“What about those rocks in your pockets?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am giving you a cue, Mr. Pepys-the segue you have been looking for.”
“Ah, well done!” said Pepys, and in a lunge he was by Daniel’s bedside, holding the auld Stone right up in his face.
Daniel had never seen it quite this close before, and he noticed now that it had a pair of symmetrically placed protrusions, like little horns, where it had begun growing up into the ureters leading down from Pepys’s kidneys. This made him queasy and so he shifted his attention to Pepys’s face, which was nearly as close.
“BEHOLD! My Death-premature, senseless, avoidable Death-mine, and yours, Daniel. But I hold mine in my hand. Yours is lodged thereabouts-do not flinch, I shall not lay hands on you-I wish only to demonstrate, Daniel, that thy Stone is only two inches or so from my hand when I hold it thus. My Stone is in my hand. A distance of only two inches! Yet for me that small interval amounts to thirty years of added life-three decades and God willing one or two more, of wenching, drinking, singing, and learning. I beg you to make the necessary arrangements, Daniel, and have that rock in your bladder moved two inches to your pocket, where it may lodge for another twenty or thirty years without giving you any trouble.”
“They are a very significant two inches, Mr. Pepys.”
“Obviously.”
“During the Plague Year, when we lodged at Epsom, I held candles for Mr. Hooke while he dissected the bodies of diverse creatures-humans included. By then I had enough skill that I could dissect most parts of most creatures. But I was always baffled by necks, and by those few inches around the bladder. Those parts had to be left to the superior skill of Mr. Hooke. All those orifices, sphincters, glands, frightfully important bits of plumbing-”
At the mention of Hooke’s name, Pepys brightened as if he had been put in mind of something to say; but as Daniel’s anatomy lesson drew on, his expression faded and soured.
“I of course know this, ” Pepys finally said, cutting him off.
“Of course.”
“I know it of my own knowledge, and I have had occasion to review and refresh my mastery of the subject whenever some dear friend of mine has died of the Stone-John Wilkins comes to mind-”
“That is low, a very low blow, for you to mention him now!”
“He is gazing down on you from Heaven saying, ‘Can’t wait to see you up here Daniel, but I don’t mind waiting another quarter-century or so, by all means take your time, have that Stone out, and finish your work.’”
“I really think you cannot possibly be any more disgraceful now, Mr. Pepys, and I beg you to leave a sick man alone.”
“All right… let’s to the pub then!”
“I am unwell, thank you.”
“When’s the last time you ate solid food?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Liquid food, then?”
“I’ve no incentive to take on liquids, lacking as I do the means of getting rid of ’em.”
“Come to the pub anyway, we are having a going-away party for you.”
“Call it off, Mr. Pepys. The equinoctial gales have begun. To sail for America now were foolish. I have entered into an arrangement with a Mr. Edmund Palling, an old man of my long acquaintance, who has for many years longed to migrate to Massachusetts with his family. It has been settled that in April of next year we shall board the Torbay, a newly built ship, at Southend-on-Sea; and after a voyage of approximately-”
“You’ll be dead a week from now.”
“I know it.”
“Perfect time for a going-away party then.” Pepys clapped his hands twice. Somehow this caused loud thumping noises to erupt in the hall outside.
“I cannot walk to your carriage, sir.”
“No need,” Pepys said, opening the door to reveal two porters carrying a sedan-chair-one of the smallest type, little more than a sarcophagus on sticks, made so that its occupant could be brought from the street all the way into a house before having to climb out, and therefore popular among shy persons, such as prostitutes.
“Ugh, what will people think?”
“That the Fellows of the Royal Society are entertaining someone extremely mysterious-business as usual!” Pepys answered. “Do not think of our reputations, Daniel, they cannot sink any lower; and we shall have plenty of time, after you are gone, to sort that out.”
Under a flood of mostly non-constructive criticism from Mr. Pepys, the two porters lifted Daniel up out of his bed, turning gray-green as they worked. Daniel remembered the odor that had filled Wilkins’s bedchamber during his final weeks, and supposed that he must smell the same way now. His body was as light and stiff as a fish that has been dried on a rack in the sun. They put him into that black box and latched the door on him, and Daniel’s nostrils filled with the scent of perfumes and powders left behind by the usual clientele. Or maybe that was what ordinary London air smelt like compared to his bed. His Reference Frame began to tilt and sway as they maneuvered him down-stairs.
They took him north beyond the Roman wall, which was the wrong way. But inasmuch as Daniel was facing his own death, it seemed illogical to fret over something as inconsequential as being kidnapped by a couple of sedan-chair carriers. When he wrenched his rigid neck around to peer out through the screened aperture in the back of the box, he saw Pepys’s coach stealing along behind.
As they maneuvered through streets and alleys, diverse views, prospects, and more or less pathetic spectacles presented themselves. But one large, newly-completed, stone building with a cupola kept presenting itself square in their path, closer and closer. It was Bedlam.
Now at this point any other man in London would have commenced screaming and trying to kick his way out, as he’d have realized that he was about to be sent into that place for a stay of unknown duration. But Daniel was nearly unique among Londoners in that he thought of Bedlam not solely as a dumping-ground for lunatics but also as the haunt of his friend and colleague Mr. Robert Hooke. Calmly he allowed himself to be carried in through its front door.
That said, he was a bit relieved when the porters turned away from the locked rooms and conveyed him towards Hooke’s office under the cupola. The howls and screams of the inmates faded to a sort of dim background babble, then were drowned out by more cheerful voices coming through a polished door. Pepys scurried round in front of the sedan chair and flung that door open to reveal everyone: not only Hooke, but Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, Isaac’s little shadow Fatio, Robert Boyle, John Locke, Roger Comstock, Christopher Wren, and twenty others-mostly Royal Society regulars, but a few odd men out such as Edmund Palling and Sterling Waterhouse.
They took him out of his sedan chair like a rare specimen being unpacked from its shipping-crate and held him up to accept several waves of cheers and toasts. Roger Comstock (who, since England’s Adult Supervision had all run away to France, was becoming more terribly important every day) stood up on Hooke’s lens-grinding table (Hooke became irate, and had to be restrained by Wren) and commanded silence. Then he held up a beaker of some fluid that was more transparent than water.
“We all know of Mr. Daniel Waterhouse’s high regard and admiration for Alchemy,” Roger began. This was made twice as funny by the exaggerated pomposity of his voice and manner; he was using his speaking-to-Parliament voice. After the laughter and Parliamentary barking noises had died down, he continued, just as gravely: “Alchemy has created many a miracle in our time, and I am assured, by some of its foremost practitioners, that within a few years they will have accomplished what has, for millennia, been the paramount goal of every Alchemist: namely, to bring us immorality!”
Roger Comstock now affected a look of extreme astonishment as the room erupted into true Bedlam. Daniel could not help glancing over at Isaac, who was the last man in the world to find anything amusing in a joke about Alchemy or immorality. But Isaac smiled and exchanged a look with Fatio.