A Calculus of Angels Read Online Free PDF

you, Benjamin Franklin,”

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    Robert said. “You’ve made much greater magic than this.”
    “I suppose,” Ben replied, “but perhaps that’s what impresses me. This clock was here for hundreds of years before true science came to be. It’s just a clever machine. But so clever, Robin, and with so much attention to beauty. It is entirely practical and entirely a thing of art at the same moment—and that moment stretched to centuries.”
    “I’m sure he was very clever with his hands, the man who built this,” Robert temporized, “but p’rhaps not so quickwitted in other ways. As I hear it, he was blinded so he couldn’t repeat his feat. A truly intelligent man would know’t‘ be wary of the whims o’ kings ‘n’ lords.”
    “Is it my imagination, or are you still mothering me?” Ben asked softly. “Do you know something I don’t, Robin?”
    Robert chuckled. “I know plenty you don’t, boyo, and don’t you f’rget it. But nothin‘ specific worrisome—just an itch I have today.”
    “Maybe it’s time you settled down and became a father. That’ll scratch that itch right well.”
    “Hah. Some cures are worse than any affliction.”
    A gilded cockerel suddenly stuck its head from the clock face and flapped its wings. “Let’s on,” Ben said. “The performance is at an end, and the Vulture is a stone’s throw that way.”
    The Vulture was indeed only a few doors away, but the beggars in the square had noticed them now and swarmed about, hands thrusting out, eyes and mouths pleading. Ben set his gaze straight ahead and brushed through them—the children, the nursing mothers, the old men. In his first months in the city, Ben had been wont to give them what he could, but by degrees his heart had hardened; for the simple fact was that there were too many of them, and for each he satisfied with a coin, twenty were left to stare grudgingly after him.
    Prague was bursting its walls with refugees of all sorts, from peasants driven from the land to the emperor himself, fleeing the fall of Vienna. The most and poorest of them dwelt in New Town, sleeping in whatever tents or shanties A CALCULUS OF ANGELS
    they could piece together; but many made their way here, to the heart of things, during the day, despite the periodic rounds of soldiers who cleared them out.
    Ben also knew that none of them were starving, due to the manna machines he had helped Newton design. Manna might be unpleasant, but it was food and free for the asking.
    A man at the door of the Vulture looked them over in case they might be beggars, but he let them pass without comment. Even at this time of day the tavern was nearly full, though it was no small place. Soldiers in uniforms rough and fine, gentlemen in stylish frock coats, workmen in stained shirts stood or sat at the long wooden tables, both in the darkened rooms and outside in the beer garden. Ben and Robert chose a table in the corner mostly because there was still room on its benches. Almost as they sat down, a serving girl with a thin face and lank brown hair brought them each a beer.
    “Thank you, my dear,” Ben said, flashing her a smile.
    Robert lifted his wooden tankard. “To your new invention, the Jesus shoes!”
    he pronounced.
    “Hush, you butterhead!” Ben said, nearly choking on his drink. “Now who’s being incautious around the Romish?”
    Robert grinned and took a gulp of his beer. “ ‘An eagle abroad but an owl at home,” “ he quoted. ”So what do you call those things?“ He gestured vaguely beneath the table.
    “Aquapeds,” Ben replied.
    “Of course. Nothing is scientifical unless you name it in the Latin,” Robert remarked, a bit mockingly.
    Ben didn’t bite at the bait, but instead tasted his beer—it was black, bitter, and solid going down. “God save the king,” he toasted automatically, and then wished he hadn’t.

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    “The king!” Robert agreed, and they tipped their tankards hard.
    When