by David Walton
Parris took a step back. "You're not serious."
With an iron bar he found on the floor, Sinclair began prying up one of the tops. "From the original voyage."
"They've been dead for weeks," Parris said. "They can't still be . . ."
The top screeched free of its nails and clattered to the side. The box contained what Parris expected: a dead body. Despite the passage of time, however, it was as well preserved as the one Parris had dissected before. There was no smell.
"I thought you had them buried."
"I saved a few for you."
Parris felt a flicker of hope. If these bodies were as perfect inside as the other had been, he might be able to learn a lot about Horizon and its workings. It might not tell him how to wake Catherine, but it was something, a start. He couldn't just sit around bleeding her. The more knowledge he could gain, the better chance he had.
Satisfied, Parris looked around. "I'll need more light."
AS night fell, Sinclair walked the decks, checking the sails, watching the dark water slip by. He kept to the shadows. He liked to watch the sailors about their business, unaware of his presence. He passed near a gang of sailors dicing and passing around a bottle of spirits, and he stopped, listening to their conversation.
". . . not what I signed up for," said an apprentice seaman, no more than eighteen years old. "I'm no Protestant, but if I go home, the queen'll lock me up all the same."
A gray- bearded sailor with a missing ear gave a sour laugh. "That's if we make it home."
"Home or not, I won't never see my Lizzie again," said the apprentice.
"Ah, I've seen your Lizzie. She's no great loss," Graybeard said.
The apprentice leaped to his feet, fists raised. "She's my betrothed. I won't hear talk like that." He kicked Graybeard, who rose smoothly to his feet, still laughing, and dodged a wild punch. The others hooted and shouted their approval or jumped up to join in the fray. The apprentice snatched up the bottle of spirits and swung it toward his opponent's head, but Sinclair stepped out of the shadows and snatched it out of his hand.
Seeing the captain, the sailors fell back and touched their foreheads, chorusing, "Pardon, my lord."
Sinclair sat in the circle and took a long swig from the bottle. "Join me, friends."
The sailors traded nervous glances, but he beckoned to them, and they cautiously sat. He couldn't leave them brooding. That sort of attitude would only feed on itself as the voyage progressed. He had to focus their attention on what lay ahead.
"Son, you'll see your girl again," Sinclair said. "You'll drape her neck with diamonds and her fingers with golden rings." He passed the bottle to the young apprentice, who took it uncertainly. "Of course, you'll have to survive the Cynocephali first."
"What's that, then?" the apprentice said.
"The worst sort of devils. Wild men of the islands. They have no heads, but one eye in each of their shoulders, and a mouth like a bloody gash in the middle of their breasts. They fall on their victims in packs and eat them alive."
The silence lasted for a moment before the sailors erupted into guffaws and clapped the apprentice on the back. He'd turned as pale as sailcloth.
"Gave him a fright, you did."
"I think he's going to be sick."
Sinclair pointed at each of them in turn. "Laugh if you will. But I've seen worse in my day. The mermaids, now, there's a creature I wouldn't see again." The sailors leaned forward, expectant. "Aye," Sinclair said, and let his eyes grow distant. "We were becalmed near Madeira. Trapped there for three days without a breath of wind to stir the sails. They came from the south, five of them, each more beautiful than her sisters, and the way they swam! Turning and twisting and leaping out of the waves, the water sluicing over their perfect bodies. We hadn't seen a woman in months. It was enough to drive a man mad."
The young apprentice's eyes were huge. "What did you do?"
"I? I gripped the rail and shut my eyes tight."
"What ever for?"
" 'Cause them that didn't couldn't hold back. They threw themselves in the water and swam toward those vixens without thought for life or limb."
"And? What happened?"
"Why, they died, son. The mermaids wrapped them in their warm embrace and dragged them down into the deep to feast on their flesh."
The lad recoiled, coughing and covering his mouth with his hands while the other sailors laughed.
"And what manner of creatures will we find in the west?" Graybeard said. "Satyrs?"
"Gorgons!" said another.
"My brother saw an incubus once."
"Put aside this nonsense!" a new voice said. Bishop Marcheford clambered down the ladder from the forecastle, one rung at a time like a green recruit. Sinclair gave a deep sigh. What ever Marcheford planned to say, it wasn't going to help.
"All this superstition and spreading of tales just causes unnecessary fear," Marcheford said, yanking his doublet straight again. "If we're going to survive this voyage, we have to keep our trust in God, who created and commands all things."
Sinclair rolled his eyes. Marcheford wasn't going to endear himself to professional seamen by giving them advice on how to make it through a long journey. He wondered if bringing him had been a mistake. As a high- ranking clergyman, Marcheford represented a rival source of authority, and one in direct opposition to Sinclair's goals. Sinclair didn't want his men contemplating eternity; he wanted them greedy for earthly gold. Success on this journey would come from those driven to line their pockets and sample the exotic delights of faraway lands, not from those trusting in a benign Creator for safety. He needed them voracious, willing to stop at nothing. Superstition fed that drive, as long as it was directed properly. Religion would ruin it.
"I hope in future—" Marcheford began to say, but Sinclair couldn't stand to hear more.
"Forgive the good preacher," he said. "He knows nothing of the far lands." He was gratified to see the yellow teeth of the sailors appearing again in smiles. Marcheford's mouth was amusingly agape.
"Terror awaits us, make no mistake," Sinclair said. "The dreadful and the horrible are our fate. But there's more. Have you not heard of the Sylphids? Sprites of the forest islands that never die? They love gold and jewels and collect them for centuries. You have only to follow one to its nest to find riches beyond your dreams."
The smiles were broader now, and the bottle began to be passed around again. Marcheford was forgotten.
"Or what of the Amazons? In that land, they have no men, for the women conceive by sipping water. They are as tall and beautiful as Aphrodite, and since they have no channel for their insatiable lusts, they yearn for nothing night and day but to lie with men."
Laughter and catcalls erupted around the circle, the sailors leering and elbowing one another. Sinclair ruffled the apprentice seaman's hair. "A young buck like you might find himself with two or three at once."
The lad blushed. Marcheford looked disgusted and opened his mouth to say more, but Sinclair rose, took his elbow, and steered him away.
"What are you doing?" Marcheford said. "You're filling those men's heads with lies."
"Useful lies," Sinclair said. "Which makes them a good deal better than your kind."
"The Scriptures, you mean?"
"I mean the tales of life after death that you fill men's heads with. Gates made of giant pearls, streets lined with gold, that sort of thing. What good does it do them? I'll give them treasures here and now, in the real world."
Marcheford wagged his chin. "This world is but a shadow," he said. "The true reality comes after."
Sinclair thought of the men he'd seen die: from drowning, scurvy, consumption, by hanging, or by the sword. They were all gone. Ever since he was a child and watched his father waste away on his sickbed, watched the moment when all the intelligence and affection disappeared from his face, Sinclair had known the truth. There was nothing after death. Death was the absence of being. He had spent his life searching for a solution to that
problem, but he didn't believe it was to be found in a mystical heaven that no one on earth had ever seen. No, he wanted a solution he could touch and taste and experiment with, one grounded in the reality of the only world he knew. And he would find it, even if God himself stood in his way.
He released Marchford's arm. "Just stay away from my men," he said.
TWO of the three corpses were the same as before: dry and gritty, but well preserved. Parris lost himself in the work, filling five books with notes and diagrams. Both corpses gave tremendous insight into the workings of the human body, but little more into Horizon. They were the same as any other corpse, only thoroughly salted.
He worried that he was wasting time, that none of this would help Catherine, but at least he was doing something. He pressed on, trusting that the more he knew about Chelsey's journey, the better chance he had of helping her.
The third body was different. For one thing, it was a woman.
"I can't cut her," he told Sinclair.
"Why not?"
"She's a woman. I can't . . . well . . ." He felt his face growing hot.
"She's dead. She won't be off ended."
"Why was there a woman on the ship anyway?" He thought about it, then reached the obvious conclusion. He wondered from what port of call Chelsey had sweet- talked her aboard, and whether he'd told her where they were headed. "Did Lady Chelsey know?"
Sinclair shrugged. "I didn't bring it up."
"I don't want to touch her."
"I won't tell your wife."
"It's not that. It's just not . . ." Decent, he thought. Appropriate. Honorable. But he recognized the fallacy. To truly understand the body, he had to understand both sexes. He had watched Joan giving birth to Catherine, hadn't he? This wasn't all that different. Besides, for all he knew, a woman's organs were organized according to a different system altogether. Certainly there had to be room for a child; that implied a different mechanism, or at least a different structure. For some reason, though, this was one radical conclusion that didn't sit well with him. He might be able to desecrate a man's body, but to touch a woman in the same way made him feel sick.
He almost convinced himself that he couldn't learn any more from the third corpse than he had from the first two, but his worry for Catherine drove him to it. If there was any chance, he had to try.
As it turned out, it wasn't only the gender of the corpse that was different. Her body had the same rocky grit, the same effusion of salt, but she was somewhat decomposed, implying that she had died earlier than the others, and for a different reason. Only after the food and water in her system had transformed did the salt prevent further decay.
When he turned her over, he saw the welt. His heart thudded in his chest. It was the same as the one on Catherine's back, a puncture wound surrounded by a ring, only this one didn't glow. And another thing: her spine looked odd, like something had wrapped around it. He dug carefully with his knife, peeling back the skin. A thin cord spiraled around her vertebrae, beginning at the welt and stretching up to her neck. He'd never seen such a thing in any body before.
Leaving his knife, he raced up the ladders to his cabin, where Catherine still lay, pale and unmoving. Blanche stepped aside as he turned her over and opened her dress. There was the welt, as before. He ran his fingers up and down her spine, and yes— her flesh wasn't wasted like the corpse, so it wasn't as noticeable, but he could feel the cord twisting around her spine.
He sat back on his heels, panting from his run. What did it mean? Chelsey's mistress, if that was who she was, had clearly been attacked in the same way by the same creature. It was another piece of knowledge, but it didn't help. It wasn't knowledge he could use. By all appearances, Chelsey's mistress had never woken from her connection with the tamarin. In fact, it had probably killed her. Maybe that cord was something planted by the tamarin when it stabbed her, something that grew until it penetrated the victim's brain.
He forced himself to be calm. That didn't make any sense, at least none that he could think of. What possible advantage could it give a tamarin to kill a victim over the course of days? Catherine had seen it eating meat, but no hunting animal would take so long to kill its prey. Nor would it help as protection against enemies. There must be another practical reason.
If only he could figure out what it was.
THE tamarin was trying to speak to her. It took an effort for Catherine even to think of them as two different people: herself and the tamarin, the tamarin and herself. It wanted to know what was happening, where the ship was going, and what they would do when they got there. The questions weren't in any kind of language Catherine could understand, but the impressions were there, in pictures and memories.
I want to be free, she tried to think. Let me go.
What followed was a rush of anger and frustration and a river of consciousness that pulled her under.
It was his first mind ceremony. His pincers were filed sharp and wrapped with wreaths of white flowers. Both his blood family and his mind family were gathered. On the rain- drenched cliff edge, his blood father danced a salutation to the setting sun.
From this vantage point, standing right on the edge of the world, the sun seemed to fill the sky. The rain clouds overhead boiled in its heat, and billows of fog swept up from the void below. His blood father danced until the sun sank into the steam and finally disappeared.
He knew what was expected of him. His mind father approached and stood facing the void. In the dark, he clambered onto his back and for the first time drove his tail into his mind father's spine. Memories of generations past began to pour through the connection. He dreamed of births and deaths, wars and alliances, volcanic eruptions and landslides. The languages of faraway tribes flowed into understanding. The memory family he was joining was a rich and important one, unbroken for millennia.
His blood family lifted him into a woven sling threaded with fragrant flowers and traveled through the forest all night, carrying him. He saw a shining cascade bubbling up from among the rocks and running down into a smooth silver pool.
His mind father brought him a ladle filled with the thick silver liquid. Because of the bond between them, he had the disorienting sensation of seeing the scene from both his mind father's perspective and his own: one lifting the ladle; one leaning forward to drink. He opened his mouth, allowing the thick, heavy liquid to roll down his throat.
Intense pain shot through him. His vision disappeared in bright light. It felt as though a piece of his mind were being boiled away. He could feel the connection to his mind father being severed, and knew this was an essential part of the ritual, a way to keep the memories of generations without the dangers of maintaining a permanent bond.
Catherine surfaced from the memory like coming up for air, grasping at the threads of her own identity. She understood what the tamarin was telling her. Striking her with his tail had been no attack. He had meant her no harm. Instead, it was his people's way of sharing thoughts and passing memories to family members. She understood, too, that the bond could be broken, but only with the silver liquid she had seen in the memory. With the human part of her mind, she recognized the liquid as something she had seen her father prepare in capsule form for Peter when he lay dying. Mercury.
Chapter Twelve
SINCLAIR could hear the shouting right through the floor of his
cabin. It was dawn, earlier than he had planned to rise, but too late to bother going back to sleep.
He donned Dryden's hat, covering his glowing scalp, and went out onto the balcony, enjoying the spray of salt water. Below him, the rudder churned through the ocean swells. Above him stretched the taff rail, its aft lantern swinging. He breathed in the cool air.
The shouting continued. He sighed, threw on a cloak, and climbed down to see what the trouble was.
In the officers' mess he found Osywn Tate, the man he'd hired to command the expedition's soldiers, arguing with the first cook. Tate's muscled bulk seemed even larger in the cramped quarter
s belowdecks, and he towered over the cook, a stout, pugnacious man who had been blinded in an old knife fight and made no effort to patch or disguise his disfigured eye sockets. Both men were red in the face and stopped their shouting abruptly when Sinclair entered the room.
Tate bowed. "Beg pardon, my lord."
"What's the trouble?"
"He"—Tate pointed at the cook—"is accusing my men of theft."
"They're always taking more than their ration," the blind cook said. "Drawing extra beer like they're God's own angels. They think I can't tell, but I can."
Tate made an indignant noise. "Salute when you speak to the captain, and call him 'my lord.' "
