Quicksilver (Baroque Cycle) by Neal Stephenson

Author:Neal Stephenson [Stephenson, Neal]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

“A PIECE OF EIGHT HAS eight reals—” Eliza said, later, having spent the last two hours sitting perfectly motionless while Jack paced, leaped, and cavorted about her bedchamber relating all of these events with only modest improvements.

“I know that—that’s why it’s called a piece of eight,” Jack said testily, standing barefoot on the sack of straw that was Eliza’s bed, where he had been demonstrating the way the workers mixed the amalgam with their feet.

“Eight pieces of eight plus six royals, makes seventy royals. A hundred marks of silver, then, is worth seven thousand royals…or…eight hundred seventy-five pieces of eight. And the price of the quicksilver needed is—again?”

“Eighty pieces of eight, or thereabouts, would be a good price.”

“So—those who’d make money need silver, and those who’d make silver need quicksilver—and a piece of eight’s worth of quicksilver, put to the right uses, produces enough silver to mint ten pieces of eight.”

“And you can re-use it, as they are careful to do,” Jack said. “You have forgotten a few other necessaries, by the way—such as a silver mine. Mountains of coal and salt. Armies of workers.”

“All gettable,” Eliza said flatly. “Didn’t you understand what Enoch was telling you?”

“Don’t say it!—don’t tell me—just wait!” Jack said, and went over to the arrow-slit to peer up at the Doctor’s windmill, and down at his ox-carts parked along the edge of the stable-yard. Up and down being the only two possibilities when peering through an arrow-slit. “The Doctor provides quicksilver to the mines whose masters do what the Doctor wants.”

“So,” Eliza said, “the Doctor has—what?”

“Power,” Jack finally said after a few wrong guesses.

“Because he has—what?”

“Quicksilver.”

“So that’s the answer—we go to Amsterdam and buy quicksilver.”

“A splendid plan—if only we had money to buy it with.”

“Poh! We’ll just use someone else’s money,” Eliza said, flicking something off the backs of her fingernails.

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