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The Cartesian Way

Written by Mark H. Huston

Spanish Netherlands, Early October 1632

René;

Within is the singularly most important paper on mathematics ever written. It is called the Crucibellus Manuscript, and it is only the first volume of several.

Digest the enclosed manuscript. This one was hand delivered to me by a man who got it from the writer in Grantville; supposedly a man of our time who accessed the substantial library there.

Mathematics, the sciences, and philosophy have taken a 350-year leap forward overnight!

Your friend in knowledge

Fr. Marin Mersenne

René Descartes looked at the bundle that accompanied the letter. He had heard of the town from the future, who hadn't by now? But there were so many rumors, so many things that sounded too fantastic to be true. So, logically, they were not.

The Protestant church said the age of miracles was over. That was not true, because surely this was a miracle he held in his hands. Or at least the first evidence of a miracle. He cut the string with a small scissors and tore back the several layers of oiled paper from around the folio. Dropping the wrappings to the side he went to his desk, which overlooked the garden of the small house he was renting.

For the next two weeks, he studied the book. The little house was silent. His servant came in the morning, while he slept, and prepared his meals. Then she left him in solitude for the rest of the day. He studied, took notes, and studied more. He settled into a routine of reading a section of the work, taking notes, and then thinking solidly about it for a day or more. He scribbled questions in the margins of the book. And he thought.

And he thought some more.

The third week after receiving the manuscript, and having examined it from many perspectives, he flew into an uncontrollable rage. "It isn't fair!" He threw papers from his desk, tore up notes and letters, kicked furniture, and broke the door of a very sturdy Dutch armoire. He broke dishes, and raged at the great unfairness of it all. "This was mine! Mine! Mine to discover, mine to tell people how to find! My methods. My name. My legacy!" He broke the remaining plates and after exhausting himself, collapsed onto the floor in the small study, sobbing. "This was all to be mine, someday. It is what I've been working on for years. My Methods of Logic. How to think. This should be all mine."

After a while he drew himself up, and began to pick up the pieces of the manuscript. He stacked them carefully together, then set them on a table in front of him. He stood in front of the table, hands behind his back, peering at the neat but tattered stack. "These mathematics are understandable, reachable. And were reached with my methods. The book I am writing now. That I was writing now. That I am no longer writing. That I have no need to ever write."

He stared at the manuscript for an hour, standing in front of it. His mind quieted from the rage, and he began to think. It was what he did; think. To think. Thinking . . .

At the end of the hour, he began to chuckle, and after a moment he broke out into a peal of guffaws. He laughed so hard that he cried. He eventually found himself on the floor again, in front of the table, exhausted.

"Never let it be said that God doesn't have a sense of humor."

Paris February 1633

"Did you know I had a child, Mersenne?" René Descartes rested the copy of an up-time book on the table in front of him, incredulous. "A child? Th-that's preposterous. A child." He shook his head, and ran the alien concept through his brain once again. He tossed it on the table, which was heaped with copies of up-time texts, including several biographies of himself. "When I went to Holland, I vowed to give up women. They are a distraction. A constant and nagging distraction. They make a man unreasonable, and he cannot concentrate." He began to pace in the long room, with tall windows on one side so the sun could stream in. "One tends to think with the wrong brain, the little one, when women are around."

Marin Mersenne looked up from his manuscript, and smiled. "Do I need to remind you, you are talking to a Minim Friar, René? That little brain you speak of is why we take a vow of chastity, along with poverty, and obedience." He pulled up the sleeves of his coarse black wool habit, crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, smiling broadly.

René paused, and then awkwardly guffawed. "Ha! I would suppose so, my friend." He paced again to the table, and spread his arms wide to lean on it. "Look at this. Three hundred years worth of mans' thought. Piled on a table in our brand new Académie Française. Just like that. Plop! And this is just the surface. It will take us years to assimilate all of them. The math, that is straightforward. We can follow nearly all of that. But the philosophy, Marin, that is what excites me."

Marin nodded. "I can see that, René. I can see your influence all over these books. In many ways, your math, and your methods, were the start of nearly all of this. You are the foundation, my friend, of modern thought. It says so, somewhere in this book, I think . . ." He held up another up-time copy.

René tried to suppress a giddy grin, and failed miserably. "Rather remarkable when you think on it, isn't it?" He straightened up from the table and once again failed to suppress a strutting walk toward the windows. "Did you read what it said about me, Marin? About taking care of the woman, the one who bore my child? I provided for her even after my death."

Marin grew still for a moment, waiting for René's giddiness to pass. "It is too bad about the child, René."

René turned back from the window, toward Marin, and shrugged. "No need to mourn. I have left Holland. I will never meet this woman from Holland, never bed her, never have a child with her. And one needs to be born first, in order to die. Even Christ. There is no need to mourn for something that will never happen." He shrugged again. "Butterflies. The up-timers call it the butterfly effect. More poetic than their usual penchant for reducing everything to acronyms."

"It has been how long since they arrived? Eighteen months? Twenty?" Marin shuffled through the pile of papers in front of him.

René leaned against the windowsill. "Do you know what it means, Marin?"

Marin raised his eyebrows. He was a rather handsome man in his thirties. "I think it will take many years before we know what it all means, René. There are so many—"

"—No, that isn't what I am talking about." René waved his arms about as if shooing flies out of the air. "I am taking about me. What it means to me, and how I should interpret my once future actions that will now never be."

"I am not sure I understand . . ."

René came back to the table and picked up the copy of his biography, and waved it at Marin. "I'm talking about this. The man described in these books." He used the first manuscript to shove others about on the table. "Me. You see, up until the moment when this version of the future somehow collided with our reality, I was the same man as described in these books. Maybe even a little while after, at least until I first heard about Grantville. At that point, I became a different man, and the one who wrote these books is forever dead. At least will never exist."

Marin nodded. "It was the same for everyone. We all were changed from what we would have been. Different choices. Different mistakes, different thoughts."

"But you agree that we are the same men, only changed by our knowledge. You and I are not some new creation."

"Yes. We are the same men, just changed in our paths for the last twenty months or so."

René smiled. "So we are the same men as in these books."

"Of course."

"A child" René said. "And a woman. Do you know what this means?"

Marin grinned. "I know it isn't usually in that order. A woman usually comes first."

René made a face at Marin. "Don't mock me, I'm serious here. We have known each other for, what? Ten years? And you know how I always felt about distractions. Women, chiefly. Terrible distractions. I hate distractions" He held up the manuscript. "But look at what I accomplished. Even with a distraction. This nameless Dutch servant girl, and a child. Do you know what this means?"

Marin thought for a moment. He looked at René, and the pile of manuscripts, and then back to René. Finally, he smiled. "I think I see, René. You learned to love someone. In spite of your work, in spite of your hatred for distractions, you learned to love."

René sat at the table across from his friend, serious and muted. "I never thought I could love someone. That I, René Descartes, the man who was—and is to create the new ways of looking at things, could discover love such as that."

"But you have always loved God. I see that from all of your correspondence from your works from the future. You were always scrupulous about staying within doctrine of the church. You clearly have a love of the Church and God."

"Of course. But that's different. Loving God is like loving your mother and respecting your father. It is simply something you do. Quite frankly, staying within doctrine is something you do in order to create—what did I read in one of these down-time political books? Ah, yes. Plausible deniability. Yes, that was it. One must always have plausible deniability when dealing with the inquisition. That's why Galileo wrote his book on planetary motion as taking place in a 'hypothetical' universe. Doesn't look like that was enough, they are still going to put him on trial, aren't they?

"That will be a bit, well, awkward, I think." Mersenne frowned. "It's a great challenge for the church to determine what this all means."

René came back to the table and sat across from his friend. "Awkward, yes. Something we scientists must watch with great interest. Church Doctrine versus Galileo, and Galileo has the up-time science on his side." He pushed some books aside, and opened a copy of a third grade science textbook. This was one of the few original texts they had, and in it was a two-page color drawing of the solar system. The sun was solidly in the middle. Exactly where Galileo had placed it.

Paris, May 1633

"Do you believe it? A woman is Crucibellus. A woman! Damned bluestocking. It sends one to thinking, doesn't it, René?" Etienne Pascal looked down the row of seats toward Descartes and smiled slyly.

The lecture was completed, and the crowd in the small drawing room was beginning to stand and move toward the doors. All around Descartes stood a group of men, and all had been taking copious notes. René Descartes looked back to Pascal, who sat next to him. "Why that smile, Etienne? What is it that you know that we do not?"

Pascal rose with Descartes and leaned in to speak quietly. "My son and daughter have been in the town of the future for several weeks now. I have letters. They say that men and women are equals there. It excites my daughter to no end."

"I have not had the honor of meeting them yet, Monsieur Pascal. Perhaps that can be arranged when I return," Colette Modi said quietly. Descartes turned to look into the eyes of the world-renowned Crucibellus. Her eyes were quite striking in a way he hadn't seen when she was at the podium. While she lectured on number theory today, the intelligence in her voice was clear. But her intense gaze, coupled with her voice, now struck him and his group as someone very special. Pascal recovered first.

"Madame Modi, it is a true joy to meet you in person. We didn't think we would be able to have this time with you, after the lecture." Pascal's manner was smooth, as one who was a member of the petite noblesse should be, thought René a little jealously.

"The pleasure is mine, Monsieur Pascal." She curtsied as she returned the greeting.

Recovering, René bent into his own bow, and out of the corner of his eye he could see several other members of the Académie Française doing the same. "Madame Modi, it is truly a pleasure."

She focused on him directly once again. "René Descartes?"

He rose from his bow and nervously returned her gaze. "Yes, Madame. That is I."

"I imagine that you were well into writing Le Monde when my manuscript was sent to you? My apologies for the interruption. Cogito, ergo sum is a phrase that is known across the centuries. It is a pleasure to know one of France's most famous philosophers."

René felt his face flush, and he bowed again in thanks. "You do me an honor in saying so, Madame Modi. I must admit that the arrival of your manuscript was met by me with . . . uh . . . mixed emotions. So much of the work was based on the very things I was working on. I was, shall we say, cast adrift from my plans."

Madame Modi smiled and nodded to him, her eyes cast down in an apology. "You know we have something in common, Monsieur?"

"I-I am not sure I understand, Madame. Of course we both love the mathematics, and the pursuit of knowledge." René felt off balance as the woman looked directly at him.

"A dream. According to your biographers, you decided to become a philosopher when you were in Germany many years ago, on a winter campaign when you served with Duke Maximilian. In what was called a 'stove heated room.'"

René smiled. "Ah yes, my Day of Discoveries and Night of Dreams. I have read some of the future accounts of my past and my no longer possible future." He looked at her with gentle accusation. "There was much abbreviation I found. But on the whole, they seem to have gotten it right. There are a few items, but I won't quibble. But you are right, a dream is what sent me down the path. Or a series of dreams, rather. Did the same thing happen to you?"

"Somewhat the same thing. I had a dream where all of the great mathematicians faded into darkness after the Ring of Fire, unknown. I took as my task to make sure that wouldn't happen. Newton should not be overlooked."

René nodded quietly. "Nor should Sartre, or the Scotsman, Ferrier."

She looked at him, with a questioning gaze. "You have read much, I see. More than I, certainly. I have focused on the math, and left the philosophy to others." She straightened slightly. "But you, it makes sense. Your math was brilliant, but your philosophy is what helped change the world."

A big man, whose patience had run out waiting for a break in the conversation, joined them, large and loud. Pierre Fermat. "Oh good heavens, don't tell him that! He's already hard enough to put up with."

René was slightly relieved when the intense questioning gaze of the woman left him. He had always been awkward in the face of beauty, and while sequestered away in the Dutch countryside, he didn't think of women. It was a tremendous advantage to his work. But in Paris, things were very different. He smiled. The big man, Fermat, was speaking.

"I'm Pierre de Fermat, Madame. Allow me to make some further introductions." He pulled her by the hand without waiting for her approval. "As you know, the cardinal has started the Académie Française a few years early, and he has gathered many of us together. He had to haul Descartes out of the Netherlands to bring him here. I believe you have met Father Mersenne?"

Mersenne, wearing sandals and his only clothing of a severe black monks robe tied with a cord of four knots, bowed to her. "I am honored to meet you, Madame. It was very kind of you to send me the original manuscript."

Fermat butted in. "Kindness had nothing to do with it. She knew you would send it to every mathematician in France the instant you read it. This is a shrewd young lady, indeed."

She turned and smiled at the Minimus priest. "I hoped that was you in the audience, Friar. When I saw your robes, I assumed it was you. Thank you for coming to this small lecture."

"You must meet the rest of them, Madame." Fermat tugged at her arm. " Over here we have the Académie Française Moon Crater Club. According to the research and some of the maps we have seen, these fellows here are charter members. This is Pierre Gassendi, who your up-time people will like. He has always been on the pragmatic side. He is very much a smug empiricist now. This young man is Jacques de Billy, whom we dragged to Paris from Rheims, along with his friend and mine, Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac. Oh, and let's not forget our Turk, Katip Celebi, come to hear you from Istanbul. He has no moon crater named after him, at least that we know of."

The crowd began to ease away from René, flowing along with Madame Modi. As they eased away from him, he heard Madam Modi interrupt Fermat, asking about some theorem. René felt relieved. The highly social, and somewhat loud Fermat irritated him. As he began to step backwards, away from the intensity of the crowd, he felt himself stepping solidly on someone's foot.

"Ouch." It was a quiet cry of pain, and an exclamation of suppressed surprise. René turned around nearly in a panic, and opened his mouth to apologize. But he was instantly struck dumb by the beauty with which he was presented. In shock, all he could do is blink into the face of the girl, whose own face was forcing a smile over what appeared to be some level of real pain. At the same time, her eyebrows were questioning, expecting something as she shifted her weight to her other foot . . .

He blinked at her twice more, his brain a jumble. Finally, "Apologize, you dolt!"

"Umm. Uh. I'm sorry mademoiselle. I am a clumsy mule. I did not look behind me. Please forgive me." René shifted uneasily; he was still quite close to her. "I didn't realize you were there, I-I apologize again." He stepped back to bow to that beautiful face, and promptly stumbled backwards into a chair, tried to keep his balance, and ended up plopping down hard on the seat. He could feel his face flush, and he looked around to see if anyone noticed. It appeared all of the room's focus was on Madame Modi, and nobody had seen him. Except the woman on whom he had stomped. And she was now standing on one foot, and hiding her mouth with her hand as she giggled, pain under the giggle.

René wished he could melt into the floor. He made some mental calculations on how much heat that might take.

The woman, quite young by his measure, at least younger than him, hobbled to the seat next to him and took off her shoe. It was a flimsy affair, barely a slipper. He stared down at his own heavy boots. Still staring at his boots, he added lamely "that must have hurt quite a lot. I am very sorry."

"I was too close to you, as I was trying to listen. I should have realized. It's my fault. My mother says I am too nosy. This will give her more reason to tell me not to come to lectures. Not that I am a nosy person, but I was just trying to listen to Madame Modi when you stepped back. Perfectly innocent, not nosy—Oh dear. I am rambling." She took a deep breath, and extended her hand. "Isabeau. Isabeau Montclair."

Gently taking her hand, almost if he were afraid he would break that too, he gathered from somewhere deep inside enough courage to look her in the eyes. "René. René Descartes. I am truly sorry for your foot, mademoiselle." She had dark eyes, with flecks of green and grey scattered about, dark hair, a youthful and innocent round shape to her face, and skin very smooth. No pox scars, pristine. It made her look very youthful.

"Think nothing of it, Monsieur Descartes. I am sure it will heal. Sometime." She smiled slyly at him.

"You are making fun of me now." Inside he felt relieved. She can't be hurt too badly if she is joking with me, he thought. But what to say next? What should he do? The pause stretched on. What should he say? Dammit. Why was he acting like a schoolboy? He glanced at her, she was sitting demurely, and glanced at him. He broke eye contact and once again examined his boots. There was more awkward pause. The crowd started to thin. After an eternity, she finally put on her shoe and rose from the chair. He rose with her, and offered her his arm.

"Do you require assistance, Mademoiselle?"

She gazed at him a moment, as if considering. "No, I think I am good. Nothing broken." She wriggled her foot to test it. "Merci."

René could feel his face fall. "But of course, whatever you wish, Mademoiselle." He bowed and turned to go, this time avoiding the chair. Before he could take a step, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"I have changed my mind, René Descartes. I think my foot hurts more than it should. Perhaps you should assist me to my carriage." She locked her arm around his in a movement that surprised and delighted him. He could feel the warmth of her arm, and the weight of her body against his. He caught his breath for a moment, felt his face flush slightly, and they eased carefully to the door.

Paris, October, 1633

"Will he be here soon, Isabeau? I tire of waiting." Isabeau's mother, Angelique Montclair, was absently fluffing pillows in the ornate drawing room. Late afternoon light filtered in through the large multi-paned windows, while the fireplace at the other end of the room tried and failed to radiate its heat to where Isabeau sat.

Isabeau sighed. "Very soon, I am sure. He is terrible with time, you know Mama. Terrible. He forgets what hour it is. He forgets appointments because he doesn't keep a calendar. The cardinal actually gave him an up-time watch from Grantville so he would not be late. He forgets to put it on."

"An up-time watch? That's worth a fortune! Does it work? Or does it need those embattlements?"

"Embattlements?"

"Oh, I don't know what you call them? Fortifications?"

"Fortifications?" Isabeau furrowed her brow and struggled to understand her mother.

"They make the electricity-things."

"Oh! The batteries." Isabeau laughed "Yes. It has batteries."

"That makes it worth even more money."

"Mother, is that all you ever think about? Money? I know we have enough from before Father died. The farms in the country, his other interests. I have seen the letters, you know. We are secure."

Angelique stopped her fluffing, and looked at Isabeau with a single raised eyebrow. "A woman on her own in this world is never secure, Isabeau. We are petite noblesse, not some family whose fortune and lands have come down from the old days. The only thing we have is money, dear." She set the pillow down on the small couch and sat next to Isabeau. "The only reason we are accepted at all—that you are allowed to attend lectures and traipse across Paris like a princess and rub shoulders with real nobility—is because we have money. You may think they accept you because you know circles and rectangles and hypotenuse, but they wouldn't give you the time of day if it wasn't for the cash. I don't know a battery from a battlement, but I do know that."

"But, Mother . . ."

"No buts. That is why this match is so important. Personally, I think Descartes is crazy. But, fortunately you seem to truly like him, so that counts for something." She patted Isabeau's hand.

Isabeau turned and faced her mother. "But he isn't crazy, Mama. Not crazy at all. He is brilliant, more brilliant than this world can contain. There are times when observing his mind can be like staring into the sun. You cannot look directly at it. Remember when Gassendi demonstrated for us with paper and pinhole, how to observe the sun? You can't look at the sun directly or you will go blind. But if you look at it after it comes through a pin hole, and see it project itself onto a blank paper, then you can make out the details. That's what being around René is like. You cannot understand him if you look directly at him. He is too strong mentally, too overwhelming. But if you are patient, and do not stare, and wait for him to turn his thoughts into something the rest of us can understand, then you can really learn things. See things with a perception that comes from somewhere very special. He can help you to see things that you never, in your most amazing dreams, could possibly think of."

"The cardinal has said that he is a good catch too, you know. I corresponded with him just last week. He always asks about you and René. Do you know that he sends me a note nearly every week, inquiring about you and René?"

"And what do you tell him, mother?"

"That you are both good Catholics, and we are hopeful."

"We are hopeful?"

"I occasionally editorialize. The cardinal is always happy to hear of news about Monsieur Descartes and you."

"So you report to Cardinal Richelieu on our relationship?"

"No, my dear. It isn't anything like that. We just have a correspondence that's all. He sends gifts on occasion. It's quite gratifying to someone like me to have a famous correspondent. You're not the only one in the family who can have a famous friend, you know. I do it for our family."

"Mother, you're a spy for the cardinal."

"No dear. Not a spy. Simply a proud mother who desires the best for her daughter. And as suitors go, Descartes is the best one I can see. Except he is crazy. And has a large nose, even by French standards."

Isabeau smiled at her, and extended her hand. "You know I would be bored out of my mind with any other suitors. Most of them are not bright enough to know when I insult them. I know math and sciences better than any of them—"

"—I never understood that about you." Her mother interrupted. "Why you insisted on learning mathematics, learning about the sciences, attending lectures. 'Tis something you were born with, like your father. God rest his soul, he was the same way. Always scribbling, always thinking about triangles and odd circles. It wasn't natural, and it isn't natural for you either. Especially as a woman."

"Mother. We have discussed this before. What is and isn't natural for a woman is changing. Slowly here in France, faster elsewhere. But it is changing. Look at Madame Modi when she was here in the spring. She had hundreds of the most brilliant minds in France falling at her feet, hanging on her every word. To be part of that is—is indescribable. Beyond imagination."

Angelique looked at her with another raised eyebrow. "Sane men do not cut apart people and animals of all sorts and study them. What he does isn't normal." She extracted her hands from Isabeau's grip. "He spends half of his time cutting up hanged criminals, and half of his time figuring out how to blow people up, or shoot down airplanes or fly airplanes, or drill through a mountain—"

"—Did I tell you he showed me how you can drink the air?

"That's what I mean. People do not drink the air!"

"He showed it to me in the summer. There was a device they made, like two hollow cannonballs and pipe between them. He heated it, and then one end became very cold. He put a cup under the cold end, and in a few moments pure water was formed out of the air, and dripped into a cup. Enough to take a sip of cold water. That was in July, when it was so hot."

"You drank water! That will kill you, or make you sick enough that you wished you were dead. You should stick with wine. For someone so smart, you're very stupid sometimes."

"Mother . . ."

". . . And another thing, he has changed lately, don't think I haven't noticed. He seems even more brooding lately, darker. Have you noticed?"

"Mother, please," Isabeau said firmly. "He has many things on his mind. The Académie Française, his experiments, and all of the up-time reading he is doing. It is very tiring for him. Is that something you put into your letter to the cardinal?"

"I'm not that stupid, dear. The cardinal only gets sunshine and roses from me."

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Both of them turned to it, and then back to each other.

Isabeau smoothed her dress in front of her and made a face at her mother. "You can go now, Mother. Please?"

"Very well. But I will be right next door."

"Listening," Isabeau admonished.

"Of course, dear. You don't think I would leave you alone with that madman, do you?" With that, she turned and left the room through a door near the fireplace. There was another polite knock.

"Come." The door opened and the footman ushered in René Descartes. His square frame stumped into the room, and he flung his cloak off his shoulders, handing it off to the footman in one motion.

"How late am I, Isabeau?"

"No more than usual, René." She sighed.

"My misery continues. I argued with Fermat at the Académie Française again today. Long and loud. I don't know if I can keep this up much longer." He continued to stump across the room, agitated, at the same pace as when he entered. "I cannot think like this. I cannot fit into their laboratories or factories and their meetings of—of nothing!. Deadlines. They want deadlines for things that have never been invented before, things that are little more than rumors or shadows or outlines on the papers they bring from Grantville."

"René, calm down. It isn't necessary for you to shout. Please." She crossed her arms and looked at him. He ignored her.

"These things must be thought about, they must be explored. One cannot snap ones fingers and create a flying machine. . . ." He continued to pace, almost frantically now. Isabeau stood and intercepted him as he crossed by, snatching his arm.

"René! Please. This is as bad as I have ever seen you about Fermat and the Académie Française." He paused and looked at her for a moment, and then continued to pace without registering that he heard her. "You know this is for the good of France."

"—Do not tell me of the good of France, the glory of France, the future of France, the greatness of France, the everlasting peace of France, the greater glory of God and France, or of France showing God's way to the lesser nations!" He was now waving his hands about as he started pacing again. "I am sick to death of France, sick to death of Paris. I cannot concentrate here. I simply cannot. There are too many meetings, too many people, too many demands . . ." he trailed off, seeming to realize where he was. He immediately looked sheepish, and his ears turned pink. "Damn."

Isabeau flashed him her patient smile.

"Sorry." He gracefully went to her, and kissed her hand. "I am sorry, Isabeau. You are the only thing that keeps me sane, in what has become an insane world. More insane by the day. Your presence is enough to soothe me."

"Thank you, René." She paused a moment and looked into his eyes. They were dark, intense and overwhelming. He seemed to catch her gaze as well, and his full intensity focused on her. She felt her diaphragm tighten, like it did the day she met him, when she latched onto his arm. She pulled him close. He bent to her compliantly, still smelling of the coolness from the street, and the chemicals of the Académie Française. "My mother is a spy for the cardinal. We must be discreet."

His hand went around her waist. "Does this mean I cannot complain about that idiot Fermat in front of her?" He whispered back to her.

Her hands went to his shoulders, and she tilted her head back to continue gazing into his eyes. "That might be foolish, she would notice the difference if suddenly you stopped. So would the cardinal for that matter."

He bent to her a little further, and touched his nose to her forehead, and then down her nose. Their lips brushed. "I thought we were quite good at keeping quiet, so no one could hear us."

She leaned slightly forward with her body, and pulled her head back. "You are incorrigible," she whispered.

"You made me that way, Isabeau." He kissed her, gently at first, then as her passion rose, she responded. They kissed. After a long moment, René broke the kiss. "She spies for the cardinal?"

"Not in so many words, but yes." She smiled coyly and played with his jacket button. "Not out of malice, but out of her love." Isabeau didn't add more to the statement, to do so would be unfair to her mother. They pressed their foreheads together gently. "Did you tell Fermat about the paper? What you want to write?"

He sighed deeply, paused, and broke the embrace. He looked at her a moment, then turned away and stepped to one of the windows. The brilliant spring day was fading, but the traffic in the city below looked as if it were trying to hold on to the sunshine, bustling toward the light as it drained out the long city boulevards, wanting to hold onto this day a bit longer, before the chill of a spring night returned. René understood their hope. Understood the cool night would be returning. He turned back to her. "Not yet, Isabeau. I'm not ready. It's inevitable. The thought of these philosophers must come out into the open. Spinoza, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Russell, the list goes on. Just the acceptance of the concept of natural rights of man destroys the last thousand years of thought. And that is only one thing. It is so much, so fast. It means so much, asks so many bold questions. Questions I dare not have asked in this age. Grantville has unleashed a force that is too great to stop."

"You used to say that God unleashed Grantville on us."

"I'm not too sure any more. About God—"

"—René!"

"I have read things, Isabeau! As much as I possibly could. And then I thought. I thought long and hard on things by the greatest minds from the future. Men who took my work and built on it. My work, Isabeau. Great philosophers who grew up with the sun in the center of their solar system, and their solar system one of billions in a galaxy, and that galaxy one of an infinite number of other galaxies in the universe. That changes the way a man looks at the world. I was taught as a child, with absolute certainty that the heavens were a fixed dome, and the sun revolved around the earth. The Jesuits taught me this as a truth. But they were wrong. There is where I started." He began to pace again. "Do you understand, Isabeau? A philosopher that knows about the construction of the universe as a truth from since he was a child, what kind of a difference that makes on his mind? How he views God? How he views man in relation to God? How he views the existence of God? Just that single lesson is enough to change your view of this planet, and where it sits in the greater scheme. Just that single lesson."

"René. The cardinal must not know of these things. How you feel about this. He has stated what he thinks of Vatican II reforms that have been passed around—"

"—which I have read," he interrupted firmly. "And studied. They are fascinating and speak to the changes that are coming. That must come, and inevitably will come to France. Whether Richelieu wants them to or not."

"I see." Isabeau sighed and pulled René to the couch, and they sat. She turned to him, worried. "René, do you speak of this to anyone? Anyone besides me?"

He snorted a suppressed laugh at her. "Somewhat with Mersenne, but I can trust him. I am not a fool, my dear. That sort of thing can get one in the deepest sort of trouble. And yet . . ." His voice trailed off in thought, and his eyes glazed over as he stared at the fireplace along the far wall.

Isabeau had seen this sort of thing from him before, and she waited patiently for a minute while he thought. There were times he could do this for hours.

"What should we do, René?"

He stood up and away from her, and then looked at her strangely, seriously, but in a way that she had not seen before. He took a step toward her, and she involuntarily shrank away. "Do you mean that, Isabeau?" His intensity could be mercurial.

"Mean what?" She was confused. This was one of those times when his mind was elsewhere, working on a level she didn't fully comprehend.

"Did you mean that?"

"I-I don't understand. Mean what?"

"What should we do? You asked, what we should do?"

She shook her head trying to gain focus, and smiled. "Yes. I asked what should we do." She began to feel uncomfortable as he took another step closer. "Simple enough question."

He stopped and looked at her with a curious gaze. "Do you know you are the smartest woman I have ever met?"

She felt her face flush. "René—"

"You see, Isabeau, you didn't ask what I should do. You asked what we should do. We. So there is only one thing we can do."

"What is it?"

"One question first. Are you with me in this? The philosophers of the future? The advancement of human thought?"

She answered without hesitation. "Of course. How could I not be?"

He reached out and held her hand, smiled warmly, and then knelt in front of her. "We must marry."

The Library at the Académie Française, after Galileo's trial, July 1634

Marin Mersenne slammed his palm onto the library table with a great deal of frustration. "It is a matter of doctrine, René! You are more aware than anyone I have ever worked with—and I have worked with every scientist in France who is worth his salt—that church doctrine determines how we study the sciences. The natural philosophy of the future is diametrically opposed to present church doctrine. It's heresy, pure and simple."

René had his back to Mersenne, and was gazing out the massive windows of the library. René wasn't looking at anything particular. And at the moment he was quite irritated with Mersenne. "I will write my summary. And publish it."

Mersenne's voice softened, trying a new argument. "You have read your future works. You were always scrupulous to maintain adherence to the teachings of the church. Your letters are full of conversations addressing the very issue. That history must mean something to you, René."

René continued to stare out the window. "My desire was to have my book on philosophical method, my Le Monde, be the accepted text of the Jesuits, the only education worth a damn in this world. I wanted my book accepted as a canonical text, and have my methods taught at the highest levels by the best teachers." He turned from the windows and faced the Friar. "Don't forget plausible deniability. That's why Galileo wrote his book on planetary motion as taking place in a 'hypothetical' universe. Fat lot of good that did him with the inquisition."

"René, do you mean you do not have faith in God and the Church as you professed? That all of your entreaties to me about staying faithful to doctrine were false? I don't believe it, René. You were practical, cautious, but I have never doubted your faith in the Church. Ever."

René tossed the book on the table and again turned to the window. "In the other time line, I completed Le Monde, but abandoned it after four years of work. Do you know why?"

Mersenne sighed. "Galileo."

René spun around, glaring at Mersenne. "Yes. Because of Galileo, that idiot, and the Dévots, who are even bigger idiots. They attacked him, they attacked the Copernican system, and they ...