The Confusion by Stephenson, Neal
To Maurine
THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE TO BE THANKED
for their help in the creation of the Baroque Cycle of which this book, The Confusion, is the second volume. Accordingly, please see the acknowledgments in Quicksilver, Volume One of the Baroque Cycle.
Author’s Note
THIS VOLUME CONTAINS two novels, Bonanza and Juncto, that take place concurrently during the span 1689-1702. Rather than present one, then the other (which would force the reader to jump back to 1689 in mid-volume), I have interleaved sections of one with sections of the other so that the two stories move forward in synchrony. It is hoped that being thus confused shall render them the less confusing to the Reader.
When at the first I took my pen in hand,
Thus for to write, I did not understand
That I at all should make a little book
In such a mode; nay, I had undertook
To make another, which when almost done,
Before I was aware, I this begun.
—JOHN BUNYAN,The Pilgrim’s Progress,
THE AUTHOR’S APOLOGY FOR HIS BOOK
Book 4
Bonanza
So great is the dignity and excellency of humane nature, and so active those sparks of heavenly fire it partakes of, that they ought to be look’d upon as very mean, and unworthy the name of men, who thro’ pusillanimity, by them call’d prudence, or thro’ sloth, which they stile moderation, or else through avarice, to which they give the name of frugality, at any rate withdraw themselves from performing great and noble actions.
—GIOVANNI FRANCESCO GEMELLI CARERI,
A Voyage Round the World
Barbary Coast
OCTOBER 1689
HE WAS NOT MERELY AWAKENED, but detonated out of an uncommonly long and repetitive dream. He could not remember any of the details of the dream now that it was over. But he had the idea that it had entailed much rowing and scraping, and little else; so he did not object to being roused. Even if he had been of a mind to object, he’d have had the good sense to hold his tongue, and keep his annoyance well-hid beneath a simpering merry-Vagabond fa?ade. Because what was doing the waking, today, was the most tremendous damned noise he’d ever heard—it was some godlike Force not to be yelled at or complained to, at least not right away.
Cannons were being fired. Never so many, and rarely so large, cannons. Whole batteries of siege-guns and coastal artillery discharging en masse, ranks of ’em ripple-firing along wall-tops. He rolled out from beneath the barnacle-covered hull of a beached ship, where he had apparently been taking an afternoon nap, and found himself pinned to the sand by a downblast of bleak sunlight. At this point a wise man, with experience in matters military, would have belly-crawled to some suitable enfilade. But the beach all round him was planted with hairy ankles and sandaled feet; he was the only one prone or supine.
Lying on his back, he squinted up through the damp, sand-caked hem of a man’s garment: a loose robe of open-weave material that laved the wearer’s body in a gold glow, so that he could look directly up into the blind eye of the man’s penis—which had been curiously modified. Inevitably, he lost this particular stare-down. He rolled back the other way, performing one and a half uphill revolutions, and clambered indignantly to his feet, forgetting about the curve of the hull and therefore barking his scalp on a phalanx of barnacles. Then he screamed as loud as he could, but no one heard him. He didn’t even hear himself. He experimented with plugging his ears and screaming, but even then he heard naught but the sound of the cannons.
Time to take stock of matters—to bring the situation in hand. The hull was blocking his view. Other than it, all he could see was a sparkling bay, and a stony breakwater. He strode into the sea, watched curiously by the man with the mushroom-headed yard, and, once he was out knee-deep, turned around. What he saw then made it more or less obligatory to fall right on his arse.