Had he been dreaming?
He recalled something…
Adrift in the vacuum, spheres of starlight expanding into dead vacuum. He had dreamed of an explosion in the darkness, a great fuming bubble of energy, its edges uncertain. It grew larger than imagination. He realized that the particles of light were separating as they flew apart, leaving waves of energy in their wake, leaving variance. There could be no space between them because it had not yet been created. Space and Time existed only in the great froth of energy they left behind. The shortest distance between different particles was a wave. Space itself was merely the potential between any two points. He saw the universe as ripples of energy expanding across a pond and bouncing back, but the pond did not really exist, only the ripples.
The dull glow of morning shone through the windows. Maskelyne sat up and shivered. He must have fallen asleep again. He got up and got dressed and then took a long draught of water from his personal supply. Then he glanced at his journal.
At the bottom of the page he spotted a paragraph that he didn’t recognize. He sat down slowly, and picked up the journal. The passage was undoubtedly written in his handwriting, but he had no recollection of ever doing so. It was a riddle.
Two brothers were separated at birth. They lived in the same house, and often spoke to one another at the supper table, although they never met. Each married the same two women, who bore them the same two sons. The world perceived them as mad, and yet they themselves perceived the world as quite normal. What quality did the brothers lack?
Maskelyne felt queasy and woolly-headed, as though the lenses had given him a hangover. Was he now writing things in his sleep? How on earth had Ianthe managed to wear them for so long?
He called for Kitchener to inquire about their progress and was told that the stocks had been built and bolted to the midships deck. Maskelyne instructed him to assemble the crew. He did not ask about his wife. He did not want to know where she was.
He went back to his journal.
My experiences with the lenses lead me to believe that Unmer sorcery is concerned with variance. If our universe is an expanding sea of variance, and if it does indeed conglomerate in places to form knots of ultra-compressed Space, thinning the remaining cosmos, then might our universe be only one of such spatial reactions? Should invariance not exist between separate universes, even if it is nothing more than a slender thread? Have the Unmer found one or more of these threads? Are they somehow able to manipulate them, to transfer energy and matter between them? Is there a network, a series of hidden tunnels that reach beyond our own universe?
One wonders if a map of such paths exists. Is this the object I have been looking for? Is this what the deranged Drowned wish me to find? A human man with knowledge of such pathways could wield the same terrifying powers as the Unmer, while remaining immune to the Haurstaf.
Compared to Unmer sorcery, the Haurstaf’s mental powers seem crude and simple. And yet they are devastatingly effective. If the Unmer are the wizards of a thousand wavelengths, the Haurstaf are the masters of one. That the latter should have so much power over the minds of the former cannot be a coincidence. The Unmer have disturbed the natural order of the cosmos, and the cosmos has reacted to restore equilibrium.
It occurs to me that the Unmer, so used to wandering the halls of infinity, perhaps perceive this tiny world with indifference. And yet, for Jontney’s sake, I cannot afford to do the same.
Ianthe had been secured in the stocks. The men stood around in silence. Maskelyne closed the sterncastle hatch behind him and walked over. Ianthe was staring absently at the deck, breathing heavily. He looked around for Lucille, but she was nowhere in sight.
‘Strip her,’ he said to Mellor.
The first officer nodded.
‘Wait.’
Maskelyne turned to see his wife, now pushing through the crowd of men. She was carrying Jontney in her arms.
‘I thought your son could learn something from this,’ she said.
Maskelyne just glared at her.
‘He ought to know what sort of man his father is.’
‘Take him inside,’ Maskelyne said.
Lucille didn’t move.
‘Take him inside!’
She stared at him defiantly. Jontney began to cry, his sobs the only human sound upon that deck.
Maskelyne was losing respect with every passing moment. He couldn’t allow himself to be humiliated like this, not now – when their very survival depended on it. Lucille was forcing him into a situation where he’d have to hurt her to protect her. Didn’t she realize how self-destructive her actions were? And then in a flash of inspiration he saw the truth. She wanted to push him. She wanted him to hurt her. Nothing else made sense. She was trying to help him. He was almost overwhelmed with a feeling of love for her.
‘Mellor,’ he said breathlessly, ‘Take my son inside.’
The first officer hesitated for a heartbeat, then stepped towards Lucille.
‘No,’ she said.
Mellor reached for the boy.
Jontney shrieked.
Lucille turned away, but Mellor already had a grip of the child’s jumper.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
She tried to get away. Mellor scuffled with her, trying to pull the child free from her arms. She struck out at him repeatedly with her free hand, scratching his face, but Mellor did not retaliate. Jontney howled.
And suddenly Mellor had the boy in his arms. He broke away, walking swiftly towards the sterncastle.
Lucille was sobbing now. ‘Don’t do this, Ethan, please. I know you think you have to, but you don’t.’
She was playing her part perfectly. At that moment this poor sobbing wretch of a woman looked more beautiful to him than ever before. His heart swelled with love. He made a fist and swung it at her head, punching her across the temple. She staggered but didn’t fall, and then looked up at him with wide, stunned eyes. He smiled and hit her again, much harder.
This time she went down. She clamped a hand to her nose and it came away bloody.
‘You coward!’ she cried.
He kicked her in the chest, and heard her gasp. He felt the weight of her body move against his boot. She began to wail. Snot and blood bubbled from her nose. She beat the palms of her hands against the rolling deck. ‘You’re a coward, Ethan,’ she said again. ‘That’s why you do these things. You’re afraid of your men, of me, of everyone you’ve ever met. You’re afraid because you don’t understand them. All these foolish theories you make up to justify everything… the truth is, you’re just a coward.’
Maskelyne recognized every word she spoke for the sacrifice that it was. She was trying to make it easier for him to punish her. The thought made his heart shudder with pain and love. Each blow he administered hurt him more than it hurt her. He wanted to pick her up and carry her away, and yet by doing so he would be betraying her. He wavered for an instant. He didn’t know if he could match her courage.
She spat at him.
He was about to respond when he heard Mellor shouting. ‘Ships to port.’
The first officer stood by the sterncastle hatch, gazing out to sea. Maskelyne realized that every man of the crew was looking in the same direction or moving to the port side to get a better view.
‘Men-o’-war,’ someone shouted. ‘Two of them.’
Maskelyne could see them now: two old, Irillian tall ships, their hulls clad in red dragon scale. They were three-masted, with foretops on their bowsprits and silver cutwaters. The fire-power from any one vessel’s triple gun decks would be enough to reduce the Unmer icebreaker to toothpicks. They were running near to full sail, despite the gales, and they were headed this way.