The System of the World

Shive Tor
TWILIGHT

ABOVEDECKS, BY THE LIGHT of the flaming Tor, the soldiers toiled with poles, pushing the hooker back from the conflagration one yard at a time. Below, in the gleam of a lanthorn that Colonel Barnes had had the presence of mind to bring over from Atalanta, Sir Isaac Newton and Daniel Waterhouse regarded the big locked chest, and listened to it tick.

Barnes had worried the point of a bayonet under the edge of the iron-bound chest and tried to lever it up, but they had seen no movement. “It is not that this is heavy, though it is,” Barnes had announced, “it is rather that the whole thing has been bolted to the very keel of the ship. And the bolt-heads are presumably locked up safe inside it.”

Isaac was saying nothing. Indeed, he had been perfectly silent ever since he had descended into the hooker’s hold with Daniel, and found it empty, save for the ticking chest.

For once, Daniel had Isaac at a disadvantage. Isaac had boarded this hooker still believing that he had sprung a trap on Jack the Coiner and was about to recover Jack’s hoard of Solomonic Gold. That he’d been trapped by Jack was only just now trespassing on the frontiers of his awareness, and would take a good long time to march in to the core of his brain.

Daniel’s instinct, of course, was to withdraw to the bow or stern, to get as far away from the device as he could. With luck he might then live through the explosion. But it was now clear that the hooker’s keel would be snapped like a twig, and she’d go down fast in the cold dark water.

Daniel went abovedecks, carrying the lanthorn so as to literally leave Sir Isaac in the dark. He was afraid that if Isaac had light he might try to tamper with the Device. Barnes followed Daniel.

Shive Tor had become a red-hot obelisk jutting straight up from the sea.

The hooker’s rigging had been sabotaged and her rudder cast away, so all she could do was drift where the currents and the winds might take her. This was very much in doubt, for the flows of the Thames and of the Medway here joined to war against the incoming tide in a wild melee of tows and vortices. But they would tend to drift into the center of the estuary, where the united rivers would flush them out to sea. The shore of the Isle of Grain was not so very distant; perhaps there was still time to summon Sergeant Bob, who was rowing about in yonder darkness salvaging the men of the First Company from the inrushing tide. Bob could not have failed to note the burning of the Tor; but he would have no way of guessing that an Infernal Device was bolted to the keel of the hooker.

Out of the hooker’s butchered rig the dragoons had chopped down two spars, and were using them as push-poles, standing at the gunwales and hugging the spars to their chests (they were heavy) to jab them into the mucky bottom. When Daniel had gone below with Isaac a few minutes ago this had been strictly a matter of keeping the hooker from getting sucked into the flames of the Tor, and it had not been especially difficult, in that the water had been barely deep enough to float the vessel, so that the spar-tips found the bottom easily. Now it was different. They’d put a safe distance between them and the cherry-red pillar. The light was fainter now. It created extreme contrasts between what was lit and what was in shadow, so Daniel’s mind labored to construct a picture of events from a few strewn arcs, points, and patches of light, and dreamlike snatches of men’s faces. But he could see that the dragoons were leaning dangerously over the sides, struggling to maintain control of the spars, most of which were now submerged. The tide had moved in on them, or they had pushed themselves out into a river-channel. At any rate, they were fast losing the power to affect their own movements.

The Tor-which was really the only thing visible outside of the ship-had until recently remained in a fixed position off their larboard quarter. But now it was executing a swift and dramatic traverse across the horizon, and it was dwindling. They were being pressed out to sea by the force of the rivers.

“What happens if you fire a musket while the ramrod is in the barrel?” Daniel inquired of the darkness.

“Sergeant Shaftoe thrashes you within an inch of your life!” answered a dragoon.

“But what happens to the ramrod?”

“Flies out like a spear, I suppose,” said the dragoon, “unless it jams in the barrel and the whole thing blows up in your face.”

“I would like to make a hole in a locked box,” Daniel explained.

“We’ve an axe,” said the dragoon.

“This box is bound and sheathed in iron,” said Daniel.

But he had already discarded the idea of firing a ramrod, or aught else, into the ticking chest. For all he knew, this was as likely to detonate, as disrupt, the Infernal Device.

A sense of relief now washed over him as he came to a realization: they were altogether doomed.

He went belowdecks to inform Isaac. Daniel might have expected Isaac to be furious over having been left in the dark. But as the light of the lanthorn invaded the hold, it revealed Isaac curled up on the decking with one ear pressed against the side of the chest, like one of Queen Anne’s physicians trying to make out whether she was still alive.

“It is a Tompion balance-spring movement,” Isaac proclaimed, “of curiously massive construction-like a watch wrought for a giant. But well-wrought. There is no grinding in the bearings, the gears mesh cleanly.”

“Shall we try to force it open?”

“The art of building lethal traps into lock-boxes is far more ancient than that of constructing Infernal Devices,” Isaac returned.

“I understand,” said Daniel, “but if the alternative is to do nothing, and be blown to bits-” But he stopped there, for Isaac’s eyelids had fluttered shut, his lips had parted, and he shifted to press his skull even harder against the cold iron frame of the chest.

“Something is happening,” he announced. “A pin was engaged. A cam revolves-” he opened his eyes and drew back as if it had only just entered his mind that he was in danger. Daniel caught one of Isaac’s hands and assisted him to his feet-then caught him in his arms as the boat was heaved beneath their feet by a swell coming in from the sea.

“Well,” Daniel said, “are you ready to find out what comes next?”

“As I told you, there is some mechanism-”

“I meant, after we die,” Daniel said.

“For that I have long been ready,” said Isaac; and Daniel was put in mind of Whitsunday 1662, when Isaac had repented of all the sins he had ever committed, and begun a ledger of sins committed since then. Did that ledger still exist somewhere? Was it still blank?

“And you, Daniel?” Isaac inquired.

“I made myself ready twenty-five years ago, when I was dying of the Stone,” Daniel said, “and have oft wondered when Death would bother to come for me.”

“Then neither of us has anything to fear,” said Isaac. Which Daniel agreed with on a purely intellectual level; but still he flinched when a hefty mechanical clunk sounded from the chest, and its lid sprang open, driven by a pair of massive springs. Daniel missed what happened next because (as he was ashamed to realize) he had jumped behind Isaac. But now he stepped clear. He let the lanthorn drop to his side. It was no longer of any use. The chest was emitting its own light. Fountains of colored sparks gushed from several metal tubes that splayed from its rim, a bit like the iron pikes that adorned London Bridge’s Great Stone Gate. Their light blinded him for a few moments. But when his eyes adjusted he saw a little carved and painted figure-a poppet-jutting from the top of the box, bobbling up and down atop a coil spring that had thrust it into the air. The poppet was adorned with a motley fool’s cap with wee bells on the ends of its tentacles, and its face had been carven into a foolish grin. Illuminated from beneath by the fizzing sparklers, it wore a ghoulish and sinister aspect.

“Jack in the Box!” Daniel exclaimed.

Isaac approached the chest. The poppet had sprung up out of a mound of hundreds of coins. These had avalanched over the rim of the chest when the lid had sprung open, and were still tumbling to the deck in ones and twos. One of them rolled to within inches of Isaac’s toe. He stooped and picked it up. Daniel, ever the lab-assistant, held the light near to hand. Isaac stared at it for a quarter of a minute. Daniel’s lanthorn-arm began to ache, but he dared not move.

Finally it occurrred to Isaac to resume breathing. A tiny smacking noise came from his mouth as he re-animated his parts of speech.

“We must get back to the Tower of London straightaway.”

“I am all for it,” Daniel said, “but I’m afraid that the currents of the Thames and the Medway disagree with us.”