Empire of Unreason (28 page)

“And then it killed him. You swore never to dabble in such stuff.”

“And I never did. But anything that can be contrived through the
use of those devils can be contrived through honest means as well

—‘tis just more work to do it, more thought entailed. I’ve had ten
years to make a device which would perform that same function. I
wasn’t certain it would.”

“Maybe it didn’t. There was no globe in that thing—it was flying like
a bird, not like Sir Isaac’s old boat at all.”

“I think the prison engine was inside, somewhere. I think you’re
right. Most of the time, when it’s moving fast, that machine gets its
buoyance from natural action of the atmosphere. Even without its
motivation, it did fly somewhat, you noticed. But even a bird must
have a heart, and if you stop that, it must fall, however prettily.

Thank God they haven’t perfected some undevilish engine…” He
trailed off, suddenly, staring into space.

“Where’d you go, Ben?” But then Robert himself made a funny
sound and started again excitedly. “Y’r own invention—the flying
box—”

“Exactly, Robin. By heavens! What we couldn’t do with the two of
them together!” He stood up so quickly he almost got faint again. “I
do want to see this thing, Robin. I want to see it right this instant!”

* * *

By the time they reached the machine, a crowd of nearly a hundred
had gathered to poke and prod it. As Franklin had suspected, it was
made of some alchemical alloy—not adamantium but something
very similar, harder than steel but lighter, almost, than wood. One
soldier proved this by tilting the whole machine by himself.

To Franklin’s relief, all the gawkers seemed to be peaceful,
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Oglethorpe’s dragoons and the men of the Junto side by side.

He could better see the machine’s structure from the ground. It

was
like a kite: one great wing, elliptical in cross section. In the
center were several movable panels that he supposed must steer it.

There was also a small cabin of alchemical glass enclosing a chair,
and below it, as he had suspected, a now-vacant globe that had once
housed a malakus.

“Ingenious,” he admitted, with mixed admiration and dread. What
other things had the Moscovado sorcerers invented?

They might get answer to that, in part, for they had captured the
pilot. He seemed stunned but otherwise not badly wounded. In fact,
many of his wounds might be accounted for by the pummeling the
margrave’s dragoons had given him when first they reached him.

More than one of their fellows had been blasted to bits by the
airman’s grenades, and they were probably not in a forgiving mood.

“Who is he?” Franklin asked, eyeing the fellow. He was a small
man, knobby, balding. A regular kobold, as the German settlers
might say.

“We’re not sure,” Nairne said. “It seems he only speaks
Moscovado.”

“Well, well. Imagine that,” Franklin said, glancing side-wise at
Oglethorpe. The margrave got the point, all right. His face
reddened. Franklin decided to say no more and let it sink in—a
word to the wise ought to be sufficient. He now must hope that
Oglethorpe was wise.

“It’s quite a strange thing,” Voltaire remarked in his ear. Franklin
hadn’t noticed the Frenchman arriving.

“There is a noble mind at work here,” Franklin said,

“though not a noble purpose. I would like to meet the inventor of
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this in better days. I wonder if we would still be enemies?”

“I wouldn’t wish for things like that, if I were you,” Voltaire
remarked. “You might just get your wish—and an answer to your
question that you might not like at all. There are many clever hands
with no good at all behind them.”

Franklin nodded. “True. Though in the end, the most harm seems
to be done by those with clever hands and those intentions that
pave the road to hell.”

He meant, as always, himself.

He continued inspecting the machine, marveling at it, explaining to
Voltaire how he thought it operated. He noticed that the Cherokee
were studying it as well. After a moment, one of them separated
from the rest and came toward Franklin and the Frenchman.

It was the pale one, the one Franklin had wondered about earlier.

As he drew close, Franklin suddenly understood that he was no
Cherokee at all, but a white man dressed as one of them and with
his hair cut in the Cherokee fashion.

“I’m told you are Benjamin Franklin, the magus of Charles Town.”

“That’s me.”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Christian
Gottlieb Priber. I’ve read a number of your papers.”

“Have you?” The fellow spoke English pretty well but with an
unmistakable German accent.

“Indeed. Not so much your scientific ones but your dissertations on
natural liberty.”

“I wrote those long ago. I’m surprised that you’ve seen them.”

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“They were passed along to me when I still lived on the Continent.

Before I managed my way here and began working at my great
purpose.”

“Was your great purpose to become a Cherokee, sir? For, if so, it
would seem you are well on your way.”

“Clothes do not make the man, sir, but they do situate him, so to
speak. No, my purpose is a simple one, and one I wish to speak to
you on, if you’ve a moment.”

“I’m somewhat busy, Mr. Priber.”

“I understand that, Mr. Franklin. But I am given to understand that
you English are quite sure of Cherokee aid in your present civil
war. I’ve come to tell you that isn’t so and explain why. I’ve also
been given, you see, to understand that you are the foreign
ambassador of your—” he smiled indulgently “—nation. I would
have spoken to you immediately, but you were not with the
delegation that welcomed me and my Cherokee brothers into town.”

“I do apologize,” Franklin said, wondering what in the hell was
going on, “but I had not received my appointment as ambassador at
that time. And Governor Nairne has said nothing of this to me—”

“As I have said nothing to him. To be frank, I do not trust him—he
served as spy amongst the Indians and kowtowed to Blackbeard.

Your tracts on liberty lead me to believe I might be able to trust
you, however. If you will not make time to talk—before the meeting

—I might withdraw that opinion.”

“You want to talk now, I suppose, sir?”

“If possible. I understand that the Apalachee and Maroon
delegations are within shouting distance, and there is little time to
lose.”

“Very well. Let me be sure that someone is appointed to deal with
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these things, and I will meet you in one quarter hour’s time in the
hall. Will that do?”

“Indeed it will. And thank you, sir.”

He started off. Franklin watched him go, thinking how silly he
looked with most of his pale arse showing around his loincloth. The
Cherokee did not look half so silly.

What next
? Franklin asked himself, a silent groan.

He found Thomas Nairne, who was making plans to secure the
airship in case it should take a mind to fly off again.

“Do you know of this Priber fellow?” he asked wearily.

“I’ve heard some rumors about him. I wondered if that was him,
but he never spoke when the Cherokee made their entrance.”

“He seems to think the Cherokee are not our friends.”

Nairne frowned. “I’ve heard nothing like that. Unwanequa seems to
be the headman of this little bunch, and he tells me that the
Cherokee are with us.”

“This Oowa—ah—this other fellow, he’s a real Indian? A chief?”

“Not a powerful chief—as I said, he’s a young fellow. But he’s had
the power to speak for his superiors before, and I imagine he has it
now. I don’t know what this German fellow is about.” He grinned.

“But I suppose you ought to speak to him, Mr. Ambassador.”

“I suppose I should. Do we have anyone who speaks Russian to
interrogate the prisoner?”

“Well, there’s our
other
prisoner.”

“Euler? Yes—but can we trust him to translate? We should try and
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find someone else. Maybe even have him listen while we have Euler
talk for us.”

“Ah. To test him. You’ve a devious mind, Mr. Franklin.”

“I know. I can’t say as I like having it, either,” he replied glumly.

He noticed that Voltaire still stood near. “Come with me,” he told
the philosopher. “I’ve a feeling I’ll need a second in this matter.”

Priber was a small man, almost as koboldlike as the pilot of the
airship. Inside, his Indian garb made him look even sillier, like a
courtier dressed up for some lavish costume ball.

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Priber?”

“Utopia, Mr. Franklin.”

“An interesting condition,” Voltaire quipped. “I’ve a cousin with a
blemish on her face that bears passing resemblance to the map of
Peru, but to have a whole country—” He stopped and peered at
Priber’s partially shaved head. “So that’s what it looks like, eh?”

Priber blinked at Voltaire, and his eyebrows puckered in
annoyance. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, sir.”

“Ah. Voltaire, at your service.”

“The author of
Oedipe
?”

“If someone must take blame forüt, I will do as well as any other.”

“Utopia, Mr. Priber,” Franklin said mildly, wondering if it had been
a mistake to include Voltaire after all.

“Ah, yes. You will both admit, I think, that the Old World has made
a mess of itself?”

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“It’s looked better,” Franklin allowed.

“I have long believed—no, dreamed, even—that a more perfect
society could exist. I know that you have—both of you, now that I
know who you are, Monsieur—likewise pondered on how the
human condition might be improved. I sought in my own country
and those near, and I found that the people in the countryside—

simple, honest people living in the ways of their forefathers—were
more nearly perfect than the jaundiced society of court and city.

Still, in those countries—even now, with all changed—the weight of
history is too heavy. It is spoilt, I think perhaps beyond
redemption.”

Franklin shrugged. “I’ve had similar thoughts.”

“And I think you agree that it’s in this New World, so bright with
promise, that we might at last create a country—an empire—that is
entirely good, sane, just. But we will not find it by bringing the
woeful ways of Europe with us. We will find it, I believe—and have
believed since I first read of them— amongst the people native to
this world, who have never felt a tyrant’s yoke, have not the habit of
oppressing or of being oppressed.”

Franklin nodded, beginning to warm to the little man a bit. “I’ve
often thought there is much sensible in the government of our
Indian neighbors.”

“Sensible, yes. Perfect, no.
Perfectible
—yes!” He said this last with
considerable triumph.

“And how would you perfect them, Mr. Priber?” Franklin asked,
suddenly cautious.

“First, I am a man of action. When the time of calamities began in
Europe, I knew that the time had come. I might have delayed
longer, if things had been more ordinary, but the atrocities and
stupidities of those in governance in Saxony, where I lived at the
time, convinced me. It was no easy thing, coming here, for ships
were scarce. But some three years ago I managed it, working as a
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sailor.”

“A fascinating account. You left in search of El Dorado, yes?”

Franklin caught the sarcasm in Voltaire’s question. Priber did not.

“El Dorado? It was long sought, but for the wrong reason—greed
for gold. No, El Dorado will be made, not found. Still, I was drawn
by the tales of the New Andalusia, of Chicora, which the earliest
explorers found here, in these climes. And that fabulous place was
nothing more than the lands of the Cherokee, magnified by the
natural longing of Man for the society I propose. In any event, come
here I did, and dwelt with the Indians, seeing what was good and
what was bad. I had things to teach them—of a practical sort—and
they valued me. But when I began speaking to them of a better way
of life, they were intrigued. To make it all short, gentlemen, the
great chief at Tellico has made me his prime minister and given me
the charge of helping to create as near to paradise on Earth as any
of us can imagine.”

“Imagine this paradise for me, if you will, Mr. Priber. In a few
words.”

“A few words will not do it justice. Indeed, I am writing a plan in
book form which will help to lay it all out.”