Charles Sheffield - The Amazing Dr. Darwin

“It will define the future. My second question: what will you do now?”

“I told you. Nothing. Unlike steam, I have no future.”

“That is not an acceptable answer. I can see why you hate bitterly the court of France. I would feel the same. But vengeance can never make a full life. I have a different suggestion, if you will hear me out.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No. I speak now both as physician and engineer. For your physical condition, I regret to say that I can do nothing. It is congenital. For the rest—” Darwin rummaged in the pocket of his greatcoat, and came up with Jacob Pole’s letter. “Do you have pen and ink?”

“I will get it.”

Darwin smoothed a page and turned to its blank back side. “This part of the country may not be safe for you. You must travel to Birmingham, well north of here. When can you leave?”

“Nothing holds me here. If necessary I can leave at once.”

“Good. I am going to give you an introduction to a Mr. James Watt.” Darwin took the goose quill, dipped it, and began to write. “He will, at my request, employ you in the Soho works. I propose to point out that your possible contributions are many in number, and he should attend most carefully to your ideas on speed governors and anything else.”

“Attend—as the court of France attended? Dr. Darwin, I may be in England, but my height is no greater than in Paris. I will be taken no more seriously.”

“Not so. You do not know good Jimmy Watt.” Darwin was scribbling furiously. “Talk to him of engineering, you could be stark naked and painted indigo and he would not notice. He has said to me, many a time, a man is not measured by wealth or stature or family name, but by the ideas that lie inside his head. You and he will get along famously—take my word on it. He will teach you steam .”

He sanded the ink, blew on it, and stood up.

“Come to Newlands, early tomorrow morning. You will travel with Colonel Pole. You heard him, no doubt, tonight, but he did not see you and you observed only one aspect of him. You will discover the rest in transit . Let me only say that you may trust him with your life, and you should allow him to handle any emergency. As for me, I must divert to London for three days. When I return to Birmingham I look forward to hearing of your progress there.”

He took one last look at the calculating engine, then went across to where Elie Marйe was standing staring at the letter of introduction. He leaned down and held out his hand. “I say this, sir, in all sincerity. It has been an honor and a privilege to make your acquaintance.”

The other man stretched up to his full height as they shook hands. “And to make yours, Dr. Darwin.” Elie Marйe’s eyes were level with Darwin’s ample midriff. He raised them to the other man’s face, and added in a voice of new confidence and optimism, “It is as you say, sir, a man must not be judged by his stature—or his girth .”

A freezing wind blew in Darwin’s face as he walked the edge of the cliff, but he chuckled at Marйe’s remark. A joke was the best barometer of mental weather. Forget Elie Marйe’s size. The man was tough. He would survive, and for him the best years were yet to be. James Watt would welcome him like a brother, and between them they would light a torch to set the world ablaze.

And when that happened—Darwin’s thoughts grew more somber—Elie Marйe would have his revenge. The force of science was stirring in the world, and the old order of courts and emperors could not stand against it. This cold wind of midnight, blowing south into Europe, was for the old regimes. With America gone, who could say where lightning might strike next? The crowned heads of Europe had reason to rest uneasy on their robed shoulders.

Darwin opened the front door of Newlands quietly and went light-footed upstairs. He hesitated on the landing. Should he wake Jacob Pole, and tell him what had happened?

No. He proceeded to his own bedroom. Tonight his thoughts were too dark for any company but his own. Tomorrow would be soon enough for his old friend to make the acquaintance of a great man.

“The fever will break at dawn. If she wakes before that, no food. Boiled water only, if she asks for drink. I will infuse a febrifuge now, that you can give in three hours time if she is awake and the fever has not abated.”

Darwin rose heavily from the bedside and moved to the fireplace, where oil lamps illuminated the medical chest standing on the oak escritoire. It was past midnight, and he moved as though he was weary to the bone.

Jacob Pole had been standing motionless by the fire, his eyes fixed on the restless form of the young woman lying on the bed. Now he bit his lip and shook his head unhappily.

“I just wish that you could stay the night, Erasmus. It’s late already. Are you sure that the fever will lessen?”

“As sure as a man can be, Jacob, when we deal with disease. I wish that I could stay, but there is a bad case of puerperal fever in Rugeley that I must see tonight. Already the ways are becoming foul, but you know as well as I do that sickness will not wait on convenience.”

He looked ruefully down at his leather leggings, spattered with drying mud from the late November rain. “If anything changes for the worse, send Prindle after me. He knows the route well. And before I go I will leave you materials for tisanes, and instructions to prepare them. Do you have somebody reliable to help you with them?”

“I do. But these will be done with my own hands. I will trust you with her, but no one else.”

“Aye, I should have known that. I’m sorry, Jacob. Weariness has a hold on me. I’ll wake when I have a few breaths of the night air.”

He began to select from the medical chest, while his companion walked to the bedside and gazed unhappily at his wife as she tossed in fevered sleep. His weariness showed only in his reddened eyes, and the more pronounced trembling of his thin hands.

Erasmus Darwin looked at him sympathetically as he sorted the drugs he needed, then took paper and quill and prepared careful written instructions for their use.

“Attend now, Jacob,” he said, as he handed him the written sheets. “There is one preparation here that I would normally insist on administering myself. These are dried tubers of aconite, cut fine. You must make an infusion for three hundred pulse beats, then let it cool before you use it. It serves as a febrifuge, to reduce fever, and also as a sudorific, to induce sweating. That is good for these cases. If the fever should continue past dawn, here is dried willow bark, for an infusion to lower body temperature.”

“After dawn. Yes. And these two?” Jacob Pole held up the other packets.

“Use them only in emergency. If there should be convulsions, send for me at once, but give this as a tisane until I arrive. It is dried celandine, together with dried flowers of silverweed. And if there is persistent coughing, make a decoction of these, dried flowers of speedwell.”

He looked closely at the other man and nodded slightly to himself as he saw the faint hand tremor and yellowish eyes. He rummaged again in the medical chest.

“And here is one for you, Jacob.” He raised his hand, stifling the other’s protest. “Don’t deny it. I saw the signs again when I first walked in here tonight. Malaria and Jacob Pole are old friends, are they not? Here is cinchona, Jesuit-bark, for your use. Be thankful that I have it with me—there’s little enough call for it on my usual rounds. Rheumatism and breech babies, that’s my fate.”

During his description of the drugs and their use, his voice had been clear and unhesitating. Now, at the hint of humor, his usual stammer was creeping back in.