Against the Day (106 page)

Woevre
couldn’t always see the skyship, but he knew it was there. When the wind was
trained exactly across the dunes, he could hear the engines aloft, see the
stars blotted out in large moving shapes of black against black
. . . .
He thought he had also glimpsed the
crew up on the seawall, slouching along like a bunch of collegians in search of
amusement, hands in pockets, taking in the sights.

It
was October by now, the regular season was past and the breezes cool but not
yet brisk enough to drive away pedestrians from the Digue, though Lindsay found
it uncomfortable—“Far too desolate, one’s face grows itchy with

the salt, one feels like Lot’s wife.” In the sealight and
optical illusions out here, with all the demolition and new construction going
on, the boys were often uncertain as to what a given mass at any distance might
turn out to be—cloud, warship, breakwater, or, indeed, only the
projection upon a perhaps tooreceptive sky of some spiritual difficulty within.
Hence, perhaps, the preference they had already noted in Ostend for interiors—casinos,
hydropathics, hotel suites in a choice of disguises—huntinglodge, Italian
grotto, parlor of sin, whatever the lodger with the wherewithal might require
for the night.

“And
say, who are these strange civilians creeping around all of a sudden?” Darby
wanted to know.

   
“The
Authorities,” shrugged Chick. “What of it?”

   
“ ‘
Authorities’! Surface jurisdiction
only. Nothing to do with us.”

   
“You
are Legal Officer,” Lindsay reminded him. “What is the problem?”
  

   
“ ‘
The’ problem, Noseworth, is
your
problem,
as MasteratArms—nothing is where it should be anymore. Almost as if
persons unknown have been sneaking on board and rooting around.”

   
“But
one cannot imagine,” pointed out Randolph St. Cosmo, “that much gets past
Pugnax.” Indeed, with the passing years Pugnax had been evolving from a simple
watchdog to a sophisticated defensive system, with a highlydeveloped taste,
moreover, for human blood. “Ever since that mission to the Carpathians,”
Randolph recalled, frowning a little. “And the way he drove off that squadron of
Uhlans at Temesvár, almost as if he were hypnotizing their horses into
unseating their riders
. . . .
”

   
“Some
fiesta!” cackled Darby.

Still,
their admiration for Pugnax’s martial skills was not unmixed these days with
apprehension. The faithful canine carried about a strange gleam in his eye, and
the only member of the crew who communicated with him much anymore was Miles
Blundell. The two had been known to sit together side by side back on the
fantail, wordlessly deep into the hours of the midwatch, as if in some sort of
telepathic contact.

Since
the mission to Inner Asia, Miles had been engaged ever more deeply with a
project of the spirit which he found himself unable to share with the others in
the crew, though it was plain to all that his present trajectory might lake him
perhaps further than he could find his way back from. Beneath the sands of the
Taklamakan, while Chick and Darby had idled mindlessly at one libertyport after
the next, and Lindsay and Randolph had spent hours conferring with Captain
Toadflax over how most effectively to carry on the search for Shambhala, Miles
was being tormented by a prefiguration, almost

insupportable in its clarity, of the
holy City, separated by only a slice of Time, a thin screen extending
everywhere across his attention, which grew ever more frail and transparent
. . . .
Unable to sleep or converse, he
would often lose track of recipes, forget to stir the popover dough, wreck the
skycoffee, while the others continued calmly about the chores of the day. How
could they not know of that immeasurable Approach? Thus he sought out Pugnax,
in whose eyes the light of understanding was a beacon in what had without
warning become dangerous skies.

For
somehow, the earlier, the great, light had departed, the certitude become
broken as grounddwellers’ promises—time regained its opacity, and one day
the boys, translated here to Belgium, as if by evil agency, had begun to lapse
earthward through a smell of coal smoke and flowers out of season, toward a
beleaguered coast ambiguous as to the disposition of land and sea, down into
seaside shadows stretching into the growing dark, shadows that could not always
be correlated with actual standing architecture, folding and pleating ever
inwardly upon themselves, an entire mapful of unlighted outer neighborhoods
sprawled among the dunes and small villages
.
. . .

Miles,
looking out at the humid distances from this height, at the hesitant darkness
in which little could be read across a lowland fixed anciently under a destiny,
if not quite a curse, contemplated the pallid vastness of twilight, in its
suspense, its cryptic insinuation. What was about to emerge from the night just
behind the curve of Earth? fog from the canals rose toward the ship. A smudged
and isolated copse of willows emerged for a moment
. . . .
Low clouds in the distance bleared the sun, causing the
light to break into suggestions of a city hidden behind what was visible here,
sketched at in shadows of taupe and damaged rose
. . .
nothing so sacred or longinglysought as Shambhala, stained
with a persistent component of black in all light that swept this lowland,
flowing over dead cities, mirrorstill canals
. . .
black shadows, tempest and visitation, prophecy, madness
. . . .

“Blundell,”
Lindsay’s voice missing today its usual aggravated edge, “the Commander has
called Special Sky Detail. Please take your assigned station.”

   
“Of
course, Lindsay, I was distracted for a moment.”

After
securing the mess decks that evening, Miles sought out Chick Counterfly. “I
have seen one of the Trespassers,” he said. “Down there. Out on the Promenade.”

   
“Did
he recognize you?”

“Yes.
We met and spoke. Ryder Thorn. He was at Candlebrow. At the ukulele workshop
that summer. He lectured on the fournote chord in the context of timelessness,
and described himself then as a Quaternionist. We

had quickly discovered our common love of the instrument,”
Miles recalled,

“and discussed the widespread contempt in which ukulele
players are held— traceable, we concluded, to the uke’s allbutexclusive
employment as a producer of chords—single, timeless events apprehended
all at once instead of serially. Notes of a linear melody, up and down a staff,
being a record of pitch versus time, to play a melody is to introduce the
element of time, and hence of mortality. Our perceived reluctance to leave the
timelessness of the struck chord has earned ukulele players our reputation as
feckless, clownlike children who will not grow up.”

“Never
thought of it like that,” said Chick, “all I know is, is it sure sounds better
than when we sing a cappella.”

“In
any case Thorn and I found that we communicate as well as ever. It was almost
like being at Candlebrow again, only maybe not as dangerous.”

   
“You
saved us then, Miles. You saw right into it. No telling what—”

“You
fellows would have been saved by your own good sense,” Miles declared. “Whether
I’d been there or not.”

But
there was a sort of disconnection now in his voice that Chick had learned to
recognize. “There’s something else, isn’t there.”

“It
may not be over.” Miles was inspecting his Chums of Chance regulationissue
knuckleduster.

   
“What
are you planning, Miles?”

   
“We’ve
arranged to meet.”

   
“You
might be ~be in danger.”

   
“We’ll
see.”

So
Miles, having duly submitted a specialrequest chit and received approval from
Randolph, descended in civilian dress as a groundparty of one, to all
appearances only another daytripper among the seasonal throng creeping about
the royal town below, ever hostage to the sea.

It
was a bright day—at the horizon Miles could just make out the carbon
smear of a liner. Ryder Thorn was waiting in the angle of the Digue by the
Kursaal, with two bicycles.

   
“Brought
your uke, I see.”

“I
have learned a ‘snappy’ new arrangement of a Chopin nocturne that might
interest you.”

They
stopped at a patisserie for coffee and rolls and then pedaled south toward
Diksmuide, the still air gradually accelerating into a breeze. The morning was
alive with late summer. Harvest season was rolling to a close. Young tourists
were everywhere in the lanes and by the canalsides, winding up their season of
exemption from care, and were preparing to go back to schools and jobs.

The terrain was flat, easy cycling,
allowing for speeds of up to twenty miles an hour. They overtook other
cyclists, singly and in cheerfully uniformed touring groups, but didn’t pause
to chat.

Miles looked at the countryside,
pretending to be less puzzled than he was. For the sunlight had to it the same
interior darkness as the watery dusk last night—it was like passing
through an allsurrounding photographic negative—the lowland nearly silent
except for waterthrushes, the harvested fields, the smell of hops being dried
in kilns, flax pulled up and piled in sheaves, in local practice not to be
retted till the spring, shining canals, sluices, dikes and cart roads, dairy
cattle under the trees, the edged and peaceful clouds. Tarnished silver.
Somewhere up in this sky was Miles’s home, and all he knew of human virtue, the
ship, somewhere on station, perhaps watching over him at that moment.

“Our people know what will happen
here,” said Thorn, “and my assignment is to find out whether, and how much,
yours know.”

“I’m a mess cook for a ballooning
club,” said Miles. “I know a hundred different kinds of soup. I can look in the
eyes of dead fish at the market and tell how fresh they’re likely to be. I am a
whiz with pudding in large quantities. But I don’t foretell the future.”

“Try to see my difficulty here. My
principals think you do. What am I supposed to report back to them?”

Miles looked around. “It’s nice
country, but a little on the motionless side. I wouldn’t say anything’s going
to happen here.”

“Blundell, back at Candlebrow,” Thorn
said, “you were able to see what your companions could not. You spied on us
regularly until you were discovered.”

“Not really. No reason to.”

“You have persistently refused to
cooperate with our program.”

“We may look like country boys, but
when strangers show up out of nowhere with offers that sound too good to be
true
. . .
well, common sense does
sort of take over, is all. Can’t blame us for that, and we’re sure not going to
feel guilty about it.”

The calmer Miles got, the more worked
up Thorn became. “You boys spend too much time up there. You lose sight of what
is really going on in the world you think you understand. Do you know why we
set up a permanent base at Candlebrow? Because all investigations of Time,
however sophisticated or abstract, have at their true base the human fear of
mortality. Because we have the answer for that. You think you drift above it
all, immune to everything, immortal. Are you that foolish? Do you know where we
are right now?”

“On
the road between Ypres and Menin, according to the signs,” said Miles.

“Ten
years from now, for hundreds and thousands of miles around, but especially
here—” He appeared to check himself, as if he had been about to blurt a
secret.

Miles
was curious, and knew by now where the needles went and which way to rotate
them. “Don’t tell me too much, now, I’m a spy, remember? I’ll report this whole
conversation to National H.Q.”

“Damn
you, Blundell, damn you all. You have no idea what you’re heading into. This
world you take to be ‘the’ world will die, and descend into Hell, and all
history after that will belong properly to the history of Hell.”

   
“Here,”
said Miles, looking up and down the tranquil Menin road.

   
“Flanders
will be the mass grave of History.”

   
“Well.”

“And
that is not the most perverse part of it. They will all embrace death.
Passionately.”

   
“The
Flemish.”

“The
world. On a scale that has never yet been imagined. Not some religious painting
in a cathedral, not Bosch, or Brueghel, but this, what you see, the great
plain, turned over and harrowed, all that lies below brought to the
surface—deliberately flooded, not the sea come to claim its due but the
human counterpart to that same utter absence of mercy—for not a village
wall will be left standing. League on league of filth, corpses by the uncounted
thousands, the breath you took for granted become corrosive and deathgiving.”

   
“Sure
sounds unpleasant,” said Miles.