A Calculus of Angels (The Age of Unreason, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 4: The Age of Unreason

Keyes, J. Gregory

 
9780345406071: A Calculus of Angels (The Age of Unreason, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345406079 ISBN 13: 9780345406071
Verlag: Del Rey, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

The second volume in the author's alternative history trilogy, following Newton's Cannon, pits Sir Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin against a wave of black magic that plays havoc with the history of the eighteenth-century Europe. Original.

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Aus dem Klappentext

non, the critically acclaimed first volume in J. Gregory Keyes's Age of Unreason series, brilliantly combined the best of alternate history, fantasy, and science fiction in a bravura reimagining of the tempestuous eighteenth century. Now, Keyes triumphantly adds to his masterpiece in the making . . .

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

1722: A second Dark Age looms after the devastating impact of an asteroid, unnaturally drawn to Earth by dire creatures who plot against the world of men. Yet this destruction is just the opening salvo in a war of annihilation.

Sir Isaac Newton and his young apprentice, Benjamin Franklin, have taken refuge in ancient Prague, seeking the secrets of the aetheric beings whose vast powers and new sciences have so nearly destroyed humanity . . . yet who may prove to be its last, great hope.

But their safety is tenuous, as Peter the Great marches his unstoppable forces across Europe. And half a world away, Cotton Mather and Blackbeard the

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Chapter One: Der Lehrling

Distracted as he was, the sudden pounding at the door captured all of Benjamin Franklin's attention. Sticking his head above the bedsheets, he stared for an instant at the source of the noise, completely at a loss.

"Katarina!" A man's voice shouted, profundo, followed by ever more violent thuds.

The appropriate reaction occurred to Ben, and he swiftly disentangled himself from milky limbs with as much enthusiasm as he had earlier entangled in them.

"It's my father!" Katarina whispered.

"Oh, only your father," Ben hissed back, reaching frantically for his breeches. "Ask him to come back later, then, will you?" He tumbled out of the bed and began struggling into the breeches, wondering where the rest of his clothing and his haversack had gone to.

"Katarina!" her father roared again. "Open the door. I know you have a man in there!"

"I don't think he will listen to me," Katarina replied.

Diving for his shirt, Ben yet allowed himself an admiring glance at tousled honey hair, half obscuring a softly rounded face still rosy from exertion. "Well, should I introduce myself?" Ben asked, yanking his shirt over his head and starting toward where his waistcoat lay crumpled in the corner. He made a mental note to learn to undress more neatly, even when passion ruled.

"I wouldn't. He has a pistol."

"A pistol?"

"Well, he has a commission in the army."

"What? You didn't think this worth mentioning?"

"I wasn't thinking much about my father just now. Besides, I thought he would be gone all day."

"Quite understandable. This window opens?"

"Yes." She sat up in the bed, allowing the sheets to drop away from her upper body, and despite himself, Ben grinned. The floor-length mirror behind Katarina grinned back at him from a face still rounded by the last traces of boyhood and haloed by thoroughly mussed chestnut locks. "Sorry to leave in such a rush," he apologized, pleased at how smooth his German had become.

"Don't forget you promised to show me the palace."

"I shan't, never fear. Expect my letter."

He bent to kiss her and heard a key suddenly grating in the lock.

The kiss turned into a quick nip on the lips. "Remember me," he said, grabbing his haversack and rushing to the window, flinging it recklessly open.

"Don't think ill of me!" she called from behind him. "I don't do this all the time. But I know more than I showed you...."

Ben was no longer listening, concentrating as he was on gripping the windowsill, looking down at his feet superimposed over cobblestones two stories below. He did not hesitate, for at seventeen his body was long and strong, near six feet, and he was confident of his athletic ability--at least, more confident than he was of his capacity to withstand a pistol shot.

The pavement shocked up through the bones of his legs into his belly, forcing out a pronounced oof, but he straightened quickly, looking about to see if he had been noticed. Happily, the street was deserted--but he had gone fewer than fifty yards when the door banged open behind him. He was running already, not up the street or down it, but straight toward the Moldau River.

"Goddamn lech!" a man's voice roared, accompanied by a bright barking sound. Something whizzing struck sparks on the pavement two yards to Ben's right.

"Beelzebub!" he grunted, and then leapt again, this time vaulting over the wall that kept high waters from swallowing Kleinseit. He paused for just an instant to slip the metallic key dangling from his waistcoat into the tiny pocket near his belt--and disappeared.

Or at least to the casual observer, he reminded himself. Among other things, the aegis built into his waistcoat bent light around it, a trick that fooled some mechanisms of the eye but not others. From the corner of his eye, the vengeful father might catch a glimpse of Ben, and staring straight on he would perceive an eye-hurting blur. Of course, the aegis also emitted a repulsive gravity that turned such objects as musket balls, but Ben's experiments had shown that as a shield the device sometimes failed. Rather than further test it, he scrambled down the stone and sand embankment to the river. There he drew out the contents of the haversack--a pair of odd-looking shoes, stiff and solid like a Dutchman's but comically larger and more boat shaped. Behind him, the hollering continued--albeit with a somewhat confused quality--as he donned them.

Katarina had been so sure her father would be gone until nightfall. Or had she? Might it be some plan of hers to trap him into marriage? After all, these days he was a fine catch, and she not without ambition.

As quickly as he dared, he placed first one foot and then the other onto the surface of the river and awkwardly glided away, around the shielding bulk of little Venedig Island. The shouts faded behind him, and once he was certain he was far enough away to risk it, he drew out the key. Wearing the aegis restricted its wearer's vision as well, faded the world to rainbow at the edges, as if one stared through prism eyes. Much like being caught in a girl's bedroom by her father, it was a less-than-comfortable sensation.


He finally found his stride, sliding his feet from side to side as if skating. It was rougher than skating, however, harder to keep his balance, but at last he was sure enough of himself to take his eyes off his feet. Just in time, too, for looking up he noticed a boat with an instant still to avoid it. He had a glimpse of a wide-eyed boatsman, heard his terrified Gott! before he was beyond, bouncing perilously over bow waves, and then weaving in front of the small craft.

People were staring and shouting from the shore as well as if they had never seen a man skating upon the Moldau before. But perhaps they had not, he thought smugly. Not when it wasn't frozen.

Grinning, he pushed on, still marveling at the way his shoes pressed against the flowing water without touching it, like two magnets with like poles shoved together. He turned back upstream, laughing at the peculiar resistance, Katarina and her father already forgotten, sliding two steps forward but nevertheless moving back with the vaster sweep of the current. Turning again, he lost his balance and teetered precariously on one foot, arms windmilling, but he did not fall. He knew all about falling from practice the day before: The shoes stayed out of the water, making it hard to get his head up; the only solution was to take them off, a clumsy business.

After an instant or two, he relaxed, marveling instead at his surroundings. It was a beautiful day--or as beautiful as days got now. Fingers of sunlight groped down through billowy clouds, tearing blue portals to a more cheerful sky. In the past two years blue sky had been so rare a sight that, if it could be minted, it would replace gold and silver as the currency of nations. Sweet, honeyed light traced languidly across the eldritch rooftops of Prague, quickening copper and gilded steeples, dancing across the gray waters of the Moldau as easily as he did. For a moment, he seemed beyond himself, a part of that singular gift from the heavens, and it came to him like a wind at his back that if he could walk upon water by the labor of his own mind, his own hands, he could do anything. He could bring sunlight back to the world. He would.

It was, he thought with a trace of an old anguish, the least he could do for having taken it away.


The inconstant sun was hiding again when he reached the Charles Bridge, and neither the span nor the baroque iron saints that...

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Verlag
Del Rey
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345406079
ISBN 13 
9780345406071
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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9780345406088: A Calculus of Angels (The Age of Unreason, Band 2)

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ISBN 10:  0345406087 ISBN 13:  9780345406088
Verlag: Del Rey, 2000
Softcover