A Calculus of Angels (30 page)

“Do you believe them?”

She shrugged. “No, but neither do I care. Are you hurt?”

“Not as I’ve noticed. I was lucky.” He looked slowly around once more, as much to avoid her gaze as to search for possible threats, and added, “I’ve heard others were not so lucky.”

She nodded and spoke more seriously. “Anna, near Newton’s rooms, and Mila, near the Black Tower.”

Ben started. “The
Black
Tower? Not the Mathematical?”

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“You know what it is, don’t you? The thing.”

“I tried to tell you the other night,” Ben replied, “but you were too stubborn.

And I warned the others.”

“I know. Anna—she was angry. She and Stefan were sometimes lovers. She thought to see it and—well, I know not what, and neither did she, and so now she is dead.”

“Oh. But Mila—”

“Does not even work in the palace but elsewhere within the castle walls. She was passing the Black Tower. Were we in danger the other night?”

Ben had been only half listening. “Us? No. The book was in his rooms, then, and in any event we were in the wrong tower, it seems. The
Black
Tower, eh?

Not the Mathematical?”

“Book?”

“Yes. There is a book, written in Hebrew. This thing that kills is searching for the book. Lenka, I must get into the tower, which means I must get into Sir Isaac’s rooms and borrow his key. You are certain that he is not in them?”

“He dines with the emperor tonight.”

“Good. I’ll put a stop to these killings, if all goes well. But if I don’t, if something happens to me— Lenka, I want you to leave the castle. Leave Prague.”

She snorted. “Such an easy thing to say, so impossible to do. I’ve no horse nor carriage nor money, and as a woman I’ll not be able to get those things save perhaps at the cost of my back—and still I’ll be hung if they catch me. Better that you just don’t get caught.”

“I’ll do my best, believe me. Here, let me see that.” He took the bundle she carried and unfolded it, and to his relief saw that it
was
his aegis. “Now if only it works,” he remarked, shucking off the cloak the rabbi had given him.

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“Always getting undressed around me. You’d think you would learn a lesson.”

“Not me. I’m too scientific to learn anything practical.” He pulled his arms through the tight sleeves.

“Now, watch closely,” he whispered and slipped the key into his pocket.

Her gasp told him that it worked, as did the sudden variegated tint he could see out of the corners of his eyes. Satisfied, he removed the key.

“I’d heard about that,” she said, “but seeing it is another thing. I guessed that’s what I was bringing you.”

“And, again, I much thank you for it. I’m afraid I’ve no way to repay you at the moment.”

“Repay me by not getting me hanged,” she said. “And now what do you intend to do?”

“I intend to watch you walk safely away from here.”

“And then?” she pursued.

“And then I shall march through the front gate.”

“I could see—something—even while you were invisible.”

“At night, on higher calibration, there will be little to see. Besides, the guards are lax.”

Her head wagged from side to side. “Not now, they aren’t. Here is what I suggest; you follow me back to the castle, and there I will make some sort of distraction for the guards.”

Ben shook his head. “That’s too dangerous for you.”

“What is more dangerous is that you will be caught, and despite what you A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

think, when tortured, you will tell all.”

Ben remembered Prince Eugene’s remarks about the Russian prisoner and torture, and reluctantly nodded.

“Besides,” she said, flashing a nervous smile, “there is still our bargain. I will accompany you into Sir Isaac’s secret laboratory.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. It was our bargain.”

“Things are very different now.”

“Not so different,” she replied sweetly. “It is still I who have the key.”

He considered that and sighed. “How will you distract them?” he asked.

“Clever,” he whispered to the prismatic blur that was Lenka, as they left the guards at the front gate behind them. “Is it safe for me to weaken the aegis?”

“Yes. There is no one in the second courtyard.”

His vision cleared enough for him to see that Lenka wore a triumphant smile.

“Clever, you say? I would rather avow that men are such buffoons that the simplest artifice works on them.”

“Most men don’t expect a glimpse of thigh from a woman strolling up to the castle,” Ben replied. Lenka had torn her skirts and feigned distress, claiming that some boys had set upon her and then let her go when she’d screamed.

Though unable to see well enough to read the expressions of the guards, Ben had heard clearly enough in their voices that— despite their expressions of concern—they had been more grateful that the “boys” had made off with a fair section of Lenka’s skirts than that she was otherwise unscathed. Indeed with the aegis turned down, he found
himself distracted
by the bit of stocking and bare skin flashing beneath the borrowed cloak.

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“It also diverted them from asking what business I had outside the castle this time of night. It seems that’all men do not share your ill opinion of my appearance.”

“Pfah.
As you said, men are imbeciles. Show them a little flesh, and all their standards drop.”

“I
see.
Well, thank you for making that clear, Mr. Franklin. I and my key shall now take our leave of you, and a good night to you, sir.”

“What did I say?” Ben asked “You must have misunderstood me. I meant to say that even the smallest glimpse of Venus robs men of their wits.”

“That sounds more convincing,” Lenka decided. “Now, quiet. Some people ahead.”

Robbed of banter, Lenka’s nervousness became a little more apparent—as did his own—but the courtiers making their way through the yard did not even notice Lenka, much less himself. He reflected that servants had scant need of an aegis to be invisible.

Save to other servants, such as the guards, he reminded himself, for as they approached those flanking the entrance to the palace, they greeted her—though they did not challenge. Doubtless straining for a glimpse of thigh, they too saw him not at all.

In the hall, Ben never let his gaze rest, sweeping here and there, searching for the smallest sign of the Golem, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, the wavering of the air near Newton’s door was gone as well. More evidence that the book had been removed, likely to the Black Tower, along with everything else.

No one was near when Lenka opened the door and they both stepped through.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Ben detached the aegis key and strode hurriedly across the anteroom to the study.

“You know where he keeps it?” Lenka asked.

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“Of course. It’s been a long while that I’ve had my eye on this.” He found the little wooden coffer and flipped back the lid, and there it lay, a Pythagorean key, a sliver of metal-bound crystal.

“There, now.” He sighed. He turned to Lenka and bowed. “Excellently done, and my highest regards. And now, see if you can find the book, a slim little thing, just so in size.” He showed her with his hands.

A thorough search of the study turned up no sign of
The
Sepher,
which did not surprise Ben in the least. Nor did he find any notebooks; all, it seemed, had been removed.

“Well.” He sighed. “Again, thank you. I’m now off to the Black Tower.”

“As am I,” Lenka informed him.

“No. Your shapely leg will not get us past the tower guard.”

“There is no guard at the Black Tower,” she replied smartly.

“No, but there will be guards about—at the Lobkovic Palace, for instance, which if I remember correctly is just next to the tower. Besides, now you have no key to hold ransom.”

“Doesn’t Sir Isaac have such a garment as yours?”

Ben narrowed his eyes. “A jade after my own heart,” he muttered. “But remember that you asked me to keep you from the hangman’s noose. Letting you walk into the tower with me might do harm to that cause.”

Her lips tightened a bit. “I want to go with you. There is something in the tower that I wish to see as well.”

“We haven’t time to argue about this,” Ben hissed.

“Good. Then stop arguing.”

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“Rot you, Lenka…”

She started suddenly across the room, headed for Newton’s wardrobe. “Never mind. I’ll find it myself.”

Ben threw up his hands. “Cease,” he grunted. “I’ll show you.”

And a quarter of an hour later they opened their second lock, this one on the heavy iron portal of the Black Tower.

The Black Tower was smaller, tighter, and altogether more square than the Mathematical Tower, where Newton’s primary laboratory was. What did he work with here, that he should want to keep it separate from the rest, and secret from Ben?

A strong sense of deja vu gripped Ben as he stepped through the doorway.

Almost, he could have been in London, more than two years ago, entering Sir Isaac’s study. Three heavy tables were every inch covered with philosophic equipment, notebooks, powders, colored liquids, and tools. In the center of the chamber mounted a pyramidal platform, like the one in London—as before, crowned with a scintillating sphere. Now he regarded all with more learned eyes, however, and knew the reddish luminescence within the globe for what it was—a captive malakus.

But as he moved amongst the tables, he saw that Sir Isaac had not merely recreated his old haunt; there were new things here. The dissected bodies of animals, ambient in glass jars of yellowish liquor. Human parts—arms, legs, a head— treated in the same manner, muscle laid open to the bone. Near each of these receptacles were sketches of the offended flesh, diagrammed in Newton’s cryptic hand. Only vaguely did he notice that Lenka, seemingly unawed by it all, had found a crammed bookshelf and was pushing her way through the books.

He knew he should hurry, but like a boy in an old tale stumbling upon the ogre’s treasure, he was transfixed. Where to begin?

Along with the dissections and their drawings were strange models: armatures of steel, articulated like bones, muscled with some azure claylike substance, A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

tough and springy to the touch. Some aped the limbs of the once-living specimens, but others bore more resemblance to the legs of insects. In one place sat an aetherschreiber, but without the customary clockwork to drive the arm, having instead more of the bluish integument.

Most strange of all was the
corpus
.

Not a corpse—for it was neither a human being nor anything that had ever lived—but a corpus, a body. Like the smaller devices on the tables, this thing was made of steel, brass, and the muscle-mimicking substance. Its head was a heavy glass globe, more or less featureless save for a faint spectral sheen.

Hesitantly, he tapped it, and was rewarded with what seemed to be a sluggish fluid motion inside, and the imprint of his finger left behind on the sphere as silvery stain, fading slowly.

“Philosophic mercury,” he muttered. The “head” was a chime, a conduit between matter and aether. He glanced back at the similar sphere, hovering above the pyramid, and a profound shiver ran through him.

“God, Sir Isaac, what have you done?”

The thing reclined in a chair. In its lap rested
The Sepher Ha-Razim.
On the table nearby, an open notebook.

Ben turned to the latter frantically, suddenly aware again that he and Lenka could be discovered at any moment. The half-finished page before him was mostly calculation and alchemical formulae. He excitedly thumbed back through it, searching for some sort of summary.

What it contained was a series of “quaestiones,” in Sir Isaac’s writing. It was the style he used, and which he had begun to teach Ben before he closed and locked the door between master and apprentice: ask a question and then amass relevant information, observation, and experiments regarding it. Ben found himself staring at “Quaestione Sixty-one.”

Quaestione Sixty-one: What is the nature of the animal spirit?

Ye animal spirit must be of a mix’d nature, for some substance must mediate
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between ye aethereal impulse and ye expansion and contractions of grosser
matter. It has been observ’d that ye Malakim are of such mixd nature, and as
such represent an imperfect fit betwixt the two, as they can only alter fix’d
substances in most cases; as in ye case of the Seraphim, the Cherubim, who
respectively can only thicken or lighten the substance of aer and lux. And yet
I might postulate other orders which have a mediating effect on magnetism
or gravity and ye other affinities etc. And have devised proofs for detecting
such. And further, I have seen by my experiments that there exist those who
are universal mediators but lack the power to expand or thicken a particular
sort of atom. But likewise there must exist those of a pure animal spirit. And
yet to test the basic notion does not require this animal spirit, but merely an
atomic one. Take the materia integumenta as can be made…

(here followed a long alchemical formula that Ben skipped over)
Contrive, by the philosopher’s mercury, to give entrance to a spirit of the sort
which impinges upon damnatum, and command that it expand and contract
in simple manner.

The margins were filled with diagrams of the devices littering the tables. Ben began skimming. Newton had experimented, it seemed endlessly, using his captive malakus to simulate muscular movement in the devices.

Several pages later, there was an annotated design of the thing in the chair. It was labeled
Talos.

Fascinated and sickened, Ben leafed farther back through the “quaestiones.”

Each had to do with some aspect of the malakim; many being the dissertations hinted at in the last quaestione. Quaestione twelve was, “For what purpose has God contrived to create the malakim,” and there followed some eighteen pages of notes from various books—some in English, most in Latin, a fair number in Hebrew.