The Shadows of God (10 page)

“We gave it out that he was killed trying to save you.”

“That was good thinking.”

“That was a lie,” Father Castillion said disapprovingly.

“Yes, it was,” Crecy said. “Would you have told the truth?”

Castillion shrugged. “I don’t know. But to lie is to slap God. Best, perhaps, to say nothing.” >

“But now our Orthodox soldiers have no priest. That will not go well, especially if we must go into battle,” Adrienne noted.

Castillion raised his hands. “I will minister to them.”

“Father, no offense, but you may remember an incident or two in France involving religion? My Russians will not accept the Roman liturgy.”

“Then I will learn theirs. The two have more in common than you think.”

“You would do that?” Adrienne asked.

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“I told you China changed me. As strange as the religion of China is, at its base it is the same as ours. If that is the case, then the differences between Orthodox and Roman are truly minute. I will do what I can to minister to your people. I will do my best, and if you can find me advisers on the matter, I think you will be surprised at how quickly I can learn.”

Adrienne regarded him silently for a moment. “God bless you, Father. You are an exceptional priest. And an exceptional man.”

“All men are exceptional, and women, too.
He
made us, after all.”

Adrienne nodded. “I tire now. Crecy, you must calm Hercule. We cannot have more strife, more hard feelings. If we find this killer, we must find him quietly.

Very soon I shall have to ask things of my people that should be asked of no one. I must be confident that they will obey me.”

“They love you.”

“Love is fickle. It is not so strong as an empty belly or the fear of a bullet. If my people think I have betrayed them, they will not hesitate to betray me. Even Saint Joan was burned at the stake, after all.”

“Politics, that was.”

“Politics are all around us. Stop Hercule.”

“I will not leave your bedside.”

“Crecy, only you can do this. Set as many guards as you wish. Send for my students to keep me company. But speak to Hercule, and now.”

Crecy’s eyes were as hard as gemstones, but after a moment she nodded. “Very well.”

“Thank you,” Adrienne replied.

Miracle or not, her wound did not heal quickly, nor did it stop hurting. Fever THE SHADOWS OF GOD

came and went, but it was mild. Father Castillion stayed by her side.

The next day, Emilie came to see her. Like Adrienne, Emilie was French by birth, spirited away from the collapse of that nation by the mathematician Maupertuis, who had brought her to Saint Petersburg, where it was well known that Tsar Peter would enthusiastically welcome anyone with scientific talent, male or female. Maupertuis joined the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, where Adrienne already had a position. When Maupertuis went to Amsterdam to help with the reconstruction there, Emilie stayed as Adrienne’s student.

Emilie was not exactly beautiful. Despite her family’s class, she had a peasant’s big bones. Her personality was forceful, however, and it made her attractive in a way her pleasant but unremarkable features could not.

“I so fear for you, Mademoiselle,” she said.

“No need to fear for me, Emilie. I’m very hard to kill.”

“God protects you.”

“He may or may not, but I do not count on it,” Adrienne responded, with a glance at the priest. “Have you continued your research with Linne?”

Emilie flushed a bit at that. “A little. He has been —distracted.”

“Ah. Elizavet.”

“What can be done? She is very beautiful, and a tsarevna.”

Adrienne smiled. “I love Elizavet like a daughter, but she does things by whimsy. Her interest in Linne will wane as soon as she is certain she has him.”

“I know that,” Emilie said. “And yet if he rejects me for her, I shall not take him back. How can I? I may be no beauty, but I am no fool. I have my pride.”

“But you love him.”

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then do not let her take him. Tell him what you just told me, and make him believe it. If that fails, you were better off without him.”

Emilie nodded. “Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

“And, Emilie, you are far from ugly.”

She nodded again.

“Well. Now tell me of your research.”

Oh. Yes. The classification of the malakim proceeds—“

“What’s this?” Father Castillion asked.

“Explain to the good father, Emilie.”

“By the malakim you mean the angels?” Castillion asked.

“We mean the aetheric beings science deals with,” Emilie said cautiously.

“Some may call them angels.”

Castillion frowned but nodded.

“Carl — Monsieur Linne—and I have been trying to classify them into kinds, as we might animals. A bird is a sort of animal, a raptor a sort of bird, a hawk a sort of raptor—”

“I’m familiar with the idea,” Castillion said.

“The trouble is that animals and plants may be classified by outward structure

—wings, feathers, beaks, and so forth. The malakim, not being composed of matter—or of very much matter, anyway— have no outward structure to observe.”

Castillion scratched his chin. “And yet I have seen some of them, as wisps of THE SHADOWS OF GOD

fire, and, by our Lord, the keres—that was indeed a thing nf matter was it not?”

“In part,” Adrienne said. “There is, among the malakim, a hierarchy.”

“As the Bible states, and rabbinical sources, and even the Chinese scripts. The seraphim, the cherubim, the ophanim, and so forth,” said Father Castillion.

“They are masters who have servants, and their servants are in turn masters over yet weaker servants,” Adrienne said. “But it is the weakest among them, those of lowest rank, which have the most material substance. Some of my servants, for instance, are able to manipulate the substance of phlegm, others lux. Some can mediate between any two substances that I point out to them.

But the great ones — call them the seraphim, if you wish—are creatures entirely of spirit. They cannot touch us or we them, save in spirit.”

“Those nearest God are more of spirit; those nearest men are more of matter.

But these seraphim can touch us, yes, by sending their more earthly servants,”

Father Castillion said.

“Yes. That is the old order of things. But it is changing, due to science. The keres, for instance, is a new thing. Generally, though, the malakim ignore mankind, until we achieve the sciences that let us affect the aether where they live. When that happens, they act, either killing the philosopher who made the discovery—as they did the man the Egyptians called Thoth and we call Hermes

—or by offering their services to him.”

“Why that last?” asked the priest.

“With magical djinni to serve your every whim, why continue the difficult and often disappointing business of the philosophical experiment? And after a generation, all science is forgotten, magic prevails, and then the malakim vanish back into the aether, leaving only mumbling fools behind them.”

Father Castillion shook his head excitedly. “It would explain much,” he said.

“It would explain much of the ritual of China, for instance, or the worship of pagan gods. It is a short step from having a djinn who serves you to having a god you must beg for favors.”

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“Precisely.”

Castillion looked to Emilie. “And so we have digressed. If there are these sorts of malakim, each with a throne higher than the other, why not keep them in their natural categories?”

“Because they are more various than their rank. And we did find a way! One of our colleagues—Monsieur Lomonosov—has proposed a startling hypothesis.

In his view, there is no matter in the world. Newton himself approached saying this, but shied.”

“I should say he did,” Castillion said. “The Church teaches that matter and spirit are separate. How can there be no matter?”

“It is all spirit. Or rather, it is all affinity—attractions and repulsions. Like gravity, which is not made of matter, or magnetism.”

“But both are created by matter. Gravity by atoms, magnetism by iron.”

“Lomonosov does not think so. He believes there are various sorts of affinities, some nearly perfect—nearer God, if you will—some less perfect. The most perfect affinities do not diminish with distance. The middle ones, like gravity, weaken in a proportion relative to the distance from the source. The least perfect affinities are those things we mistake for matter. But since all of these things are spirit existing at different levels, one may become another, and all are connected,” Emilie explained.

“This is making my head spin.”

“Think of a musical scale. All notes on the scale are different, and have different qualities, but all can be reached by lengthening or shortening a string.”

“So if we ”shorten‘ matter, we get gravity? Or the holy spirit?“

“Yes, very like that.”

“And your malakim—those with the most masters between them and God and THE SHADOWS OF GOD

those nearest man —are the most imperfect, the most material. And the archangels, the thrones, and great powers, are farthest. But can one, then, become the other?” He sounded Skeptical.

“We are matter, and imperfect,” Adrienne said. “But aren’t we taught that we can become spirit, and perfect?”

“I must hear more of this,” Castillion said. “Much more. The implications—this has been borne out by experiment?”

“It has been suggested by reasoning, and by some experiment. We have yet to devise satisfactory tests, though young Lomonosov is trying.”

“And now—my head spins on —how does this apply to the classification of the malakim?”

“They are made of patterns of affinities, each unique like the ridges on our fingers. We can observe the pattern, using certain instruments. The weaker, less perfect malakim are simpler and more specialized than their masters.

What we have discovered is that these masters make their servants from their own substance —not by natural reproduction, but by excising some part of themselves, then changing its ”musical pitch‘ so to speak.“

“All this we knew,” Adrienne said. “I thought you had made progress.”

“We have. As a man’s child carries resemblance to him, these malakim made from other malakim resemble one another, but much more strongly. Their patterns tell their parentage, as it were. And our calculations—based, Mademoiselle, largely upon your own papers and observations—suggest something interesting.”

“And that is?”

“That in all the world, Mademoiselle, there are really only two true malakim.

Two, from which all the others are descended.”

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

7.

Guns on the Altamaha

At midday, the sun scarcely touched the sluggish waters of the mighty Altamaha River. Not here, at least where it was narrow enough that the gallery of oaks it flowed through could nearly twine their branches in an arch, the Spanish moss hanging like stalactites from the roof of a cave. Somewhere the sun was shining; here the waters flowed dark and quiet. Cormorants perched on snags, and a great blue heron came flapping by on heavy wings.

Oglethorpe glanced at Tomochichi, the aging chief of the Yamacraw. Even at his advanced years, he was arresting, his still-muscular chest tattooed with black wings, his earlobes slit and dangling with jewelry. His intelligent face, painted red and black now, expressed something Oglethorpe rarely saw on it: concern. He was staring at the water.

“What’s wrong, old friend?”

“Things live down there. Snakes that once were men. Pale cannibals. An entire world we cannot see, should not see.”

“That isn’t who we fight.”

Tomochichi met his gaze, something the Indians did only to express disbelief or emphasize a point. “Yes, it is,” he murmured. His certainty put ice in Oglethorpe’s veins.

The water rippled, and the forest moved. Yamacraws, Yuchi, Maroons, and rangers, shadows one moment, men the next, now shadows again. Oglethorpe kept his eyes focused on the bobs, little bits of light wood floating on the surface of the river with cords going down to weights on the bottom.

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

An instant later, one went under, and then the next. And the next. A faint V

appeared on the surface of the river.

“Catfish large enough to swallow men,” Tomochichi murmured. “Panthers with rattlesnake tails.”

Oglethorpe’s heart was hammering. “Not yet,” he pleaded. “Not yet.

The next bob went down, then the next two.

And there, where the deep channel came against a dry, clear bank, something poked its head from the water. It looked, at first, like the head of a giant turtle, a flat-topped cylinder a yard across, sticking two or three feet above the river.

It was the color of black iron.

Though he could not see them, Oglethorpe knew there were windows in the thing, and intelligent eyes behind the windows. He prayed they would see nothing besides trees and birds.

He was still praying when the water rose up in a mound the shape of a lozenge, and then the water poured away, and there lay something that looked like a giant manatee, the cylinder that had first appeared standing up near its front.

“Steady, boys,” he said under his breath.

And they were. Oglethorpe’s men had fought demons of steel, flying men-of-war, and spirits of mist and flame. This was just a boat. A boat that went underwater, a boat made of metal, a boat with an engine sent to Earth by Satan himself perhaps, but a still a boat filled with men.

Oglethorpe examined the thing more closely. Now that it floated free, he saw that it was, in fact, shaped like two war galleys placed one upon the other, one flattened keel facing the sky and the other toward the bottom of the river. He wondered suddenly, not at its strangeness but at why no one had ever built such a thing before.

And the watchtower was also a hatch—a giant screw, for as he watched, it began to untwist. Near the hatch, one on each side, were mounted two THE SHADOWS OF GOD

swiveling guns of unknown design. He suspected they could be worked from inside the turret, as well as from outside.