Read Online The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World by Neal Stephenson - Free Book Online
Authors: Neal Stephenson
Tags: Fiction
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because some lackey has caused his latest stiletto-thrust to be printed in its back pages? Challenge problems flying back and forth across the Channel, each one fiendishly devised to prove that Leibniz’s calculus is the original, and Newton’s but a shoddy counterfeit, or vice versa? Reputations tossed about on points of swords—”
“No,” Daniel says. “I moved here to get away from European intrigues.” His eyes drop to the Letter. Enoch can’t help looking at it, too.
“It is purely an anomaly of fate,” Enoch says, “that Gottfried, as a young man, lacking means, seeking a position—anything that would give him the simple freedom to work—landed in the court of an obscure German Duke. Who through intricate and tedious lacework of marryings, couplings, dyings, religious conversions, wars, revolutions, miscarriages, decapitations, congenital feeblemindedness, excommunications, et cetera among Europe’s elite—most notably, the deaths of all seventeen of Queen Anne’s children—became first in line to the Throne of England and Scotland, or Great Britain as we’re supposed to call it now.”
“ Some would call it fate. Others—”
“Let’s not get into that. ”
“Agreed.”
“Anne’s in miserable health, the House of Hanover is packing up its pointed helmets and illustrated beer-mugs, and taking English lessons. Sophie may get to be Queen of England yet, at least for a short while. But soon enough, George Louis will become Newton’s King and—as Sir Isaac is still at the Mint—his boss.”
“I take your point. It is most awkward.”
“George Louis is the embodiment of awkwardness—he doesn’t care, and scarcely knows, and would probably think it amusing if he did. But his daughter-in-law the Princess—author of this letter—in time likely to become Queen of England herself—is a friend of Leibniz. And yet an admirer of Newton. She wants a reconciliation.”
“She wants a dove to fly between the Pillars of Hercules. Which are still runny with the guts of the previous several peace-makers.”
“It’s supposed that you are different.”
“Herculean, perhaps?”
“Well…”
“Do you have any idea why I’m different, Mr. Root?”
“I do not, Dr. Waterhouse.”
“The tavern it is, then.”
B EN AND G ODFREY ARE SENT back to Boston on the ferry. Daniel scorns the nearest tavern—some sort of long-running dispute with the proprietor—so they find the highway and ride northwest for a couple of miles, drawing off to one side from time to time to let drovers bring their small herds of Boston-bound cattle through. They arrive at what used to be the capital of Massachusetts, before the city fathers of Boston out-maneuvered it. Several roads lunge out of the wilderness and collide with one another. Yeomen and drovers and backwoodsmen churn it up into a vortex of mud and manure. Next to it is a College. Newtowne is, in other words, paradise for tavern-keepers, and the square (as they style it) is lined with public houses.
Waterhouse enters a tavern but immediately backs out of it. Looking into the place over his companion’s shoulder, Enoch glimpses a white-wigged Judge on a massive chair at the head of the tap-room, a jury empaneled on plank benches, a grimy rogue being interrogated. “Not a good place for a pair of idlers,” Waterhouse mumbles.
“You hold judicial proceedings in drinking-houses !?”
“Poh! That judge is no more drunk than any magistrate of the Old Bailey.”
“It is perfectly logical when you put it that way.”
Daniel chooses another tavern. They walk through its brick-reddoor. A couple of leather fire-buckets dangle by the entrance, in accordance with safety regulations, and a bootjack hangs on the wall so that the innkeeper can take his guests’ footwear hostage at night. The proprietor is bastioned in a little wooden fort in the corner, bottles on shelves behind him, a preposterous firearm, at least six feet long, leaning in the angle of the
“No,” Daniel says. “I moved here to get away from European intrigues.” His eyes drop to the Letter. Enoch can’t help looking at it, too.
“It is purely an anomaly of fate,” Enoch says, “that Gottfried, as a young man, lacking means, seeking a position—anything that would give him the simple freedom to work—landed in the court of an obscure German Duke. Who through intricate and tedious lacework of marryings, couplings, dyings, religious conversions, wars, revolutions, miscarriages, decapitations, congenital feeblemindedness, excommunications, et cetera among Europe’s elite—most notably, the deaths of all seventeen of Queen Anne’s children—became first in line to the Throne of England and Scotland, or Great Britain as we’re supposed to call it now.”
“ Some would call it fate. Others—”
“Let’s not get into that. ”
“Agreed.”
“Anne’s in miserable health, the House of Hanover is packing up its pointed helmets and illustrated beer-mugs, and taking English lessons. Sophie may get to be Queen of England yet, at least for a short while. But soon enough, George Louis will become Newton’s King and—as Sir Isaac is still at the Mint—his boss.”
“I take your point. It is most awkward.”
“George Louis is the embodiment of awkwardness—he doesn’t care, and scarcely knows, and would probably think it amusing if he did. But his daughter-in-law the Princess—author of this letter—in time likely to become Queen of England herself—is a friend of Leibniz. And yet an admirer of Newton. She wants a reconciliation.”
“She wants a dove to fly between the Pillars of Hercules. Which are still runny with the guts of the previous several peace-makers.”
“It’s supposed that you are different.”
“Herculean, perhaps?”
“Well…”
“Do you have any idea why I’m different, Mr. Root?”
“I do not, Dr. Waterhouse.”
“The tavern it is, then.”
B EN AND G ODFREY ARE SENT back to Boston on the ferry. Daniel scorns the nearest tavern—some sort of long-running dispute with the proprietor—so they find the highway and ride northwest for a couple of miles, drawing off to one side from time to time to let drovers bring their small herds of Boston-bound cattle through. They arrive at what used to be the capital of Massachusetts, before the city fathers of Boston out-maneuvered it. Several roads lunge out of the wilderness and collide with one another. Yeomen and drovers and backwoodsmen churn it up into a vortex of mud and manure. Next to it is a College. Newtowne is, in other words, paradise for tavern-keepers, and the square (as they style it) is lined with public houses.
Waterhouse enters a tavern but immediately backs out of it. Looking into the place over his companion’s shoulder, Enoch glimpses a white-wigged Judge on a massive chair at the head of the tap-room, a jury empaneled on plank benches, a grimy rogue being interrogated. “Not a good place for a pair of idlers,” Waterhouse mumbles.
“You hold judicial proceedings in drinking-houses !?”
“Poh! That judge is no more drunk than any magistrate of the Old Bailey.”
“It is perfectly logical when you put it that way.”
Daniel chooses another tavern. They walk through its brick-reddoor. A couple of leather fire-buckets dangle by the entrance, in accordance with safety regulations, and a bootjack hangs on the wall so that the innkeeper can take his guests’ footwear hostage at night. The proprietor is bastioned in a little wooden fort in the corner, bottles on shelves behind him, a preposterous firearm, at least six feet long, leaning in the angle of the
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