Part 61 (1/2)
”That is what they tell me,” said Caroline, ”but Newton seems to believe he has now got the upper hand where that is concerned, by arresting the arch-villain known as Jack the Coiner. The fiend is now utterly in Sir Isaac's power, and doomed to be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn Cross...Johann? Johann! Johann! Bring the smelling salts, the d.u.c.h.ess has got the vapors!” Bring the smelling salts, the d.u.c.h.ess has got the vapors!”
Johann banged into the room only a few moments later, but by then his mother had got her color back, and prevented a slide to the floor by getting a white-knuckled grip on the arms of her chair. ”It is nothing,” she said, swiveling her eyes at her first-born. ”Carry on, please, as you were.”
Johann departed, seething and quizzical.
”It is just a sort of catalepsis that comes over me sometimes, when suddenly I have got rather a lot to think about all at once. Shortly it pa.s.ses. I am fine. Thank you for your expression of concern, highness. Moving on-”
”We shall not not move on!” announced the Princess of Wales. ”We shall stick right here, on this, the most fascinating topic of conversation in the history of the world! move on!” announced the Princess of Wales. ”We shall stick right here, on this, the most fascinating topic of conversation in the history of the world! You You are in love with the most infamous Black-guard ever!” are in love with the most infamous Black-guard ever!”
”Stop that! It's not like that at all,” said Eliza. ”He happens to be in love with happens to be in love with me, me, that is all.” that is all.”
”Oh, well, that's different altogether.”
”There is no call for sarcasm.”
”How did you meet? I love to hear stories of how true lovers met.”
”We are not not true lovers,” said Eliza, ”and as to how we met-well-it's none of your business.” true lovers,” said Eliza, ”and as to how we met-well-it's none of your business.”
Another door whacked open and in came Leibniz. He bowed to the ladies, looking very solemn. ”I take it that a departure for Hanover is planned, and soon,” he said. ”If your royal highness will have me, I will accompany you.” He turned toward Eliza. ”My lady. The friends.h.i.+p that began in Leipzig thirty years ago, when our paths crossed at the Fair, and I shared a little adventure with you and your Vagabond beau-”
”Aha!” shouted Caroline.
”Draws now to a close. The Princess's n.o.ble and splendid attempt to effect a philosophical reconciliation-so ably and patiently a.s.sisted by Dr. Waterhouse-has, I am sorry to say-”
”Failed?” said Caroline.
”Adjourned,” Leibniz said.
”For how long?”
”Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.”
”Hmm,” said Caroline, ”that will be of little practical utility to the House of Hanover, when it comes time to select a new Privy Council.”
”I am sorry,” said Leibniz, ”but there is no rus.h.i.+ng certain things. While other other matters, such as my departure from London, happen entirely too soon.” matters, such as my departure from London, happen entirely too soon.”
”Where are Sir Isaac, and Dr. Waterhouse?” the Princess inquired.
”Sir Isaac has taken his leave, and forwards apologies for not having said good-bye in person,” said Leibniz, ”but one gets the idea he had terribly important things to do. Dr. Waterhouse said he would await you in the garden, just in case you might be of a mind to behead him for failing in his mission.”
”By no means! I shall go and thank him for his good offices-and I'll see you on the boat tomorrow!” said Caroline, and swept out of the place.
”Eliza,” said the savant.
”Gottfried,” said the d.u.c.h.ess.
London Bridge THE NEXT DAY.
”IT WAS NOT HALF so blubbery as it might have been,” said Leibniz, ”when one considers how long the d.u.c.h.ess and I have known each other, and all we have been through, and whatnot. We shall keep in touch, of course, through letters.” so blubbery as it might have been,” said Leibniz, ”when one considers how long the d.u.c.h.ess and I have known each other, and all we have been through, and whatnot. We shall keep in touch, of course, through letters.”
He was describing his leave-taking from Eliza at Leicester House the day before; but he might as well have been talking of the one that was happening now, on London Bridge, between him and Daniel.
”Forty-one years,” Daniel said.
”I was thinking the same thing!” Leibniz said, practically before Daniel had got the words out. ”It was forty-one years ago when you and I first met, right here, on this very what-do-you-call-it.”
”Starling,” Daniel said. They were standing on the one beneath the Square, near the mid-point of the Bridge, and not awfully far from the Main-Topp where the Clubb had of late conducted its Stake-out. But Daniel's memory of that, though only a few weeks old, was already quite washed-out and indistinct compared to what Leibniz was speaking of: the day in 1673 when a young Leibniz (no Baron in those days) with an Arithmetickal Engine tucked under his arm had disembarked from a s.h.i.+p that had brought him over from Calais, and been conveyed to this starling-to this very spot spot-by a lighter, and first made the acquaintance of young Daniel Waterhouse of the Royal Society.
Leibniz's memory was no less distinct. ”I believe it was-here!” (tapping a flat rock at starling's edge with his toe) ”where I first touched down.”
”That is how I remember it.”
”Of course we are both wrong, if Absolute s.p.a.ce is correct,” Leibniz went on. ”For during those forty-one years the Earth has rotated, and revolved about the Sun, and the Sun, for all we know, has careered for some vast distance. So I did not really touch down here here but in some but in some other other place that is now far out in the interstellar vacuum.” place that is now far out in the interstellar vacuum.”
Daniel did not rise to this bait. He was fearful that Leibniz was about to burst out into some bitter declamation against Newton and Newton's philosophy. But Leibniz drew back from that brink, even as he was drawing back from the stony rim of the starling. A longboat was working up towards them. It was the lighter that would take Leibniz out to the Hanoverian sloop Sophia, Sophia, where Princess Caroline had already settled into her cabin. where Princess Caroline had already settled into her cabin.
”What do I remember of that day? We were espied, and glared at, by Hooke, who was over yonder surveying a wharf,” said Leibniz, pointing at the London bank. ”We went to pay a call on poor old Wilkins, who lay some great responsibility on your shoulders-”
”He wanted me to 'make it all happen,' ” said Daniel.
Leibniz laughed. ”What do you suppose the rascal meant by that?”
”I have thought about it a million times,” said Daniel. ”Religious toleration? The Royal Society? Pansophism? The Arithmetickal Engine? I cannot be sure. But all of those things were linked together in Wilkins's mind.”
”He had a prefiguring of what Caroline calls the System of the World.”
”Perhaps. At any rate, I have tried to preserve in my mind, since then, that linkage-the notion that all of those things must move together, somewhat like prisoners on a common chain-”
”A cheerful image!” Leibniz remarked.
”And if there has been any plan whatever to my life in those forty-one years, it's been that I have tried to keep an eye out for whichever of them was lagging farthest behind, and chivvy it along. For two decades, the laggard has been Arithmetickal Engines and Logic Mills, et cetera et cetera.”
”And so you have toiled on that,” said Leibniz, ”for which you have my aeternal grat.i.tude. But who knows? With the support of the Tsar, and the motive Power of the Engine for Raising Water by Fire, perhaps it shall be laggardly no more.”
”Perhaps,” said Daniel. ”It grieves me, now-especially since yesterday-that I went off into seclusion, and did not involve myself in the Metaphysickal rift until it was too late.”
”But if you had, had, you'd be now berating yourself over having neglected some you'd be now berating yourself over having neglected some other other matter-good Puritan that you are.” matter-good Puritan that you are.”
Daniel snorted.
”Remember that in those days Newton was known chiefly as a very clever telescope-maker,” Leibniz went on. ”Wilkins could not have foreseen the rift you spoke of-and so could not have charged you with healing it. You are clear of any such burthen.”
”But the grand project of Pansophism was a thing he saw very clearly, and, I'm sure, wanted me to support in whatever way I could,” Daniel said. ”I wonder now if I did the best possible job of it.”
”And I should say the answer is yes,” said Leibniz, ”for that we live in the best of all possible worlds.”
”I hope that is not true,” said Daniel, ”as it seems to me now that my journey here from Boston, which I confess I undertook with a certain kind of foolish and thrilling hope in my heart, has concluded in tragedy-and not even grand grand tragedy but something much more futile and ignominious.” tragedy but something much more futile and ignominious.”