APTHORP:I think that you do, sir.

WATERHOUSE:Why do you doff your hat to me thus?

APTHORP:To honor you, sir, and to pay my respects to him who made you.

WATERHOUSE:What, Drake?

APTHORP:Why, no, I refer to your Mentor, the late John Wilkins, Lord Bishop of Chester-or as some would say, the living incarnation of Janus. For that good fellow penned the Cryptonomicon with one hand and the Universal Character with the other; he was a good friend of high and mighty Cavaliers at the same time he was wooing and marrying Cromwell’s own sister; and, in sum, was Janus-like in diverse ways I’ll not bother enumerating to you. For you are truly his pupil, his creation: one moment dispensing intelligence like a Mercury, the next keeping counsel like Pluto.

WATERHOUSE:Mentor was a guise adopted by Minerva, and her pupil was great Ulysses, and so by hewing to a strict Classical interpretation of your words, sir, I’ll endeavour not to take offense.

APTHORP:Endeavour and succeed, my good man, for no offense was meant. Good day.

RAVENSCAR:I’m taking this to the printer’s straightaway, but before I do, I was pondering this Newton/Leibniz thing…

WATERHOUSE:What!? Jack Ketch’s performance made no impression on you at all?

RAVENSCAR:Oh, that? I assume you arranged it that way in order to buttress your position as the King’s token Puritan bootlick-whilst in fact stirring rebellious spirits in the hearts and minds of the rich and powerful. Forgive me for not tossing out a compliment. Twenty years ago I’d have admired it, but by my current standards it is only a modestly sophisticated ploy. The matter of Newton and Leibniz is much more interesting.

WATERHOUSE:Go ahead, then.

RAVENSCAR:Descartes explained, years and years ago, that the planets move round the sun like slips of paper caught up in a wind-vortex. So Leibniz’s objection is groundless-there is no mystery, and therefore Newton did not gloss over any problems.

WATERHOUSE:Leibniz has been trying to make sense of Descartes’ dynamics for years, and finally given up. Descartes was wrong. His theory of dynamics is beautiful in that it is purely geometrical and mathematical. But when you compare that theory to the world as it really is, it proves an unmitigated disaster. The whole notion of vortices does not work. There is no doubt that the inverse square law exists, and governs the motions of all heavenly bodies along conic sections. But it has nothing to do with vortices, or the c?lestial ?ther, or any of that other nonsense.

RAVENSCAR:What brings it about, then?

WATERHOUSE:Isaac says it is God, or God’s presence in the physical world. Leibniz says it has to be some sort of interaction among particles too tiny to see…

RAVENSCAR:Atoms?

WATERHOUSE:Atoms-to make a long story short and leave out all the good bits-could not move and change fast enough. Instead Leibniz speaks of monads, which are more fundamental than atoms. If I try to explain we’ll both get headaches. Suffice it to say, he is going at it hammer and tongs, and we will hear more from him in due course.

RAVENSCAR:That is very odd, for he avers in a personal letter to me that, having published the Integral Calculus, he’ll now turn his attention to genealogical research.

WATERHOUSE:That sort of work entails much travel, and the Doctor does his best work when he’s rattling round the Continent in his carriage. He can do both things, and more, at the same time.

RAVENSCAR:In the decision to study history, some will see an admission of defeat to Newton. I myself cannot understand why he should want to waste his time digging up ancient family trees.

WATERHOUSE:Perhaps I’m not the only Natural Philosopher who can put together a “moderately sophisticated ploy” when he needs to.

RAVENSCAR:What on earth are you talking about?

WATERHOUSE:Dig up some ancient family trees, stop assuming that Leibniz is a defeated ninehammer, and consider it. Put your philosophick acumen to use: know, for example, that the children of syphilitics are often syphilitic themselves, and unable to bear viable offspring.

RAVENSCAR:Now you are swimming out into the deep water, Daniel. Monsters are there-bear it in mind.

WATERHOUSE:’Tis true, and when a man has got to a point in his life when he needs to slay a monster, like St. George, or be eaten by one, like Jonah, I think that is where he goes a-swimming.

RAVENSCAR:Is it your intention to slay, or be eaten?

WATERHOUSE:I have already been eaten. My choices are to slay, or else be vomited up on some bit of dry land somewhere-Massachusetts, perhaps.

RAVENSCAR:Right. Well, before you make me any more alarmed, I’m off to the printer’s.

WATERHOUSE:It may be the finest errand you ever do, Roger.

APTHORP:Woe. Bad tidings and alarums! Fear for England… O miserable island!

WATERHOUSE:What can possibly have happened, in the Temple of Mercury, to alter your mood so? Did you lose a lot of money?

APTHORP:No, I made a lot, buying low and selling high.

WATERHOUSE:Buying what?

APTHORP:Tent-cloth, saltpeter, lead, and other martial commodities.

WATERHOUSE:From whom?

APTHORP:Men who knew less than I did.

WATERHOUSE:And you sold it to-?

APTHORP:Men who knew more.

WATERHOUSE:A typical commercial transaction, all in all.

APTHORP:Except that I acquired knowledge as part of the bargain. And the knowledge fills me with dread.

WATERHOUSE:Share it with Pluto, then, for he knows all secrets, and keeps most of ’em, and basks in Dread as an old dog lies in the sun.

APTHORP:The buyer is the King of England.

WATERHOUSE:Good news, then! Our King is bolstering our defences.

APTHORP:But why d’you suppose the Jew braved the North Sea to come and buy it here?

WATERHOUSE:Because ’Tis cheaper here?

APTHORP:It isn’t. But he saves money to buy it in England, because then there are no expenses for shipping. For these warlike commodities are supposed to be delivered, not to some foreign battle-ground, but here -to England-which is where the King intends to use ’em.

WATERHOUSE:That is extraordinary, since there are no foreigners here to practise war upon.

APTHORP:Only Englishmen, as far as the eye can see!

WATERHOUSE:Perhaps the King fears a foreign invasion.

APTHORP:Does it give you comfort to think so?

WATERHOUSE:To think of being invaded? No. To think of the Coldstream Guards, the Grenadiers, and the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards fighting foreigners, ‘stead of Englishmen, why yes.

APTHORP:Then it follows, does it not, that all good Englishmen should bend their efforts to bringing it about.

WATERHOUSE:Let us now choose our words carefully, for Jack Ketch is only just round the corner.

APTHORP:No man has been choosing his words more carefully than you, Daniel.

WATERHOUSE: Lest native arms fraternal blood might shed,

For want of alien foes and righteous broil,

We’d fain see foreign canvas off our shores,

And English towns beset by armed Boers.

Our soldiers, if they love by whom they’re led,

May then let foreign blood on English soil.

And if they don’t, and let their colors fall,

Their leader never was their King at all.