The Truth is Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

a new gunpowder I had developed. Lethal. It was absolutely lethal, very unstable at the time. I had struck on using a different potassium salt than is usually used. The nitrate of potassium is the usual component of gunpowder, but I was using potassium muriate. Twice as powerful. I believe it liberates more oxygen in the combustion process, and as my early work on oxygen proved, this gas is—”
    “Yes, yes, very well,” snapped Napoleon. “I know you can kill people. My question to you is this. Can you manufacture it again? Could you make, for example, enough for two hundred thousand men?”
    Lavoisier smiled. “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth. Of course I can, given enough time, and money, but you have a garrison here of what? Five hundred men? What do you want with such large amounts of gunpowder?”
    “Six hundred,” said Napoleon pedantically, “but the weaponry is not for Elba. Come with me.”
    He stood and walked over to a small door that led off the side of the dining room. Lavoisier followed the Emperor along ornate corridors and up narrow stairs to a small study on the first floor. Napoleon fiddled with the blinds, trying to shed a little more light into the room, in the centre of which stood a large square table, the entire surface of which was covered with a detailed map of Europe.
    “The best my map-makers ever made,” he said proudly. “Come and look, come and look.”
    They wandered around the map, admiring its beautiful draughtsmanship, its colour and detail.
    Lavoisier gazed at the map, almost speechless. A tear formed in one eye. “How much of it I saw! But how much still to see!” His hand stroked the outline of the French coast.
    “You will see France again,” Napoleon said, as if soothing a child. His eyes scoured the map greedily. “In the spring we will leave this rock, you and I, and as many men as I can muster from Elba, from Sicily, from Corsica. We will land on the French coast, somewhere near Antibes, and then we will strike inland. We will march this way, through the Bas Alps, to Grenoble, thence to Rives and Lyons. Then Paris. We will arrive there without firing a shot. Undoubtedly on the way we will meet some force sent to intercept us, and I will throw my coat open and say, ‘Here is your Emperor’s breast. Kill me if you will! If not, follow me to glory!’ and the men will all fall on their knees and shout, ‘Vive L’Empereur!’ They will love me as they did before and we will depose the puppet king. Then the British and the Russians will start to fear me, and will send forces to engage me.
    “Most likely I will march north-east to Brussels, and battle will be met.” He pointed at the map idly, his finger drifting, his mind playing out the military encounters like a game of chess. “Maybe here, at Wavre, or Mont-Saint-Jean, or at some godforsaken village near by, like this one, Waterloo.”
    “You dream!” Lavoisier said.
    “No, I know these things. This is my world and I will win these battles, with the help of your world. You will make enough of this gunpowder of yours to blow the British into the sea!”
    “No,” said Lavoisier simply, “I won’t.”
    “You will.”
    “No,” Lavoisier repeated, “I won’t. As it happens, I have already sold the recipe to the British.”
    “What!” roared Napoleon. He thundered round the table and roared at Lavoisier again. “Treachery?”
    The old man held up a hand. He was not in the business of winning arguments by shouting. Napoleon fell silent.
    “I had to make some money somehow. I ran out of what you gave me ten years ago. Anyway, the gunpowder is lethal. Impressive in a demonstration, maybe, but impractical in the field. Now, keep your peace and come with me. It is my turn to show you something.”
    The old scientist led the way down through the bowels of the house to his improvised laboratory, where he swung the door aside to allow the Emperor in. Napoleon was still on the edge of anger,