Empire of Unreason (Age of Unreason, Bk 3)

334 Pages·2001·1.86 MB·English

by  J. Gregory Keyes

Empire of Unreason
Book Three of The Age of Unreason
J. Gregory Keyes
A Del Rey® Book
THE BALLANTINE PUBLISHING GROUP • NEW YORK
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it
may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author
nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming hardcover edition of The Shadows
of God by J. Gregory Keyes. This excerpt has been specially set for this edition only and
may not reflect the final content of the hardcover edition.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2000 by J. Gregory Keyes
Excerpt from The Shadows of God by J. Gregory Keyes copyright © 2001 by J. Gregory
Keyes
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto.“
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random
House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001116711
ISBN 0-345-40610-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Hardcover Edition: May 2000 First Mass Market Edition: June 2001
10 987654321
For Veronica Chapman
CONTENTS
Prologue
PART ONE
Magnetisms
1. A Matter of Gravity
2. A Death
3. Flint Shouting
4. A Ghost
5. Snares
6. The Scalped Man
7. Pretender
8. Taxonomy
9. Mask of the Sea
10. The Iron People
11. Seraph
12. Assembly
13. Sun Boy
14. Direction
PART TWO
Cartographies of Darkness
1. Fort Moore
2. Bargains
3. A Tale
4. The Margrave
5. Irena
6. Ambassador
7. Siberian Vision
8. A Box of Snakes
9. Mongols
10. Suspicions and Ribs
PART THREE
Dark Engines
1. First Blood
2. A Question of China
3. Coweta
4. SintiLapitta
5. Lines of Supply
6. New Moscow
7. The Frames
8. The Prophet
9. Keres
10. Red Paths
11. Apollo
12. Cavalries
Epilogue: Weeping Lightning
Acknowledgments
Belated credits to Bob Kobres for his pointers on how to destroy London with an
asteroid. Thanks to Steve Saffel, who had to jump on this boat in midstream, and in a
pretty swift current. My appreciation to Kris Boldis, Ken Carleton, Professor Nell
Keyes, and Nancy Landrum for reading. Thanks to Duane Wilkins of University Books
in Seattle and Mary-Elizabeth Hart of Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, not just for their
dedication to science fiction and fantasy, but for their friendship. Finally, my thanks to
Heather Ramsey, Tony Selto, Bill Nary, and everyone else at Salle Auriol Seattle for
bruising my body but lightening my spirits.
Prologue
His body closed like a fist, each muscle trying to tear free of bone. He snarled through
his teeth, watched the angel with slitted eyes.
“You can still change your mind,” the angel said reasonably, “and obey me.” It raised its
feathery wings. Its face, as always, was a mask of light.
Peter tasted blood in his mouth, but he managed to get the words out as he wanted, clear
and measured. “I am Peter Alexeyevich! I am the tsar of Russia. You cannot command
me.”
“I am an angel of God.”
“You are not. You are a betrayer and a liar.”
“I saved your life. I saved your empire. I helped you control your Old Believers. You
were happy to tell them I was an angel.”
Peter scooted against the cabin wall and dug his hands into the deep pockets of his coat.
His face, which often slipped his control, spasmed terribly. “What do you want?” he
demanded. “What do you devils really want?”
“Only the one thing I asked. Have I ever asked for anything else? Any reward for my
services?”
“It isn’t one thing. It’s everything. I know you now.”
“I doubt that. But, very well, if you insist on dying.”
Peter pulled something from his pocket—a small cube with a circular depression in the
top. It was humming, a single clear note.
The angel paused. “What is that?”
“Something a friend gave me. A wise friend, as it turns out.” He placed a sphere the size
of a musket ball in the depression, and a shriek cut through the fabric of the universe.
Peter felt it in his bones. The angel felt it, too, and dripped fire into Peter’s veins, even
as a wind came that tore it apart, each feather dissolving into a line of smoke.
The death of the angel did not stop the pain. A wave of agony crested over Peter’s head
and dragged him under; and suddenly he had no weight at all, as if he were falling from
a height with no end.
Red Shoes jerked awake to find himself already on his feet. He swayed there for a
moment, trying to remember where he was, but the otherworld sight was still wrapped
around him, making the trees, the earth he stood on, the stars themselves too strange to
recognize.
He found his pipe and a pinch of Ancient Tobacco and lit it from an ember that had
strayed from the remains of the fire. The warm, musky smoke strengthened the breath in
him and curled from his nose. Gradually the world came clear.
He was Red Shoes, war prophet and miracle maker of the Choctaw people, and he stood
on an earthen mound in the Natchez country, near the Great Water Road. The mound’s
top was as broad as a village, and around it lay swamp, the underworld kissing the earth
from beneath.
A soft cough came behind him, and he turned to regard Skin Eater.
Skin Eater was a Natchez man, a descendant of the Sun, his dark skin mottled with even
darker tattoos, blurred by the eighty winters of his life.
“I felt it,” Skin Eater murmured. “Do you know what it was?”
“No,” Red Shoes admitted. “Something important, something strong. My
shadowchildren died bringing it to me.”
“From the West.”
“Yes. Since the strange news from the West began, I have sent my children out to watch.
Now they have seen something.”
“West is a big place,” Skin Eater observed.
“I know. But my shadowchildren tell me no more than that. If only I knew where in the
West…” Red Shoes trailed off, thinking.
Skin Eater reflected for a moment as he lit his own pipe. “You are more powerful than
ever I was,” he said, “perhaps the strongest there has ever been. But your people are
younger than mine—there are things the Natchez remember that the Choctaw do not.”
“I acknowledge that, great-uncle.” It was a title of respect, only. He was not related to
the old man.
Skin Eater swept his arms around. “This place is an image of the world—do you see?
The deeps of the beginning times below and around us, the earth raised up with a face
for each direction. The flat top here is the whole surface of the middle world. Like those
paintings on paper the French use.”
“You mean a map? But maps have things marked on them. Rivers, mountains, towns—”
“But if a town should move, will it move on a French map? Not unless they draw
another map, yes? Here, however, you have only to know how to look. Here, the world
can always be seen true.”
Red Shoes frowned slightly as the implications of the old man’s words sunk in. He took
another puff of his pipe, and began chanting, walking in widening circles upon the top of
the mound, giving smoke to the directions. His feet sank back into the world of spirit, of
dream.
As he walked, the appearance of the mound changed. Below his feet, plains, mountains,
and forests appeared and vanished, as if, indeed, he walked on an enormous and
incredibly detailed map. Excited now, he strode west, looking for what he had seen. He
crossed the Great Water Road, which the English called Mississippi. He towered above
thinning trees, and then there were no trees at all, only grass. There, at last, he found an
obscure place he could not see, a patch of nothing on the image of the world. This was
the thing, the place where his shadowchildren had heard the scream, felt the strange
power.
He made his way back, memorizing the directions as he went. The Natchez country was
easy to find again, for it was in the middle of the mound; and for a moment he was
dizzied, standing at the center of the center of the center. Then he shook himself alive
again.
“Did you find it?” Skin Eater asked.
“What ‘r’ y‘ two talking about when a man is trying’t’ sleep?” A voice grumbled from
nearby. Red Shoes turned to regard a big, broad-faced, knob-nosed Englishman, sitting
up in his blankets.
“Good morning, Tug,” Red Shoes said.
“Mornin‘?” The Englishman glared around at the darkness. “Mornin’ has sunlight, damn
y’r In’yun soul.” He looked around again, this time more worriedly. “What’s got y‘ hup?
Ghosts and ghoulies?”
“Something like that. How set were you on seeing New Paris?”
“W’t y‘ mean? Han’t we goin’ to New Paree?”
“Not anymore. I have to go someplace else.”
“Oh, well, old Tug han’t particular. Long’s there’s women an‘ rum.”
“Well,” Red Shoes began slowly, “now there is the problem…”
Part One
Magnetisms
For it’s well known that bodies act one upon another by the attractions of gravity,
magnetism, and electricity; and these instances shew the tenor and course of Nature, and
make it not improbable but that there may be more attractive forces than these.
—Sir Isaac Newton, Optics 1717
Wherever law ends, tryanny begins…
—John Locke, Second Treatise of Government 1689
1.
A Matter of Gravity
Benjamin Franklin felt awfully pleased with himself as he rose from the polished oak
table to face his audience. The meeting room in the upper story of the Egyptian
Coffeehouse was suffused with milky sunlight that poured through high, wide windows,
blending with arabesques of pipe smoke and ephemeral vapors from a dozen bowls of
coffee. He felt as if he were addressing a Dutch painting—one he himself had
commissioned.
He paused at a small bench, and made as if to pluck at the cloth that covered the
squarish object that lay upon it; but instead, repressing a devilish grin, he turned toward
the assembly and cleared his throat. Coffee bowls clinked and settled as ten men and two
women regarded him expectantly. He summoned up his best orator’s voice.
“The opening questions of the Junto having been asked and answered, I now propose a
modest demonstration. But first a query, my ladies and my gentlemen—and my
otherwise— what is the most pressing problem of our day?”
“Get on with it, Mr. Franklin!” Shandy Tupman piped, in his reedy voice, shaking his
fist in mock threat. “Han’t no schoolroom, this!”
Franklin arched his brows. “And how would you know what the inside of a schoolhouse
looked like, Mr. Tupman?”
That drew a few snickers.
“Only by rumor, sir,” Shandy replied good-naturedly.
“Allow Mr. Franklin his glory, Mr. Tupman,” a beetle-browed fellow named Dawkins
said. “It’s little enough of it he has, as it is.”
A contagious chuckle passed around the room at that, and Franklin kept his smile small:
he was not the least well-known man in the British Commonwealth of America.
“Very gracious,” Franklin said. “And to my question?”
“Bed mites!” someone offered.
“Piss-thin beer!”
“Foolish, prattling, overblown husbands!” asserted a lightly built woman with sapphire
eyes. Her exclamation was punctuated by assenting jeers.
“My dear,” Franklin said, peering down his nose at her. “There’s no cure for that sort of
man but a sensible wife.”
“Some cures take a lifetime to work, it seems,” she said back sweetly, “especially when
the patient is so deeply infected.”
Franklin smiled. “Well, it may be. But one good husband is worth two good wives.”
“And how do you reckon that, husband?” she said.
“Why, my dear Lenka, the scarcer something is, the greater its value.”
He waited for the laughter to die, then put on a more somber face. “Now. In all
seriousness.”
“The malakim,” August Stark said dourly. “That devilish brood and their warlock
footmen are our greatest worry.”
That chased all the good humor out of the room quickly enough.
“You’re on the right track,” Franklin agreed, “but I was thinking more specific.”
Stark rubbed his hammer-heavy jaw. “Tsar Peter and his demon ships.”
“There. Mr. Stark gets the prize.”
“You have remedy for them?” Stark asked. “What have you to show us, Benjamin
Franklin? Enough of this French wit. What have you invented?”
Franklin absorbed Stark’s frank challenge with a modest bow. He understood the man’s
attitude—Stark’s father had died in Venice, fighting those demon ships. He was touchy
on the subject, but a good man.
“No more delays,” Franklin promised, “once I have two ‘prentices to join me here.”
“I’ll sign no indenture papers with you, no more than I would sign for the devil,” Stark
said, “but if it’ll get you on with it, I’ll assist—”
“And me!” Tupman added.
The two men came up, as Franklin uncovered a simple wooden box, a yard long and half
that wide and deep, with two handles.
“Take hold there, fellows,” Franklin encouraged, “and try to lift her up.”
They did. Tupman was a wiry little man, but Stark was a blacksmith with arms like the
shanks of a plow horse. As much as they strained, neither could budge the box.
“Nailed down, ain’t she,” Shandy complained.
“Alley-oop,” Franklin replied, and in a sudden motion, the box lifted from the bench,
taking the two surprised men up with it. It rose without pause to the height of the ceiling
— some fifteen feet—and stuck there, Stark and Tupman dangling from the handles, to
the enthusiastic clapping and calling of the small crowd.
“And there you have it,” Franklin said, bowing just a bit.
Roger Smalls raised his hands. “A flying box, very well. But there have been flying
engines for nigh on ten years now.”
“Ah, but not like this one,” Franklin said. “Those globes on which the tsar hefts his ships
are shells ‘prisoning aethereal spirits—malakim. Every machine to this day which flies
owes its motivation to those evil and untrustworthy creatures. We all know the malakim
plot against us-—I for one will not trust them to bear me up a mile above the Earth. This
device owes them nothing. It repels directly against gravity.”
“You solved the equation? You have the affinity of gravity?”
“Only last week.”
“No wonder you’ve been all puffed up!” David Crowley said excitedly. “And well you
deserve it! I admit to being impressed!”
“So must we all,” Smalls vowed.
“I, for one,” Stark called down from the ceiling, “would now like to see how well it
reverses itself.”
“At your command,” Franklin said and, reaching into his pocket, pulled forth a small
box and twisted a key set in it. The box floated back down, the two men with it.
“This is grand,” Smalls went on. “Now the enemy loses his advantage, if the
depneumifier y‘ spoke of last month works as well as this new flying engine. You can
bring their ships crashing down as you float on up past ’em.”
“The depneumifier needs testing,” Franklin cautioned. “But, yes, we can at least build
flying machines. I’ve got a good start on one, as a matter of fact.”
“Will you publish it to us, Franklin? How it was done?”
“I would not have called you together otherwise. We members of the Junto do not hold
back from one another, and I shan’t hold this back. In fact, if you are all prepared, I shall
—”