The glass structure was a model of a building, complete with a blown dome, and pillars carved of crystal. It was of a Gothickal design, and had the general look of some Government office in London, or a University college. The doors and windows were open to let bees fly in and out. They had built a hive inside-a cathedral of honeycombs.
“With all respect to Mr. Wren, I see a clash of architectural styles here-”
“What! Where?” Wilkins exclaimed, searching the roofline for aesthetic contaminants. “I shall cane the boy!”
“It’s not the builder, but the tenants who’re responsible. All those little waxy hexagons-doesn’t fit with Mr. Wren’s scheme, does it?”
“Which style do you prefer?” Wilkins asked, wickedly.
“Err-”
“Before you answer, know that Mr. Hooke approaches,” the Rev. whispered, glancing sidelong. Daniel looked over toward the house to see Hooke coming their way, bent and gray and transparent, like one of those curious figments that occasionally floats across one’s eyeball.
“Is he all right?” Daniel asked.
“The usual bouts of melancholy-a certain peevishness over the scarcity of adventuresome females-”
“I meant is he sick.”
Hooke had stopped near Daniel’s luggage, attracted by the croaking of frogs. He stepped in and seized the basket.
“Oh, he ever looks as if he’s been bleeding to death for several hours-fear for the frogs, not for Hooke!” Wilkins said. He had a perpetual knowing, amused look that enabled him to get away with saying almost anything. This, combined with the occasional tactical master-stroke (e.g., marrying Cromwell’s sister during the Interregnum), probably accounted for his ability to ride out civil wars and revolutions as if they were mere theatrical performances. He bent down in front of the glass apiary, pantomiming a bad back; reached underneath; and, after some dramatic rummaging, drew out a glass jar with an inch or so of cloudy brown honey in the bottom. “Mr. Wren provided sewerage, as you can see,” he said, giving the jar to Daniel. It was blood-warm. The Rev. now headed in the direction of the house, and Daniel followed.
“You say you quarantined yourself at Epsom town-you must have paid for lodgings there-that means you have pocket-money. Drake must’ve given it you. What on earth did you tell him you were coming here to do? I need to know,” Wilkins added apologetically, “only so that I can write him the occasional letter claiming that you are doing it.”
“Keeping abreast of the very latest, from the Continent or whatever. I’m to provide him with advance warning of any events that are plainly part of the Apocalypse.”
Wilkins stroked an invisible beard and nodded profoundly, standing back so that Daniel could dart forward and haul open the cottage door. They went into the front room, where a fire was decaying in a vast hearth. Two or three rooms away, Hooke was crucifying a frog on a plank, occasionally swearing as he struck his thumb. “Perhaps you can help me with my book…”
“A new edition of the Cryptonomicon?”
“Perish the thought! Damn me, I’d almost forgotten about that old thing. Wrote it a quarter-century ago. Consider the times! The King was losing his mind-his Ministers being lynched in Parliament-his own drawbridge-keepers locking him out of his own arsenals. His foes intercepting letters abroad, written by that French Papist wife of his, begging foreign powers to invade us. Hugh Peters had come back from Salem to whip those Puritans into a frenzy-no great difficulty, given that the King, simply out- out-of money, had seized all of the merchants’ gold in the Tower. Scottish Covenanters down as far as Newcastle, Catholics rebelling in Ulster, sudden panics in London-gentlemen on the street whipping out their rapiers for little or no reason. Things no better elsewhere-Europe twenty-five years into the Thirty Years’ War, wolves eating children along the road in Besancon, for Christ’s sake-Spain and Portugal dividing into two separate kingdoms, the Dutch taking advantage of it to steal Malacca from the Portuguese-of course I wrote the Cryptonomicon! And of course people bought it! But if it was the Omega-a way of hiding information, of making the light into darkness-then the Universal Character is the Alpha-an opening. A dawn. A candle in the darkness. Am I being disgusting?”
“Is this anything like Comenius’s project?”
Wilkins leaned across and made as if to box Daniel’s ears. “It is his project! This was what he and I, and that whole gang of odd Germans-Hartlib, Haak, Kinner, Oldenburg-wanted to do when we conceived the Invisible College*back in the Dark Ages. But Mr. Comenius’s work was burned up in a fire, back in Moravia, you know.”
“Accidental, or-”
“ Excellentquestion, young man-in Moravia, one never knows. Now, if Comenius had listened to my advice and accepted the invitation to be Master of Harvard College back in ’41, it might’ve been different-”
“The colonists would be twenty-five years ahead of us!”
“Just so. Instead, Natural Philosophy flourishes at Oxford-less so at Cambridge-and Harvard is a pitiable backwater.”
“Why didn’t he take your advice, I wonder-?”
“The tragedy of these middle-European savants is that they are always trying to apply their philosophick acumen in the political realm.”
“Whereas the Royal Society is-?”
“ Ever so strictlyapolitical,” Wilkins said, and then favored Daniel with a stage-actor’s hugely exaggerated wink. “If we stayed away from politics, we could be flying winged chariots to the Moon within a few generations. All that’s needed is to pull down certain barriers to progress-”
“Such as?”
“Latin.”
“ Latin!?But Latin is-”
“I know, the universal language of scholars and divines, et cetera, et cetera. And it sounds so lovely, doesn’t it. You can say any sort of nonsense in Latin and our feeble University men will be stunned, or at least profoundly confused. That’s how the Popes have gotten away with peddling bad religion for so long-they simply say it in Latin. But if we were to unfold their convoluted phrases and translate them into a philosophical language, all of their contradictions and vagueness would become manifest.”
“Mmm… I’d go so far as to say that if a proper philosophical language existed, it would be impossible to express any false concept in it without violating its rules of grammar,” Daniel hazarded.
“You have just uttered the most succinct possible definition of it-I say, you’re not competing with me, are you?” Wilkins said jovially.
“No,” Daniel said, too intimidated to catch the humor. “I was merely reasoning by analogy to Cartesian analysis, where false statements cannot legally be written down, as long as the terms are understood.”
“The terms! That’s the difficult part,” Wilkins said. “As a way to write down the terms, I am developing the Philosophical Language and the Universal Character-which learned men of all races and nations will use to signify ideas.”
“I am at your service, sir,” Daniel said. “When may I begin?”
“Immediately! Before Hooke’s done with those frogs-if he comes in here and finds you idle, he’ll enslave you-you’ll be shovelling guts or, worse, trying the precision of his clocks by standing before a pendulum and counting… its… alternations… all… day… long.”
Hooke came in. His spine was all awry: not only stooped, but bent to one side. His long brown hair hung unkempt around his face. He straightened up a bit and tilted his head back so that the hair fell away to either side, like a curtain opening up to reveal a pale face. Stubble on the cheeks made him look even gaunter than he actually was, and made his gray eyes look even more huge. He said: “Frogs, too.”