Irregularity

by Nick Harkaway

  W stood silent and pallid for some moments and then turned to me. We must never let anyone know of this, he said. I must trust you to rebuild this wall, to make it ten feet thick, or twenty. I will tender my report that the cathedral must be rebuilt somewhere else. If I am not allowed — and I may not be, for there must be a cathedral here, there always has been — if I am not, I will engineer a method to keep this… this abomination forever buried.

  2 June 1671

  The plan of the new cathedral was laid out in completely today; it sits over much of the footprint of the old cathedral but turned several degrees along the axis of north and south, to bury for ever that blasphemous spot deep underground, beyond the old north-east wall. I alone have overseen the filling of that gaping hole that W and I once stood before in silent horror; I alone have transported cartloads of waste within and packed it solid, that it may support the structure that W will build atop it. And I alone will sleep knowing that the sea of bones can never again be reached by man, nor will the unholy flood that threatens London from within ever rise up to overwhelm us. And in my dreams, from now until the day God sees fit to receive me, I shall hear the sound of a thousand tiny claws scrabbling over bones, the music which day in and day out, filled my ears as I was about my task. There, in the darkness no light could ever reach, the rats waited and watched. May they wait until Judgement Day.

  St Paul’s will rise again, and us with it, and what secrets holds shall be contained beneath sixty-five thousand tonnes of clean white Portland stone. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum, resurgemus.

  The Voyage of the Basset

  Claire North

  It was impressed upon me, when agreeing to this expedition, that secrecy was essential. I have abided by this request but, as a scholar of the natural sciences, I consider it a poor practice of my craft not to set here down some observations upon the voyage of the Basset, that future generations may, when this secret is no longer sacred, come to share in our ventures.

  I was only recently returned to England’s shores from my voyage with H.M.S. Beagle, and had little thought of venturing to sea again, when the commissioners came. At first I was reluctant to even hear their proposition, considering that the work I had to do in documenting my experiences at sea and far-off land a far greater matter than any affair of state.

  “But Mr Darwin!” they implored, “Can you not see the urgency? When Her Majesty is crowned it is an event which will define the nation! The eyes both of her citizens and of foreign powers — some still hostile to the Empire — will be upon us!”

  I muttered some indignant noise as to the effect that it seemed unlikely, England’s situation being what it is, that some few hours of pomp on Her Majesty’s behalf could yet determine the fate of a nation.

  “My good sir,” retorted Mr. Fellows, a portly fellow of squeaking voice and flushing cheeks, “all the kings and queens of Europe will attend this coronation, the greatest statesmen of our age! The Emperor of the Chinese, the Moguls of India, Sultans and Khans, Rajas and Tsars pay her homage. Were the event to be anything but a triumph, I do not see how we could hold our heads up high in society.”

  There, I divined, was the heart of the matter; for these gentlemen were civil servants, tasked to ensuring a spectacular celebration for our Queen. They couched their actions within the language of mighty events and vital diplomacy, yet family men still they remained and I could not but feel that it was a question of their salaries and position at work which dogged them, more than any visiting dignitary.

  “Be that as it may!” I exclaimed, “I hardly see how I, a mere naturalist, can be of any assistance to you.”

  “Mr Darwin, you are recommended by both Captain Fitzroy and the Reverend Henslow as the only man!”

  This bold claim I met with some doubt, despite the naming of several men to whom I am indebted, but they then pursued the matter with words most unexpected to my ears. “We have a scheme — indeed, such a scheme! — that will guarantee the most magnificent celebration for Her Majesty’s coronation, and you are essential. What, sir,” asked Mr Fellows, “Do you know of the lycaenidae?”

  Some four months later, in March 1838, I stood upon the wharves of Portsmouth harbour, in the thick oilskins that were the only thing for travel at sea, and wondered quite how I had agreed to be at this point. My patriotism, though no lesser than any servant of Her Majesty, was not my primary motive, for all of Mr Fellow’s chatter — rather the mission at hand, the experiment and its consequences — that I could not permit to pass me by.

  So on that cold spring morning, with wind from the north east and the sloops skimming across the sea, barely touching water, I set sail with perhaps the most unusual task I have ever enacted, upon the H.M.S. Basset.

  Some basic observations on the H.M.S. Basset.

  Though not quite so old as the Beagle, she had not seen a full refit for some time, which matter told in her creaking decks, her salt-scratched mast, her leaky cabins, and her six guns which, even to my landlubber eye, I perceived to be short-range and outmoded. The few men who tended these weapons took on double, triple roles across the ship of carpenter, cook, reefman and bosun, and looked askance at the guns like men trying to remember a stranger’s name. Her commander — one Captain Worth — was a young man recently raised up from Lieutenant, though his youth was well measured by his confidence and a rolling kind of wit that had no qualms at mocking the maturity of his own position.

  “Well, Mr Darwin,” said he as I supervised the loading of my cargo beneath his decks, “if I get bitten in the night be sure I shall bite back hard, and you the man I bite.”

  At first I took these words to be sincere, and as we rocked back in the harbour I scurried around my crates, examining every side to ensure that they were tight, and hoping that the fleas and rats which infest every aging brig would not be mistook for my charge and care.

  “The French will have some ado about us,” he added that even as we took the tide past the Sound and out on to whiter waters. “I have no doubt we’ll have to gut every man they send and scupper their timbers to the bottom before this business is done.”

  So horrified was I at this suggestion that I think I quite lost my colour, for he, examining my face, suddenly burst out laughing and, with a slap of his hand against my back and a shaking of his head exclaimed, “A jest, Mr Darwin, a jest! I had thought a man of your experience would know the sailor’s wit!”

  Yet though the Captain made light of the matter, news had already reached the ship that his jest could prove more earnest than we looked for. A French frigate called the Ste Guilliame, armed with intelligence passed to it by certain elements of the Americans, had been sighted sailing up the English Channel with orders — so the rumour went — to observe and, where at all possible, disrupt our mission. That such an act could occur at times of peace seemed to me barbarous but, as Captain Worth pointed out in one of his quieter moments, “When a ship vanishes in the middle of the Atlantic, Mr Darwin, who’s to say if it was God or powder that took her? And though our purpose is science in the service of our nation, yet its implications, as I understand it, could be of great significance to us all.”

  Thus it was a quieter ship than the Beagle which caught the winds into the Atlantic.

  An enumeration of my cargo.

  Nearly all of the vessel’s hold was given over to my mission, which was indeed the ship’s mission, and that space which was not taken by victuals was rather consumed by my apparatus.

  These contained, but were not confined to, five very large crates — large enough to berth five men in each by hammocks suspended across the walls, so the sailors grumbled — within which were the precious goods of my enterprise as five swelling mounds of earth, pebble and sand which were shaped to form the colony, or heap, of some approximately three hundred thousand ants mainly of the formica fusca species. The number needs must be approximate as the few months I had to prepare for the voyage was little suitable to counting each individu
al member of the heap, which must also have varied by temperature, humidity and the violent motion of the sea as the nest was transported to the cargo hold of the Basset.

  Needless to say, keeping these creatures within their crates while ensuring a suitable supply of food, air and moisture was a considerable challenge and I believe I saw more of the inside of the holds in the weeks we were at sea than I had observed in nearly five years living within the Beagle. At night, dreaming of ants crawling across me, I would wake — only to recall that my skin manifested an anxiety, rather than an escape of my charges.

  Yet if the ants were a continual worry to me, within the crates was a far greater and more delicate matter, for there the larvae of the lycaenidae were growing to maturity, nurtured in perfect symbiosis by the ants that tended them, for the primary form of this creature, as it grows and feeds, will upon the stimulation by the ant’s antennae produce the sweetest of the honeydews, which is to the ant great nectar; and yet which creature will also, by its relation with the ant, force the ant to regurgitate some of its own food, which then may be digested. Thus the internal process of one creature feeds the other, whose internal processes feed the feeder, and nature finds its path to sustain itself and grow, a system working in perfect harmony, one part upon the other. Truly, if it were not to the heavens and the turning of the stars above that men look for God, I say that you shall see His mighty work in the humble and almighty ant.

  Thus, my days so preoccupied with my symbiotic charges, thoughts of the French and their expedition to disrupt us quite fled my mind. Even Captain Worth — ever watchful beneath his wit — seemed largely to neglect the threat, declaring that in the ocean it was still accounted good fortune to find the shores of America when you looked for them, and that to find one frigate within all this mass of cloud and water would be a triumph indeed.

  It fell, alas, to me, to undermine this confidence when, one sea-tossed night I sat with the captain in his cabin, taking turns to catch the pitcher of port which was sliding across the table between us with each shaking of the ship, when Captain Worth exclaimed,

  “How did you come to conceive of this idea at all, Mr Darwin?”

  “It was not my idea at all; I was merely judged suitable to tend to its execution.”

  “Then whose idea was it, for pity’s sake?” he exclaimed, saving his glass from a tumble as the whole vessel seemed to jump and fall again with the pounding of the seas.

  “I believe that a good many natural philosophers and mathematicians, who specialise in examining the motion of the skies, have developed the ideas behind this voyage. Though in truth, first credit for the notion — albeit not the execution — must go to our fellow sailors of the East, who it is said often times sacrifice to fanciful dragons and spirits to grant them good fortune and auspicious skies.”

  “Fairy tales!” he exclaimed. “I trust we are not sailing to test a superstition?”

  “Supposition, perhaps,” I replied, “Though an experiment which yields no results is arguably as important as that which confirms your hypothesis. My primary concern with this exploit is how to monitor its results, for in truth, even should our cargo survive to our destination — which is the challenge for which I was called upon to serve — the number of variables in what we are attempting to achieve are near incalculable. Even calculating the co-ordinates to which we are destined to go, and the volume of cargo which we must release to produce the desired effect, is itself a triumph.”

  “You are saying our position was deduced mathematically?”

  “Quite so; it would not be valid any other way.”

  For a while Captain Worth was silent, drawing his lower lip in and out with a slight sucking breath, in a manner that put me in mind of an old man unsure of a new set of teeth. At last he said, “Then you consider it possible that the French might also have performed such a calculation, and concluded the destination to which we are bound?”

  In truth, I hadn’t considered it at all, but the matter now being set before me, I was forced to concede that yes, it was not, in theory, impossible, once they knew of the task we were set. Any mathematician armed with the same basic assumptions could, if they knew the purpose of our voyage, deduce its method — and so I told the Captain.

  “But still to reach the coordinates; to be there on time — that is a nautical challenge, is it not, as well as a mathematical one? Already I am seeing large numbers of the ants die back; the implication can only be that the larvae are reaching their maturity.”

  “What if they reach maturity too soon — if your charge is ready before we arrive at our destination?”

  “Then we will not succeed with the experiment,” I replied, and now there was no humour in either of us. “The life cycle of these creatures is not long, and I do not have supplies to feed them above another seven days.”

  Captain Worth considered this, then laughing said, “Perhaps we should unleash your cargo now, Mr Darwin, see if they cannot give us a fair wind for the rest of the voyage! Then again, were there to be hurricanes in London I have no doubt you or I would receive the blame, merited or not. Perhaps therefore in good naval order we should simply stick to the orders given, and not pause to question them.”

  So we continued, servants to the wind that carried us, since — for now — no urgency could command the heavens to bend to our will. Every day I spent in the cargo hold, I observed the growing number of creatures dying, both ants and larvae beneath my care, and though I had calculated for such odds, the sight of it chilled me. I knew that this was a perfect balance of nature that I had brought with me from England, of larvae feeding ant and ant feeding larvae, yet it could not last for ever stripped from its natural environment, and death is a part of the course of life as ever birth is, and no less essential.

  These reflections in me, growing the more philosophical as I witnessed my cargo being whittled away, induced a kind of lethargy so that, when the word came down of a sail sighted on the horizon, I found neither the surge of excitement nor the start of fear within me that sailors on a lonely voyage so often experience at the sight of another of their kin.

  Indeed, going up onto deck, I could not spot the vessel at all, until the First Lieutenant gave me his spy-glass and, looking to the south, I caught a glimmer of what looked for all the world like the ridged limbs of a frightened phasmida, and which sharper eyes informed me was not merely a frigate, but a race-built frigate of an American design, now common to warships of a certain age upon these oceans. Of colours, neither I nor the Captain could make them out at this distance but as we continued on, I felt a stillness settle over the deck that did not reassure.

  For two hours we held our course, and the ship, rather than gaining, seemed to hover like the blackness of distant falling rain upon the horizon, sometimes so far off that we thought it had fled; sometimes rising up across the grey seas from a temporary occlusion behind the running waves. At last, some two hours in, the Captain lifted the glass to his eye, then lowered it, then raised it again, and on now lowering it one more time turned to the wheel and gave orders to change our course and run full speed before the wind.

  This order was immediately obeyed, and now all thoughts of my ants departed and I stood upon the deck and murmured in the Lieutenant’s ear, “Has he seen her colours?”

  “I don’t know rightly what the Captain has seen,” he replied softly back, lest his voice disturb the now stern concentration on the deck, “But if he bids us run before the wind, then run we shall, and let the Devil come.”

  Indeed, it seemed that our turning from our course was the signal that the other vessel had needed to confirm her own actions, for she too raised full sail and set to behind us, growing now in the horizon from a tiny dot to a rounder protrusion. She was still too far off for me to perceive her colours with my naked eye, but close enough that the Lieutenant turned to me and said the words we had waited for;

  “She flies no colours.”

  “So she might not be French?”

&nb
sp; “A ship which flies no colours has no good intent, regardless of her port.”

  “Can she catch us?”

  He had clearly spent too much time in Captain Worth’s company, for as junior officers often do, he had taken upon him the senior’s mannerisms, drawing in his nether lip before murmuring, “She’s newer than us, and built to run, which gives her an edge. But she’s heavier too. We’ve seen port these last few weeks and had our keel stripped of all that might encumber her, so, lest she catches us in the next few hours, I’d say we have a chance of slipping from her right enough.”

  “Why the next few hours?”

  “The sun will set soon,” he answered. “Then it’s God’s will what happens.”

  Thus reassured — or perhaps not assured at all — I found that I had nothing to do but wait. To calm my mind — for no man for whom it is not his business can look at a shadow in his wake for more than a few hours and in any way feel productive — I went back to my ants and my larvae and, peeping open the lid on the foremost crate, was almost immediately startled by a flutter of blue in the dark.

  My cargo was coming to its maturity, and now — with only three days to go until the fateful day of Her Majesty’s coronation, and two days to complete our experiment — it was down to the seamanship of Captain Worth in finding our destination and getting us there whole, and I could do no more.

  By the time the sun was beginning to set, the ship that pursued us was near enough in range that I fancied I could see the shapes of people scurrying across its deck. Looking back at them from the stern of the Basset, I wondered if they knew the full scale of the experiment we had been sent to conduct. Most assuredly, to those civil servants who had first enlisted me to it, their purpose was diplomatic, designed to secure the coronation of the Queen against a threat I considered trivial at best. But for men of learning, men who study the wonder of God’s creation and within it see the masterwork of what He has wrought, our enterprise was no less than wonderful, and it seemed to me that every man of scholarship, every man of imagination, regardless of his language or place of birth, should in it find something extraordinary. This thought made me sadder almost than the fear of the guns, slowly coming into range as we headed towards the night.