Newton's Cannon (32 page)

“Yes, yes, that is clear,” Crecy said. “But I tell you again, your agony is in the
contradiction
. You want the fruits of the life of Ninon, but you insist on the principles of Madame de Maintenon. As if
she
had principles.”

“What? What slander is this? I
knew
Maintenon, I saw her piety—”

“You saw her in the prison she built for herself, but she was not always thus. Let me tell you a story, Adrienne. It begins many years ago. Maintenon was Ninon's pupil in love and life. She married the cripple Scarron, who was Ninon's dearest friend. Does this sound like a lie yet?”

“No,” Adrienne whispered.

“Scarron was worthless for the lusts of a young beauty like Maintenon. Ninon passed her hand-me-downs to Maintenon. Ninon lent them a room for their lovemaking. And Ninon and Maintenon shared the same bed for some three months.”

A terrible little thrill jolted through Adrienne's belly. “Are you saying …”

“I leave it for you,” Crecy replied, her mouth quite near Adri-enne's ear, so that her breath touched it with warmth. “In the end, Maintenon had another sort of ambition than Ninon. Ninon wanted nothing more than to lead life on her own terms, beholden to no one. Maintenon craved riches and power. When she managed to become governess of the king's bastards by Montespan, she saw her chance. She saw the king had begun to feel the guilt of his many sins. And so, to win him, she put on the mask of piety. And she succeeded, replacing Montespan as mistress.
When the queen died, she replaced her, too. The woman you knew, Adrienne, was a woman whose mask had become glued to her face.”

Crecy fell silent, and Adrienne stared up at the baroquely patterned ceiling. She felt sick, but it was a new sort of sickness. It was true, she knew it.

“Why do you tell me this?”

“I told you,” Crecy said quietly. “One day we shall be friends. I want to save you, Adrienne, from Maintenon's fate. You wear a mask, but it has not yet become fixed.”

“Then you should not have told the Korai of your vision,” she replied.

“That would not have saved you, only prolonged your silly illusion. Maintenon's so-called morality is what keeps us chained, Adrienne. You cannot be her and Ninon at once.”

Adrienne wiped her eyes of tears she had not even realized were present and felt a sudden strength, as if something wobbly within her were suddenly unshakable. “Come where I can see you, Veronique. Sit on that stool, please.”

Crecy did so.

“You are very convincing,” Adrienne told her, “though I know you lie to me often. But you are right; I have been playing at the wrong game and losing. Torcy once wondered whether I was a queen or a pawn, and I vowed to be a queen. I failed because I did not understand that the queen is as lacking in free will as the pawn. What I wish now is to be neither. I wish to move the pieces myself.”

“I understand you,” Crecy replied, a suspicion of a grin brightening her features.

“Good. I do not know what your obligations to the duchess and the Korai are, Veronique. Frankly I do not care what they are, so long as they do not impede my own designs. Some things need doing, and I would prefer help in doing them. These things are very dangerous. Will you help me?”

Crecy's smile vanished. She stood up from her stool. For the first time since they had met, Crecy looked eager.

“There you are!” she exclaimed. “The woman I have seen in
visions, the woman I hoped you to be. Command me. I am yours.”

“Do not mock me,” warned Adrienne.

“Adrienne, I do not mock you. This is not sarcasm. I am giving you what pledge I can.”

“What does ‘what pledge I can’ mean?”Adrienne asked.

“I cannot lay aside any earlier oaths, but henceforth I will make no new promises without your permission.”

Adrienne reached for the towel, staring at this strange woman. What new ploy was this? “Do not say these things if you do not mean them,” she cautioned.

“I do not.”

“Then here is what we must do first, tonight.”

The trouble with sneaking about Versailles at night was that it was as bright as it was during the day. Lanterns of fanciful design lined the halls—nymphs with glowing eyes and mouths, sun standards, seraphim with wings like slivers of moon. Guarding the stair ahead of her was a golden Michael with flaming sword. She wondered briefly how the uneven fluttering of his lantern-sword had been produced. In stockinged feet she glided past the archangel, down the stairs.

A rustle of skirts and the clatter of shoes on marble followed, and Crecy stood beside her.

“Well?” Adrienne whispered. They were in the part of the chateau where older ministers and household servants had their lodgings. Most were asleep or in the fashionable salons of Paris or flattering some member of royalty.

“He is distracted,” Crecy assured her, speaking of the guard who had taken Nicolas' place in front of Adrienne's door. “For an hour or so, anyway.” She smiled. “One of the kitchen girls owes me a favor.

“Worry not,” Crecy added. “This one had an itch to scratch anyway.
She
will not suffer, I promise.”

“Very well. The laboratory will be guarded as well.”

“And that is what
I
am for, is it not?” Crecy asked.

Adrienne did not answer, but Crecy kissed her on the cheek and started ahead.

Adrienne stood at the head of the stairway and waited, until she heard whispered conversation, and then more dubious sounds, down the corridor. She edged up and peered down the hall.

Crecy was leading the guard away by the hand; the young man was kissing her neck playfully. They vanished around a corner.

So simple. She wondered if she could unlearn this use of people when everything was over.

Of course, when everything was over, she would doubtless be dangling from a gallows.

Her key still fit the laboratory lock. She opened the door gently and then shut it behind her and locked it again.

She found the papers she sought, copying the parts of the formula she did not already know. She no longer needed the broad outlines. In fact, looking at Fatio's final calculations, she saw that she could have even suggested improvements. She understood this city-killing spell now; what she wanted were the specifics.

She found them. She also found a sheaf of papers with odd, stippled patterns on them, as if they had been smudged by dirty fingers. A closer examination revealed that the patterns had been burnt on.

The comet's mass and dimensions and gross composition— the alchemical symbol for iron in greatest proportion—were recorded. A rough sphere of iron half a league in diameter was going to hit London. How fast would it be moving? Did it matter?

Something nagged her that it did, so she found that, too, and wrote it down.

She didn't have to check the date when it would strike London. That she knew already.

Now there was one more thing, perhaps the most important. She rapped very lightly on the door of Fatio's bedchamber.

If a kitchen girl and Crecy could do it, so could she. She closed her eyes, preparing what she would say.

But no answer came, so she tried the handle and found the door was unlocked. She glanced in.

The bedchamber was lit by a half-shuttered lantern but Fatio
was out. He could return anytime. Her heart was thumping, but she knew she only needed a few moments to commit the treason she planned. Where was his aetherschreiber?

She found it immediately. It was a very old one, probably one of the first fifty made, sitting on a little stand in the corner.

Removing the lid, she found that spiders had made a home within; cities of silk tore as she readied the device for use. When Fatio went to use it next, he would know that someone else had.

She was dreadfully aware of the clock ticking by the nightstand as she lay paper in the machine.

She began to write. If this machine's mate was not there, if it was not wound, her labors would be for nothing.

She was not finished when she heard the outer door open. Condensing as much as she could, she hurried through formulae, omitting explanatory text, knowing that if this machine had its mate where she thought it did, a longer explanation was not necessary. It had to be with Newton himself. Given Fatio's betrayed love and his sick pride, it could not be otherwise.

Someone fumbled at Fatio's chamber door.

No time to remove the paper. She wrote the last line and quickly placed the lid on the machine. Just as Fatio stumbled into the chamber, she dashed into the open closet.

She was not quick enough, and Fatio glimpsed her. He looked puzzled, then laughed.

He was very, very drunk. He tried to get his breeches off and fell on the floor, then he whimpered a bit before rising unsteadily and flopping across the bed.

After Adrienne counted a hundred breaths and he hadn't moved, she slipped out of the closet and removed the paper from the schreiber.

Once back in the laboratory she moved to one of the windows that opened onto a broad ledge. She planned to walk along it until she reached an outside stairway. She could then reenter the chateau as if she had merely gone out for some air.

The window creaked as it opened, and suddenly all of the hairs on Adrienne's neck stood up. The pane before her reddened with reflected light. She turned, and her heart seemed to stop in her chest.

Drifting toward her from the center of the room was a cloud of smoke and flame with a single glowing orb that resembled a huge eye.

“Don't get stupid, Ben, I need you payin' attention,” Maclaurin snapped, interrupting Ben's speculations.

“Maybe if I understood what we were doing,” Ben grumbled.

“I'll explain in a moment,” Maclaurin said. “For now just keep up wi' me. This all must be performed wi'in a certain short period of time.”

Ben did as he was told, though he continued to eye the telescope speculatively.

If it even
was
a telescope. What kind of telescope could you use at
midday
? What was Maclaurin looking at?

He should have learned by now that the mathematician—or whatever he was—did not give answers readily. He preferred Ben to
deduce
what he was about.

A click sounded, and Maclaurin quickly handed him another plate. It was about a foot square and seemed to be made of rusty iron. Handling had shown Ben it was some nonferrous metal— he suspected zinc—with a fine emulsion of rust on one side. Following Maclaurin's instructions, Ben laid a piece of paper on the plate, clipped a frame onto it that held the paper tight against the metal, and dusted it with iron powder. Then he blew to clear it, revealing swirling patterns that resembled fingerprints. Next he removed a similar plate—on which he had put paper about a minute ago—from a boxy device. This plate was warm. He placed the new plate into the box and pulled the handle. The machine hissed. Meantime, he unclipped the frame from the earlier plate and brushed off the filings. The patterns remained on the paper, apparently burned there.

This was the sixteenth such sheet, and he numbered it accordingly.

Maclaurin, during all of this, had shifted the telescope a few degrees. He depressed a switch, and another plate came out. Ben handed him the old one and began the process once more.

“This would be easier if there were more than three plates,” Ben remarked.

“Yes. But those things are expensive,” Maclaurin explained. “Hang on, now, just a few more to go. We ha' to make all of these as close together as we can.”

A quarter of an hour later, the philosopher stepped away from the telescope. “Let's see what we got,” he said.

Ben finished up the last sheet, then brought it over to where Maclaurin was spreading the rest out on a table, overlapping them a bit. Ben noticed that the sheets matched at the edges, and together they formed a
large
image.

“Well?” Maclaurin said expectantly.

“Ah … it looks a little like star patterns or something, but the sizes are all wrong.”

“What do ya mean?”

“I mean that stars don't vary that much in size. Here's one the size of a shilling and another no larger than a pinhead. Besides, it's daylight … Wait, I see. This telescope doesn't look at light at all, does it?”

Maclaurin grinned broadly and slapped him on the back. “Good lad! Would it help if I called it an affinascope?”

“Yes,” Ben replied immediately.

“Explain, then.”

Ben felt a rising tide of excitement lifting the words out of him. “The scope registers the proportionate pull of gravity of different celestial bodies. You must have a mercuric translator that transforms the gravitic harmonics into magnetism. That, in turn, writes patterns on the rust. The patterns hold the iron dust in similar patterns when I sprinkle it on, and that gets burned on the paper. This
is
a star chart, but it indicates the
mass
of the stars.”

“Aye!” Maclaurin confirmed. “Though I must correct you in one particular; what you see here are not stars, but planets,
moons, and comets.” He stabbed at the largest mark. “This is Jupiter, and these—” He pointed in turn at seven smaller blobs. “—are its moons.”

“I thought Jupiter had four moons.”

“Haven't you looked at the orrery?”

“Yes. I meant to ask about the extra moon, but I assumed that it had been discovered recently.”

“Indeed. By Edwin and I. And now we can add two more!” he crowed. “Things too small to see wi' an optical telescope are easily found wi' the affinascope. Of course, we
knew
they were there already—this is only the proof.”

“How did you know?”

“Remember Newton's laws of harmonic affinity? Attraction is a function of the generality of the affinity and the distance. In the case of gravity 'tis a simple matter of mass and the inverse square of the distance. Wi' more specific affinities, the proportion changes so that the attraction is stronger over longer distances.”

“Yes, I understand all of that.”

“Well, that means one orbiting body will skew the orbit of another, if it's close enough and massive enough. We could tell, for instance, that Ganymede's orbit was perturbed in a way that Jupiter, the sun, and the moons we know could'na account for. Ipso facto, there must be other moons. And there they are!” He gestured wildly at the sheets.