Empire of Unreason (11 page)

Lomonosov smiled briefly and bowed. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“You have not disturbed me,” she replied. “Not you.”

“Well,” she remarked, surveying the three men in the director’s office, “the three of you together. More than I could have hoped for.”

Prince Golitsyn smiled in the most unfriendly way possible. “Good day to you, Mademoiselle. You know Professor Swedenborg, of course—and you have met his grace, the metropolitan of Saint Petersburg?”

Swedenborg nodded greeting and favored her with a friendly smile. He was a plump man in middle age with pleasant but rather unremarkable features. His EMPIRE OF UNREASON

gaze, however, was memorable: it had the quality of looking through you and studying you in minute detail all at once. It was intense and uncomfortable, and she recognized it. Swedenborg spoke with angels, with great regularity, and without apparent aid of scientific device. That put him in a rather restricted group of people—herself, those strange individuals like Crecy who were tutored and shaped by the malakim from birth, and finally King Louis XIV and Tsar Peter, both of whom acquired their affinity with the aetheric by consuming elixirs of life.

Where Swedenborg’s affinity came from, she had no way of knowing; and despite his faultlessly polite and even friendly demeanor, that made him, in her eyes, untrustworthy.

The metropolitan, on the other hand, hated her—for being a woman, for her connection to the “saints” and angels, for reasons even he probably could not articulate. His cold smile, like a slit in a pumpkin, and his bulging eyes confirmed his contempt more eloquently than even his rasping voice.

She held up the paper Lomonosov had brought her so that they might all see it.

“What is this?” she asked.

Golitsyn took it and looked over it carefully. “It appears.” he said, “to be a command signed by Professor Swedenborg, our new minister of the sciences.”

Swedenborg took the paper and nodded. “Yes, I signed this,” he murmured, almost as if to some fourth party.

“When did the minister of sciences begin assigning tutorials?” Adrienne demanded.

“It is not my job,” Swedenborg admitted, still dreamily. “But this is a reflection of a most important statute.”

“Indeed,” the metropolitan added. “You have, of course, received your copy.”

“I have not.”

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“An oversight,” Golitsyn said. “I have a copy here…”

He rummaged for a moment through his desk, then produced and handed her a parchment. She took it and examined it for a moment.

“As you can see, it is signed by the empress and the patriarch,” Golitsyn said.

“The empress has not yet been installed. This is not yet law.”

“True,” Golitsyn said. “But it will be, and I thought it better to begin the changes as soon as possible—I assumed there would be no objection. Shall I explain it to you? We were busy, as you can see, but I can, of course, make a moment for Mademoiselle Montchevreuil.”

“I would appreciate that, especially as you promised me the academy would remain untouched.”

“It is, it will. The academy and your position in it will remain. It was thought best to make a few changes in curricula, to better reflect the modern state of science. As science is now recognized as a godly pursuit, the patriarch and empress wish to devote all of our energies—and the resources of our state— to those sciences most godly.”

“But this says that calculus will no longer be studied. Or alchemy! Or biology!

Those are important sciences.”

The metropolitan cleared his throat. “The patriarch has decreed them ungodly.”

“The patriarch doesn’t know a fluxion from his bung,” Adrienne retorted.

“What business has he—”

“Now see here!” the metropolitan exploded. “He is
the patriarch,
chosen by God. You will never speak of him in that manner, or—”

Adrienne held up her hand, let it glow briefly. “Or what, metropolitan? Shall we have a contest? Between you and me? Between the patriarch and me? I think we shall see who is more favored by the angels.”

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The metropolitan hesitated at that. “You are perhaps too certain of yourself,”

he said in a quieter voice. “After all, those who command devils are not always readily distinguished from those who speak to angels.” But he did not sound confident.

“Monsieur Swedenborg?” she demanded. “What do you have to say of this? Do you agree with this nonsense?”

Swedenborg turned his odd eyes upon her. “It is time for purification,” he said.

“We are in the very center of the Apocalypse. When it ends, the world will be either heaven or hell. We must listen to the angels, Mademoiselle. We must.

Surely you know this, being so close to them yourself.”

Adrienne studied Swedenborg. Had he gone mad? What was he talking about?

Golitsyn coughed for attention. “Mademoiselle, yesterday I saw you fly into the heavens on the backs of angels. What mathematical proofs did that require?

What anatomical dissection?”

“For that? None, but—”

“The taloi that work our mines and fight alongside our soldiers, the engines that heat and protect our city, the boats that speed across—and beneath—our waters… I believe I have kept up with scientific advances these past years, but I cannot recall ever seeing mathematical demonstrations of any of these things.”

“But all of them are based in the calculus and alchemy, ultimately, the advances made by Sir Isaac Newton.”

“Yes, but now that the angels have come to serve us, we have no need of those rough, dubious pursuits. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that those old sciences were often traps for the soul, seducing the unwary into a godless, mechanical universe. Now we know, without shadow of doubt, that Descartes and his fellows were wrong. Our science comes from God, is of God; and we must not allow the devil a foothold in our academy. Other than the alteration of a few of your tutorials, Mademoiselle, I cannot possibly see how this violates our agreement. You have published fifty papers since you came to us. I have reviewed them, and I have seen very little in the way of either mathematics or EMPIRE OF UNREASON

alchemy in any of them.”

Adrienne could only stare at the three of them, thunderstruck.

He was right. And she had been trapped, in a way more subtle than she could have ever imagined.

9.

Mask of the Sea

Ben’s horse clopped from beneath the overhanging oaks into the broad yard of Nairne’s plantation. Robert and Shandy Tupman were already there, awaiting him—he could see them by the light of their pipes and the pale, sickle moon.

“ Y‘ left the party early, I see,” Shandy called.

“I’ve a weak stomach, it seems,” Franklin replied. “What news?”

Robert tamped out red sparks from the bowl of his pipe, laying a red constellation at his feet. “Up an‘ down the coast, no sign of more ships. The comestibles f’r the party, y’r wife’s dress—all were bought here by various Tories, as y’ suspected.”

Franklin nodded, wiping sweat from his brow with his shirt cuff. The night air was still warm, and not a little briny. “Any sign of airships?”

“Not by any reckoning. But they might be far enough away to keep our compasses quiet.”

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Franklin dismounted, and a boy scurried down .from the porch to take his horse. “The compasses would detect airships or warlocks for a range of a hundred miles or more,” he mused. “Let’s go question our prisoner.”

“My name,” the man said, “is Leonhard Euler.”

“And you are a Moscovado?”

“No. I studied there and lived there for many years, but by birth I am Swiss.”

“But come recently from Russia. Let’s start with that.” As he turned to Robert, Franklin leaned back until the legs of his wooden stool creaked. “We’ve sentries up the road?”

Robert nodded. “Y‘ weren’t followed here, not by man, not by sprite or warlock.”

“Good. Mr. Euler, I’ll come to the point, because I have little time to waste with you. Did you come on the ship with James Stuart?”

“I came on one of his ships, yes.”

“Is James backed by the tsar?”

“He is.”

“Holy mother—” Robert sputtered, but Franklin waved him to silence.

“And is the tsar backed by these malakim overlords—these cherubim—you speak of?”

Euler chuckled. “You do come to the point, sir. The true answer to that is long and complex. The brief answer is yes.”

“It is the brief answer I care about, just now. And here, too—is it the tsar’s plan, through James, to conquer our colonies?”

“Yes. Either James will be accepted peacefully, or he will take his throne with EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Russian might.”

Franklin rested his chin on his hand and rubbed his jaw, scrutinizing Euler.

The warlock’s face seemed a bit blurry—it was time for him to get fitted for those eyeglasses he kept putting off.

“Mr. Euler, why do you betray your country—and your demon masters—and tell us these things?”

“Russia is not my country, Mr. Franklin—I thought I explained that. And the malakim are no longer my masters, as I also explained. I have made myself free of them.”

“Yes, you did claim that, didn’t you. And yet our compasses still found you right quickly. If you have no aetheric accomplice, how do you explain that?”

Euler shrugged. “Some lingering magnetism, I don’t doubt. But I don’t
know.

Do your best—you will find no familiar about me.”

“We will do our best, never doubt it,” Franklin promised. “But let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that your claims are true. Remind me why you’ve sought
me
out, in particular?”

“Because, Mr. Franklin, I wish to join you. Study with you. Become part of your cause.”

“What do you suppose that cause might be?” Franklin said mildly.

“True science. True liberty.”

A smile forced itself on Ben’s face. “They certainly know me well, your masters.

You make fine bait, Mr. Euler, better than has been dangled before me in many years.”

“So much for your promise to give my plea even momentary credence, eh? I did not learn about you from
them,
Mr. Franklin, but from your publications.”

Franklin stared at him in surprise for a moment, and a small thrill of guilt ran EMPIRE OF UNREASON

through him. Was he wronging this man? What if he were telling the truth? He could be an invaluable ally.

“Have you anything to offer us to prove your good faith, Mr. Euler? Anything at all?”

“Oh, I think so. Something quite valuable indeed, I should think.”

“Well?”

“Look in your harbor, and you will see the design of your would-be king.”

“There are three ships in the harbor,” Franklin said, “and I have seen them already.”

“Not
upon
the harbor,” Euler said. “
Beneath it
.”

Franklin glanced at the equipment on his workbench, reached to tighten a valve that he had already tightened a few times. Where was Robert? He glanced again at the clock. Robert wouldn’t be late for another twenty minutes; it was his own impatience telling. But if what Euler said was true, time was something that could catch up with them at any moment.

He went back to his inventions. Since his life depended upon them, there was every reason to be overcautious.

This was especially true of the cone-shaped device he examined next. He had given it the unlikely name
depneumifier,
though Robert referred to it as

“exorcister.” What it was supposed to do was separate basically aethereal malakim from the scientific devices they operated through—the floating globes, for instance, that held Russian airships aloft. That was what it was
supposed
to do, but long experience had taught Franklin that you could never be sure what any untested device
would
do. Once in Prague, while trying to duplicate Sir Isaac Newton’s aegis—a sort of cloak of invisibility—he had accidentally made instead a device that pushed all that was breathable and nourishing in the air far away. It had nearly been the death of him.

Soft footsteps signaled Lenka’s entrance. He glanced up to greet her.

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“
There
you are,” she said. “How did your skulking go?”

“Well enough.”

“They suspected something at the party, I think, though I managed to distract your Mr. Sterne for a time. Did you make certain you weren’t followed?”

“As certain as I could. Lenka, that was dangerous work, cozening Sterne. I wish you hadn’t done it.”

She set her face in a little frown. “I am a member of your Junto,” she replied,

“though you seem to forget it at moments like these.”

He rose and took her hands in his. “I almost lost you once, my dear. I do not care even for the thought of losing you again.”

Her eyes told him she did not accept that, but she said nothing, instead disengaging and walking toward what he had laid out on the table.

“Why have you pulled out your diving suit?”

“The man we captured, Euler, claims that the Pretender is backed by underwater craft of some sort. Robin and I will go tonight and see if that is true.”

She looked at him coldly. “Were you going to tell me of this?”

“Assuredly. When we were finished. I hoped not to trouble your sleep.”

“I find it difficult to sleep without you in our bed, which means I get little sleep indeed,” she said, a bit angrily. “We will discuss these matters, you and I, Mr.

Franklin. I am not happy at my treatment.” She glanced up at the clock as he began searching for some reply. She cut him off by going on, however. “A visitor shall be at our door in one minute. I suggest you greet him.”

“A visitor? Who?”

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“You seem ill-disposed to tell me things in advance, so I’ll take the same liberty. Perhaps ‘tis your king come for a bedtime story; perhaps it is Tsar Peter himself. Good night, and if you drown yourself, don’t come dripping your corpse on my rugs, you hear?”

He caught her and gave her a gentle kiss. She responded, but when she drew away, her gaze was unrelenting. “We will talk of these things,” she repeated, then turned and went up the stairs, skirts whispering good night on the polished wood.