By the time Wilander regained his feet and staggered to the rail, Nygaard was down the rope and off into the forest. After the briefest of hesitations, he followed, furious at the little man for his transgression, for having befouled his woman, and he debated the truth of that as he went; he wondered if Nygaard might only be convicted of abusing a pet, but no, Wilander thought, catching sight of him heading over a rise (there you are, weaselly little shit), then passing out of sight…No, these were frontier circumstances, frontier laws must therefore apply. They hung horsethieves, sheepstealers, why not whistler-fuckers? He envisioned himself calling Nygaard to judgment—Nygaard would back away, stumble in the snow, put out his hands in defense, say something pitiable, and Wilander, looming above him, would say, I pronounce…I pronounce…Well, he would say something appropriate, something that would terrify Nygaard, that by its grandeur would infect him with dread, and then he would be on him with his fists flying, with kicks, goal-scoring kicks, delving in under the ribs, digging out his bones. As he floundered up the rise behind which Nygaard had vanished, a burst of light and noise, there came a shrieking and an accompanying flare of brightness that held and held, and he sank to his knees in the snow, stoppering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. After an interminable time, the sound and light abated. He struggled to his feet and trudged to the top of the rise. Nygaard’s trail gave out in a patch of disturbed snow. Another burst of light and noise, farther away, off to his right, caused Wilander to grit his teeth. With Viator so near to leaving, the forest was full of stress points and Nygaard must have stumbled directly into one. He would have to be very careful; he did not want to pass through the barrier without the ship. Without her iron keel, the great stress-bearer to surround him, he had little chance of survival. Yet Aralyn, the qwazil and the wiccara, they had slipped through safely. He struggled with the idea, considering the notion of two-way travel, pro-and-conning, trying out the idea that passage one way was easier than passage the other, and, giving it up as too problematic, he began hiking back to the ship. It was tough going in the snow, the air turning to ice in his lungs, and as he paused to catch his breath, he was transfixed by the sight of Viator. The overcast had deepened, big snowflakes swirling down, and the ship, trapped between the two confining hills, looked to be straining forward, shouldering its burden of ice and snow, battered and indefatigable, every splotch, every dent, every evidence of its long labor, visible in that neutral light. He felt a unity with her, a shared principle, an inelegant workers’ purpose; they persevered, they hung in, they did their job. Tears came to his eyes on seeing his sister so resolute and undaunted. He glanced heavenward, less an emotional response than an involuntary attempt to clear his airway, and there, making a great soundless sweep across the lower sky was the creature of his dreams, the ropy wormlike thing, thrillingly vast, skimming the fir tops, clear for a split-second, a mile of gristle given definition by a central nub, leaving stillness in its wake. Wilander did not know what to do, dismasted by the sight. The firs had not bent beneath it, he had felt no great wind, so perhaps he had not seen it, perhaps he had fallen asleep in the snow and was dreaming. But the passage of the creature seemed a statement of finality. There was nothing left to do or say. He waited to be gathered, to wink out of existence, for some momentous event to occur. When it became clear that he was not to be taken, that this was not his time, only then did he collect the litter of self, the human stupidities, cram them back into his head, abandoning what would not fit, and went stumping through the snow toward Viator, not a thought in his head apart from that passage, that godlike passage, replaying it until the dark brown shadow it had cast became a dark brown cast of mind.
From the shingle, Viator’s hull was a brutish thing, black and blunt and patchy with ice, given a strangely delicate accent by the two crumpled screws with their defining crusts of snow, like two sugar flowers popping out from the belly of an unsodded grave; and there was an odd thing, as well, on the shore, a length of seaweed, iron in color, bulky, roughly man-sized, uncovered by the snow. Wilander’s path led away from it, but he let his feet stray him near and found that it was not seaweed as it had appeared, but rust; a man made of rust. On peering closer, he recognized that man to be Arnsparger. Fright drove him back a step. He had a second look. The body was fully clothed, the clothes cunningly fashioned of rust; arranged lying on its stomach, its arms held close, face to the side, gaping—it might have fallen from the stern. Arnsparger must have put it there to be found, a grisly piece of art, but artful nonetheless. Wilander knelt by the body. The detail was exquisite. All of ozim. Here was Arnsparger’s pen protruding from his trouser pocket; here the bulge of his wallet, the buttons on his shirt collar. He had not believed him capable of such. Beery, bluff Arnsparger, born in tavern light to a crowbar and keg of beer…he had done this? This miracle? How had he managed to fix the surface? Or did he, like the purest of artists, intend his work to be sacrificed, victimized by wind and weather? Wilander positioned his finger over Arnsparger’s jowly, stupefied face, then thought, no, not the face, he wouldn’t be the one to spoil the face, and, choosing an area near the belt, where the damage would not be so noticeable, he pushed in his finger. To his dismay, it went in easily. Ah, well. He withdrew it. Sheathed in rust, tipped in blood. He stared. Delicate flakes of red and black coated the finger from the knuckle to the first joint, giving way to glistening red. The fact of it sank in, as did the fact of a red leakage from the hole he had made. Something inside the figure settled, some imbalance registered, and its cheek caved in, rust leaked from an eyesocket. He jumped up and ran, nearly running up the rope, a mad scramble, flung himself over the rail, and made for the cabins, calling to Mortensen, to Halmus, wanting to alert them to a danger, but what was the danger? You couldn’t yell, Arnsparger’s turned into rust! and expect the same reaction you got by yelling, Fire! You would leave yourself open to ridicule, and rightly so. Mortensen wasn’t in his cabin; he must be down in the hold and he could rot there, because Wilander wasn’t poking his nose in the hold, no sir, not on his life, and he burst into Halmus’ cabin, noticing the glass had been knocked out of the port just as his feet skidded out from under him—he squawked, flailed, slammed down, knocking the back of his head painfully, not losing consciousness, squeezing his eyes against the pain. After the pain subsided he saw that the port glass was littering the floor and one of the crumbs, a chunk the size of a marble, held part of a brown eye. He thought it was reflecting his eye until he remembered his eyes were blue. Groggily, he sat up, bracing against the bottom of Halmus’ bunk. Turned the piece over in his hand. It showed the same from every angle, as if the eye were turning with it, interested in him. Wilander was too exhausted to register much of a reaction. Another chunk held the corner of a sneering mouth, and another a section of neatly trimmed beard. He had gone a ways toward assembling Halmus’ face before deciding he did not want to see the expression he had worn at the moment of death. Scattering the death mask on the floor, crunching the pieces underfoot, he walked along the passageway to his cabin and lay down on his bunk. Something dug into his back. The cell phone. He switched the thing on. Lots of messages, but he didn’t have a lot to say, just he wished this trip was over, Sayonara, and like that. He was tired, too full of angles for which there were no…The thought tailed off, uncompleted. He couldn’t count, he couldn’t think. His phone rang. Watching the little dingus vibrating on his chest made for a fun few seconds, but soon grew tiresome. It stopped. Seconds later it rang again. He picked it up, said, Hello.