The system of the world - By Neal Stephenson Page 0,28

in one city of too many printing presses; a bloody and perpetual atmosphere of Party Malice; and an infinite supply of coffee; had combined, in some alchemical sense, to engender a monstrous prodigy, an unstanchable wound that bled Ink and would never heal. Daniel, who had grown to maturity in a London where printing presses had to be hidden in hay-wagons to preserve them from the sledgehammers of the Censor, could not quite believe this at first; but they kept coming, every day. Mrs. Arlanc brought these to him as if it were perfectly normal for a man to read about all London’s scandals, duels, catastrophes, and outrages every morning as he spooned up his porridge.

At first Daniel found them intolerable. It was as if the Fleet Ditch were being diverted into his lap for half an hour every day. But once he grew accustomed to them, he began to draw a kind of solace from their very vileness. How self-absorbed for him to cower in bed, for fear of mysterious enemies, here in the center of a metropolis that was to Hostility what Paris was to Taste? To be so unnerved, simply because someone had tried to blow him up in London, was like a sailor in a naval engagement pouting and sulking because one of his fellows had stepped on his toe.

So, inasmuch as it made him feel better, Daniel began to look forward to his daily ink-toilette. Immersion in Bile, a splash of Calumny on the face, and a dab of Slander behind each ear, and he was a new man.

The 14th of February was a Sunday, meaning that before the sun had risen, Mr. and Mrs. Arlanc had embarked on their weekly pilgrimage to a Huguenot meeting-house that lay somewhere out beyond Ratcliff. Daniel awoke to find, next to his door, a bowl of cold porridge resting on an otherwise empty tray. No newspapers! Down he ventured into the lower storeys of the house, scavenging for old ones. Most of the rooms had no reading material whatever, except for damned Natural Philosophy books. But on the ground floor, back in Mrs. Arlanc’s kitchen, he found a sheaf of old newspapers preserved as fire-starters. He re-ascended in triumph to his garret and read a few of the more recent numbers while excavating a pit in his congealed porridge.

Of the past week’s editions, several actually agreed on something factual. This happened about as often as a Total Eclipse of the Sun, and was just as likely to cause panic in the streets. They agreed that Queen Anne was going to open Parliament tomorrow.

Daniel had been conceiving of this Queen as a caricature of elderliness and frailty. News that this half-embalmed figment was going to clamber out of bed and do something of consequence made Daniel feel ashamed of himself. When the Arlancs returned from church in the late afternoon, and the Mrs. trudged up to the garret to collect the tray and porridge-bowl, Daniel announced that tomorrow he would read his mail, and perhaps even put on clothes and get out of bed.

Mrs. Arlanc, who hid competence beneath a jiggly, henlike façade, smiled at this news; though she had the good manners to keep her lips pressed together so that Daniel would not be exposed to the sight of her teeth. Like most Londoners’, these had been well blackened by sugar.

“You chose aptly, sir,” she allowed the next morning, backing through the narrow door with a basket of books and papers balanced on her tummy. “Sir Isaac inquired after you for a third time.”

“He was here this morning?”

“Is here now,” Mrs. Arlanc answered, then paused. The entire house had drawn a tiny, sharp breath as the front door was closed. “Unless that was him departing.”

Daniel, who had been sitting up on the edge of his bed, rose to his feet and ventured to a window. He could not see down to the front door from here. But in a few moments he spied a burly fellow plodding away, holding a pole in each hand, followed closely by a black sedan chair, and then a second pole-holding bloke. They patiently built up to a trot, weaving round a few stentorian vendors, knife-grinders, &c. who were making their way up and down Crane Court, pretending to be shocked that the residents were not flocking out of their houses to transact business with them.

Daniel tracked Isaac’s sedan chair until it reached Fleet, which was a howling flume of Monday morning traffic.