“Trying to incite his Envy-?”
“Yes-but in his hierarchy of vices, Sloth would appear to reign unchallenged by Envy or anything else. Have you met with success here, my lord?”
“Sir Elias Ashmole is starting a brave library-but he’s distracted and addled with Alchemy. I have had to attend to more fundamental matters-” Wilkins said, and gestured weakly toward the door through which Bolstrood had departed. “I believe that binary arithmetickal engines will be of enormous significance-Oldenburg, too, is most eager.”
“If I could carry your work forward, sir, I would consider myself privileged.”
“Now we are only being polite-I have no time. Waterhouse!”
Leibniz closed up his box. The Bishop of Chester watched the lid closing over the engine, and his eyelids almost closed at the same moment. But then he summoned up a bit more strength. Leibniz backed out of the way, and Daniel took his place.
“My Lord?”
It was all he could get out. Drake had been his father, but John Wilkins really was his lord in almost every sense of the word. His lord, his bishop, his minister, his professor.
“The responsibility now falls upon you to make it all happen.”
“My Lord? To make what happen?”
But Wilkins was either dead or asleep.
THEY STUMBLED THROUGHa small dark kitchen and out into the maze of yards and alleys behind Chancery Lane, where they drew the attention of diverse roosters and dogs. Pursued by their hue and cry, Mr. Waterhouse and Dr. Leibniz emerged into a district of theatres and coffee-houses. Any one of those coffee-houses would have sufficed, but they were close to Queen Street-another of Hooke’s paving-projects. Daniel had begun to feel like a flea under the Great Microscope. Hooke subtended about half of the cosmos, and made Daniel feel as if he were flitting from one place of refuge to another, even though he had nothing to hide. Leibniz was hale, and seemed to enjoy exploring a new city. Daniel got them turned back in the direction of the river. He was trying to make out what responsibility, specifically, had just been placed on his shoulders by Wilkins. He realized-after a quarter of an hour of being a very poor conversationalist-that Leibniz might have ideas on the subject.
“You said you wanted to carry Wilkins’s work forward, Doctor. Which of his projects were you referring to? Flying to the moon, or-”
“The Philosophical Language,” Leibniz said, as if this should have been obvious.
He knew that Daniel had been involved in that project, and seemed to take the question as a sign that Daniel wasn’t especially proud of it-which was true. Noting Leibniz’s respect for the project, Daniel felt a stab of misgivings that perhaps the Philosophical Language had some wonderful properties that he had been too stupid to notice.
“What more is there to be done with it?” Daniel asked. “You have some refinements-additions-? You wish to translate the work into German-? You’re shaking your head, Doctor-what is it, then?”
“I was trained as a lawyer. Don’t look so horrified, Mr. Waterhouse, it is respectable enough, for an educated man in Germany. You must remember that we don’t have a Royal Society. After I was awarded my Doctor of Jurisprudence, I went to work for the Archbishop of Mainz, who gave me the job of reforming the legal code-which was a Tower of Babel-Roman and Germanic and local common law all mangled together. I concluded that there was little point in jury-rigging something. What was needed was to break everything down into certain basic concepts and begin from first principles.”
“I can see how the Philosophical Language would be useful in breaking things down,” Daniel said, “but to build them back up, you would need something else-”
“Logic,” Leibniz said.
“Logic has a dismal reputation among the higher primates in the Royal Society-”
“Because they associate it with the Scholastic pedants who tormented them in university,” Leibniz said agreeably. “I’m not talking about that sort of thing! When I say logic, I mean Euclidean.”
“Begin with certain axioms and combine them according to definite rules-”
“Yes-and build up a system of laws that is as provable, and as internally consistent, as the theory of conic sections.”
“But you have recently moved to Paris, have you not?”
Leibniz nodded. “Part of the same project. For obvious reasons, I need to improve my knowledge of mathematics-what better place for it?” Then his face got a distracted, brooding look. “Actually there was another reason-the Archbishop sent me as an emissary, to tender a certain proposal to Louis XIV.”
“So today is not the first time you have combined Natural Philosophy with Diplomacy-”
“Nor the last, I fear.”
“What was the proposal you set before the King?”
“I only got as far as Colbert, actually. But it was that, instead of invading her neighbors, La France ought to make an expedition to Egypt, and establish an Empire there-creating a threat to the Turk’s left flank-Africa-and forcing him to move some armies away from his right flank-”
“Christendom.”
“Yes.” Leibniz sighed.
“It sounds-er-audacious,” Daniel said, now on a diplomatic mission of his own.
“By the time I’d arrived in Paris, and secured an appointment with Colbert, King Louis had already flung his invasion-force into Holland and Germany.”
“Ah, well-’twas a fine enough idea.”
“Perhaps some future monarch of France will revive it,” Leibniz said. “For the Dutch, the consequences were dire. For me, it was fortuitous-no longer straining at diplomatic gnats, I could go to Colbert’s house in the Rue Vivienne and grapple with philosophick giants.”
“I’ve given up trying to grapple with them,” Daniel sighed, “and now only dodge their steps.”
They rambled all the way down to the Strand and sat down in a coffee-house with south-facing windows. Daniel tilted the arithmetickal engine toward the sun and inspected its small gears. “Forgive me for asking, Doctor, but is this purely a conversation-starter, or-?”
“Perhaps you should go back and ask Wilkins.”
“Touche.”
Now some sipping of coffee.
“My Lord Chester spoke correctly-in a way-when he said that Hooke could build this,” Daniel said. “Only a few years ago, he was a creature of the Royal Society, and he would have. Now he’s a creature of London, and he has artisans build most of his watches. The only exceptions, perhaps, are the ones he makes for the King, the Duke of York, and the like.”
“If I can explain to Mr. Hooke the importance of this device, I’m confident he’ll undertake it.”
“You don’t understand Hooke,” Daniel said. “Because you are German, and because you have diverse foreign connections, Hooke will assume you are a part of the Grubendolian cabal-which in his mind looms so vast that a French invasion of Egypt would be only a corner of it.”
“Grubendol?” Leibniz said. Then, before Daniel could say it, he continued, “I see-it is an anagram for Oldenburg.”
Daniel ground his teeth for a while, remembering how long it had taken him to decipher the same anagram, then continued: “Hooke is convinced that Oldenburg is stealing his inventions-sending them overseas in encrypted letters. What is worse, he saw you disembarking at the Bridge, and being handed a letter by a known Dutchman. He’ll want to know what manner of Continental intrigues you’re mixed up in.”
“It’s not a secret that my patron is the Archbishop of Mainz,” Leibniz protested.
“But you said you were a Lutheran.”
“And I am-but one of the Archbishop’s objectives is to reconcile the two churches.”
“ Herewe say there are more than two,” Daniel reminded him.