The System of the World

Clerkenwell Court
MORNING OF 23 OCTOBER 1714

ROGER WOULD SOMEHOW HAVE got advance intelligence of this raid. Roger would have confronted them-no, strike that, he would have had coffee and hot cross buns waiting, and he would have served them up to Isaac Newton, the Earl of Lostwithiel, and the King’s Messengers, so that by the time they invaded the Court, the whole affair would have been re-conjured into a guided tour, invitation-only.

But Daniel was not Roger, and so, by the time he arrived, the raid had already been in progress for two hours. It would have been over and done with, had it been better managed. But more than one apparatus of His Majesty’s Government had become interested, and so it had waxed cumbersome, and been both over- and under-planned. There had been meetings; that much was obvious. Bright young things had attended them, shaped the agendas, had their say, been noted down in the minutes. Someone had anticipated a need to remove the doors of the Vault by main force. Petards, winches, ox-teams had been concatenated to the Bill of Necessaries. Delays and misunderstandings had propagated. No one had showed up at exactly the right time. Important men had missed opportunities to see the humorous side. Obstinacy and indignation were the order of the day. The foot-soldiers cooled their heels, awaiting orders, and shook their heads incredulously.

This, in sum, was what Daniel walked in to at about nine of the clock. Walked because the raid and its unintended consequences had blocked traffic on Coppice Row and forced him to abandon his sedan chair a quarter of a mile short of the destination. This was for the better. The sedan chair would have dumped him into the midst of the broil; he’d have been noticed, and men who’d been to those meetings would have been keen to exchange words with him. As it was, he approached the thing gradually and quietly.

With one exception: halfway there, he passed the carriage of the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm, stuck in traffic.

“Coming to look in on your investment, my lady?” he inquired, as if talking to himself, as he walked past the helpless vehicle.

There was a rustle within; he guessed she was at her correspondence.

“Good morning, Dr. Waterhouse. May I call on you there, in a few minutes’ time?”

“I invite you to let yourself in to the vacant apartment on the first floor, above the clock-shop,” Daniel called back over his shoulder. “Think of it as a private box from which you may view the Comedy of Errors.”

A minute later, he was there. He went in through a side-wicket and got in to the middle of the thing before anyone had recognized him; then they all wanted to know how long he’d been there. “Dr. Waterhouse!” exclaimed the Earl of Lostwithiel, “how long have you been here?”

“Long enough,” said Daniel, trying to be oracular.

“It’s a bit of a shame,” said the Earl. Which Daniel found most irritating, until he recollected that the Earl was a man of breeding, and tended to understate things to the point where they were nearly subliminal. He was trying to let Daniel know that he was very sorry. Daniel tried to respond in kind. “It must have been awkward for you.”

“Not at all,” said the Earl, meaning it has been a living hell.

“The thing became complicated, didn’t it,” Daniel went on. “Your responsibilities as Captain of the King’s Messengers, of course, supersede all other considerations. I see you have discharged them well.”

“God save the King,” said the Earl, which, Daniel guessed, was a way of saying you have got it right and thank you for not being cross with me.

“…save the King” said Daniel, meaning you’re welcome.

“Sir Isaac is…below,” said the Earl, looking down toward the gates of the Templar-tomb, which stood open and, as far as Daniel could make out, unwrecked.

“How did you get them open?” Daniel asked.

“We stood about them, discussing the use of force, until finally a great big chap showed up and undid the lock for us.”

Daniel took his leave and walked towards the gates, ignoring two different Persons of Quality who spotted him and demanded to know how long he had been there.

“HOW LONG HAVE YOU been here?” asked Sir Isaac Newton.

The Templar-tomb was a bubble of warm, oily smoke, for many candles and lanthorns had been brought down. The steam pulsing from the nostrils of half a dozen shovel-and-rake-wielding workmen, and the moist vapors rising from all of those lights, condensed on the chilly stone and brass of the sarcophagi and streaked them with rivulets.

“Long enough,” Daniel snapped. There was much here for him to be peevish about, but the worst of it was that Isaac, who was capable of being so interesting, had, by involving himself in these worldly doings, made himself so dull.

But it was all for the most ethereal of reasons. Daniel must keep reminding himself of that.

“This cannon-duel that was fought on Tower Hill the other day: it’s all about that, isn’t it?” Daniel tried.

“That, and the escape of the Shaftoes,” Isaac admitted. “My witnesses have a way of disappearing when they are most needed. Only Jack now remains.”

“You are not going to find anything by digging up these poor Templars,” Daniel said. “It must be obvious to you that what was here, has been moved.”

“Of course it is,” Isaac said, “but other Powers have involved themselves in the thing, as you can see, and they are not as quick to notice what is obvious, as you and I.”

This sounded almost like a compliment: Isaac reaching down to pull Daniel up to his plane for a moment. Daniel was pleased, then wary.

“It is all White’s fault,” Isaac went on. “I do think that he meant to die-to put himself beyond the grasp of Justice. But the manner of his death he could not have foreseen-and it has wrought in my favor.”

“By throwing the new government into a sort of panic, you mean.”

By way of an answer, Isaac spread his hands, and looked about at all of the perfervid diggers. “When they have grown as bored as I am with the ransacking of this place, they’ll move on to Bridewell, and if nothing is found there, they’ll follow the trail to the Bank of England.”

Daniel knew that there was an appendix to this sentence, which need hardly be spoken aloud: unless you help me by giving me some of what I need. And for a moment Daniel was ready to nip down to the Bank and fetch out a bit of Solomonic Gold for good old Isaac. Why not? Solomon Kohan would notice that it had gone missing, and Peter the Great would wax wroth, but there would probably be a way to patch it up.

Then Isaac spoke: “They say that to hide the escape of the Shaftoes from the strong-room of the Fleet, an old gager got the Mobb drunk, and told them tall tales of buried gold.”

This curdled the whole thing. Daniel remembered, now, why he had good reason to hold on to every grain of the gold: because people wanted it, and so having it gave Daniel power he might need. And, too, he was reminded of the farcical nature of the whole Alchemical world-view. So he said nothing more of substance, but excused himself, and went up above ground, and a minute later had joined the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm in that vacant apartment above what had been the Court of Technologickal Arts.

“YOU SHOULD NEVER HAVE LEFT me alone here,” she said to him.

Somehow Daniel did not get the idea that she was complaining of a social faux pas. “Your grace?”

She was standing at a window that looked out over the Court, and talking over her shoulder at him. He approached, and drew up next to her, but well off to the side, so that the scurrying big-wigs below would not see them together in the window.

“Something has been troubling me about this investment ever since I agreed to it,” she continued.

These words, had they been spoken in anger, might have made Daniel spin on his heel and run all the way to Massachusetts. But she was bemused and a little distracted, with the makings of a smile on her lips.

She explained, “It came clear to me when I looked out this window. The last time I saw your Court of Technologickal Arts, it was a bazaar of the mind-all those clever men, each in his own wee shop, pursuing his peculiar interests, but exchanging ideas with the others when he went to fetch a cup of coffee or to use the House of Office. That seemed to work very well, didn’t it? And because I am curious about the same things, I was cozened by it-I admit that I was! And yet as enchanted as I was, a little voice kept whispering to me that it was not, au fond, a sound investment. Today I came here and found it all gone. All the clever fellows have packed up their tools and absconded. Only the land and the building remain. For those, your investors have overpaid. This place is destined to be just another suburban shop-block, of no greater value than the ones to the left and to the right.”

“As to the value of the property, I agree,” Daniel said. “Does that mean it was not a sound investment for you and for Roger Comstock?”

“Yes,” she said, again with a smile, “that is what it means!”

“In an accompt-book, maybe that is true-”

“Oh, believe me. It is.”

“But Roger never set much store by strict accompts, did he? He pursued more than strictly financial gain.”

“That is perfectly all right,” Eliza said. “You misunderstand me. I too have many goals that cannot be assessed or rendered in an accompt-book. But it has been my practice to keep those separate, in my head, from the sorts of projects that would make sense to any investor. In the case of the Court of Technologickal Arts, I made the error of confusing one with the other. That is all. I do not think one can ever own the quicksilver spirit that circulates among the minds of philosophers and ingenieurs. It is like trying to catch in a bucket the electrickal fluid of Mr. Hauksbee.”

“So it is hopeless, then?”

“Is what hopeless, Dr. Waterhouse?”

“Trying to support, to invest in such projects?”

“Oh, no. Not hopeless. I think it could be done. I got it wrong the first time. That’s all.”

“Is there to be a second time?”

Silence. Daniel tried again. “What is to be the final accounting, then? Even if I did not have any interest in the thing, I should need to know, for I am involved in the settling of Roger’s estate.”

“Oh. You need to know what this is all worth,” Eliza said.

“Yes. Your grace. Thank you.”

“It is worth whatever the building next to it is worth. You could, then, pursue claims on the value of the discoveries that were made here. Conceivably. For example, if six months from now a horologist who was once a tenant here builds a clock that wins the Longitude Prize, then Roger’s estate could lay claim to some part of the money. But it would be a fool’s errand. It would only enrich lawyers.”

“Very well. We shall write it off. But what of the Logic Mill-?”

“I heard that the card-punching organs had been torn out of Bridewell, and cast into the river.”

“Oh, yes. I made sure of that. Everything is gone from Bridewell.”

“The cards themselves-?”

“Are to be shipped to Hanover, and thence to the Tsar’s Academy in St. Petersburg.”

“So they neither add to nor subtract from the balance-sheet. What is it, then, that you are asking me about?”

Daniel was appalled, in some sense, by the pitiless brutality of this financial discourse. But he was also fascinated. It was a bit like vivisection: savage, but just interesting enough to keep him from slinking out of the room and going straight to the nearest boozing-ken. “I suppose I am asking you about the whole structure of ideas that gives the cards of the Logic Mill their value,” he said.

“Value?”

“Power, then. Power to effect computations.”

“You are asking, what are those ideas worth?”

“Yes.”

“That depends on how soon a true Logic Mill can be made. You have not made one, have you?”

“No,” Daniel admitted. “We learned much from making the card-punching organs-”

“We meaning-” and Eliza cocked her head out the window, reminding him of the vacant stalls being pillaged by soldiers and Messengers.

“All right,” Daniel admitted, “the we no longer exists. We have been scattered. It shall be most difficult to re-assemble the we.”

“And the organs are on the bottom of the river.”

“Yes.”

“You have drawings? Plans?”

“Mostly in our heads.”

“Here’s what I would say, then,” Eliza began, “if I were rendering this accompt. The ideas are very good ones. The quality of the work, excellent. However, they are Leibniz’s ideas, and they stand or fall with the Doctor and his reputation. His repute is very low with his House, the House of Hanover, which is now the sovereign power in this Realm. Caroline loves the Doctor, and has tried to effect a reconciliation between him and Sir Isaac, but this came to naught. Even when she is Queen she will have little power to change this-so irreconcilable are Leibniz’s ideas with Newton’s. It would be different if Leibniz’s ideas were useful, but they are not-not yet, not compared to Newton’s. It might be a long time before a Logic Mill can be constructed-a hundred years or more. And so the answer is that it is all devoid of monetary value at this time.”

“Hmm. My life’s work, devoid of value. That’s hard to hear.”

“I am only saying that you’ll never find anyone who’ll give you money for it. But you have a great Prince in the East who is happy to support the work. Ship it all to him. The golden cards, your notes and drawings, all that Enoch Root shipped over from Boston-send it all into the East, where someone values it.”

“Very well. I have been arranging to do just that.”

Eliza had turned away from the window and made Daniel Waterhouse the object of her scrutiny. She had, in fact, quite backed him into a corner. Something had occurred to her just now: a wild idea she did not like very much. “You phant’sy that’s all there is, don’t you? When you, Daniel, speak of your life’s work, the only thing you include in that is what you have done on the Logic Mill.”

Daniel showed empty hands to her. “What else is there?”

“At the very least, there is your son Godfrey, whom you ought to go home and look in on! One child in Boston today is a million descendants at some time in the future.”

“Yes, but in what estate, in what sort of country?”

“That is for you to determine. And setting aside Godfrey-consider all you have done in the year since you received the letter from Princess Caroline!”

“I feel it’s all been a muddle.”

“You have done much for this country. For the Engine for Raising Water by Fire. For the abolition of Slavery. For Newton and Leibniz both, though neither of them might appreciate it.”

“As I said before, ’tis all a muddle to me. But I am a great brooder, and you have given me something to brood on for the rest of my days.”

“Don’t only brood on it, if you please. Work it out. See what you have done.”

“In your rendering of the accompt,” said Daniel, “do you find anything at all in the way of assets?”

“Oh, yes,” Eliza said. “The Engine for Raising Water by Fire shall more than pay for all of the losses that I have complained of.”

“I didn’t feel that you were complaining so much as facing facts,” Daniel said.

“I lose money all the time,” she assured him. “I have spent rather a lot on this Slavery project, and it is only beginning-it’ll take at least as long to do away with Slavery as it will to construct a proper Logic Mill, of that I’m sure.”

“Ah, so I’m no worse than you-very kind of you to say so. What is to be your next project, if I may inquire?”

“As far as this investment is concerned? To cut the losses, liquidate what is to no purpose, and redouble investment in what is actually working: the Engine.”

“It seems very reasonable when you put it that way,” said Daniel, for some reason feeling quite relieved. “If the Engine succeeds, by the way, it will help your Cause, by reducing the demand for slave labor-”

“And yours,” she said, “by supplying motive Power for a Logic Mill. Now you are beginning to understand.”

“As Roger liked to say, ’tis a good thing to be educable.”

“Very well!” she said, and clapped her hands. “But there are details for us to attend to, aren’t there, before we become distracted by these grand schemes?”

“We have a way to keep the cards safe from men of that type,” said Daniel, gesturing with his head in the direction of the authorities sacking the Court.

“I had guessed as much. I was thinking of Friday.”

“Two things are happening on Friday: the Trial of the Pyx, and the Hanging-March,” Daniel reminded her. “Which of them do you mean?”

Eliza got that rueful half-smile again. “Both,” she said simply, “for they are one thing now.”

“Then you and I have arrived at the same conclusion,” Daniel said. “It is between Isaac and Jack. For Jack almost certainly placed base metal in the Pyx. If he testifies to that effect, Newton is absolved, and the currency is upheld.”

“Would there be any way to save Newton, and the Currency, without such testimony from Jack?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to persuade Jack to testify? That would have the added benefit of saving Jack from execution, supposing a deal could be struck-”

“A very questionable supposition, that,” she pointed out, “and at any rate, I don’t want him to make any such deal. I want him to be executed on Friday.”

Daniel was so dumbfounded by this bald utterance that he kept on talking, like a man who has been shot through the head but keeps walking a stride or two before he crumples. “Er-well-even if that is what you want-why not strike a deal that would give him a quick merciful hanging, at least?”

“The original sentence,” she insisted, “is what I want to be carried out against Jack Shaftoe on Friday.”

“So-” Daniel blinked and shook his head, unable to fathom her placid cruelty. “So you are asking me, is there a way for Newton to triumph, in a Trial of the Pyx, even without testimony from Jack?”

“That is what I am asking you, as a Natural Philosopher.”

“You are asking me, then, if the Trial of the Pyx can be rigged!”

“Good day, Dr. Waterhouse; both of us have many things to tend to before Friday,” said Eliza, and walked out of the room.