Newton’s Fire

IV

Pelham pulled onto the hard shoulder of the dual carriageway, the better to look at the anagram for himself. ‘Sous is French,’ he said. ‘Did Newton even speak French? I thought it was all English and Latin back then.’

Luke nodded. ‘He taught himself so that he could read St. Didier in the original.’ He turned to the first page to show them the citation from Le Triomphe Hermetique.

‘This Museum of the History of Science woman of yours,’ said Rachel. ‘Olivia, wasn’t it? Can we talk to her?’

‘I don’t know her number.’

‘But she’s in Oxford, yes?’ said Luke. ‘Why don’t we go see her? It’s pretty much on our way.’

‘It’s Sunday. Her museum will be shut by now.’

‘Don’t you know where she lives?’

Pelham shrugged. ‘I know where she lived back then. Odd-something. It seemed so apt for her. Oddminster, maybe. Oddhampton.’

Luke typed the first three letters into the SatNav and let its predictive software go to work. ‘Oddingley or Oddington,’ he said.

‘Oddington. That’s it.’ Pelham looked at them both. ‘What do you reckon? Worth a visit?’

‘Damned right,’ said Luke. ‘These people know who we are. The police and counterterrorism and god-knows who else are on their side. They’ll be watching our friends and families, probably monitoring the Internet and the media too. They’ll find us eventually. I say we fight back while we can. If we can find out what they’re looking for, we can take the story public and maybe even be believed.’

Pelham nodded. ‘Rachel?’

She nodded emphatically. ‘The sooner we get started, the better. Oxford will be safe enough as long as they’re still searching Crane Court.’

‘Good,’ said Pelham. ‘We’re unanimous.’ He pulled a lever and the roof began to pack itself away in his boot, prompting Luke to give him a look. ‘They’re after a car with its roof up,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ said Luke. ‘This’ll fool them.’

The papers began to rustle and flap on the back seat as they moved off. Rachel passed them to Luke to stow in the glove compartment. ‘Sous Ashmolean,’ she smiled. ‘What on earth’s down there? What was Newton working on when Ashmole died?’

‘In May 1692?’ replied Luke. ‘Not much. He was still recuperating from the Principia.’ It was understandable enough. Writing it had been arguably the greatest sustained intellectual effort in scientific history. And it had left him utterly exhausted. ‘But he began working again towards the end of the year. On alchemy.’

‘Triggered by whatever Ashmole left him,’ suggested Pelham.

‘The dates fit,’ agreed Luke. ‘And he worked himself sick over the next twelve months. And I do mean sick. He had a pretty severe mental breakdown, writing bizarre letters to Samuel Pepys and John Locke, accusing them of all kinds of fantastical stuff. Then he wrote them profuse apologies, blaming exhaustion and fumes from his experiments.’

‘Two letters hardly constitutes a breakdown,’ said Rachel.

‘There were plenty of other indicators too,’ said Luke. ‘For one, it looks like that year broke him. He published some ground-breaking work afterwards, particularly Opticks, but his breakthrough thinking was largely done. And then he wrote this notorious paper called Praxis that …’ He broke off, frowned.

‘What?’ asked Rachel.

‘Nothing,’ said Luke. ‘Just coincidence. It has to be.’

‘What has to be?’

‘This paper he wrote. It’s not dated, but we’re pretty sure he wrote it in summer or autumn 1693, because it doesn’t make sense unless he was going through some kind of crisis at the time.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s the thing. He claimed in it that he’d achieved multiplication.’

Rachel shook her head. ‘Multiplication?’

‘It’s the ultimate goal of the alchemist,’ said Pelham, answering for Luke. ‘Newton was effectively claiming that he’d discovered the philosopher’s stone itself.’