Reglum took his opening. “The coordinates derived through manipulation of the Fulginator’s calculating schemata correspond to the positions on the wall-charts. The relative positions of the stars are also part of the calculations, though of course the stars will not be, with some odd exceptions, the same en route or at our destination as they are in Big Land. The books you see are gazetteers and concordances. This is how we pick our way forward and back through the tangled mazes of the Interrugal Lands.”
Dorentius returned to the conversation. “In Big Land the approaches to Yount, the gateways, are — with one exception that we know of — always in the southern areas of the Indian Ocean. The Arab mariners knew something of them, not as gateways but as places where the sea was more than normally confused and dangerous, places that ate ships. The gateway moves greatly within that area, sometimes nearer to Africa, sometimes farther south towards the eternal ice, sometimes farther north towards India. The gate shifts because of winds in the ether, ruptures in the Interrugal Lands, xantrophicius forces in the voids surrounding our respective worlds, coroscular flows and concatenations of chulchoisical disturbances . . .” He began to mutter again.
Sally brought him back with a question: “The exception . . . ?”
“Ah, yes,” said Dorentius. “Gateways appear in one other area, a stretch of the mid-Atlantic between Bermuda and Florida. We only learned of this in recent times, when a shipload of Lutheran Pietists en route from Hamburg to Philadelphia came through to Yount. Just over a century ago. The Pietists seek connections to Big Land, are thus often volunteers for even the most hazardous duty when the Fencibles or the A.B. send people from Yount into your world.”
Nexius Dexius had joined the group. “Fraulein Reimer,” he said. “She is one of them, of that society.”
Scrutinizing the Fulginator, Sanford said, “Superb craftsmanship.”
“Absolutely first rate,” said Reglum. “It has to be because the need for precision is incredibly high. If a calculation is awry by just a thousandth of a percentage, the Gallinule might wander off into . . . lost space, and worse. Notice the goodness of fit, the intricacy of the escapements and gears. This is the most advanced fulginator ever built.”
Dorentius rushed to add, “We owe something of the precision milling to English craft as well. We purchased — I believe you have met our Purser in London? Nexius’s brother? — a machine lathe from the firm of Henry Maudslay, shipped it to Yount. The best in Big Land. Technically against your anti-exportation laws but, I promise you, all in a good cause.”
Sanford pointed to another feature of the Fulginator.
“Well spotted,” said Reglum. “Fulgination is a mathematical art, manifested through variable vibrations, verging on music. What you see, those wires strung taut, the membranes and short tubes, the glass and crystal enclosures, all those are calculating mechanisms too, ones that capture the xantrophicius reverberations and the echoes of chulchoisical forces. The attached styli convert these movements into mathematical formulae and patterns, inscribing them onto the cylinders you see there.”
Barnabas and Sanford recalled a humming on the far edge of their minds. Sally remembered the keening sounds in her sleep on Mincing Lane.
“No one is allowed in here,” said Dorentius, “except the fulgination team and the A.B.s. The door is enjambed with brass, and all the mouldings are brass, to keep out rats and mice. Would be disastrous to have them gnawing and running in the Fulginator’s workings.”
Reglum smiled and looked at Sally. “We don’t allow cats in here either — it would not do to have the ship pitched into a blind maze because a cat sought a perch in the Fulginator! But we love cats, have a whole ship full of them, give them free range everywhere else. Do I understand, Miss Sally, that you have a cat with you?”
So Isaak joined in the plots, alliances, wars, and ambushes of the Gallinule’s feline tribes, quickly becoming the queen of one deck, and a scourge of all rodents within her domain. Crew members called Isaak the tes muddry, which Sally learned meant “golden claw.” Sally, whose memories of her first trip to Yount would be bittersweet, was glad that Isaak was happy. If only the cook could see Isaak now!
At dinner that night Sally showed such interest in the Fulginator, and played Dorentius so skilfully off Reglum (and vice versa), that she was invited to observe the fulgination process.
“You can start by learning the charts,” said Dorentius.
“I will give you a dictionary, so you can translate from Yountish,” said Reglum.
“Those charts,” said Barnabas. “They’re like nothing I have ever seen. Yet I have it docketed in my mind that those charts don’t show Yount either. So what does Yount look like? In all this time, we have never seen a map of the place!”
Reglum nodded. “We have atlases here and will show you. In short, Yount is our name for three large islands — ”
“ — and many dozen small islands,” interrupted Dorentius.
“Yes, yes,” said Reglum. “The Liviates and the Northern FiefIslands, but now we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. The largest island is Yount Major, also known as Farther Yount, where Yount Great-Port is, and much else besides. Yount Minor lies to the west, and Nearer Yount to the east.”
“Of course,” interrupted Dorentius again. “We use here the English equivalents for their names, in the original Yountish Nearer Yount is called Orn . . .”
The other Yountish officers at the table stopped their own conversations to join in describing Yount to the McDoons. Nothing interests mariners far out to sea as much as describing their home, in increasing detail as the distance between ship and home grows wider. In short order, the McDoons were overwhelmed with facts and figures. Barnabas waved his hands in mock-distress.
“Beans and bacon,” he said. “Our heads swim with all this knowledge. Obviously Yount is bigger than we had imagined! You’ll have to grant us some time to encompass all that is new!”
“Yet not all is new either,” said Sally. “I mean, most things are: the steam engine and the Fulginator, and, oh, for instance, the decorations you place all around your doors and windows — we’ve never seen anything like those. Still, there is much that is familiar to us. Look, here, the tea service we are using now, why, it is the same or else very like the china we use in Karket-soom, right down to the indigo pheasant motif.”
Noting to himself Sally’s use of the Yountish word, Reglum said, “This service is from Karket-soom. We are too few in Yount to sustain all forms of industry, so are forced to import many things such as porcelain.”
“It is a lovely pattern,” said an officer across the table from Sally and Reglum, a thick-set curly haired man with agile fingers constantly in motion as if he were playing an invisible flute. “Reglum’s right, this does come from Karket-soom, from Dutch merchants, but it was made in China. I know because I am Noreous Minicate, Purser of the Gallinule, and so responsible for all such purchases onboard.”
Noreous Minicate picked up the teapot and let the candlelight play off its glaze, saying, “You see that? True porcelain. We could not make this in Yount even if it were financially sound to do so. We simply cannot because we lack a key ingredient for the making of porcelain, an ingredient you call ‘china clay.’ Being Sabo-soom, the Small Land, we suffer such lacks in many areas of industry. We do not have an entire world with which to trade.”
“Ah,” sighed Dorentius. “What I would not give for porcelain fittings in the Fulginator. Much better conductivity, better resonation for the coroscular forces.”
“Why not trade with us?” asked Sanford, who guessed the answer even as he spoke.
The Yountians shook their heads as one.
“Too dangerous,” said the ship’s captain. “Each crossing from Sabo-soom to Karket-soom is a great risk.”
“The ships are too small,” said Noreous.
“Practically no cargo space,” added Reglum. “Guns and cannon take up a great part of a tough ship’s capacity.”
“Fulgination is an unpredictable art,” said Dorentius, with pride and sadness mixed. “Unacceptably erratic from a commercial point of view.”
Sanford adopted a mild version of his “qualifying” tone, saying, “Yet you seem to have commercial agents all over our world.”
“No, no,” said Noreous, his fingers making circles in the air to keep time with his phrases. “I mean, yes, we have a network of factors, like the Termuydens at the Cape and the Landemanns in Hamburg. Salmius Nalmius orchestrates it all from London. Only there aren’t so many as you make it out to be, not at all, perhaps twenty families in all, families we Small Landers have known and trusted for generations.”
Something gnawed at the back of Barnabas’s mind. “Have you a factor in India then, or perhaps more than one?” he asked.
The officers looked at each other, shifted in their chairs, sent side glances to Nexius. Nexius nodded almost imperceptibly to the purser.
Noreous said, “Yes. One in Calcutta, and one in Bombay.”
“In Bombay,” asked Barnabas. “It is not a Khodja merchant named — ”
“No,” said Noreous, tapping his fingers quickly. “No, but I have read that you know our contact there all the same: a staunch friend of Yount named Sitterjee.”
“Sitterjee!” exclaimed Barnabas and Sanford together. “Our Parsee friend!”
“The same,” said Noreous.
Nexius rose to his feet and said, “You still have many questions, Barnabas. Here, we officers know only some of your story and how your story — dassamirran — connects with ours and with the key. Reglum, tell Barnabas what we know from our orders.”
Reglum said, “Truly, we on the Gallinule know only what we have seen in the dossier our commanders gave us. These are deep matters beyond the thinking of any one man . . . or woman. The Learned Doctors took an interest in you, Barnabas, long, long ago. Before you were even born, in fact. It was your mother who first came to their attention.”
Barnabas opened his mouth, but no “beans and bacon” emanated. At last he said, “My mother? I barely knew her. Your grandmother, Sally. I’ve told you. She died when I was but a boy, eight years old. Sally, your mother, my sister, never really knew our mother at all. When she died — your grandmother — your mother and I were sent to be bred up by my uncle, the Old McDoon.”
Reglum coughed lightly. “I apologize for this. It is intrusive, I know, but we feel it best you know what we know. The better to help you when you arrive with the key.”
Absentmindedly, Barnabas fished for the key in his pocket. “No, it is acceptable,” said the London merchant. “I asked to know this. But what a marvel to discover that strangers not even of this world, my world, have known of me since my birth . . . knew my mother.”
“Your mother, sir,” said Reglum. “Born Belladonna Brownlee in Edinburgh in the middle of the last century. The Brownlees were less wealthy than the McDoons but a solid respectable family all the same. The Brownlees had been trading with the Continent, mostly through Amsterdam and Hamburg. Their main correspondents were, well, you can guess, members of the Termuyden and Landemann families. Pure happenstance, a coincidence or a gesture from God, interpret it however you wish. Your mother, Belladonna, had an unusual reputation already by the end of her childhood. According to the reports we have, she cut a strange swath in Edinburgh society. Many people thought she was a witch. I am sorry to put it in such crude terms.”
Sanford looked sharply at the Yountians and said, “Do not toy with us, gentlemen! We have come too far for cruel tricks. And think of what his niece must endure!”
Nexius stood up again. He bowed low, almost to the table, looking like a bear trying ballet. “Kumsi majirra sasal,” he said. “We are pained to give pain, and we beg your forgiveness. We are your sworn friends. This we do for the key — and to get Tom back to you.”
Reglum continued, “Belladonna born Brownlee possessed a strong desire to come to a place she did not know, and an ability — deemed witchly — to create visions of that place. A natural philosopher like myself, rejecting the concept of witchcraft, would say, Barnabas, that your mother had an innate ability to ‘feel far’ the way an ansible does. There’s not much more to tell. Your mother died a natural if premature death, a fever took her. The point is that her gift is exceedingly rare and it can be passed to offspring. The key can only be used by one with that gift, so reports from the Landemanns and Termuydens about your mother naturally aroused great interest among the Learned Doctors. I can only surmise that they see the potential in you for your mother’s ‘far-feeling,’ and so had the key sent to you.”
Getting to his feet, Barnabas said, “To speak here, with strangers, of things that I have never spoken of with anyone is a matter beyond my comprehension. My uncle would not speak to me of my mother, his sister-in-law. He quashed all my enquiries in that direction. Tonight you have told me far more than I have ever imagined. Pray allow me to retire now: I must ponder all that you have said.”
The ship’s captain said, “Please, let us all to bed soon. Tomorrow is our last day in Karket-soom — so Dorentius informs me. Let us prepare with rest that we may not enjoy again for months to come.”
In her cabin, Sally considered the evening’s discoveries. Isaak jumped up on the bed, walked around in a tightening circle and flumped down in the crook of Sally’s arm. Sally said to the cat, “Uncle Barnabas has more secrets than the crone who guards the Well at the Edge of the World. Secrets he himself knew nothing about . . . secret secrets. So, my grandmother was a far-dreamer. She had the longing for that which is foreign and strange, ‘was fremd und seltsam ist,’ as Fraulein Reimer says. Of course, the fraulein fits that description herself: a Pietist from Hamburg who fell through . . . a hole in the world. . . . Tom, where are you? What news I must share with you. Our grandmother, a witch. Uncle Barnabas was in love. I’m in . . . love.”
An image of Tom came into her mind: Tom as a boy hunched over a ledger book writing with a pen almost as long as his arm. He looked up and smiled with her eyes and cheekbones. An image of Barnabas’s Rehana came to her, but it looked like a female version of Reglum Bammary. Deep dark eyes and glossy black hair, Sally thought. A blurry image of another young woman, an African girl but in a city that looked like London, flitted across her mind; Sally had no idea who the young woman was. An image of James Kidlington sitting alone in a cell erased all else. Sally pushed that back, squeezing tears away from her eyes. “Sleep,” she commanded herself against the pain. Sleep obliged. Sally woke up for one second more. “Sehnsucht,” she said and then, thinking of Tom, she fell asleep without dreaming. It was the last dreamless night Sally would have until the Gallinule reached Yount.
Tom fended off a branch as the Cretched Man’s ship sailed close in along a shore overhung with giant trees and choked with undergrowth. Billy Sea-Hen, Pinch, and Tat’head did the same, cursing as stinging insects flew at them from the greenery. The bosun called out yet another depth-reading, sailors with long poles pushed away roots and debris.
“Well, Tom,” said Billy. “We knows we’re not in London anymore, what with wasps the size of chickens flyin’ at us . . .”
A large branch tangled itself in the rigging, forcing the ship almost onto the shore. Overhead the leaves rustled as if a large fish were swimming through the foliage. Something with webbed paws and too many eyes jumped from the tree onto the deck, long ears streaming behind it. It seized a sailor, tucked him under its arm like a loaf of bread, and bounded towards the railing.
“No!” yelled Tom and the Minders in unison. Tat’head dived on top of the snarling creature. The monster dropped the sailor, wrapped its talons around Tat’head’s neck.
Tom grabbed the thing’s donkey-ears, pulled back hard.
The thing howled, let loose of Tat’head, and grabbed Tom’s hands.
Before Tom could respond, the leaper bit two of Tom’s fingers off, sheared away from his right hand.
Tom screamed but grappled his enemy, hoisted it up, r
ammed its multi-eyed head against the mast over and over again until its neck snapped and its brains were smeared on the wood.
Tom looked dully at his bleeding hand, heard far away the shouts of Billy and Tat and Jambres. The last thing he saw before he collapsed was a finger in a puddle of blood on the deck.
For the next three days, fever smothered Tom. Blood kept seeping from the wound; something in the thing’s saliva slowed coagulation. Jambres put forth a power to staunch the flow and quiet the fever. Everyone on ship prayed for Tom’s recovery.
On the morning of the fourth day, the fever broke.
Billy Sea-Hen, sitting beside Tom, said, “By Wee Willie Hawken, you’re back.”
Jambres, sitting on the other side of the bed, smiled.
“Here he is just, Tom Two-Fingers,” said Billy. “That’s what we’ve taken to callin’ you, lad. Two-Fingers!”
Billy reached down, brought up a jar sloshing with alcohol, which he presented to Tom.
“Here, we saved this for you,” Billy said. “We could not find the other one. We think the monster swallered it.”
In the jar floated a finger.
“Oh, our second gift, young master,” said Billy, bending down to collect a long, flat box. “You earned these, right enough — the sailor whose life you saved, and Tat, they thank you in particular.”
Billy opened the box, which held two long fleshy ears, grey-yellow, still moist, pinned to the bottom like a butterfly.
“Should be the thing’s teeth,” Billy said, with a feral smile. “But we daren’t touch its gob for fear of poison.”
Tom tried to thank Billy but felt suddenly sick.
Jambres stroked Tom’s brow, whispered, “Sleep, Thomas, sleep. Restore yourself. Soon we will sail into the place called Sanctuary.” Some time later, Tom looked out the window of a house by a beryline sea. Gulls with silver wings flew by. Sanderlings, the palest grey with twinkling black legs, ran to and fro, chasing the surf, and being chased by it up to the sea-kale and blite on the tideline. The door opened in the room behind him, and the Cretched Man said, “Good morning, Thomas.”
The Choir Boats Page 17
