'That'd be none, then.' Captain Stephens cocked a half-smile. 'Submersiblers don't like to talk about this sort of thing, you understand.'
Rokeby-Taylor was bent over, peering into the battery racks.
'Mr Rokeby-Taylor?' Aubrey said. 'You're the expert on the Electra. Have you any insights?'
'Eh?' He straightened. 'Well, it was the batteries I was most interested in. Can't say I'm totally familiar with all the other aspects of the craft.'
'The batteries then. What was so special about them?'
Rokeby-Taylor reached into pocket of his jacket and pulled out a handkerchief. He swabbed at his brow. 'They were a hundred times more powerful than anything else ever invented. Spells accelerated the rate of something or other. Or decreased it.' He rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'To tell you the truth, I'm not much of a details man.'
'Can you remember anything helpful?'
'Only that we need the batteries if we're going to get out of here. Life or death, I'm afraid.'
Aubrey sighed. He hadn't really anticipated performing any major magic. His condition was fragile; it could crumble at the slightest provocation. Like performing serious magic.
Grimly, he turned his magical awareness inward to check his status.
His soul was nestled within his body, but it was uneasy. The golden cord that led to the portal guarding the way to the true death tugged, fitfully. It wasn't a comfortable state of affairs but Aubrey had learned to live with it, like a toothache.
He decided that he was stable enough to undertake some careful magic. And since he really didn't have any choice, he saw this as a good – and timely – thing.
He ignored the small voice in the back of his mind that wondered if he were overestimating his readiness. What else could he do?
He went to the racks where the batteries had been. Great insulated copper cables – each as thick as his wrist – drooped like overcooked noodles. There was simply nothing to connect them to.
Aubrey peered into the racks. The feeble emergency lighting made it difficult to see, but he could feel the prickling of magic on his skin. Was it just residue of whatever spell had caused the batteries to disappear, or was it something else?
Alternatives paraded in front of him. The batteries could have been transported somewhere else. That would be a major spell drawing on the Law of Displacement. Moving such bulky objects any distance at all was a highly complex task, but it was a well-established procedure. Which meant he would have detected it from a mile away, so he crossed out that possibility.
Or the batteries could simply have been destroyed. He shook his head. The residue in that case would be magical, but also physical. There were no traces of metal fragments, or pools of acid.
No. This is something esoteric, exotic, radical.
He leaned right over the restraining bar. Taking his weight on his stomach, he ran his finger across the middle of the metal plate. He examined it closely. It felt slightly gritty, but with an overtone of orange, which was his mundane senses trying to come to terms with magical remnants. He sniffed, and it smelled pointy – another sense-scrambling magical quality.
He rubbed his finger and thumb together absently; without realising it, he began to hum.
Rokeby-Taylor and Captain Stephens appeared at his shoulder. 'D'you have something?' the industrialist asked.
Aubrey started. 'Maybe. Possibly.'
'Not sounding altogether certain, then.' Captain Stephens glanced in the direction of Atwood and the gunner's mate. 'It'd be good if you did. We don't seem to have many options.'
Aubrey nodded. 'Mr Rokeby-Taylor, do you recall the Law of Dimensionality?'
Rokeby-Taylor screwed up his face. 'Dimensionality? I may have missed that lecture.'
'It's obscure stuff, usually glossed over.' Aubrey studied his thumb and forefinger. 'I have a feeling that a clever magician manipulated the batteries with a spell derived from the Law of Dimensionality. All done on a delay, of course, to go off when we were well at sea.'
'On a delay,' Rokeby-Taylor echoed. Then he narrowed his eyes. 'Manipulated the dimensions? Of the batteries?'
'Exactly. Height, width and breadth are our standard dimensions. The Law of Dimensionality states that any spell that deals with a physical object must include these aspects, to cover its physical presence.'
'Fairly obvious.'
'And that's where most people stop. But if the Law of Dimensionality is inverted, then it points the way to create spells that can manipulate the dimensions of objects. It's very tricky stuff, but it's possible to reduce objects to a state of having no dimensions.'
Captain Stephens stared at the racks. 'No dimensions?'
'I think the batteries have become . . . points.' Aubrey groped for an explanation. 'Imagine turning a cube until all you can see is one side – a square. In effect, you've turned a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional object. The same thing happens if you turn a square around so you can only see one edge. A line. Two dimensions become one. These batteries have been turned, and turned again and again until three dimensions have become none.'
'If you say so.' Captain Stephens pushed back his cap and scratched his head. 'Really, I don't care if the batteries have become merry-go-rounds, as long as you can restore them.'
Aubrey thought hard. It shouldn't be difficult. The spell-caster had been arrogant, assuming that the cleverness of the magic would baffle anyone left on the submersible. In Aubrey's favour, he had the natural tendency of objects to return to their true form, reverting to their original state if given half a chance.
'Not wanting to rush you,' Captain Stephens said, 'but I'd say we only have a few hours air left.'
Aubrey's palms were sweating. He ran them along the sides of his trousers. As a possible fate, suffocating in a tin eggshell at the bottom of the sea was not high on his list of favourites.
Danaanian. The ancient Danaans were great ones for their geometry, so using their language to manipulate dimensions should work well. A few simple terms, delimiting the strictures placed on length, height and breadth, and that should do the trick. Simple – and not too taxing.
He hoped.
'Stand back,' he said to the others.
Aubrey took up a position halfway along the bank of racks. He spread his arms in a vague gesture towards his own dimensionality. He steadied himself, concentrating hard on what he was about to attempt. He felt the usual mixture of apprehension, doubt, exhilaration and excitement before finally resolving his will on the task. A deep breath, then he chanted the spell.
Each term came easily and he was pleased as each led to the next with surety. It was over in less than a minute and he added a neat final term as his signature.
Nothing happened. Aubrey cocked his head and frowned. He leaned closer to the empty racks.
And he was blown off his feet.
Even as he sailed through the air he felt a mixture of triumph and exasperation. Air, he thought. I should have remembered all the air that would get displaced when the batteries reformed.