Will Adams: Newton’s Fire

‘He’d have told someone,’ she protested.

‘No,’ insisted Luke. ‘He hated sharing his ideas. Every time he did, it inevitably kicked off some new controversy. With Hooke, with Flamsteed, with Leibniz. Besides, he was head of the Royal Mint, remember? And he believed he’d discovered the philosopher’s stone. Imagine the panic there’d have been if word had got out that the man in that job had discovered how to turn base metals into gold. And when he was dying, he went through everything he’d ever written and made a great bonfire of all the papers he didn’t want outliving him. No one knows what they were, but I’ll bet they were about the Ark, about electricity. He’d have been terrified of people using them to trash his reputation and denounce him as a sorcerer and a heretic.’

‘But he missed two sets of the papers,’ murmured Rachel, finally coming around. ‘And Jay found the first in Jerusalem.’

‘And I found the second in your aunt’s attic.’ He checked the Ark. Its lid looked like solid gold, but it wasn’t heavy enough for that, so it was presumably wood covered by gold leaf. Rachel helped him remove it and set it down on the floor. Then they both looked inside.

‘What the hell?’ muttered Rachel.

But Luke only nodded. It was much as the schematic depicted: a honeycomb of cells separated by wooden panels and fibreglass mats. A lead coil stood on its side in each compartment. He picked one up. Not pure lead but an alloy formed into a thin grid then stuffed with metallic paste and covered with cloth before being rolled. He peered down into the vacant bay. A sheet of wood riven by filaments of gold lay a few inches down, hinting at a second and maybe even a third layer of cells beneath.

‘How does it work?’ asked Rachel.

Luke returned the coil to its berth. He put his finger and thumb on it and its neighbour. ‘Each of these pairs form a single electric cell,’ he said. ‘Combine them with other cells and you have a battery.’ It was actually how batteries had got their name, because they worked so much more effectively in parallel, like cannon. ‘Twenty cells on top. At least twenty more beneath. That’s forty minimum, maybe sixty.’

‘Enough to kill a turkey?’

‘God, yes. And see these mats? Fibreglass is porous enough to allow liquid to seep through.’

A wry smile. ‘So Newton had fibreglass now?’

Luke nodded at the oak chests. ‘There are lots of linen sheets in there. They’d have worked fine. But acid degrades linen pretty quickly, so Jay must have used Newton’s specs to create modern versions of everything. New coils, new dividers, fresh chemicals. But the wiring is all Newton’s.’

‘Wiring?’ frowned Rachel.

‘Wood doesn’t conduct electricity. Gold is about the best conductor there is. Put the two together and you’ve got wiring.’ He patted the sides of the Ark. ‘I’ll bet there’s more inside these walls.’

‘What does it do?’

‘I don’t know. I’d have to strip it down.’

Rachel touched her forehead, as if she had a headache coming on. ‘You must have some idea.’

‘I know how to start it,’ he said. ‘Just pour in sulphuric acid and distilled water and then turn on this electric motor.’ He kicked it with his foot.

‘The Ark won’t generate its own power?’

‘Capacitors and batteries are typically storage devices, not generators. Newton would have used some kind of friction machine. He had this saying as an old man: if you want to keep your legs, you have to use your legs. So maybe he invented the treadmill or the exercise bike; I wouldn’t have put it past him.’ He frowned, developing a headache of his own now. And each breath was taking more effort. ‘Oh, hell,’ he said, when he realized the implication. ‘They’ve turned off our air.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘They can depressurize back here. They must be doing it now.’

‘No!’ cried Rachel. ‘What’ll happen?’

‘I don’t know. Altitude sickness, I guess. Headaches. Nausea. Unconsciousness.’

She gave him a fierce look. ‘Death?’

He felt wretched. He wanted to comfort her. But she deserved the truth. ‘Eventually,’ he said.

‘We have to fight back,’ she said grimly. ‘How can we fight back, Luke?’

He placed his hand on the Ark. ‘This is a weapon, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I think it’s time we found out what it can do.’

Avram glanced down at the remote control trigger in his left hand. It gave him an intoxicating sense of power. All he needed to do was pop the safety catch and press the red trigger and the world would be transformed.

But not yet …

Another tour of the walls, exhorting Shlomo and Danel and their men to stay alert for movement outside, for possible counterattacks. Not that they needed telling. They were all pumped up by adrenalin and success. Only Benyamin was looking miserable. ‘Aren’t you glad you came?’ Avram asked.

The big man just shrugged.

Avram returned to his laptop, checked for latest news. It amused him to hear the Minister for Foreign Affairs gabbling about the prisoners whose release he had already secured. And it thrilled him to see aerial footage of the Dome from the very same helicopters he could hear thundering above. He flipped through his rota of news shows, going so fast that he passed one channel before he realized something wasn’t right. He went back. Yes. Until now, every one of them had been all Dome all the time. But this one had split its screen. One half showed the Dome; the other showed only empty sea and sky. But a red banner ran across its foot.

Dome conspiracy aircraft arriving Ben Gurion shortly

Avram’s heart squeezed. How the hell had they found out? Had someone talked? But then the anchor explained about Track Changes in the prisoner-release demand. He felt furious with his own sloppiness, but he couldn’t see how it changed anything. The Israelis had to realize that shooting the plane down would mean instant and catastrophic consequences. But he kept a wary eye on that screen from then on, all the same.

There was no time for finesse, for working out in which order to do things. Luke and Rachel tore open crates of bottled sulphuric acid and distilled water, uncapped them and poured them in roughly equal measures into the Ark’s cells. The liquid vanished as fast as they glugged it in, seeping through into the cells beneath. The floor quickly became littered with empties, and still it wasn’t full.

‘What will it do to the plane?’ asked Rachel. ‘Aren’t they built to withstand lightning strikes?’

‘Only because their outer hulls are insulated from their inner hulls,’ said Luke. ‘So lightning can’t get through. But that also means that an electrical surge inside can’t escape so easily. Everything could get frazzled.’

‘Including us?’

He grimaced. ‘It’s our only chance.’ The air was thin and vaporous. Their movements grew increasingly clumsy from lack of oxygen, their eyes watering with migraines. But they kept disgorging bottles until finally the Ark was full. They heaved its lid back on, then Luke stooped by the electric motor. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Ready,’ said Rachel.

He flipped the switch and took a step back, fearful of something extraordinary. But nothing happened. Rachel looked at him. ‘It’ll take time,’ he said.

The Ark began to steam and smoke, filling the hold with noxious fumes. Then it seemed almost to crackle. The air, despite its thinness, became increasingly charged. Luke’s skin began to tingle. The tingling turned to itching, his skin infested by swarms of invisible insects that now burrowed inside him, squeezing his organs, pumping his heart, making his blood fizz like some madcap experiment.