Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “I accept that charge—you have already spent twenty seconds!” said the Earl of Upnor.

  “Please, Louis, let us show due respect for our Founder, and for this Doctor,” said his father.

  “It seems too late for the former, Father, but I assent to the latter.”

  “Hear, hear!” Boyle said. This made the chirurgeon falter—but John Comstock stiffened him up with a look.

  “Most of Lord Chester’s organs were normal for a man of his age,” the chirurgeon said. “In one kidney I found two small stones. In the ureter, some gravel. Thank you.”

  The chirurgeon sat down very hastily, like an infantryman who has just seen puffs of smoke bloom from the powder-pans of opposing muskets. Buzzing and droning filled the room—suddenly it was like one of Wilkins’s glass apiaries, and the chirurgeon a boy who’d poked it with a stick. But the Queen Bee was dead, and there was disagreement as to who was going to be stung.

  “It is what I suspected—there was no stoppage of urine,” Hooke finally announced, “only pain from small kidney-stones. Pain that induced Lord Chester to take solace in opiates.”

  Which was as good as flinging a glass of water in the face of Monsieur LeFebure. The King’s Chymist stood up. “To have given comfort to the Lord Bishop of Chester in his time of need is the greatest honor of my career,” he said. “It would be an infamous shame if any of those other medicines he took, led to his demise.”

  Now a great deal more buzzing, in a different key. Roger Comstock stood up and cut through it: “If Mr. Pepys would be so kind as to show us his stone…”

  Pepys fairly erupted to his feet across the room and shoved a hand into a pregnant pocket.

  John Comstock sent both men back down with cast-iron eyes. “It would not be a kindness, Mr., er, Comstock, as we’ve all seen it.”

  Daniel’s turn. “Mr. Pepys’s stone is colossal—yet he was able to urinate a little. Considering the smallness of the urinary passages, is it not possible that a small stone might block urine as well as a large one—and perhaps better?”

  No more buzzing now, but a deep general murmur—the point was awarded, by acclamation, to Daniel. He sat down. Roger Comstock ejaculated compliments all over him.

  “I’ve had stones in the kidney,” Anglesey said, “and I will testify that the pain is beyond description.”

  John Comstock: “Like something meted out by the Popish Inquisition?”

  “I cannot make out what is going on,” said Daniel, quietly, to his neighbor.

  “Well, you’d best make it out before you say anything else,” Roger said. “Just a suggestion.”

  “First Anglesey and Comstock are united in disgracing Wilkins’s memory—then next moment, at each other’s throats over religion.”

  “Where does that put you, Daniel?” Roger asked.

  Anglesey, unruffled: “I’m sure I speak for the entire Royal Society in expressing unbounded gratitude to Monsieur LeFebure for easing Lord Chester’s final months.”

  “The Elixir Proprietalis LeFebure is greatly admired at Court—even among young ladies who are not afflicted with exquisitely painful disorders,” said John Comstock. “Some of them like it so well that they have started a new fashion: going to sleep, and never waking up again.”

  The conversation had now taken on the semblance of a lawn-tennis match played with sputtering granadoes. There was a palpable shifting of bodies and chairs as Fellows of the R.S. aligned themselves for spectation. Monsieur LeFebure caught Comstock’s lob with perfect aplomb: “It has been known since ancient times that syrup of poppies, in even small doses, cripples the judgment by day and induces frightful dreams by night—would you not agree?”

  Here John Comstock, sensing a trap, said nothing. But Hooke answered, “I can attest to that.”

  “Your dedication to Truth is an example to us all, Mr. Hooke. In large doses, of course, the medicine kills. The first symptom—destruction of judgment—can lead to the second—death by overdosing. That is why the Elixir Proprietalis LeFebure should only be administered under my supervision—and that is why I have personally taken pains to visit Lord Chester several times each week, during the months that his judgment was crippled by the drug.”

  Comstock was annoyed by LeFebure’s resilience. But (as Daniel realized too late) Comstock had another goal in sight besides denting LeFebure’s reputation, and it was a goal that he shared with Thomas More Anglesey—normally his rival and enemy. A look passed between these two.

  Daniel stood. Roger got a grip on his sleeve, but was not in a position to reach his tongue. “I saw Lord Chester several times in his final weeks and saw no evidence that his mental faculties were affected! To the contrary—”

  “Lest someone come away with the foolish opinion that you are being unkind, Monsieur LeFebure,” Anglesey said—shooting a glare at Daniel—“did Lord Chester not consider this mental impairment a fair price to pay for the opportunity to spend a few last months with his family?”

  “Oh, he paid that price gladly,” Monsieur LeFebure said.

  “I collect that this is why we’ve heard so little from him in the way of Natural Philosophy of late—” Comstock said.

  “Yes—and it is why we should overlook any of his more recent, er…”

  “Indiscretions?”

  “Enthusiasms?”

  “Impulsive ventures into the lower realm of politics—”

  “His mental powers dimmed—his heart was as pure as ever—and sought solace in well-meaning gestures.”

  That was all the poisoned eulogies Daniel could stand to hear—then he was out in the garden of Gunfleet House watching a white marble mermaid vomit an endless stream of clear babble into a fish-pond. Roger Comstock was right behind him.

  There were marble benches a-plenty, but he could not sit. Rage had taken him. Daniel was not especially susceptible to that passion. But he understood, now, why the Greeks had believed that Furies were angels of a sort, winged-swift, armed with whips and torches, rushing up out of Erebus to goad men unto madness. Roger, watching Daniel pace around the garden, might have convinced himself that his friend’s wild lunges and strides were being provoked by invisible lashes, and that his face had been scorched by torches.

  “O for a sword,” Daniel said.

  “Aw, you’d be dead right away if you tried that!”

  “I know that, Roger. Some would say there are worse things than being dead. Thank god Jeffreys wasn’t in the room—to see me running out of it like a thief!” And here his voice choked and tears rushed to his eyes. For this was the worst part. That in the end he had done nothing—nothing—except run out of the Grand Salon.

  “You’re clever, but you don’t know what to do,” Roger said. “I’m the other way round. We complement each other.”

  Daniel was annoyed. Then he reflected that to be the complement of a man with as many deficiencies as Roger Comstock was a high distinction. He turned and looked the other up and down, perhaps with an eye towards punching him in the nose. Roger was not so much wearing his wig as embedded in its lower reaches, and it was perfect—the sort of wig that had its own staff. Daniel, even if he were the punching sort, could not bring himself to ruin anything so perfect. “You are too modest, Roger—obviously you’ve gone out and done something clever.”

  “Oh, you’ve noticed my attire! I hope you don’t think it’s foppish.”

  “I think it’s expensive.”

  “For one of the Golden Comstocks, you mean…”

  Roger came closer. Daniel kept being cruel to Roger, trying to make him go away, but Roger took it as honesty, implying profound friendship.

  “Well, in any case it is certainly an improvement on your appearance the last time I saw you.” Daniel was referring to the explosion in the laboratory, which was now far enough in the past that both Daniel and Roger had their eyebrows back. He had not seen Roger since that night because Isaac, upon coming back to find the lab blown up, had fired him, and sent him packing, not just out of t
he laboratory, but out of Cambridge. Thus had ended a scholarly career that had probably needed to be put out of its misery in any case. Daniel knew not whither their Cinderella had fled, but he appeared to have done well there.

  Roger plainly had no idea what Daniel was talking about. “I don’t recall that—did you meet me in the street, before I left for Amsterdam? I probably did look wretched then.”

  Daniel now tried the Leibnizian experiment of rehearsing the explosion in the laboratory from Roger’s point of view.

  Roger had been working in the dark: a necessity, as any open flame might set fire to the gunpowder. And not much of an inconvenience, since what he’d been up to was dead simple: grinding the powder in a mortar and dumping it into a bag. Both the sound, and the feel of the pestle in his hand, would tell when the powder had been ground to a fine enough consistency for whatever purpose Roger had in mind. So he had worked blind. Light was the one thing he prayed he wouldn’t see, for it would mean a spark that would be certain to ignite the powder. Attent on work and worry, he had never known that Daniel had come back to the house—why should he, since he was supposed to be watching a play? And Roger had not yet heard the applause and the distant murmur of voices that would signal its end. Roger had never heard Daniel’s approach, for Daniel, who’d phant’sied he was stalking a rat, had been at pains to move as quietly as possible. The heavy fabric screen had blocked the light of Daniel’s candle to the point where it was no brighter than the ambient furnace-glow. Suddenly the candle-flame had been in Roger’s face. In other circumstances he’d’ve known it for what it was; but standing there with a sack of gunpowder in his hands, he had taken it for what he’d most dreaded: a spark. He had dropped the mortar and the bag and flung himself back as quick as he could. The explosion had followed in the next instant. He could neither have seen nor heard anything until after he’d fled the building. So there was no ground to suppose he had ever registered as much as the faintest impression of Daniel’s presence. He’d not seen Daniel since.

  And so Daniel was presented with a choice between telling Roger the truth, and assenting to the lie that Roger had conveniently proffered: namely, that Daniel had spied Roger in the street before Roger had departed for Amsterdam. Telling the truth held no danger, so far as he could see. The lie was attended with a small peril that Roger—who was cunning, in a way—might be dangling it before him as some sort of test.

  “I thought you knew,” Daniel said, “I was in the laboratory when it happened. Had gone there to fetch Isaac’s paper on tangents. Nearly got blown to bits myself!”

  Astonishment and revelation came out of Roger’s face like sudden flame. But if Daniel had owned a Hooke watch, he would have counted only a few seconds of time before the old look came back down over his face. As when a candle-snuffer pounces on a wild flame and the errant brilliance that had filled one’s vision a moment ago is in an instant vanished, the only thing left in its place a dull sight of old silver-work, frozen and familiar.

  “I phant’sied I’d heard someone moving about in there!” Roger exclaimed. Which was obviously a lie; but it made the conversation move along better.

  Daniel was keen to ask Roger what he’d been doing with the gunpowder. But perhaps it would be better to wait for Roger to volunteer something. “So it was to Amsterdam you went, to recuperate from the excitements of that evening,” Daniel said.

  “Here first.”

  “Here to London?”

  “Here to the Angleseys’. Lovely family. And socializing with them has its benefits.” Roger reached up as if to stroke his wig—but dared not touch it.

  “What, you’re not in their employ—?”

  “No, no! It’s much better. I know things. Certain of the Golden Comstocks immigrated—all right, all right, some would say fled—to Holland in the last century. Settled in Amsterdam. I went and paid them a visit. From them, I knew that de Ruyter was taking his fleet to Guinea to seize the Duke of York’s slave-ports. So I sold my Guinea Company shares while they were still high. Then from the Angleseys I learned that King Looie was making preparations to invade the Dutch Republic—but could never stage a campaign without purchasing grain first—purchasing it you’ll never guess where.”

  “No!”

  “Just so—the Dutch sold France the grain that King Looie is using to conquer them! At any rate—I took my money from the Guinea Company shares, and took a large position in Amsterdam-grain just before King Looie bid the price up! Voilà! Now I’ve a Hooke-watch, a big wig, and a lot on fashionable Waterhouse Square!”

  “You own—” Daniel began, and was well on his way to saying You own some of my family estate!? when they were interrupted by Leibniz, stalking through a flower-bed, hugging his brain-in-a-box.

  “Dr. Leibniz—the Royal Society were quite taken with your Arithmetickal Engine,” Roger said.

  “But they did not like my mathematickal proofs,” said one dejected German savant.

  “On the contrary—they were acknowledged to be unusually elegant!” Daniel protested.

  “But there is no honor in elegantly proving a theorem in 1672 that some Scotsman proved barbarously in 1671!”

  “You could not possibly have known that,” Daniel said.

  “Happens all the time,” said Roger, a-bristle with bogus authority.

  “Monsieur Huygens should have known, when he assigned me those problems as exercises,” Leibniz grumbled.

  “He probably did,” Daniel said. “Oldenburg writes to him every week.”

  “It is well-known that GRUBENDOL is a trafficker in foreign intelligence!” announced Robert Hooke, crashing through a laurel bush and tottering onto a marble bench as vertigo seized him. Daniel gritted his teeth, waiting for a fist-fight, or worse, to break out between Hooke and Leibniz, but Leibniz let this jab at Oldenburg pass without comment, as if Hooke had merely farted at High Table.

  “Another way of phrasing it might be that Mr. Oldenburg keeps Monsieur Huygens abreast of the latest developments from England,” Roger said.

  Daniel picked up the thread: “Huygens probably heard about the latest English theorems through that channel, and gave them to you, Doctor Leibniz, to test your mettle!”

  “Never anticipating,” Roger tidily concluded, “that fortunes of War and Diplomacy would bring you to the Britannic shore, where you would innocently present the same results to the Royal Society!”

  “Entirely the fault of Oldenburg—who steals my latest watch-designs, and despatches ’em to that same Huygens!” Hooke added.

  “Nonetheless—for me to present theorems to the Royal Society—only to have some gentleman in a kilt stand up in the back of the room, and announce that he proved the same thing a year ago—”

  “Everyone who matters knows it was innocent.”

  “It is a blow to my reputation.”

  “Your reputation will outshine any, when you finish that Arithmetickal Engine!” announced Oldenburg, coming down a path like a blob of mercury in a trough.

  “Any on the Continent, perhaps,” Hooke sniffed.

  “But all of the Frenchmen who are competent to realize my conception, are consumed with vain attempts to match the work of Mr. Hooke!” Leibniz returned. Which was a reasonably professional bit of flattery, the sort of thing that greased wheels and made reputations in small Continental courts.

  Oldenburg rolled his eyes, then straightened abruptly as a stifled belch pistoned up his gorge.

  Hooke said, “I have a design for an arithmetickal engine of my own, which I have not had the leisure to complete yet.”

  “Yes—but do you have a design for what you shall do with it, when it’s finished?” Leibniz asked eagerly.

  “Calculate logarithms, I suppose, and outmode Napier’s bones…”

  “But why concern yourself with anything so tedious as logarithms!?”

  “They are a tool—nothing more.”

  “And for what purpose do you wish to use that tool, sir?” Leibniz asked eagerly.

&n
bsp; “If I believed that my answer would remain within the walls of this fair garden, Doctor, I would say—but as matters stand, I fear my words will be carried to Paris with the swiftness—though surely not the grace—of the winged-footed messenger of the gods.” Staring directly at Oldenburg.

  Leibniz deflated. Oldenburg stepped closer to him, whilst turning his back on Hooke, and began trying to cheer the Doctor up—which only depressed him more, as being claimed, by Oldenburg, as an ally, would condemn him forever in Hooke’s opinion.

  Hooke removed a long slim deerskin wallet from his breast pocket and unrolled it on his lap. It contained a neat row of slim objects: diverse quills and slivers of cane. He selected a tendril of whalebone—set the wallet aside—spread his knees wide—leaned forward—inserted the whalebone deep into his throat—wiggled it—and immediately began to vomit up bile. Daniel watched with an empiric eye, until he had made sure the vomit contained no blood, parasites, or other auspices of serious trouble.

  Oldenburg was muttering to Leibniz in High-Dutch, of which Daniel could not understand a single word—which was probably why. But Daniel could make out a few names: first of Leibniz’s late patron in Mainz, and then of various Parisians, such as Colbert.

  He turned round hoping to continue his conversation with Roger, but Roger had quietly removed himself to make way for his distant cousin the Earl of Epsom—who was stalking directly toward Daniel looking as if he would be happy to settle matters with a head-butting duel. “Mr. Waterhouse.”

  “My Lord.”

  “You loved John Wilkins.”

  “Almost as a father, my lord.”

  “You would have him revered and respected by future generations of Englishmen.”

  “I pray that Englishmen will have the wisdom and discernment to give Wilkins his due.”