A Calculus of Angels (24 page)

“I would be as cautious, I suppose, were I you. Like me, you must stand before you can walk, and ease into your new estate by degrees. But I sense no deception on their part. They have sworn themselves to you.”

“So it seems,” Adrienne allowed.

“I think they have proved their good intentions.”

“Oh? And how, pray tell me?”

“As I said, it is difficult for them to kill our kind, but not impossible. If they were of the
malefique
faction, you and I would be dead already.”

“And yet the
malfaiteurs
did not kill me when they could have—before you and I were friends.”

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“They had uses for you then. When you upset their plans, they changed their tune, did they not? Gustavus most certainly meant to kill you.”

“That makes sense.” Adrienne nodded. “I would like to believe
my
malakim good creatures, doing God’s will. If they can be trusted, there is little limit to what I might learn. Still, I wonder what
they
gain in this.”

“Haven’t you guessed? They are as blind to the world of matter as we are to the world of aether. Through you, they see our world. Thus, you can help them to defeat their evil brethren. If the
malfaiteurs
find us now, they will not find us unguarded.” She grinned and touched Adrienne’s arm lightly. “You will be reassured in time,” she said. “As it is, you smile more than I’ve ever known you to—real smiles, not that frosty thing that you kept out at Versailles.”

“There is much to smile about,” Adrienne admitted. “We are fed, clothed, reasonably safe. My son is well and now has a chance at a good life, and my good friend Veronique seems on the verge of recovery! Will you have the strength to join us for dinner?”

“Yourself and the duke? No, I think not. Already I tire, and you are right—I should not overtax myself.”

“Good. Then you do have some sense, though I am sure that the duke would enjoy your company.”

“I am more than certain you can entertain his lordship sufficiently alone. He has an eye for you.”

Adrienne nodded. “I know.”

“Be careful. He is our benefactor, but he is also both a boy and noble—two sorts of creature notoriously prone to jealousy, rage, and idle whim packaged in one male form.”

“As usual, your advice in the matter is expert,” Adrienne said, laying her hand on the other’s arm. “Though Monsieur d’Argenson has lectured me on this already.”

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Crecy pursed her lips in approval. “A sensible man, d’Argenson. A likable man, and I have heard good things of him. Perhaps when I am capable of greater exertion—”

Adrienne thumped her friend’s forehead lightly. “She-goat! Best you curb your cravings for a time, else you will return to the doctor’s ministrations.”

Crecy smiled wanly. “Ah, just a thought. Now if you could help me to my bed—my lonely bed…”

* * *

Adrienne had perhaps too much wine that night and the duke certainly did, but while sloppy drunk, he was yet charmingly naive, so it was no trouble to kindly dispose of what might have been tentative advances. Returning to her tent, slightly unsteady on her feet, she found Crecy in deep sleep, and lighting a solitary candle did not wake her. She drew out the formula she had been working on—the one to do with her hand—and tried to read through it, but was frustrated. Each time she read it, it made less sense. Back in Lorraine, she had been certain that she could fill in the missing parts, understand exactly how her hand had been made and what its ultimate properties were. Now, drunkenly staring at the pages, at the symbols so well known to her and yet so mysterious, she wondered if it was not a sort of false start. If the malakim had
given
her the hand, then her dream of having somehow created it was simple delirium. In that case there were deep-rooted errors in her assumptions which

—after all—had not come from reason but from fever. What she needed before plunging back into some deductive, intuitional cloud castle of mathematics were more empirical observations of just the sort she had made today. The method of Newton, after all, made it clear that observation and experimentation were far and away preferable to mere hypothesizing. What foundation did she have to hypothesize from? Not much of one.

She stepped out into the cool night air and took a moment to enjoy the gentle buffeting of the wind. Then, raising her hand, she opened its many-eyed fingers, willing it to see. The harmonies of the world opened before her, and she searched in them for angels. She saw one, near enough. She had seen two of their kind before ever she had lost her real palm and fingers. One had been a fiery eye ringed by a mist; the other a winged, black creature. Both had been visible to her human eyes. The one she regarded now had never evinced a A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

material form. Through her
manus oculatus
it appeared as a spiculum, two cones or horns with bases together, blurred toward their ends.

“Of what nature are you, O Djinn?” she asked, lightly. The question hummed through the
manus oculatus,
and her fingertips birthed ripples, just as if she had wiggled them in still water. Whatever else her hand did, it functioned something like philosopher’s mercury, transposing the gross motions of matter into fluxions of the aether.

The answer came back similarly, a resonance that became, somewhere between fingertips and brain, a voice—her
own
voice. That made a sort of sense

—the creature would have no physical vocalization of its own, possessing neither lungs nor tongue—and so as the varied business of the universe transposed themselves for her as lines and numbers, so too did the voice of its aethereal creatures become familiar, as well. This hypothesis made her own voice answering her no less eerie, however.

“I translate,” it said. “I make harmony.”

“What do you mean?”

“Between like and unlike I make resolution.”

“Ah. Mediation, you mean.”

“If that is your word for it.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is Odjinn,” it replied.

For some reason, rather than being amusing, that sent a little shiver up her spine. “That is what I called you,” she pointed out. “I called you Djinn, for a fanciful creature. But what is your
name?”

“My name is Djinn,” it answered promptly.

Names, then, like the visions, like the sound of its voice, came from her. How A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

did this differ from delusional madness? “If I call you that name, you will come?”

“Yes.”

“And why are you here, Djinn?”

“To serve you, lady.”

“And how can you serve me?”

“You command, and I shall serve.”

Adrienne bit her lip and thought for a moment. So far she had merely used the creatures as oculars to view the aetheric world. But could she do more? Could they also be her mortar and pestle, her crucible? It mediated; that was a key concept in science. Water, for instance, could not dissolve copper— the two were too dissimilar harmonically to be sociable—but if the copper were melted together with sulfur first, a solution with water could thence be formed. The sulfur mediated the change, produced a middle ground between the ferments of water and copper. Her hand mediated between the tones of sound and the harmonies of the aether, and so forth. Mediation created, in essence, sociabilities or attractions between things where naturally none existed.

However, most natural mediators had limited roles, any one substance able to mediate between only two or perhaps three or four others. Philosopher’s mercury was a powerful mediator, for it was changeable in nature, able to transmit any harmony or set of affinities it was supplied with; and so it was through mercury that many scientifical devices worked, whether it be the work of transmutation or turning a liquid into its natural vaporous form. Was this creature a sort of living mercury? Was that its nature?

She recalled a passage from one of Newton’s books, in which he feigned to explain muscular motion—saying that the animate spirit present in living things was, in its essence, mediation between the aether and the gross expansion and contraction of muscles. Could that be what these malakim were? The same sorts of spirits that animated living things, but without bodies or with bodies of fainter stuff?

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Frowning, she returned to her tent, took up a candle, and from the floor a half-empty glass of wine. She dripped a little wax into the cup, where it congealed and floated, two little islands.

“Here,” she said. “Can you mediate between these substances?”

“If you see the substance for me, I will try,” Djinn answered.

“Very well.” She closed her eyes and concentrated through the
manus oculatus
on the cup, on the wine, on the drops of wax. They appeared as distinct entities, bounded from one another as if by capsules or walls, and yet connected by a thousand wavelet harmonies as well—gravity, magnetism, and many more she had not yet named.

Long moments passed, and she began to grow impatient.

“It is a many-sided task,” Djinn admitted.

“Ah.” She should have started with something simpler: water and copper, lead and tin, or some other simple, unsociable compounds.

There came a hiss and a vapor, as the bones of her hand flared sun bright through her flesh.

“I could not mediate all,” Djinn told her. “Some of the substance was lost.”

“Yes,” Adrienne replied, absently. “I saw the vapor. But sweet God…” She stared at the gray, gelatinous puddle that had once been wine, a cup, and two drops of wax.

8.

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A Hunting

Ben groaned at the hollow boom that seemed to rattle his eardrums from within. He opened his eyes to find his face pressed hard against the mattress.

The concussion repeated itself, and this time he realized it was someone hammering on the door. Cursing, he rose-rather drunkenly, though there was no taste of beer in his mouth—and uncapped the small lanthorn near his bed.

His bleary eyes and the clock told him it was six.

Four hours of sleep. He rubbed his eyes and found that even with such little rest, he felt good. The evening with Lenka and the telescope had been a deep breath, clearing his head, reassuring him, leaving him with a powerful sense of optimism and purpose. Today, for good or ill, he would learn what Newton was hiding from him, and know what to do.

But who in the world was banging at the door?

It might be Lenka—perhaps Newton had gone early. Or maybe she had some other reason to see him…

Grinning at that latter prospect, he quickly pulled on a linen shirt, white satin waistcoat, and rather poofy black Spanish breeches. It would not do for him to appear in the slightest undressed before her, not this time. Smoothing back his hair, he trotted to the door and swung it open.

Two royal footmen replied to his welcoming grin with polite nods. “Good morning, Herr Franklin,” said the one in front, a fellow Ben recognized but whose name he did not recall. “The emperor requests your presence at the hunt.”

“When?”

“The company leaves by the stroke of seven, sir.”

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“Leaves? Leaves to where?”

“To Bubeutsch, the hunting park, sir.”

“I…” He cursed inwardly. It was too late to feign illness, not the way he had come up to the door, all grinning and stupid. “I must first have my master’s permission.”

“Not that it would matter,” the fellow said, “for the permission of your master is nothing next to the emperor’s wish— but Sir Isaac is going as well.”

“Oh.” He thought furiously. Would Lenka wonder where he was, come ten o’clock? If he missed their appointment she might claim it canceled her debt, and that wouldn’t do. Damn the emperor, anyway. “In that case, I’ll join you at seven.” He could at least find her and explain.

“We have orders to accompany you, sir. The tailor sent along your hunting clothes.” The second man stepped up, offering a pile of woolen garments.

Ben stared at the suit, but he could think of nothing more to say. “I suppose I’ll dress, then,” he muttered.

He miserably watched the water cascade from the brim of his hat. The dawn had begun to gray the sky a bit as they approached Bubeutsch, but the day it revealed was not promising. A mat of pewter cloud lay low to the ground, and rain came and went. It was coming now. He reached up to unlace the hat, converting the tricorn to a more functional rain hat, and a small flood splashed onto his horse’s mane.

“This is a fine, fine day,” Robert muttered from a few yards away.

“It’s a damn silly day to go hunting,” Ben snapped. “What does this—” He stopped himself. Nobody was in earshot save Robert and Frisk, but he still had his doubts about Frisk, and using the words he had intended in describing the emperor could prove a very foolish thing if they got back to him. Instead, he changed the subject.

“Do you have the smallest notion of how to hunt?”

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Robert’s white grin appeared through the double cataracts of their hats. “Well, sure, I’m expert in these highborn hunts—I’ve hunted with the French king, the tsar of Muscovy, an‘ the pasha of Persia—but ’tis said the customs of these German folks an’t the same as them courts.”

“Meaning you don’t know either.”

“Meanin‘ exactly that. What in hell would I know of royal hunts? How about you, Captain Frisk? What’ve you to speak on the matter?”

Frisk shrugged. “I have not hunted in many a day. As a boy I hunted with musket, but the kill was so easy as to seem pointless to me—a sport for weak, fat old men.”

“What did you hunt with, then?” Ben asked.

“In the end, a pitchfork,” Frisk answered.

“A pitchfork? How does one kill a deer with a pitchfork?”

“Ah, one does not,” Frisk answered. “The pitchfork is best for hunting bear.”

“I
see”
Ben replied. “And so, in brief, none of us knows a thing about hunting.”

Frisk turned to frown at him. “Are you calling me a liar, sir?”

Ben opened his mouth to retort, but he suddenly saw that Frisk was not joking, and he remembered how little he knew about this man—and what a dangerous man he had shown himself to be. “No, sir,” he said. “I only assumed you were having me on, but now I see that you aren’t.”