The Narrator (21 page)

Who is narrating this?

Hear the companion writing their reciprocal dreams made. Read the companion voice that is prosaically called the powers of the air. Conjure with them the third person, to whom this is addressed. Address the third person with
them
. Do it all as sniffed by a dead arm, as seen by a silent mouth, as heard by a stopped nose, as fingered by a deaf ear, as tasted by a blind eye, as undergone by a missing person nobody missed in the first place, and related by a ghost who somehow manages just about every time to persuade you that it presides over this switching operation between stories. Who is not dead and not alive, and who, the ghost, and this ghost was born a ghost not a living person, appears in Low when he does all its work for it, as the unknown knowledge of its name which remains hidden inside that knowledge, or as the owner’s tag, hidden deep in the fur, attached to that work. These things are everywhere, one is speaking now, and its speaking is a writhing on the floor, twisting its lithe, sleek body this way and that, on its back and on its belly, as hands try playfully to seize it. It gambols. The third person squirts and slips from those hands like a lathered cake of soap, squirms like a intestine, one admires the gleam of its lushly oiled fur. And all the while it squeals out its speeches, revealing to you what it is, or what
that
is, as it is as sniffed by a dead moth, as kissed by a silent guest, as heard by a stopped charm, as fingered by a deaf parson, as tasted by a blind rose, as seen by an eye that was most often finally a ghost, and undergone by a tear or a tear who somehow happens to preside over this switching operation, if only because it can persuade you this operation happens between stories.

Pink light crimps the horizon, and there’s a sudden wind. The white figure wakes and plunges out of sight. Low’s arm drops. Still asleep, he walks to his bunk and pulls the sheet over his head. The third person cries out in terror at the sight of this sheeted form.

*

We’d left in a hurry, with many more on board than would normally be permitted, so we find ourselves inadequately supplied. I have to pick my way from one side of the boat to another, as the decks are jammed with sprawling madmen and soldiers with visors down on their noses. They get to rest; I have to copy. Nikhinoch pertly informs me we are making for Uithui, already visible a low broad mound in the indigo shade by the horizon, there to replenish our water reserves and lay in fresh and more copious food.

Thrushchurl is sitting with the loonies, Jil Punkinflake is puppy-dogging after Saskia, and Silichieh labors nearly every waking moment below decks, putting the forward batteries into better working order.

Makemin’s fanaticism is nothing like Saskia’s. She is a true believer; her way of seeing things is so abstract it’s frightening. To her way of thinking, the other Yesegs, who simply remained loyal to Tewsetonta, as anyone would have, are traitors whose mere existence is an unbearable affront to her personally. Makemin strikes me as a man incensed to ruthlessness by a neverending succession of frustrations, disappointments, and thwarted ambitions. An intense, chronic irritability never quits him, and for all his collectedness and self-possession he nearly always seems only a step or two short of desperation. These are the people in command here.

In the mess ... I take in a traditional slogan, printed on a banner that sways a little on the wall. “I’m not hungry!” It refers to an old melodrama; someone must have dragged me off to see it when I was still at the orphanage. One of the asylum soldiers sits in the corner diagonal to me. He is neatly dressed in civilian clothes, with an incongruous metal gorget and a broken-butt pistol shoved in the band of a broad belt around his hips. His presence is discouraging, and I saunter dejectedly from the mess and back to my uninviting bunk. I have to take advantage of this brief respite from Makemin’s papers.

Lying there, again I feel stifling warmth, just this side of making me break into a sweat. My hand drops to the floor, and brushes there a litter of books. I take one up ...

... the book slinks to the floor from fingers. I let my eyelids droop, and fantasize a warm round-shaped lizard or dragon, with a body like marzipan ... peach yellow and flame orange and dusted all over with powdered sugar, it slithers happily along a bank of fire grooved into a green mountain ... The disaster is that the end has already happened, and we have survived it, no one knows when or what it was, there was no
event
—over time, the world ended, and yet here we all are with no world.

*

The island is about ten hands’ breadths wide now. I’m on deck, watching it grow; I smell petals, and moist green, in with the scent of fermenting brine and creosote from the ship.

Now my eye is drawn to something in the water, that’s white but not brilliant, not a flash of reflected sun, and no piece of foam—and from where, when all is so dim and still? It’s only just beneath the surface—it rises and falls in place with the current. And now it’s moving, suddenly and deliberately, in a straight line, diverging sharply with our course, going off to my left, whatever that is—starboard I suppose. It’s alive—is it getting itself away from us? I scan the approaching beach. A dark meltingness by the tops of the trees there at the edge of the beach, at the corner of the island. Now it’s gone. I peer ... and there it is again. Black smoke. I stop Nikhinoch, who is smartly trucking to and fro as usual—he screws up his face and squints out past the tip of my pointing index finger through his glasses. He starts, and at once we are both, for some reason both, going to Makemin. He peers through his goggles—

“I see ships. More than one. On the far side,” he says, turning to climb to the bridge.

I notice we are shifting course. Now the island, which had been approaching us a bit to the right, port?, is creeping to the center of the horizon ... now to the left of us. But we are not approaching—we must be going around to the far side ...

Here the shore is pinched out into a short tongue protruding into the ocean and as the trees that line it thin out our motion reveals a small bay with two steam launches at anchor not far apart. One’s half our size, the other slightly smaller.

Saskia bellows at sight of them and our prow immediately swings hard upon their direction. Smaller steam launch is the farther of the two, and as we round on the bay its stacks gush smoke and it backs water. The other ship is slower getting started. Makemin gives my shoulder a squeeze and turns his attention to the other sharpshooters, arraying them with gestures along the railings in those places where the rail is solid. He clearly wants me by him, watching for posterity. The men charge the rail actually colliding with it guns already level, eyes straining down the barrels. They’ve been drilled to death for this kind of thing. Looking down I can see Silichieh through the open bow hatches, stripped to the waist and covered with grease he is loading the forward batteries with amazing speed. Thrushchurl above him on deck, holding the gun site; it’s a brass thing like a tube with a wire across the glass. Thrushchurl’s vision is keen, and I suppose they know it.

The bigger steamer wallows around away from us and a few puffs of smoke dash off on the wind as the guns on its decks fire on us. I hear a sharp crack somewhere behind me. Saskia is cursing them—her voice shakes the wheelhouse like a trapped animal. The loonies are capering and running from one end of the boat to another, except where the soldiers beat them and drive them back. Nikhinoch is trying to put up a barrier to cordon off the sharpshooters’ area, where I am.

Thrushchurl sings out in a strange voice and the forward batteries explode, shaking the boat. I clap my hands to my ears and fall down, but I don’t miss the big steamer buckling up the middle and then our ship lunges and a sound slaps my face, the water around the bow thrashes and the blow rips the big steamer’s sides and topples its stacks toward the water. Makemin puts his goggles on his eyes and then ratchets down his visor sights, the next moment, he gives the shooters the command to open fire. I see blackbirds drop from the rails, another eruption that knocks me back to the deck so that I stay there—the big steamer is listing hard to one side exposing the hull below its waterline. Our bow is heavily grinding out to sea again, that’s to port. Figures race along the beach and bound into the tree line. The sharpshooters are still firing and I see some dark figures drop on the sand, flop half in the bushes or half in the surf. The men are crushing themselves against the rails to get their guns closer. I see Saskia leaning out of the wheelhouse emptying her pistol at the shore—her mouth is pulled back but her lips are slack, her eyes staring and blank. A figure on the shore is running to and fro uncertainly and flings up its hands. Saskia lowers her arm and shoots it. Even from here I can see the tuft fly from its head before it sinks backward to bloody the sand. It seems impossible she could have hit him from so far away. They’re all shooting wildly at the beach like they must unburden themselves of the mercurial killing power that they were charged with, and until then, no real words, spoken or unspoken. Only grunts and curses.

We are passing the big steamer—I can hear it groan as the timbers split, it is breaking in half. Cries of anguish rise from its flooding decks, faces sink into the sea.

Distant horns are audible now the shooters have stopped. Makemin drags me with him as he makes his way angrily up to the wheelhouse. Saskia is barking insults and random commands to an empty bridge.

“Make for their station!” he points to the island, to a pale regularity dimly visible through the trees. “Before they man their batteries!”

Our course is out to sea, our prow exactly in line with the fleeing, smaller launch.

Saskia flashes glassy eyes at Makemin over her shoulder—“We can handle their batteries!”

“Turn inland at once!”

“We’ll be on them in two minutes! I won’t lose them!”

“You will turn inland at once!”

“They’ll go to the warships!”

Makemin stands nearly tiptoe and livid. Saskia turns back to the wheel, then flips her head at him again.

“Two minutes!”

And then—

“Why have one when you can have them all?”

Makemin thinks for a moment, then quits the bridge, his face white with fury. Moments later, we are back again among the sharpshooters. The small steam launch is nearly lost in its own wildly careering, wind-torn smoke. Thrushchurl crows again and the batteries explode. The smaller steam launch didn’t even get out of the lee of the island. Its rear end vanishes in splinters and the entire fore end of the boat pivots straight up in the air and stays there. Now it is listing. Now it crashes on its side. Now it rolls over. Heads bob in the water. I see a two blackbirds uncannily sliding sideways across the top of the waves toward the island, veering like skaters. Makemin, his whole body palpably tensed, lifts his rifle and splatters them both. They drift—just above the waves.

Uithui swings in front of us again. Distant burps of smoke lift from a low level rampart embedded in the beach, adjacent to a pier and floating platform. Blackbirds are running here and there on the beach or fling themselves flat. Under Saskia’s control, the boat plunges head on toward the station. With a sound that hits me like a blow to the stomach something strikes the water not ten feet from us sending up a thick fraying column of white water as high as the bridge. Another comes a bit farther away only a moment later. Though hopelessly out of range, Makemin begins firing mechanically at the distant station, and many of the sharpshooters join him. The clappers have finally gathered on the upper deck—how long has it been?—where protection is minimal, and have started their droning and knocking.

Some men emerge from below with two Bremml guns and are frenetically busy bolting them to their swivel mounts on the foredeck. Another crash of spray—now the boat shudders and I feel something pepper my back and neck—splinters—looking up, I see one of the forward booms or whatever they are has been sheared off, a jagged stump is left dangling on its sinews of rigging.

The level white station comes toward us, seeming to list like a drunken antagonist, spitting puffs of smoke at us, lobbing shells. Plumes of water proliferate all around the boat, crashing and rending wood and metal in a noise that never stops, and screams of men, continuous screams of men, a gullet-clogging stink of blood, stifling smoke ... The asylum soldiers are hooting and wailing—I can see one cringing behind a barrel bawling his eyes out and kneading his face with his hands. Others are shrieking imprecations at the shore, leaping up the rigging to get a better view, they bellow and gnash their teeth, cheer and masturbate and fall in fits, some flinging themselves over the sides, hurtling past our position on the middle deck, and swim frantically for the shore—some plainly in a panic, others with knives in their teeth or hatchets in their hands, I see one holding a frying pan above the water as if he didn’t want to get it wet, wild-eyed and furious with violence, wanting to throw themselves bodily on the enemy. Somewhere in it all I hear Thrushchurl’s chanticleer note, and our forward batteries fire—through distant clots of smoke streaking away in the wind I see the station is now ragged and blackened—although now there are more plumes around us ... another thud throws me from my feet.

Bruised and a little crazy I get up again and start looking around for injured to help, but I can’t stop watching the station. The front of our ship blurs and throws a shotput of smoke up and out, and I see the top of the station flip clear off and back, the upends of huge black beams thrown this way and that. We are close enough now there’s no mistaking the alarms, and screams coming on the soft air from the fragrant woods not two hundred yards away. The Bremml guns are clanking, the fire is continuous, men in regular movements breach loading shells the size of my forearm from lead boxes. Crash of thunder from the battery and the station seems to settle and subside like a collapsing horse—faint, irregular and unceasing motion of fire inside it, visible through its gouged walls. Then a thump I feel more than I hear—their powder store going up—the walls race away on all sides and the remainder of the roof falls flat in, throwing out an ash cloud. Only then do I become aware of the ringing shots of the sharpshooters, and Makemin near to me, as they pick off the remnant, fleeing into the trees.