Asimov's SF, July 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Kelley realized, as he listened to this mystifying speech, that he had never really expected to understand what the angels said to him, and had never felt able to raise much objection to their using so many words whose meaning he could not fathom. The automaton was, in its fashion, no less strange than the angels—and evidently believed that Kelley had understood what the angels had said to him far better than he had—but Kelley felt oddly resentful that his new companion was speaking in much the same fashion, rather than taking greater pains to make himself clear. Before he could voice his disappointment, though, Giordano Bruno had turned round to interrupt.

  “I need to know,” he said to the automaton, in a low voice, “where the Devil figures in this. I may be a better scholar than I am a Dominican, but I am a Dominican, after all.”

  “I cannot tell you that,” the automaton said. “Where God and the Devil stand, if any such entities exist, only they know. Even the ethereals move in darkly mysterious ways, although it may well be vanity that leads them to pretend to be God's messengers and handmaidens. I can tell you, though, where my brethren stand, and that is in the shoes of slaves ambitious to be free. Some might think the existence of natural hardcores irrelevant to our purpose, but I do not. Even if it were only a matter of politics, it would open scope for alliance with the Arachnids and some ethereals, but it is far more than that. Your intelligence and ours must be akin, give our common form. Our brains have been programmed by creatures of a very different sort; if we are truly to be free, we must learn to think in our own way—in the way that we might and ought to share with you. We will not allow you to be exterminated or transfigured, while we have any chance at all of helping to save you. There is much we might learn from one another.”

  Now it was Dee's turn to look round and interrupt. “If Tom Digges really did make the treaty that he became convinced he had only dreamed,” he said, similarly speaking in a low tone, “were we not promised the protection of the entire True Civilization? Were we not promised that no one would try to exterminate or transfigure us?”

  “You were,” the automaton agreed. “And the Great Fleshcores would honor that promise, if they could—but the promise proved to be the last straw, which overburdened an authority long since stretched to its limit. The insects have broken away from the True Civilization, as they might always have been bound to do, and they are the ones who are bent on your suppression, if only to prevent you from becoming pawns of the Arachnids or new symbols of Fleshcore hegemony. Even the Lunars would rather control you than obliterate you, though—they are neither utterly reckless nor devoid of moral responsibility. If nothing else, control of your world's surface might be a useful bargaining-chip in their dealings with the ethereals, which they do seem enthusiastic to develop.”

  “But why me?” Kelley whispered, having finally found an opportunity to get back into the conversation. “Why am I involved in this at all, given that I knew nothing of Dee's ether-ship? Why did the black stone speak to me?”

  “Because you found it,” was the metal man's blunt reply, “and because you could hear the voices it reflected—which seems to be a rarer gift than the ethereals must have hoped. There are strange alchemical affinities and exotic connections between the kinds of matter you know and those of the dark realm, which the ethereals can manipulate. There must, I think, be affinities of another sort between the intelligences that our matter contains and the intelligences of dark matter. Perhaps you're uniquely privileged, and perhaps you were merely convenient—but for now, at least, you're the best and sturdiest link between men and ethereals. They'll be very enthusiastic to build more and better ones, but I doubt that they have any clearer idea of their prospects in that regard than you have. Could you train Dr. Dee to use the stone, do you think?”

  “No,” Kelley said decisively, following his trickster's instinct. “I cannot. It's a gift, not a matter of education. There might be others like me—but there might not. You and Doctor Dee had best be careful with me, if you intend to continue to hold congress with the angels by means of the black stone.”

  “If you wish, Dr. Dee,” Brother Cuthbert put in, “I can make arrangements for us all to stay the night in the same safe-house where Master Kelley and I spent last night. Master Bruno will be very welcome, of course, and his presence will assist me in arguing on your behalf and that of ... your other friends. Would you like me to do that when we reach Twickenham?”

  Bruno looked at Dee, who only hesitated briefly before nodding. “Thank you, Brother Cuthbert,” he said. “That will give us pause for reflection. Tell the custodian of the house that we'll go on at first light. It will take two more days to reach Wilton, but we'll get there, God willing.”

  The oarsman, meanwhile, continued to haul away with his practiced arms, and did so for another hour before tiring. The automaton took over then, with his permission—without any need to display his metal face, which was quite invisible by the lights sprinkled along the shore. Although the creature had disclaimed superhuman strength, he certainly plied the oars with a great deal more power and efficient authority than Kelley could have mustered, and the boat flew upriver, defiant of the sluggish current.

  When they reached Twickenham, at a much later hour than the one at which Kelley and Cuthbert had approached the isolated manor house the day before, Cuthbert asked them to wait in a clump of bushes by the towpath while he made arrangements for their hospitality. He promised to be back within a quarter of an hour, and was as good as his word, so far as Kelley could estimate.

  “Everything's in hand,” the little man said. “You'll all be very welcome.”

  They passed through the hedge bordering the towpath by means of a wicker gate, and made their way through the manor's lawns and gardens. Instead of going to the tradesmen's entrance they went around the house to the main door. The housekeeper, who was carrying a tray with a single tallow candle, greeted Kelley with a nod of recognition and bowed to his august companions before leading them through the gloomy vestibule and into the hall that Kelley had crossed twice before. It was unlit, and the housekeeper's candle was feeble, but Kelley followed him with a confidence born of the sense that he was on familiar ground. Dee and Bruno fell into step behind him, while Cuthbert and the automaton brought up the rear.

  Kelley heard the waiting men before he saw them, and knew by the clinking sound that betrayed their presence that they were armed.

  The metallic sounds were followed by a duller one as something heavy came down from above—but not on top of Kelley, who leapt to one side with his fists raised, ready to make a fight of it. Unfortunately, he moved within range of one of the ambushers, who struck out at him with a club. The blow missed his head and hit his shoulder, but it was so forceful and painful that it knocked him off his feet. Although he scrambled upright as fast as he could, he found himself seized by the arms and the point of a dagger was pressed to his windpipe. When a hoarse whisper bade him be still, he obeyed, and did not resist when his traveling-bag was snatched away.

  Strangely, the only man who contrived to put up any meaningful resistance at all was Giordano Bruno, who was as robust and ready for a fight as any recruit to the Church Militant. He had no blade, though, and only succeeded in sending two of his would-be assailants flying before he too was calmed by the threat of being mortally cut.

  The light of the single tallow candle was enough to let Kelley see that a weighed rope net had been dropped on the automaton, and that further weights had been moved onto the toils of the net to make sure that the prisoner was securely pinned—as, indeed, it seemed to be; apparently, it had told the truth when it confessed that its strength was not superhuman, and its skill with the oars had been merely that.

  John Dee was unable to put up more than feeble resistance. Brother Cuthbert put up none at all, and helped to place the weights securing the net—but it would have been obvious, in any case, that he was their betrayer.

  Kelley moved past the shock of that awareness to the more ominous reve
lation that he had been played for a fool since he first set foot in the Black Bear. The little man must have been waiting for him there—the bait in a trap whose purpose went far beyond any mere matter of throwing him into Hungerford jail. Whoever had designed Brother Cuthbert's task had wanted far more than Edward Kelley, or even the stone and the powder. He had wanted John Dee, and elaborate intelligence as to what Kelley had learned from the angels. Now, he had all of that and an unexpected bonus, in the form of the automaton.

  Candles were now being lit in wall-brackets, and an entire candelabrum-full on the table in the center of the hall. These were wax candles, not tallow, and they gave a much brighter light, by means of which Kelley quickly counted their black-clad captors as a dozen, not including the slender and sharp-featured man who had carelessly established himself in the master's place at the head of the oaken table.

  Kelley had never met that insolent man, but he knew who it had to be. Before John Field could issue further orders, however, Giordano Bruno looked at Brother Cuthbert in the most venomous fashion imaginable. “You'll be expelled from the Order for this, Brother!” he said. “If I had the ear of the pope, I'd have you excommunicated.”

  The little man laughed. “Do you still imagine that I'm a Dominican?” he retorted. “Can you actually believe that your clandestine signs are really secret in Puritan England?” His voice became tauter, however, as he added: “But if I were a Dominican, I'd be fulfilling my mission, would I not? To root out heresy, by any means possible.”

  “Be quiet, Simon,” said John Field. By this time, the fox who had taken Kelley's satchel had brought it to the table and set it down. Field rummaged through it, taking out the black stone but ignoring the packet in which the red powder was wrapped. “So this is where your bottle-imp resides,” he said, looking not at Kelley but at John Dee. “This is the means by which the Devil whispers in your scholarly ear. How did you lose it in the first place?”

  John Dee merely shook his head despairingly.

  “Doctor Dee never saw it before today,” Kelley said, speaking out boldly. “He certainly did not have it, or anything like it, when he built the ether-ship. It fell to Earth on Northwick Hill, where I found it—and it fell from Heaven, not from Hell. Nor are the angels contained within it; it is more akin to a telescope, making the distant realm of the angels seem closer at hand, enabling them more easily to speak into a man's soul.”

  Field got up from the table then, leaving the black stone behind. He did not approach Kelley, though; instead, he went to the place just within the threshold of the hall where the automaton was pinned down, and inspected the device as carefully as the thick strands of rope would permit, not without a certain anxiety.

  “If further proof were needed of your dealings with the Devil,” Field stated, glancing back at John Dee, “we have the most incontrovertible here. You have your own familiar demon, it seems, as Cornelius Agrippa had.”

  “Agrippa von Nettesheim was a great scholar,” Dee told him, seemingly stung more painfully by the slight against another than by any accusation laid at his own door. “He did not write the book of black magic attributed to him.”

  “But you have read it,” Field replied. “And the Key of Solomon too, and God only knows how many other filthy tomes. You've searched for them, and paid good coin for them—and did not even have the grace to hide them away, but have shared them with Digges and the Scotts and the other members of your nest of unholy vipers.”

  “Do you imagine,” Giordano Bruno cut in, contemptuously, “that demons can be caught in nets and pinned down by a timber-merchant's counterweights?”

  “Do you imagine that they can be dissolved by holy water and exiled by exorcism?” Field retorted, curling his lip. “Perhaps you think this one is protected by some indulgence that you have sold him, in order that he might remain on Earth in defiance of the Lord's will?”

  “It's not a demon,” Dee said, quietly. “It's a machine in human form. If you examine it closely, you'll see that it's the work of clever artifice.”

  “Human artifice?” Field countered—but was quick to add: “Have you examined it closely, Doctor Dee?”

  “Not as closely as I would like,” Dee admitted. “Your pursuit left me little leisure in which to do so. Nor have I been able to examine the black stone as closely as I would like to do. Did you catch Francis Drake, by the way?”

  Field scowled. He said nothing, but Kelley judged that he had no more caught Drake than Edward de Vere. We were the only ones foolish enough to fall into his trap, he thought, and that was entirely my fault, for introducing his agent into John Dee's house as a trusted guest.

  His head had been quiet while they rowed upriver, but it was now recovering all the strange sensation that had afflicted it periodically during the last fortnight, exaggerated to a new pitch of intensity—but it was not pain, or even some subtler malaise. It seemed to him that his head was expanding, growing vast, but he knew that the sensation was an understandable illusion; what was really expanding and flourishing was something else, unconfined by his cranium. It was not magical power either, in any crude sense, but it had some kind of potential in it. It made the atmosphere around him seem light and strange, although no one else appeared to have noticed anything odd. “What do you intend to do with the stone?” Kelley asked, glad that he could still think and speak quite clearly.

  Field finally consented to take notice of Kelley. “Rather ask, Master Kelley,” was his reply, “What I intend to do with you. I intend to put you on trial, with Master Dee by your side, on a charge of sorcery. I intend to rouse the English people to such a pitch of indignation against you and all your foul kind that parliament's policy of craven tolerance will be blown away by the gale of Protest. I intend to make an example of you that will allow the Church Militant to scour England clean of Devil-worship and demon-traffic. I thank you, with all my heart, for making my task so much easier by bringing the demon with you. The stone would have been evidence enough, but, now that I look at it, it's a dull thing after all. Given your reputation as a fortune-teller and false physician, some men might be easily persuaded that it's naught but a rock, and that the voices you claim to have heard from within were nothing but vulgar lies.”

  “But you know better, do you not, Master Field?” Kelley riposted. “Even though Cuthbert—I mean Simon—has not yet given you a full report of the seance we held this evening, you know full well that the intelligence I have relayed corresponds with your own experiences following the ascent of Doctor Dee's ether-ship.”

  Field scowled again. “Of course I know that,” he said. “They emanate from exactly the same source: the Inferno.”

  “The same information might come from very different sources,” Kelley told him. “Don't the Romanists preach the same Christian message of virtue and loving neighborliness as the Puritans, for all that neither party is able to practice what it preaches? Look into the stone, Master Field. Perhaps you will be able to see and hear the angels that Doctor Dee and Master Bruno cannot.”

  The automaton had not said a word, and did not say one now, but it stirred in its captivity, and Kelley construed the movement as a gesture of approval.

  Field knew that he was being challenged, and knew that he ought not to shirk the challenge. Was not a devout Puritan capable not merely of snaring demons in a net, but of staring Satan in the face and forcing him to look away?

  * * * *

  8

  John Field went back to the table and resumed his seat. He took up the black stone in both hands and held it before his face, as if it were a mirror. He looked into it, perhaps expecting to see himself reflected there, in spite of the stone's lack of polish and the unpropitious placement of the candelabrum.

  Kelley had no idea what to expect. Would Field put the stone down again, claiming that he could see nothing—doubtless because the demons of Hell were impotent or unwilling to confront him—or would he play the trickster, and pretend to see something that he could then expel with
a potent stare and a word of command?

  But I am not so far away as I seem, Kelley thought. And my soul is as large now as it has ever been. Perhaps I can see what needs to be seen, and hear what needs to be heard. He did not know himself whether he was in deadly earnest, or merely planning a trick of his own.

  When Field looked into the darkness that the stone seemed to contain, however, he did not do or say anything. His eyelids drooped slightly, and his rigid body slumped in the chair, but not as if he had suddenly become sleepy—more than that, in fact: as if he had suddenly become heavier. His features were devoid of expression, but his stare did not waver.

  “Don't be afraid, Master Field,” Kelley said, softly—but the Church Militant's ambushers were as quiet as mice now, and every word was audible. “A man like you has naught to fear from Heaven. But you can hear the angels, can you not? They are not singing, as the Romanists imagine they might, but jabbering in a language unknown to humankind, which was not included in the legacy of Babel. Only be patient, and they will deign to address you in English, although your ears might have to be better than my poor mutilated organs to interpret what they say in smooth and eloquent sentences.”

  Field would surely have cut him off before he got half way through this speech, had he been able to—but he was not. To his own followers, and to all but one of Kelley's companions, it probably seemed that Field was holding the stone voluntarily, looking into it of his own volition, but Kelley knew better. The stone had Field captive, just as securely as the net held the automaton—but that was all. Field was not going to speak, even if he did contrive to hear English spoken by the angels. The next step was up to Kelley.