The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [84]
“Perhaps. Or perhaps—” A terrible thought occurred to him. “Perhaps the purpose is not to make this new substance but to destroy the old. Oh, dear heaven, that's it.”
“I still don't understand.”
“Carbonis is present in all living things, Vasilisa. Where these engines pass, nothing will remain alive.”
“How?”
“I suppose all would just crumble apart. Or, no, let me figure this.” He took to paper with his pen and worked through the formula. He stared at the results for a second, frowned, and started over. “That can't be right,” he muttered.
It came out the same way a second time. He did it a third.
“I must be making some faulty assumption.”
“How so?”
“Two things. First, only a fraction of the carbonis attracted undergoes transformation. That doesn't make it less dangerous, because most of the carbonis within its radius—which looks like miles—is attracted, which still means death. But the amount of niveum produced is negligible. Why do it at all?”
“And the second thing?”
“Some of the matter disappears during the process. It just goes away. You see? Carbon is made up of four atoms of damnatum, four of phlegm, three of lux, one of gas. This new substance ought to have double all that, yes? Because he's crushing them together. But it isn't so. Two damnatum atoms are missing, and he accounts for them nowhere. It makes no sense. If there were two lux left over, that might explain the ‘furnace’ he talks about, though it would be more like a match, I think. But here, you see, he talks about a great number of lux atoms released—a very great number—though there are none left over. They come from nowhere.”
“Benjamin?” Vasilisa's eyes had gone dreamy.
“What?”
“What if the damnatum atoms are changed into lux?”
“That shouldn't be possible. Atoms themselves are unchangeable and irreducible.”
“So Newton thought. What if Newton was wrong?”
“There's no proof he was wrong, just this crazy formula.”
“Benjamin, even if you are skeptical, how can we take that chance?”
“Maybe this is all a distraction, something to keep us from working on the defenses we know will work.”
“I don't think so. That is not Swedenborg's nature.”
“If either Newton or Swedenborg has to be wrong, I know who I choose to trust.”
“Really, Benjamin, Newton was at least as mad as Swedenborg—probably more so. Do you trust a dead man?”
That stung a little. It was what he had told d'Artaguiette, turned against him.
“I'll think about it some more. The most important thing— if these devices are indeed real—is to make it so that they cannot attract graphite ferments.” He began to doodle. “We could make our own attractors—”
“Which would kill just as surely as theirs.”
“Of course. But we could use them to create something like a firebreak, a zone where they would have no sustenance.”
“Why not make a repulsion against the new substance, the niveum?”
He blinked at her. “Of course. Of course, that is the answer, Vasilisa. By God, you still have a wonderful mind.”
“Why, thank you, Benjamin.” She actually seemed pleased. “That's a compliment indeed, from you.”
They were close, bent over the same sheet of paper. He could feel her breath. “We are the only ones left,” she said. “We are the only Newtonians still alive.” Her eyes were bright with tears.
It was the last thing he had ever expected from her. The very last thing.
It took twelve years off his life, made him a boy again, as when Voltaire had proposed his toast …
“No,” he said huskily. “There is Voltaire.”
She snorted and turned away. “He was never one of us; he said it himself. He never much understood Newton's theories or any of our own. Maclauren, Heath, Stirling—and me, I like to think. And you, of course, the greatest one of all.”
“The others had no opportunity to become great. I—”
It caught him like an explosion, this thing he had learned to keep bottled up so well. He choked on it as it came out. “Dear God, Vasilisa. What did we do to the world? What did I do to it?” He was weeping too, like a little boy, as he hadn't in years.
She reached for him, and for an instant he forgot everything—her great