by Steven Hall
The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss.
Italo Calvino
30
Farewell and Adieu to You, Fair Spanish Ladies
I tumbled and rolled, pressed and pin-wheeled through promises thoughts stories plans whispers lusts lies tricks secrets longings surprises loves passions hurts melodies memories wishes worries doubts, down to up and inside to outside in a liquid forever of history, mind and churning, thundering concept.
Quickly or eventually–there was no way to know–the turbulence began to lessen, slowing, steadying, calming itself into a gentle rhythm. The water held me, wrapped me, nudged, shoved and buffeted me, all events and all ideas with their own rhythmic pull and push, bob and dip. I hung like an angel or a star, or an old forgotten moment in the endless blue of the world’s mind. My lungs squealed. The sun cut dappling wedges down around me and I kicked for the light somewhere up above.
My head broke the surface and I dragged in a great creaking gasp of breath. Warm air filled my aching lungs and I bobbed up on the swell of a gentle wave. The world of ideas and meanings and concepts I’d experienced underwater unfocused now my head was clear of the blue; now this was just water, all cold, salty and deep. I sank and bobbed on another swell, heard the shriek and caw of seagulls, tasted and smelled the tang and slap of waves. The sun burned brilliant in an endless blue sky. In front of me, the ocean dipped and rolled for miles and miles and miles, to a distant blue-meets-blue horizon line. My waterlogged coat and boots were heavy, trying to drag me down. I thought about my legs kicking, exposed, hanging out over the black depths and cold horror squeezed at my stomach. A wave splashed, my open gasping mouth took in cold, salty, plantish water and I kicked and coughed and coughed.
A shout behind me, “Eric.”
I swam myself around on the spot. A boat bobbed in the waves, a large-ish battered-looking fishing boat. Two figures stood on deck, one grey-haired and waving, the other smaller and standing back a little from the rail. Fidorous and Scout. I struggled against the heavy weight of my clothes, swimming as fast as I could towards them.
Taking one arm each, they pulled me in over the side and I fell on the warm wooden deck, panting and leaking water.
After a moment I rolled over onto my back, and found myself looking up at Scout.
The world became clear and specific then–my lungs pulling and heaving under my ribs, the drip and run, the cold and warm of my seawater puddle, the brilliant clear sky. Scout’s hair falling forward at both sides so the points of her bob met over her chin, her pale face shaded between black curtains. Her eyebrows knotted down just a little, the shadow of concern. I nodded a tiny I’m alright and she gave me a tight-lipped smile and walked away, leaving my field of vision a bright, uninterrupted matt blue. I propped myself up onto my elbows.
“Well, that was hardly textbook, was it? But we’re here.” Fidorous was leaning against the deck railings, glasses in hand, his eyes closed and wrinkled elastic band face turned up towards the sun. “And what’s more, it’s a beautiful day.”
“We’re at sea.”
“Yes, we are. In a manner of speaking.”
The boat bobbed on the waves. The sun beat down. Still from somewhere, the sound of gulls.
“And this is the Orpheus.”
“It is. The lady and not the painting. You missed it by about forty feet.”
“It all feels,” I pushed myself up into a sitting position, “it all feels like the most normal thing in the world. I mean–real, solid. Sort of familiar too.”
“It should be familiar. If you were to say shark-hunting boat to almost anybody in the western world they’ll visualise this exact same boat. This,” he rubbed a hand against a very ordinary and very real railing, “is the current collective idea of what a shark-hunting boat should be.”
Cold wet shivers still waterlogged my jeans, shoes and jacket but the sun was already doing its best to warm me at the edges. I felt the old battered deck under my fingers.
“A collective idea?”
“Yes,” the doctor nodded, “and a commonly held one for more than twenty-five years. That’s why she’s so convincing.”
He offered a hand and helped me to my feet, me trying to manage the sway of the boat and drip splatter of seawater still escaping from my clothes.
“Ah. Hello.”
I turned to follow the doctor’s eyes. Ian waddle-padded up to the edge of my personal puddle and sat down. The word contempt didn’t really do justice to Ian’s expression.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it just wouldn’t wash.
“And how are you, Toto?” the doctor said, leaning in with a rare and too-big smile. “Is it warm enough for you today?”
Ian gave him the sort of look you might expect from an orbital laser defence platform.
“Yes, well.” The doctor straightened up. “He’s a jolly little fellow, isn’t he?” His words came out fuzzy-edged with uncertainty and something about that made me feel a little easier with the old man, and with the craziness of things generally.
“Oh yeah,” I said, looking down at the furious cat. “He’s a card.”
Fidorous showed me into the little cabin below the flying deck so I could find something dry to wear. The clothes in my rucksack had been worn past the point of wearing again. The doctor pointed out a small chest of drawers in the corner which had been stuffed to breaking with lost-and-found type clothing. He said these were the ideas of clothes left here by people who’d imagined or dreamt their way onboard in the past, but they all felt–and some smelled–like the real thing to me. I picked out some too-big shorts and a red Hawaiian shirt with silhouette palm trees. I also dug out a slightly crumbly straw fedora (the only hat I could find) and a pair of big black plastic Roy Orbison shades to defend against the sun. I felt like an idiot. When I came back out onto the deck, Fidorous nodded approvingly and said I looked much more myself. Not knowing what else to do, I just said cheers.
Gear-shifting into gruff captain, Fidorous insisted on taking me on a tour of the rest of the Orpheus. As we made our way around the stern, I saw how the strimmer and the desk fan had become twin propellers; the box full of paper was now a blocky laserprinter secured to hang over the backboard of the boat, and the office chair had reinvented itself as a bolted-to-the-deck fisherman’s seat with rod and line ready to cast off. The boat now had a real mast, a real winching arm, a real anchor. As we went on I spotted occasional ghost marks of the Orpheus’s earlier incarnation: a cluster of knots and stains on the deck still vaguely resembled the brass numbers that had once been part of a front door; weather marks on the cabin walls occasionally resolved themselves into fragments of the text I’d originally seen printed on cardboard boxes as part of the assemblage–but ultimately these were only surface effects. In every way that mattered, the Orpheus had become a real, solid, functional fishing boat.
Coming around the cabin and onto the front deck, we arrived at the three barrels filled with telephone directories and electronic speed diallers. They seemed completely unchanged from their original forms but Fidorous only got annoyed when I mentioned it.
“Well, of course they are. What did you expect, a chest of drawers and a hat stand?”
I decided not to ask any more questions.
The boat’s controls were up on the flying deck which doubled as the roof of the cabin. Scout was up there, lying out on a towel in sunglasses and shorts, with her vest top tucked up under her bra. She propped up when we came up the steps, then pulled her glasses slowly down her nose to look at me in my Hawaiian shirt and hat.
“Hello,” I said, doing a geeky wave before I could stop myself. I felt so stupidly self-conscious in these stupid, stupid clothes and seeing her there like that, the whole routine just slipped out. What a fucking idiot.
Scout did an almost-smirk and sat up cross-legged.
“Dry clothes,” I
said, pulling at the shirt.
“Oh,” she nodded.
“And how is she looking up here, helmsman?” Fidorous came up the steps behind me.
“Boatlike,” Scout said, knocking her knuckles on the deck. “This is so crazy I’m not even going to ask.”
“Probably for the best,” the doctor said. “It’s easier if you just accept it.”
“Easier if you just accept it, thanks. So, anyway, I just push down that handle there and steer left and right?”
“Yes, but it’s port and starboard.”
“Left, right, port, starboard. Fine, I’ve got it.”
“Scout,” Fidorous said, “this is a serious business.”
“Don’t worry,” she flicked a cool, empty glance at me. “I know it is.”
We came full circle around the boat and arrived at Nobody’s laptop. Like the barrels it was almost completely unchanged: slim, expensive, black and sitting on an upturned box just as it had been in Fidorous’s cellar. The only difference–the internet cable which once ran from the laptop’s back and up into the ceiling was gone, in its place there was a chrome telescopic aerial. Now we had wireless internet connection. I passed my palm over the top of the aerial a few times but didn’t meet any resistance.
“Didn’t you hear me tell Scout,” Fidorous said, checking the screen, “to try not to think about it?”
I turned away and looked out over the waves, the clear deep blue, the gentle rise and drop. The sun was so hot it gave everything–the sea, my skin, the warm pale decking under my feet–its own sort of holiday smell. That heat smell you forget ever existed in the cold and the rain and the dark grey evenings, but a smell that comes back to you like a dream, like waking up, when the sun is high in the sky. I stared towards the horizon, wondering if this sea went on forever. Were there shallows, oceanic trenches, cold places with icebergs, coral reefs swarming with different fish and other conceptual animals? I wondered if wars, life-changing inventions or assassinations created storms here. Did the sea ever heave? Did it become still as a pond in white, bleak midwinter?
“Eric,” the doctor said, “I have something for you.”
I turned round to see him handling a long wooden spear, balancing it up above his shoulder, weighing it back and forth experimentally like a javelin thrower warming up. I took a step away without meaning to.
“What’s that?”
Fidorous’s eyebrows pushed up, bunching wrinkles into his forehead. “You don’t recognise it?”
The spear was about five feet long and tipped at one end with a steel teardrop-shaped head. The other end connected to a length of cable wound in coils on the deck and eventually plugged into the back of Nobody’s laptop. The shaft looked old, the wood varnished to an ancient smooth black. Something clicked.
“It’s the paintbrush.”
“Correct. Now listen carefully because this will be your job, Eric Sanderson. When we get alongside the Ludovician you have to spear him with this. Then the shark will be connected through this spear and through this cable to Nobody’s laptop, and the laptop is connected via the aerial to Ward.”
“Matter and antimatter,” I said. “Bang.”
“Exactly. Bang. And we can all go home.”
“Except it’s not going to be quite like that, is it? Not if we have to get close to the shark.”
“Well, there’s always risk, but what you have to remember is this whole boat is made from a single powerful non-divergent conceptual loop. Whatever happens, the shark can’t touch us as long as we stay onboard. We have to find him, and we have to wear him down, exhaust him. There are tools onboard for that. Once we’ve taken the fight out of him, you can use the spear.”
The way the doctor described it, it sounded more like a job to be done, hunting down an animal that didn’t really stand a chance. I don’t know what my face was doing, but it must have given me away.
“You’re quite right,” Fidorous said, as if I’d been thinking out loud. “The Ludovician is very dangerous but remember we have all the advantages here. I know we can deal with it safely.”
I thought about that.
“I don’t care how it dies,” I said in the end.
The doctor nodded, quietly considering. He handed me the spear and I weighed it the same way he had. It felt solid, well balanced.
“You’ll need to hit him in the head, near the brain or near the mouth.”
“In the head,” I repeated, “the brain or the mouth.”
“Good.” Fidorous looked out to sea, shading his eyes. “Now let’s see if we can get his attention. Bring that.”
I followed the doctor to the laserprinter bolted in place over the stern. He turned the machine on and it came to life with a cluuunk whiiirr and flashing green and amber lights. After checking the paper tray, Fidorous unwound a grey cable from the printer’s back. He motioned for me to bring the spear closer and when I did he touched the lead quickly against its metal head. Immediately, the printer began to print, clunk clunk whiiirrring away, dropping sheets over the stern and into the water. Fidorous reached over the backboard and caught the third page as it fell, passing it back to me. It was my story, the words I’d written in the air with the paintbrush the night before.
“Chumming the water,” the doctor said, pleased with himself. “With a little bit of luck, the Ludovician will find this trail and follow it straight to us.”
I looked over the page again then dropped it into the water with the others.
“Slow ahead if you please, Mr Scout!” the doctor called out.
Scout looked down at us from the flying deck. “Did you just say Mister?”
“Slow ahead if you please.”
“Aye, aye,” she said. I couldn’t help smiling. Deep down inside, I started to feel there was a chance we could actually do this.
The engine grumbled and a cloud of blue-grey smoke plumed up from an exhaust somewhere. The Orpheus rumbled forward into the waves.
Ian lay in the shade of the cabin, stretched-out and sleeping. If he hated everything else, at least he approved of the weather. Fidorous sat in his bolted-down fisherman’s chair at the boat’s stern, industrial-strength rod and line trailing out behind us as we chugged forwards. He’d found a green Park Rangers cap from somewhere and had it pulled down over his eyes, pretending to sleep. My wet clothes bobbed at the end of his line as bait, a bundled ball of almost-me with a big heavy hook hanging ready below. My old coat waved, swayed and rolled in the clear blue water and I felt bad for sacrificing it after everything we’d been through together.
I sat cross-legged on the deck next to the printer, watching it chug and whine and mechanically cough up pages from my story–the bedroom floor, Dr Randle, the First Eric Sanderson, my journey, the Willows Hotel, Clio Aames, Mr Nobody, the yellow Jeep, un-space, Mark Richardson, the red filing cabinet, the Yellow Pages dome, Fidorous and the samurai and the glass of words, Scout, lots about Scout–bright paper pages flutter-falling over the stern and down into the ocean. As the Orpheus grumbled forward, the waterlogging pages rolled and curved in the swell as we left them behind. They clung to the underside of the ocean’s surface, floating and dipping, bright in the sun. The trail of pages stretched away from us, a swaying path of white into the distance. I watched the water for any other movement, but there was nothing else at all.
We’d been going like this for about four hours.
Scout came down from the flying bridge to check on Nobody’s laptop. She’d done this twice already.
“We don’t have forever with this, you know.”
“It takes as long as it takes,” Fidorous said from under his cap.
“But if Ward notices this connection we’ll be locked out for good.”
Fidorous didn’t answer.
Scout turned away, scraped her fingers through her hair and turned back. “Doctor.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
Scout stared at him. “I don’t know. More paper? Go faster? You’re the
expert, you tell me.”
Fidorous knocked up the peak of his cap with a thumb and turned around in his chair. “If we put more chum in the water, the tide will take it and in a few hours it’ll cover half the sea. If we go faster we risk breaking the trail. You’re just going to have to be patient, Dorothy.” He turned back and pulled down the cap.
The air took a breath just like it does before a lightning strike.
“Patient? What the fuck happened to this is a serious business, Scout? We’ve only got one shot at this and time isn’t on our side.”
The doctor ignored her.
“How long do you think we have?” I asked.
Scout went from staring at Fidorous to staring at me. My words didn’t register at first and when they did I could see her struggling through her anger to decide whether she should answer.
“I don’t know,” she said in the end. “Ward could shut us out at any second and then, it’s over. Every minute we waste sunbathing puts the odds against us.”
“Doctor,” I said.
“We’re doing what we’re doing.”
Scout gave an exasperated sigh and turned away, heading back up to the flying deck.
Far back along the stretching, spreading trail of paper and ink, a single white page curls and hangs several feet under the surface of the ocean.
The slipstream under-pull of something huge and fast suddenly drags the page down, twisting and corkscrewing it into a pulpy knot of fragments which spin and swirl, caught and carried along in the wake of the dark, powerful shape before losing momentum, unravelling, coming apart. As the water settles, the remains of the page begin their slow and final spiral down into the deep black.
I blinked, squinted out at the waves, the trail of white paper disappearing into the distance, the seagulls, the empty ocean. Had I been asleep? I couldn’t tell.
Onboard the Orpheus time passed slowly, the minutes rolling and bobbing to hours as the sun made its slow way through the sky.
