Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  The Exchange [Between Threadneedle and Cornhill]

  SEPTEMBER 1686

  I find that men (as high as trees) will write

  Dialogue-wise; yet no man doth them slight

  For writing so; indeed if they abuse

  Truth, cursed be they, and the craft they use

  To that intent; but yet let truth be free

  To make her sallies upon thee, and me,

  Which way it pleases God.

  —JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim’s Progress

  DANIEL WATERHOUSE, a Puritan.

  SIR RICHARD APTHORP, a former Goldsmith, proprietor of Apthorp’s Bank.

  A DUTCHMAN.

  A JEW.

  ROGER COMSTOCK, Marquis of Ravenscar, a courtier. JACK KETCH, chief Executioner of England.

  A HERALD.

  A BAILIFF.

  EDMUND PALLING, an old man.

  TRADERS.

  APTHORP’S MINIONS.

  APTHORP’S HANGERS-ON AND FAVOR-SEEKERS.

  JACK KETCH’S ASSISTANTS. SOLDIERS.

  MUSICIANS.

  Scene: A court hemmed in by colonnades. Discover DANIEL WATERHOUSE, seated on a Chair amid scuffling and shouting TRADERS. Enter SIR RICHARD APTHORP, with Minions, Hangers-on, and Favor-seekers.

  APTHORP: It couldn’t be—Dr. Daniel Waterhouse!

  WATERHOUSE: Well met, Sir Richard!

  APTHORP: Sitting in a chair, no less!

  WATERHOUSE: The day is long, Sir Richard, my legs are tired.

  APTHORP: It helps if you keep moving—which is the whole point of the ‘Change, by the by. This is the Temple of Mercury—not of Saturn!

  WATERHOUSE: Did you think I was beingSaturnine? Saturn is Cronos, the God of Time. For your truly Saturnine character you had better look to Mr. Hooke, world’s foremost clockmaker…

  Enter Dutchman.

  DUTCHMAN: Sir! Our Mr. Huygens taught your Mr. Hooke everything he knows!

  Exits.

  WATERHOUSE: Different countries revere the same gods under different names. The Greeks had Cronos, the Romans Saturn. The Dutch have Huygens and we have Hooke.

  APTHORP: If you are not Saturn, what are you, then, to bide in a chair, so gloomy and pensive, in the middle of the ‘Change? WATERHOUSE: I am he who was born to be his family’s designated participant in the Apocalypse; who was named after the strangest book in the Bible; who rode Pestilence out of London and Fire into it. I escorted Drake Waterhouse and King Charles from this world, and I put Cromwell’s head back into its grave with these two hands.

  APTHORP: My word! Sir!

  WATERHOUSE: Of late I have been observed lurking round Whitehall, dressed in black, affrighting the courtiers.

  APTHORP: What brings Lord Pluto to the Temple of Mercury?

  Enter Jew.

  JEW: By’re leave, by’re leave, Señor—pray—where stands the tablero?

  Wanders off.

  APTHORP: He sees that you have a Chair, and hopes you know where is the Table.

  WATERHOUSE: That would be mesa. Perhaps he means banca, desk…

  APTHORP: Every other man in this ‘Change, who is seated upon a chair, is in front of such a banca. He wants to know where yours has got to!

  WATERHOUSE: I meant that perhaps he is looking for the bank.

  APTHORP: You mean, me?

  WATERHOUSE: That is the new title you have given your goldsmith’s shop now, is it not? A bank?

  APTHORP: Why, yes; but why doesn’t he just ask for me then?

  WATERHOUSE: Señor! A moment, I beg you!

  Jew returns with a paper.

  JEW: Like this, like this!

  APTHORP: What is he holding up there, I do not have my spectacles.

  WATERHOUSE: He has drawn what a Natural Philosopher would identify as a Cartesian coordinate plane, and what you would style a ledger, and scrawled words in one column, and numerals in the next.

  APTHORP: Tablero—he means the board where the prices of something are billed. Commodities, most likely.

  JEW: Commodities, yes!

  WATERHOUSE: ‘Sblood, it’s right over there in the corner, is the man blind?

  APTHORP: Rabbi, do not take offense at my friend’s irritable tone, for he is the Lord of the Underworld, and known for his moods. Here in Mercury’s temple all is movement, flux—which is why we name it the ‘Change. Knowledge and intelligence flow like the running waters spoken of in the Psalms. But you have made the mistake of asking Pluto, the God of Secrets. Why is Pluto here? ‘Tis something of a mystery—I myself was startled to see him just now, and supposed I was looking at a ghost.

  WATERHOUSE: The tablero is over yonder.

  JEW: That is all!?

  APTHORP: You have come from Amsterdam?

  JEW: Yes.

  APTHORP: How many commodities are billed on the tablero in Amsterdam now?

  JEW: This number…

  Writes.

  APTHORP: Daniel, what has he written there?

  WATERHOUSE: Five hundred and fifty.

  APTHORP: God save England, the Dutchmen have a tablero with near six hundred commodities, and we’ve a plank with a few dozen.

  WATERHOUSE: No wonder he did not recognize it.

  Exit Jew in the direction of said Plank, rolling his eyes and scoffing.

  APTHORP (TO MINION): Follow that Kohan and learn what he is on about—he knows something.

  Exit Minion.

  WATERHOUSE: Now who is the God of Secrets?

  APTHORP: You are, for you still have not told me why you are here.

  WATERHOUSE: As Lord of the Underworld, I customarily sit enthroned in the Well of Souls, where departed spirits whirl about me like so many dry leaves. Arising this morning at my lodgings in Gresham’s College and strolling down Bishopsgate, I chanced to look in ‘tween the columns of the ‘Change here. It was deserted. But a wind-vortex was picking up all the little scraps of paper dropped by traders yesterday and making ‘em orbit round past all of the bancas like so many dry leaves…I became confused, thinking I had reached Hell, and took my accustomed seat.

  APTHORP: Your discourse is annoying.

  Enter Marquis of Ravenscar, magnificently attired.

  RAVENSCAR: “The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties!”

  WATERHOUSE: God save the King, m’lord.

  APTHORP: God save the King—and damn all riddlers—m’lord.

  WATERHOUSE: ‘Twere redundant to damn Pluto.

  RAVENSCAR: He’s damning me, Daniel, for prating about vortices.

  APTHORP: The mystery is resolved. For now I perceive that the two of you have arranged to meet here. And since you are speaking of vortices, m’lord, I ween it has to do with Natural Philosophy.

  RAVENSCAR: I beg leave to disagree, Sir Richard. For ‘twas this fellow in the chair who chose the place of our meeting. Normally we meet in the Golden Grasshopper.

  APTHORP: So the mystery endures. Why the ‘Change today, then, Daniel?

  WATERHOUSE: You will see soon enough.

  RAVENSCAR: Perhaps it is because we are going to exchange some documents. Voilà!

  APTHORP: What is that you have whipped out of your pocket m’lord, I do not have my spectacles.

  RAVENSCAR: The latest from Hanover. Dr. Leibniz has favored you, Daniel, with a personalized and autographed copy of the latest Acta Eruditorum. Lots of mathematickal incantations are in here, chopped up with great stretched-out S marks—extraordinary!

  WATERHOUSE: Then the Doctor has finally dropped the other shoe, for that could only be the Integral Calculus.

  RAVENSCAR: Too, some letters addressed to you personally, Daniel, which means they’ve only been read by a few dozen people so far.

  WATERHOUSE: By your leave.

  APTHORP: Good heavens, m’lord, if Mr. Waterhouse had snatched ‘em any quicker they’d’ve caught fire. One who dwells in the Underworld ought to be more cautious when handling Inflammable Objects.

  WATERHOUSE: Here, m’lord, fresh from Cambridge, as promised, I give
you Books I and II of Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton—have a care, some would consider it a valuable document.

  APTHORP: My word, is that the cornerstone of a building, or a manuscript?

  RAVENSCAR: Err! To judge by weight, it is the former.

  APTHORP: Whatever it is, it is too long, too long!

  WATERHOUSE: It explains the System of the World.

  APTHORP: Some sharp editor needs to step in and take that wretch in hand!

  RAVENSCAR: Will you just look at all of these damned illustrations…do you realize what this will cost, for all of the woodcuts?

  WATERHOUSE: Think of each one of them as saving a thousand pages of tedious explanations full of great stretched-out S marks.

  RAVENSCAR: None the less, the cost of printing this is going to bankrupt the Royal Society!

  APTHORP: So that is why Mr. Waterhouse is seated at a chair, with no banca—it is a symbolic posture, meant to express the financial condition of the Royal Society. I very much fear that I am to be asked for money at this point. Say, can either one of you hear a word I am saying?

  Silence.

  APTHORP: Go ahead and read. I don’t mind being ignored. Are those documents terribly fascinating, then?

  Silence.

  APTHORP: Ah, like a salmon weaving a devious course up-torrent, slipping round boulders and leaping o’er logs, my assistant is making his way back to me.

  Enter Minion.

  MINION: You were right concerning the Jew, Sir Richard. He wants to purchase certain commodities in large amounts.

  APTHORP: At this moment on a Board in Amsterdam, those commodities must be fetching a higher price than is scribbled on our humble English Plank. The Jew wants to buy low here, and sell high there. Pray tell, what sorts of commodities are in such high demand in Amsterdam?

  MINION: He takes a particular interest in certain coarse, durable fabrics…

  APTHORP: Sailcloth! Someone is building a navy!

  MINION: He specifically does not want sailcloth, but cheaper stuff.

  APTHORP: Tent cloth! Someone is building an army! Come, let us go and buy all the war-stuff we can find.

  Exit Apthorp and entourage.

  RAVENSCAR: So this is the thing Newton’s been working on?

  WATERHOUSE: How could he have produced that without working on it?

  RAVENSCAR: When I work on things, Daniel, they come out in disjoint parts, a lump at a time; this is a unitary whole, like the garment of Our Saviour, seamless…what is he going to do in Book III? Raise the dead and ascend into Heaven?

  WATERHOUSE: He is going to solve the orbit of the moon, provided Flamsteed will part with the requisite data.

  RAVENSCAR: If Flamsteed doesn’t, I’ll see to it he parts with his fingernails. God! Here’s a catchy bit: “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…if you press a stone with your finger, the finger is also pressed by the stone.” The perfection of this work is obvious even to me, Daniel! How must it look to you?

  WATERHOUSE: If you are going down that road, then ask rather how it looks to Leibniz, for he is as far beyond me as I am beyond you; if Newton is the finger, Leibniz is the stone, and they press against each other with equal and opposite force, a little bit harder every day.

  RAVENSCAR: But Leibniz has not read it, and you have, so there would be little point in asking him.

  WATERHOUSE: I have taken the liberty of conveying the essentials to Leibniz, which explains why he is writing so many of these damned letters.

  RAVENSCAR: But certainly Leibniz would not dare to challenge a work of such radiance!

  WATERHOUSE: Leibniz is at the disadvantage of not having seen it. Or perhaps we should count this as an advantage, for anyone who sees it is dumbfounded by the brilliance of the geometry, and it is difficult to criticize a man’s work when you are down on your knees shielding your eyes.

  RAVENSCAR: You believe that Leibniz has discovered an error in one of these proofs?

  WATERHOUSE: No, proofs such as Newton’s cannot have errors.

  RAVENSCAR: Cannot?

  WATERHOUSE: As a man looks at an apple on a table and says, “There is an apple on the table,” you may look at these geometrical diagrams of Newton’s and say, “Newton speaks the truth.”

  RAVENSCAR: Then I’ll convey a copy to the Doctor forthwith, so that he may join us on his knees.

  WATERHOUSE: Don’t bother. Leibniz’s objection lies not in what Newton has done but in what he has not done.

  RAVENSCAR: Perhaps we can get Newton to do it in Book III, then, and remove the objection! You have influence with him…

  WATERHOUSE: The ability to annoy Isaac is not to be confused with influence.

  RAVENSCAR: We will convey Leibniz’s objections to him directly, then.

  WATERHOUSE: You do not grasp the nature of Leibniz’s objections. It is not that Newton left some corollary unproved, or failed to follow up on some promising line of inquiry. Turn back, even before the Laws of Motion, and read what Isaac says in his introduction. I can quote it from memory: “For I here design only to give a mathematical notion of these forces, without considering their physical causes and seats.”

  RAVENSCAR: What is wrong with that?

  WATERHOUSE: Some would argue that as Natural Philosophers we are supposed to consider their physical causes and seats! This morning, Roger, I sat in this empty courtyard, in the midst of a whirlwind. The whirlwind was invisible; how did I know ‘twas here? Because of the motion it conferred on innumerable scraps of paper, which orbited round me. Had I thought to bring along my instruments I could have taken observations and measured the velocities and plotted the trajectories of those scraps, and if I were as brilliant as Isaac I could have drawn all of those data together into a single unifying picture of the whirlwind. But if I were Leibniz I’d have done none of those things. Instead I’d have asked, Why is the whirlwind here?

  ENTR’ACTE

  Noises off: A grave Procession ascending Fish Street Hill, coming from the TOWER OF LONDON.

  Traders exhibit startlement and dismay as the Procession marches into the Exchange, disrupting Commerce.

  Enter first two platoons of the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards, armed with muskets, affixed to the muzzles whereof are long stabbing-weapons in the style recently adopted by the French Army, and nominated by them bayonets. Leveling these, the soldiers clear all traders from the center of the ‘Change, and compel them to form up in concentric ranks, like spectators gathered round an impromptu Punchinello-show at a fair.

  Enter now trumpeters and drummers, followed by a HERALD bellowing legal gibberish.

  As drummers beat a slow and dolorous cadence, enter JACK KETCH in a black hood. The assembled traders are silent as the dead.

  Jack Ketch walks slowly into the center of the empty space and stands with arms folded.

  Enter now a wagon drawn by a black horse and loaded with faggots and jars, flanked by the ASSISTANTS of Jack Ketch. Assistants pile the wood on the ground and then soak it with oil poured from the jars.

  Enter now BAILIFF carrying a BOOK bound up in chains and padlocks.

  JACK KETCH: In the name of the King, stop and identify yourself!

  BAILIFF: John Bull, a bailiff.

  JACK KETCH: State your business.

  BAILIFF: It is the King’s business. I have here a prisoner to be bound over for execution.

  JACK KETCH: What is the prisoner’s name?

  BAILIFF: A History of the Late Massacres and Persecutions of the French Huguenots; to which is appended a brief relation of the bloody and atrocious crimes recently visited upon blameless Protestants dwelling in the realms of the Duke of Savoy, at the behest of King Louis XIV of France.

  JACK KETCH: Has this prisoner been accused of a crime?

  BAILIFF: Not only accused, but justly convicted, of spreading contumacious falsehoods, attempting to arouse civil discord, and leveling many base slanders against the good name of The Most Christian King Louis XIV, a true friend of our ow
n King and a loyal ally of England.

  JACK KETCH: Vile crimes, indeed! Has a sentence been pronounced?

  BAILIFF: Indeed, as I mentioned before, it has been ordered by Lord Jeffreys that the prisoner is to be bound over to you for immediate execution.

  JACK KETCH: Then I’ll welcome him as I did the late Duke of Monmouth.

  Jack Ketch advances toward the Bailiff and grips the end of the chain. The bailiff drops the Book and dusts off his hands. To a slow cadence of muffled drums, Jack Ketch marches to the wood-pile, dragging the book across the pavement behind him. He heaves the book onto the top of the pile, steps back, and accepts a torch from an assistant.

  JACK KETCH: Any last words, villainous Book? No? Very well, then to hell with thee!

  Lights the fire.

  Traders, Soldiers, Musicians, Executioner’s Staff, &c. watch silently as the Book is consumed by the flames.

  Exeunt Bailiff, Herald, Executioners, Musicians, and Soldiers, leaving behind a smouldering heap of coals.

  Traders resume commerce as if nothing had happened, save for EDMUND PALLING, an old man.

  PALLING: Mr. Waterhouse! From the fact that you are the only one who brought something to sit on, may I assume you knew that this shameful poppet-show would disgrace the ‘Change today?

  WATERHOUSE: That would appear to be the unspoken message.

  PALLING: Unspoken is an interesting word…what of the truths that were spoken in the late Book, concerning the persecutions of our brethren in France and Savoy? Have they now been unspoken because the pages were burnt?

  WATERHOUSE: I have heard many a sermon in my life, Mr. Palling, and I know where this one is bound…you’re going to say that just as the immortal spirit departs the body to be one with God, so the contents of the late Book are now going to wherever its smoke is distributed by the four winds…say, weren’t you Massachusetts-bound?

  PALLING: I am only bating until I have raised money for the passage, and would probably be finished by now if Jack Ketch had not muddied and stirred the subtle currents of the market.

  Exits. Enter Sir Richard Apthorp.

  APTHORP: Burning books…is that not a favorite practice of the Spanish Inquisition?

  WATERHOUSE: I have never been to Spain, Sir Richard, and so the only way I know that they burn books is because of the vast number of books that have been published on the subject.