The system of the world - By Neal Stephenson Page 0,347

so upset that the blood stopped flowing to his brain for a little while; he remained standing, though, and his eyes stayed open, but it was as if his consciousness had gone into a total eclipse for half a minute or so.

When he was next aware of his surroundings, Saturn was tugging gently at his sleeve. Daniel looked round to discover that he was the only one still on his feet. The Tsar had moved around to Daniel’s side of the table to make room for Isaac. Daniel wedged his skinny pelvis into the slot between the two Peters, Hoxton and The Great, the largest men in the room. Facing them across the table, Newton and Leibniz sat side-by-side in the most awkward arrangement imaginable. They were silhouettes against the window-light, and perhaps it was some small act of mercy that Daniel could see nothing of their facial expressions, only the shapes of their periwigs.

Through Kikin, Peter the Great said to Newton: “I thought of you today.”

“I am honored, your Tsarish Majesty. May I ask in what connexion?” Newton’s head-silhouette angled slightly toward Leibniz. He was guessing it had something to do with the calculus. And so imagine his surprise at Peter’s response:

“Gold! I have never forgotten the day you showed me the Mint, and explained how gold flows to the Tower of London from every corner of the world to be made into guineas there. Today I have taken part in that currency. I have brought ordinary gold from Russia to your Bank, and heavy gold from the ship Minerva to Dr. Waterhouse’s vault around the corner.”

Lengthy was the silence of Newton. Daniel sensed, though he could not see, Isaac’s gaze on him. His face was warm, as if feeling the heat of Isaac’s wrath, and he wondered if his skin was still capable of turning pink.

Damn it anyway. This matter of the Solomonic Gold (he reminded himself) was not Daniel’s affair. He could not care less about it. As a favor to Leibniz, whose name was being dragged through the mud every day by Newton, and as a way to further his own work on the Logick Mill, Daniel had brokered a one-for-one swop of normal for “Solomonic” gold that had finally and improbably been consummated within the last few hours. Minerva was at last free of her cursed burthen. Jack Shaftoe was well on his way to being free of the threat of prosecution and punishment for his past work in coining that gold. The stuff was sitting in the Templar-tomb now, legally under Ravenscar’s control, but effectively Daniel’s to do with as he pleased. Daniel had been working toward this moment for some months now, and ought to have been hoisting a glass or two in carefree celebration. There was this one complication, having to do with Isaac’s notions about Alchemy; but Daniel had gotten better, with age, at accepting and ignoring the quirks and difficult peculiarities of his friends, perhaps even unto the point of self-induced blindness, and so he had not considered this very much until now.

What had ruined it all was the appearance of Monsieur Kohan. Most likely he was a lunatick; but indisputably he knew about the so-called Solomonic Gold, and looked forward to the day when every last ounce of it would be delivered to his custody in St. Petersburg. Whether or not Alchemy was claptrap, some believed in it, and some of them happened to be important, even dangerous. It might have been foolish for Daniel to have swallowed the phantastickal conceit that the heavy gold was infused with divine quintessence. But it would have suggested safer actions, which, had they been taken, would have led to simpler ends.

“That is a very remarkable thing, your Tsarish Majesty,” said Isaac, “and explains much that until this moment has been obscured from me.”

The front door of the tavern was kicked open. A huge man was standing there.

All went black, which Daniel, given his age, and his level of anxiety, was inclined to put down as resulting from the sort of devastating neurological event that was normally followed in a few minutes or hours by massive swelling of the brain and death.

On second thought, he was perfectly fine. Saturn had gripped the edge of the table and flung it up in the air whilst rising to his feet. The table—twelve feet long, and a hundred pounds of thick fir deals—had flipped up to create a barrier between all those sitting on that side