comes from the very sun. Perhaps if I succeed in isolating the phlogistic principle, we shall find, indeed, the true nature of even that great sun overhead."

  That was too much for even the devout phlogistians in the audience. They came to their feet, arguing against him.

  "Nevertheless," said Sir Robert, rolling up his manuscript. "Nevertheless, I have had special equipment ordered, and wil
l carry through . . ." The president stood up and pounded with his gavel. ". . . I will prevail in my work, and expect within a fortnight to have all ready. Such of you as may want shall be invited to witness . . ." The roar rose above his words for a space and he paused. ". . . to witness this great thing, and those of you who don't can go to the very devil himself!"

  He stomped from the dais. Hamp drove home in the wagon down the snow-covered ruts which passed for a road. The ground was lit by the cold still glow of the full moon, on whose closest Monday night the Lunatick Society sat, and for whose shining light it was named.

  At noon two days later, Lawrence Curwell arrived. Sir Robert and Lady Margurite Athole met him on the wide carriage porch in the light of a bright cold sun.

  Curwell bowed to Lady Margurite. "Your servant, madam."

  "Sorry Hamp isn't here, too," said Sir Robert. "He's out in the laboratory, unpacking the new globe which arrived this forenoon from Philadelphia."

  "I'm sure my note arrived rather late the night of the meeting," said Curwell. "I was surrounded by disputants during your speech. It's only luck we kept Hazzard from plunging his penknife into Revecher. What a contentious lot!"

  Lawrence Curwell, like Sir Robert, was from Britain. Unlike the elder scientist, he could return, being in America to check on his brother's tobacco holdings. This was possible only because the new Constitution had been adopted, and relations between the two countries were normalizing again after the shaky years of the Confederation.

  Sir Robert, who had once been a notorious supporter of the Colonies in their rebellion, had been hounded to the States, much like his contemporary Priestley who now lived in Pennsylvania.

  Curwell, who was young and still loyal to Britain, and Sir Robert, in his fifties, experienced, but now apolitical, met only on the common ground of a devotion to knowledge and the empire of science. They shared another opinion that the American philosophs were hotheaded, opinionated, prejudiced, and had no science to match the new country's ideals. With a few exceptions: the late, lamented Franklin, Priestley, who really didn't count, Bartram of Carolina.

  "I trust they'll sing another tune if you succeed," said Curwell.

  "They'll have to," said Lady Margurite.

  "Do we have time to see how Hamp's getting on before lunch?" asked Sir Robert.

  Lady Margurite gave a knowing smile. "Surely," she said.

  "Will you come with us?" asked Curwell, who was very taken with her beauty.

  "Not presently. I have to see to the servants," she said, and turned to go into the house, which was an imposing, square, white three-story structure with a green roof.

  "This way," said Sir Robert.

  They followed a flagstone path around the house. A vista opened up to the flat rolling hills toward the west. Here was a barn, there poultry houses, stables and servant quarters larger than the cottage Curwell lived in. Past those was a wide field and beyond that a low squat edifice of fieldstones with many smokestacks and chimneys protruding from it. As Curwell neared it, he saw a huge pile of sand under the fire bell tower which stood near the doorway. One of the many large windows showed blackened signs of scorching.

  "An accident late last year," said Sir Robert.

  There were still a few patches of snow here and there in the shadows of the building and trees across the field. The wind was from the north but spring was in the air.

  "This is quite a marvelous globe flask," said Sir Robert as they entered the building through a low rickety door. Several white servants and the black man were busy with crates and boxes. "It has a diameter of three feet, its sides are two and one-half inches in thickness, stoppable ports and conduits for sparking. I had it made especially for the grand experiment."

  "Hamp," said Sir Robert. The black man looked up from his work, rubbed his hands on a chamois, came over. "Hamp. Lawrence Curwell. Lawrence, Hampton Hamilton."

  "Pleased, indeed," said Hampton, and offered his hand.

  It was the first time Lawrence Curwell had been offered the hand of a black man. He shook it nonetheless. He had assumed at the meeting that the man had been Sir Robert's slave.

  "Hamp runs the laboratory for me, and is in charge of all the equipment and requisitioning. How's the globe, Hamp?"

  "Excellent, indeed," said Hamp. Turning to the great transparent globe before them supported on sawhorses, he said, "The ports fit so tightly that I doubt we shall need wax and quicklime to seal the joints tight."

  "Good, good," said Sir Robert. "Let me see the bill of lading, will you? Excuse me, Lawrence . . ."

  While they put their heads together, Lawrence Curwell looked around the laboratory. He was struck by the spaciousness and cleanliness of the place and its supplies. Where most chemists got on with two or three small furnaces, Sir Robert had no less than seven—three of them large reverberatory cones, two forced-draft furnaces, two smaller ones spread down the length of the room, each with its own stack or chimney.

  At one end stood large jugs—gallons of water, vitriol, spirit of wine, acid, distilled waters. In other places were ceramic buckets marked sulfur, antimony, lead, earth of rhubarb, Mohr's salt.

  Shelf after shelf stretched across the walls with tins, vials and flasks—the most completely stocked workroom Curwell had ever seen—syrup of violets, oil of Dippel, ley of oxblood, Icy Butter, Starkey's Soap, salt of Gall, Glauber's salt, liquor of flints, Minderer's spirit. Numberless others.

  At the far end of the laboratory were pumps and basins for washing. Near each end were large workbenches covered with experiments in progress.

  In the center of the room were pneumatic troughs for the recovery of gases. Two were filled with water, the third with four inches of mercury. Seven glass bottles, some filled with a reddish air, stood upside down in each.

  Curwell walked to the workbench where retorts and a Woulfe bottle caught his eye. In a few seconds he recognized it as the cohobation of some solid. At another spot he found lixiviation in process—how long it had been going on he did not know. He had seen some last for half a year, with virtually no result.

  He followed to another spot where some matter was being edulcorated from acid by a water bath.

  There seemed no order to the experiments, nowhere they should be leading. There was no thread holding them together, except perhaps that of refinement. Maybe Sir Robert was getting the best possible metals and calxes together before using them in his actual work.

  "Lawrence," said Sir Robert. "Here, come over here." He was now standing near one of his pneumatic troughs, while behind him Hamp and the others busied themselves once more with the boxes.

  "Here." He pointed at one of the inverted bottles. "I've been doing things with a gas collected over sulfur and nitre. Would you like to see?"

  He began by showing Curwell some of the properties of the gas, talking occasionally of how it would be a part of the great experiment. They began moving from table to trough to bench as one or another thing they should try came to them. At one point they took off their frock coats, and sometime later their wigs. Curwell suggested other properties, other processes. They took bottles from workbench to crucible to mortar and pestle. The workmen came and left, came again. They ignored the two men huddling over the trough.

  At some time Hamp lit candles in the room, finished the unpacking. Then he left. The candles burned down.

  At 11 p.m. the two scientists stumbled back to the house, talking, gesturing, happy as mice and famished as wolves. Everyone was asleep.

  It was the second week of Curwell's stay. Something was bothering Sir Robert, and both Margurite and Hampton could tell. Sir Robert seemed distracted in the middle of conversations or experiments. He drew plans on sheets of foolscap with a thick graphite pencil, then discarded them in lumps around the house or the laboratory.

  Most of them dealt with clockwork devices, cogs, fuses. None seemed to satisfy him.

  Curwell had begun to see that all the experiments and processes in the laboratory were coming togeth
er in a great design. It was ambitious, complicated, and to Curwell's mind it would probably not work. Most of it centered on fixing the phlogiston, much as fixed air is obtained from common air. He thought there were too many variables, and it depended on timing of at least four major processes. But Sir Robert's enthusiasm stirred him, and he and Hamp set about putting together minor portions of the apparatus and materials. Sir Robert talked less and less, worked more and more, and became still more dissatisfied.

  One morning as he and Curwell walked toward the laboratory, they were interrupted by a halloo. Turning, they saw Athole's gamekeeper riding slowly toward them down the road. On the wagon-rut before him walked a trussed man dressed in deerskin trousers and jacket who seemed much the worse for wear.

  "Caught a live one, Your Lordship," said the gamekeeper, who was Irish. "He made the best shot I've ever seen. Right into one of your heath hens," he continued, and produced the feathered evidence from his saddlepack. "Am I to take him to the constable, or shall I pummel him unmercifully?"

  "As if you haven't already!" grumbled the man in leather.

  "Quiet, you!" said the game'keeper, and yanked on the rope.

  Sir Robert was staring as if transfixed. "What rifle did he use?"

  "Here," said the gamekeeper, and handed down a Kentucky rifle.

  "I didn't do anything," said the man.

  "Quite right," said the gamekeeper, and dealt him a smart blow behind the ear with his own rifle butt.

  "No need for that, McCartney," said Sir Robert.

  "Ow Ow Ow!" said the man, who had fallen to the ground.

  "How far was the hen?" asked Sir Robert.

  "Between eighty and a hundred paces, my lord," said McCartney.

  "It was a hundred or I'm damned," said the man on the road.

  "And could you make a shot at a quarter mile?"

  "How big a target, and with what gun?" asked the man.

  Sir Robert thought a moment. "A target two feet across, and with whatever weapon you need."

  "It'd take a Philadelphia rifle of .60 caliber," said the man, "and I could do it."

  "Done!" said Sir Robert. "Be here at dawn on the twenty-first of the month. You shall have the Philadelphia rifle, and yours to keep, and a gold crown for making the shot."