"Snap out of it, man," he said.
When I looked up, I saw that he had gone to the black bag he had brought with him. From within, he pulled a long glass cylinder with a glass jar attached to the end.
"Nunnly designed this for me," he said. "You see, it's retractable. He began pulling concentric cylindrical stems out of the main unit until he had an exceptionally long glass rod at the end of which was the jar. The contraption extended out over the sides of the basket on either end.
"This process would be much easier if I could use wire or string, but the nature of the liquid mercury is such that it would eat right through them. I've discovered glass will hold the stuff. Not even Nunnly could spin thread from glass."
"I think you are going to be short a foot or two," I said, seeing that the long-handled jar was no more than ten or eleven feet.
"Well, this is as big as he could make it without danger of it snapping under the weight of the sample I bring up."
"But what good is it?" I asked. "You will still be two or three feet short."
"That, Cley, is where you come in. You will hold me firmly by the ankles and lower me over the side of the basket, where I will scoop up a portion of the ocean."
"That's mad," I said.
"Quite," he replied. "Let's get on with it." Holding the unwieldy rod in one hand, he struggled up onto the edge of the basket, placing his free hand on the rope that connected us to the island above. He stood there unsteadily, balancing.
"What if I drop you?" I said.
"That would be unfortunate, but if you do, I want you to watch and notice if I appear as part of the story." Just then a huge gust of wind blasted the side of the basket. The Doctor began to lose his balance, and I lunged forward and grabbed him by the ankles.
Luckily he was a small man; otherwise, I never would have been able to hold his weight back. He hung down under our carriage where I could not see what was going on.
"The view is even better down here," he yelled.
I was grunting and straining merely trying to hold him in place, and wasn't about to start a conversation.
Just when I thought I was going to lose him, he finally called, "Heave ho, Cley. Don't jostle me too much, or we'll have to do it again."
I began to back up across the basket as slowly and steadily as I could. When his waist was even with the edge, the Doctor straightened his body, bringing the jar end of the glass device up in both hands, taking great care not to spill a drop. As his feet touched down on the floor, he said, "Cley, come quickly now and unscrew the arm."
The glass rod had threads in the end that attached it to the jar. I worked quickly to remove it and release the Doctor from its drag.
"Just let it fall into the ocean," he said. "This is my last expedition. The rim of the island will soon be too unsteady to support the winch."
I did as he said, and after watching it fall away into a growing wave, I turned to see him affixing a fitted glass lid on the jar. He held his specimen up in front of him, where it gleamed in the brightness of the sun.
"I think we've got something here, Cley," he said, smiling. "I should have thought of this sooner." He stepped over and handed me the jar.
I grasped the glass container tightly for fear of dropping it, and discovered that it radiated a subtle warmth. Doctor Hellman moved back over to the black bag and pulled out a wide-barreled pistol. Aiming straight up, he pulled the trigger and the gun discharged. There was no explosion, only a loud pop followed by blue smoke. A projectile sped out of the end and rocketed toward the island. I followed its course for a moment, then lost it.
"Look now," he said.
I tilted back my head and witnessed a red splotch, like a bleeding wound, spreading out across the resilient blue. It was not long after that we began to ascend in the same uneven manner as we had been lowered.
"Where does Anotine get the strength to lift us?" I asked.
"Nunnly's gears make the job easy. Turning the crank is no harder than reeling a bucket of water out of a well. Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate Anotine's strength," said the Doctor with a laugh.
I handed him back his small portion of the mercury sea and went to the side to get one last look. We were almost too far away for me to perceive the detail of the etched surface, but I managed to make out one final scene. A prodigious curl carried on its back a tableau of the Master and his demon son wrapped in an embrace. Then the wave fell into itself, devouring the portrait, and, with two more upward tugs on the rope, I could no longer make out any details.
Doctor Hellman and I again took up our positions resting on the floor of the gondola. Wearing a look of contentment, he held the jar nestled in his arms as if it were his own child. I thought his mood might make him talkative, and I asked him to tell me about the ocean's dream.
"A love story, you said?" I asked him.
"I was joking in a way when I said that, but what I meant was that my interpretation of what I have seen, the silver chronicle of what seems to be every single moment of one particular man's life, has a meaning that is greater than the sum of all its individual scenes. It is a total concept that lies just beyond my powers of description. This is why I call it a love story, because Love is a word I am familiar with, a word that haunts my own dreams, but for the life of me I can no longer grasp the concept of it. The significance of the story in the ocean and my inability to remember the meaning of this term leave me with an identical, unquenchable yearning. I feel they are one and the same thing."
"Are you any closer to them now from when you started?" I asked.
"I'm so close," he said, laughing. "So close now that everything is disintegrating. Perhaps if I had a long enough glass rod and jar with which I could dip into myself, I could bring out the answer."
I hadn't realized how badly I needed a cigarette until I found myself puffing on a lit Hundred-To-One that, without warning, materialized between my fingers. It tasted so good, I didn't bother to question its appearance.
"What about this man in the story?" I asked. "Who is he?"
"He's a man of great power and great weakness with the potential for both good and evil—a scientist and magician. The ocean has shown me this in detail. Once I saw him crack an egg and a cricket jumped forth, and once he built a crystal egg that held within it a world."
The wind rocked the basket in a circular motion. This and the Doctor's conversation made my mind spin. For the remainder of the ascent, I suffered from a sense of unreality as if I were the ghost of a ghost. All I had to anchor me was the insubstantial smoke of the cigarette. I pressed my hand against the pocket containing the green veil and remembered my own yearning.
13
When we finally reached the island, and I stepped out of the basket, Anotine was there to take my arm. The moment my foot touched the ground, I realized that our strange journey had wrought some change in me. It was as if the mnemonic world had gained a great measure of authority or validity, for everything appeared more vibrant, and I felt, for the first time, comfortable with my existence there.
All of the doubt I had felt while ascending in the basket was now gone, carried off by one of the clouds we had passed through. The urgency of my mission, which had been a constant nagging companion, had mysteriously vanished like the breakfast plates in Anotine's dining room. I concentrated now on the touch of her hand, and that thrilled me like nothing from my rapidly diminishing memories of Wenau ever had.