Frig Newton

"Oldenburg, the secretary, of course. The society probably wouldn't have gotten off its feet after King Charles' foundation, without his efforts. It nearly folded twice in the 1680s. Do you look at comparable organizations as well? I know Leibniz was keen to have a German equivalent, and contributed to the journal Acta Eruditorum."

While bringing up the topic of another Newton antagonist, Rupert was charmed by the way her mouth launched into an ironic smile. The Newton/Leibniz squabble over which of them invented the calculus was legendary.

Rupert looked at her carefully as she talked about Sir Isaac and Leibniz, and made her way around the food. He tried to calculate the tangent line from the pivot point of her right shoulder as it moved. It was unfortunate that Newton's term 'fluxions' did not become the standard term, instead Leibniz's 'differential.'

"But ultimately, Leibniz published first, that was what counted," she went on. She wiped a bit of mustard off her lower lip. Rupert was afraid he appeared to be staring. "And his notation is what got adopted by the rest of the world too, not Newton's."

They chatted and ate and drank.

Rupert was unable not to pose a question.

"You've been very kind, I appreciate the time you have taken with me. But why are you interested? Surely you have better things to do? Others to associate with in town?"

The look he got was one of puzzlement. He had surely been too direct.

"You felt sorry for me," he said, when she didn't answer immediately.

"The dumb clueless American..."

"No, that's not it at all. If I was only interested in the people I felt sorry for, I would quite have my hands full. You would be astonished at some of the folks I have to work with here."

"Most of the others in my field are male, most of them quite uninteresting. There is a good deal of condescension in their behaviors, which I have not detected in you."

She paused and looked at him.

"I saw you help Mildred the other day, at the market square before I came up to you. She is quite the character here in town, without help from everyone else she would be in deep trouble. I liked how you assisted, it was done with kindness, without any fuss. I didn't get the sense that you were acting out of obligation or a need for some Good Samaritan bonus points."

"I am quite accustomed to males with awkward manners. Usually it is just mildly annoying. Somehow with you I find some charm."

Rupert wasn't sure what to make of this.

"I read the first chapter of your 'Immutable,' Trinity had a copy. It was quite good, I am anxious to see how you investigate Newton's, ah, oddities in the theological realm in your next work."

He noticed her eyes glance at the ring-finger on his left hand. Why did it never occur to him to look to do this too? Now that he noticed, she wore no ring of any sort.

It appeared she had watched his eyes.

"No, I'm not." She answered his unspoken question. "And you?"

Rupert looked away. He wasn't sure he was up for this discussion. He tried for brief.

"Some time ago, early in my career. It did not end well." He looked away again.

"Tell me." Her voice was quiet, urging.

"Diane and I met in college, we were very young. At first it was sweet, the way all new things, all discoveries, all initial forces of attraction, are sweet. We did not end angrily, it was more ... drifting apart."

She arched her eyebrows.

"I think my career certainly had some impact, for which I regret. I had gotten the position at Idaho, we had had to move from Seattle. The the first years of a tenure-track job are relentless. I was working fifty, sixty hours a week, of course trying to finish the 'Immutable' book, at least in the US you are not considered a proper historian until your first book is out. Friends joked that as a couple we were 'R&D'." He realized Cassie might not get the joke but she smiled.

"But 'D' never got to properly develop."

He didn't want to continue.

"And you? Cassiopeia hasn't joined herself to another? Hard to imagine why not."

She smiled. "That's sweet to say. I have had a couple longer term connections, but they were not sustainable. Like you, my own interests tended to dominate, and I seemed always to pick men who liked to direct everything. No more of that for me."

He had tried to pay the entire bill, insisting it would go on his per diem (which he did not in fact have) but she wouldn't hear of it and he was compelled to split the tab.

She glanced at her watch and grimaced. "Oh the time has flown! I must be heading off. I have a three o'clock I cannot miss."

"Do you mind if I accompany you?"

"Thank you but no, I've my bicycle and must go quickly to make it back in time."

"Listen," she spoke abruptly. "Have you ever been to Woolsthorpe? Newton's ancestral home, where he retreated from Cambridge for his Annus mirabilis? in 1666?"

"No. My focus has been on his writings."

"I am going home to Grantham in Lincolnshire for the weekend, my family lives not that far from there. Would you like to come up for the day, it's just a couple hours from here by train? I could pick you up at the station, we could take a look around the old manor house? Maybe occupy your mind until D-Day at the archive hopefully arrives next week?"

"Yes, that would be good. Might do me well to leave town for a day."

"Excellent. There is a 10:22 that will get you into Grantham by noon. I'll see you when you pull in."

She was off with a wave.

****

Cassie met him at the train station. She wore a pale blue scarf, which seemed odd as the day was the warmest it had been since he'd arrived on this confounding isle.

But its purpose became clear when she ushered me to her ride, a sparkling Austin Healy with the top down.

"A Three Thousand," she said. "My dad was what I think you Yanks call a 'gearhead.' This one is one of his favorites, doesn't drive it much any more, but I have use of it when I'm home, and its great for blasting around some of these back roads."

"Isn't it a bit of maintenance? These cars, even when new were not known for durability."

"Yes, of course. But my father both likes the tinkering part of it all and the nostalgia. And these winding roads are suited perfectly for its temperament."

"What's the latest trouble been?"

"The fuel pump. It's the second one this year."

He laughed. "It's a Lucas electric affair, right? If my memory serves me. They did the electrics for most all the British makes. I believe the nickname for the Lucas outfit was the 'Prince of Darkness?' For their reliability?"

She laughed. "I think father said it was an SU pump, but I may not be remembering right. But yes, it always seems to fail at the worst possible moment. During a rainstorm, at night."

"Lucas," Rupert mused. "It cannot be the same family that brought the Lucasian chair to Cambridge, that Sir Isaac inhabited, can it?"

"I doubt it. Lucas is a common name, seems highly unlikely."

Rupert thought of light, optics, electricity, and the fickle nature of man's attempt to harness them all.

The hedgerows flew by, and he found himself a bit uncomfortable. He had never gotten used to this part, as an American passenger in the left-hand seat, driving on the wrong side of the road, it seemed as if any moment the car would scrape against the upright hedgerows, or even worse, the stone fences that crowded the country lanes. He wanted to trust Cassie, and she certainly seemed to be a good driver, but on many of the swerving turns he still found his right foot pushing hard on the spot where the brake pedal would have been in America.

He looked over at Cassie while she drove. Her scarf flew behind her in the breeze, she really looked quite dashing.

The Newton ancestral house itself was entirely unimposing. Sturdy stone construction, small windows, the building itself was not large. It was hard to imagine this as Sir Isaac's refuge. The visiting charges were not outrageous, although the overall effect was kitschy and overdone.

Cassie gave him a quick tour, the study upstairs where Issac reputedly did his writing, a small desk where Rupert imagined the work was done, maybe even the early draft of Principia he sought. It was all too tidy, too clean, too perfectly restored.

"Let's go outside," she suggested.

They strolled around the grounds in the late afternoon sun, a pleasant spring day, butterflies and blue sky scudded with clouds.

"Here's the famous apple tree." She pointed at an old scraggly tree, the first blossom buds just beginning to form.

He eyed her warily.

"There surely was no apple tree," he said testily. "That's all part of the myth, I think even by the time of my high school physics class we knew it was just a fabrication, a convenient and supremely appealing story, but no more than that."

Cassie's smile was hard to read. Amused? Teasing?

"Yes, unlikely to be sure. But Westfall and a few others have deemed it more possible than previously thought. Of course there are times when a good story is still the best, don't you think?"

They approached , then circled the tree, and Cassie led him to the trunk.

"Here, feel the bark of gravity." He was sure she was teasing now, but she pulled his hand to the trunk, and rubbed it up and down the rough surface.

Her touch was electrifying, of course the first time their skin had come into contact, and the thrill was strong enough he had some trouble concealing it.

"Was it really the plague though?" He tried a diversionary question. "The reason for his retreat from Cambridge? The university annals say 'plague' a lot, but its fairly obvious the term was used indiscriminately, inaccurately, although surely by Sir Isaac's time the medical folks knew the real article from any of the other rampant infections."

Cassie had lifted her hand from his, and he felt a pang of regret at the ending of this unsought, but welcome, touch.

They turned and watched the other visitors milling around the grounds.

"Let's go," Cassie said. "I know a better spot, and they'll be closing up the grounds shortly anyway. There is a little country road with a nice view of the grounds just to the side. It's a bit more restful there."

The side road, barely more than an old, worn cart-path, rose slightly to a meadow overlooking the manor and the grounds.

She led him to another, younger but larger, solitary apple tree on top of a small knoll.

She turned and sat down with her back against the trunk, facing the afternoon sun and the manor. She patted a place next to her and he joined her, alongside.

"What else do you know about his plague retreat?" he asked.

"We're pretty sure it was indeed bubonic. Cambridge was closed for over a year, and the garden variety epidemics usually blew over faster than that."

"The poor folks who had to stay in town, the college workers and townsmen who had nowhere to retreat to, it must have been tough for them," Rupert said.

He gazed about, the field enchantingly green, cowslips white and waving in the fields about them.

The sun felt good on his face, and it occurred to him how rarely he had ever felt the sunshine on his trips to England, usually drizzly affairs, never sun for more than a day at a time.

"Tell me about your own researches, the ones that touched Sir Isaac. You've mentioned the Royal Society, but surely you have read the Principia?"

She laughed. "As much as it is possible to read it, not the easiest text to wade through. But yes. Let's just say that physics was not a part of my 'O' levels."

They paused. She began to recite the first passage from the Principia, the first Law.

"Quantitas Materiæ est mensura ejusdem orta ex illius Densitate et Magnitudine conjunctim. Or, in English, 'Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.'"

Rupert started.

This was the second uncontrolled aspect of his life. It was quite inexplicable, really, but whenever he read certain parts of the Principia, even silently, especially the three laws, his penis would begin to stir.

He felt his erection beginning, his sitting position not quite comfortable for it to grow properly.

She went on to the second Law, in Latin, and soon his penis was in a quite uncomfortable state, folded over on itself and seeking to straighten. He shifted to allow some movement, and was sure that Cassie had noticed.

She gave no sign however, and continued her recitation, by memory.

His penis had grown insistently stiff in the process.

He grew still, and she noticed his uneasiness. As if he had signaled to do so, her gaze went to the front of his pants, the evidence now quite impossible to hide, and then looked back at him, questioning.

Rupert couldn't see his own face, but knew it had reddened. He smiled awkwardly.

"Sorry, this is an unfortunate byproduct of my infatuation with Newton." He felt sheepish, and his words were small swallowed affairs.

"I imagine that is sometimes embarrassing," she mused. He was struck by her straightforwardness and apparent compassion.

"Sorry, it's just that I have always found his words arousing. Nothing to do with you..."

"You sure?" She arched her eyebrows. "Calculus is multidimensional, no reason arousal isn't as well, don't you think?"

They sat for several minutes, he was quite uncertain what to do, what to say, and cursed himself for being such an immobile, mindless clod.

He felt Cassie's eyes upon him though and turned to face her.

The expression was quite remarkable, he noted. If ever he had seen a 'please kiss me' look before, this was it times twenty.

He felt her fingers running over his crotch. She clearly had known he was hard, but now she had verified it conclusively.

The fingers stayed there, and he leaned over for a kiss, which grew deeper and more ardent than he expected.

This was a quite impossible situation for Rupert. How had it come about? This young English woman, why was she interested in him, who had had no female attention for ages?

He broke from the kiss, came up for air, but the fingers did not stop, they continued to rub until Rupert's hips were squirming about quite uncontrollably.

"Look," she said. "I think I can help you here. I know this is rather fast, rather forward on my part, but I believe you have a fair amount of tension built up. I imagine it is quite unbearable, frankly."

To his astonishment, she carefully undid his belt, unbuttoned his pants and fished his erection out into the open. It stood proud in the sunlight, veins outlined, the cock-head quite enlarged.

"Circumcised," she mused. "Are you Jewish, by any chance?"

"No. It was the case amongst all the boys in my region growing up." He was aware of how awkwardly and artificially he had said 'amongst.'

"I take that is not the case here?" Rupert had no idea of what she would say.

"I should say not," she paused. "Although my sample size, is not so large."

She laughed.

"That didn't come out right. But yes, this is my first. It looks so ... vulnerable." She was staring at his cock-head.

He looked down as she fondled his penis, stiff, moving with awkward ramrod twitching.

"Look, Rupert, just sit back and enjoy yourself. You men always have such difficulty being in the moment, just for once let the sensory gates open. For the next stretch just feel, just live, just enjoy."

Something about the way she spoke eased his mind. Was this okay? She seemed to think so.

The fingers were inventive, one hand now under his balls, rolling them, caressing their scrotal surface. He tried not to think about the sperm production there, or the hydraulic mechanics of the even now growing inevitable.

"Close your eyes," Cassie murmured in his ears. "You are no longer a scholar, a man of the mind. Just a man with an insistent sensory organ which requires attention. Take it all in," she continued, while the fingers continued their dalliance on his member.

He rested his head back against the tree. There was no way this time could prolong itself, already the pressure at the root of his balls was becoming unbearable.

But Cassie kept things going longer than he thought possible. Just when the inevitable seemed to be there, she would shift her movements, her grip, those probing fingers moving to less sensitive areas, but still keeping interest in place.

But once, when a finger had returned to his prick-head, and he felt a dampness, he couldn't help but look down to see his oozing fluids on his organ, her finger now dampened.

Her smile was reassuring.

Long slow pulls alternated with short twisting movements—his penis grew impossibly rigid.

He felt his balls contract, his anus—his penis now completely in charge.

He looked down in time to see her aiming his first spurt, holding his penis out away from him, so the semen went out and away. Even now she was in control and competent.

Two, three, four, five times he sent sperm out, the arcs diminishing and shortening, more or less a reverse Zeno paradox, each distance perhaps one half of the one before, until a last dribble fell to the ground.

White semen lay in small dots on the grass in front of him, Cassie using her fingers carefully now, nurturing the brilliantly sensitive afterglow of a climax.

His penis shrank quickly. First the head smaller, damp and diminished, then his shaft lost its backbone, grew limp.

They looked at each other, then Cassie's semen-coated hands.

"A bit of a mess, sorry," he apologized, but she laughed.

"Nothing to clean up with I'm afraid." he said, suddenly feeling quite foolish.

"No worries," she fished a handkerchief out of her purse, the kind of purse that always mystified Rupert, as they seemed always to have the most magical items, just what was needed at any given time, a Band-aid, a rubber band, an extra pen. She dried him off first, then her own hands.

"Maybe you can call yourself Johnny Appleseed now? Spread your seed widely? You did notice how gravity still works? Your semen fell to earth properly, not off into space. Mass? Force?"

"An irresistible force even," he said wryly.

His groin had not been this happy in years. But what did Cassie want? What could he do to reciprocate? He was at a loss. He reached over to rub her chest, unsure of what to do.

"No, no, that's alright. This is just for you. Just now. Just this little penetration into space-time for an overworked intellectual."

She gave him a quick but thorough kiss, and then placed her back against the tree, their shoulders just touching.

Rupert was pleased with the slight contact, the warm sun, the radiant heat coming from his groin.

They chatted a bit longer, but finally time called. Cassie was due back to her home for dinner and Rupert needed the 6:10 back to Cambridge.

Rupert felt awkward as usual, exiting her Austin-Healy, trying to find the right tone for a farewell, something he never had been good at.

"Thank you so much, you've been so kind." What else could he say to someone who has just fondled his penis for the first time?

With a wave she was off, and he again stifled the urge to watch her depart.

****

Finally, late Sunday night back at the hotel, Rupert got through to Donald, reaching the dean at his home phone, knowing that Donald would not be pleased.

"Booker! What a surprise. I only just got back. Great retreat, in no ways ready for work tomorrow. What do you want?"

Rupert tried to ignore the petulant tone he thought he detected in his query.

"The letter, Donald! The one you were supposed to send!"

"Hold on Booker, lower your tone a little. What letter?"

"Oh come on man, the one I need for Newton's manuscript. Here in Cambridge."