The Golden Specific

by S. E. Grove

  This left us momentarily dumbstruck. “Of course we have. The challenges of travel are forbidding,” I suggested.

  Wren shook his head. “Not for everyone. In certain Ages, travel is less of a challenge. Australia would be easily able to send hundreds, thousands of people to your shores—every week.”

  “Future Ages would have no interest in dwelling on the past,” Bronson argued. “For the same reason that we do not pack up and move to the Papal States, where they are on the verge of burning our friend thanks to superstitious backwardness, you would not want to travel to New Occident.”

  Wren shook his head. “Bronson, you know better than anyone the curiosity of an explorer. You are, yourselves, journeying as explorers to the Papal States. Does it not seem odd that no explorers from Australia have ever turned up in Boston?”

  “I suppose you are right,” I conceded.

  “The League of Encephalon Ages,” Wren explained, after another mouthful of food, “was formed shortly after what you know as the Great Disruption. Your Age, New Occident, lies at the cusp of the divide. All the Ages after it belong to the league, and we agreed not to venture into your Age, or any earlier one.”

  “There are future Ages in the Baldlands, and we venture back and forth all the time.”

  “But those Ages are mere fragments,” Wren explained, “that lost their encephalon qualities soon after the Disruption. They do not qualify for the league.”

  “But what is the purpose of the league?” Bronson demanded.

  “The purpose,” Wren said, sitting back, his face suddenly weary, “is to protect all of you from us.” For a moment, he sat and looked off into the middle distance. Wren was so consistently a cheerful man, always radiating such good humor, that the sudden gravity of his expression seemed to alter him completely. He appeared ten years older. The lines of his tanned face seemed grooves of worry rather than laughter. He passed his large hand over his forehead, momentarily covering his eyes. “To tell you why such protection is necessary would defeat the very purpose. All our Ages are agreed that yours should not know of”—he paused, taking a deep breath—“the misfortune in ours. We are protecting you from knowledge. And we aboard the Roost are only a few among the thousands who make it our task to sustain this protection and enforce the terms of the league. In most cases, we are communicating with agents of our own; we need only be persuasive enough to pass muster from a distance.”

  “Agents?” Bronson echoed.

  “Yes,” Wren replied with an apologetic look. “There are among you—in all the pre-cephalon Ages—people from our league, pretending to be of your Age.” I opened my mouth to speak, but he continued: “I know how it must seem, but understand that we are there primarily to police ourselves: to track down and capture people of our Ages who have no permission to travel, who have broken the terms of the league treaties, who would corrupt your Ages with knowledge from ours. We were, in fact, returning from a failed mission to apprehend one of these wrongdoers when we found you. Since your lives were in danger, the terms of the league did not prevent me from hauling you from the water. But the crew and I are not accustomed to such constant and perceptive attention.” He smiled. “I feared that it was only a matter of time before we gave ourselves away.”

  Bronson and I still could not eat; we needed to absorb the captain’s words. Staggering as the information seemed, there was such an air of truth to it, and such an earnestness to Wren’s demeanor, that we did not for a moment doubt his explanation.

  I reviewed the last five days in light of this new knowledge. All the things I had considered suspicious—the subtle but noticeable difference in the health and stature of the men, the odd mixture of old and new aboard the ship, the misinformation scattered throughout Wren’s conversation—now made sense to me. It also made sense that, as I had keenly felt, Wren meant us no ill will. The curiosity I might have felt about the Encephalon Ages, their league, and their mysterious secret was superseded by my sudden, sharp appreciation of all that Wren had done for us. He had not only saved us from the sea; he had, touchingly, done his best to fit his world to ours, thereby honoring his own allegiances. I could not, perhaps, understand the secret of the Encephalon Ages, but I could certainly understand the effort it cost Wren to adhere to his principles.

  “Thank you, Captain Wren,” I finally said, “not only for your explanation but for your kindness to us. I can see, given all you have told us, that many in your position would have left us to our fate in the ocean.”

  Bronson, who had, after all, formed a greater attachment to Wren and thereby felt the deception more acutely, was somewhat slower to come around. “Yes,” he said, his face slightly flushed. “We certainly thank you for your continued hospitality aboard the ship—however strange to us its origins.”

  Wren looked vastly relieved. “It’s very good of you to say so. I wouldn’t blame you in the least for throwing such duplicitous hospitality in my face.”

  “And then?” Bronson asked. He has too forgiving a heart to stay angry long with anyone, and Wren was no exception. “It would be highly impractical now to jump into the sea because we did not like your hospitality! We may not like it,” he declared, making clear he meant just the opposite, “but we will simply have to put up with your fine wine and delicious meals and excellent company a little bit longer.”

  Wren laughed. “Very well, very well. You are most welcome to it.”

  “What I still do not understand,” I put in, placing my hand on the volume beside me on the table, “is this book by my brother.”

  “Ah,” Wren said, reaching for it. “Yes, of course. Well, it would be more accurate to say that it was written by someone with the same name as your brother. They are not the same person. In my Age, about a century ago, a man with the name Shadrack Elli who lived in Boston wrote this wonderful book. I bought it, kept it, and unwisely brought it with me. It does not, strictly speaking, meet protocol. But you can imagine the challenges of creating an entire ship that does. Your Age is not identical to the nineteenth century that existed one hundred years ago in mine. Keeping the environment accurate is very difficult.”

  “I see,” I said slowly, when Wren had finished. “Then . . .” I paused. “Does this mean there was also a woman in your Age by the name of Wilhelmina Tims? And a man named Bronson Tims? And a little girl named Sophia?”

  Wren gave me a keen glance and smiled. “Truthfully, I do not know. It is possible, given that you have found a book by someone with your brother’s name. But many things happened differently in that past, Minna,” he added gently. “It is more different from your Age than similar to it.”

  “Of course,” I agreed. “I asked merely out of curiosity.”

  “Now that we know all of this,” Bronson said, “will you and the crew drop the pretense? Will we have a chance to see what Australians are really like?”

  “I’m afraid not, my friend,” Wren replied ruefully. “Well, of course we will drop the pretense in the sense that we will none of us claim to be from your Age. And perhaps we can introduce a few of the comforts familiar to us that we usually keep hidden.” He tapped the wine bottle and grinned. “But we cannot entirely yank off the veil, lest we imperil the integrity of our regulations. The more unfortunate circumstance,” he said, “is that we will be unable to travel with you into Seville. We are already deviating from our set course, but I considered it essential that we take you safely to port.”

  “We certainly understand,” I said. “We are very grateful to you for adjusting your route.”

  “Of course. And the other thing we can do is travel at our accustomed speed. The crew will be relieved, I’m sure. Doing so, we’ll arrive in Seville tomorrow, instead of five days from now.” Bronson and I both exclaimed in surprise. “Yes. I’m happy to bend the rules on that score. Though, sadly, it means we will be saying good-bye rather soon. Once we arrive in Seville tomorrow, you will be on your
own.”

  10

  Guided by Remorse

  —1892, June 3: 9-Hour 10—

  The New States Party, founded in 1861, has long advocated peaceful integration with other Ages, rather than conquest. It has, in years past, advocated an accelerated path to statehood for the Indian Territories, and even a treaty with the western Baldlands. Its popularity tends to ebb and flow with the perceived danger posed by other Ages.

  —From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident

  WHEN HE HAD finished his breakfast, Theo headed to Miles’s house on Beacon Hill, a rambling and profoundly untidy brick edifice crammed from basement to attic with relics from countless journeys. However untidy, the mansion still cut an impressive figure. Miles was one of the wealthiest men in Boston. He was certainly the wealthiest explorer; but he was not one of those residents of Beacon Hill whose family had always enjoyed a fortune.

  Miles’s grandparents had been slaves at the time of the Disruption, and they had joined the rebellion that formed New Akan. In those early years after the rebellion, when the eastern seaboard looked upon the state populated by former slaves with distrust, Miles’s grandfather had built his fortune selling sugar, cotton, and rice from New Akan in the eastern states. Being a former slave himself, he was one of the few who would buy from the men and women who now ran their own farms, and who would hire former slaves in his textile mills. John Countryman acquired the mansion on Beacon Hill when he was building his fortune, as a signal to Boston of what trade with the powerful state of New Akan might accomplish. Now his grandson, Miles, occupied the palatial home with little thought of trade but with a similar ardor for exploration, the pursuit that had become his life’s passion.

  Even if Theo had not overheard the previous night’s conversation, he would probably have gone to see Miles anyway, dropped happily into an armchair, and discussed the high points of their expedition all day. As it was, he had a more particular purpose. He spent more than an hour leading Miles in a roundabout way closer and closer to the topic, until he finally was able to ask casually, “Why was Bligh so worried about Broadgirdle? He sounded friendly enough.”

  Miles snorted and threw up his hands, almost dropping the pottery he was holding. The only tidy spots in the house were the great glass cabinets in which he displayed the treasures acquired on his expeditions. He was reorganizing one now to accommodate the pieces they had just brought back. “Oh, believe me, he has good reason to be worried. Broadgirdle is the most inveterate blackmailer in New Occident. Any stain, however small—that man will find it and make it spread until his poor victim is good and dirty all the way through. How do you think he rose to become leader of his party so quickly?”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “Who knows. He bought his seat in parliament only five years ago. Apparently he made a fortune in the soap industry.” Miles gently dusted the ears of a sculpted bear.

  Theo gave a wry smile. “How perfect.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s washed away all traces of his past, hasn’t he?”

  “I would say it’s not very good soap.” Miles scowled. He closed the cabinet and sat down in the leather chair next to Theo. “Despite the clean, sweet-smelling appearance that the people of Boston seem to believe in, the man is still the dirtiest politician in town.”

  “Does anyone know more about him?”

  Miles looked at Theo keenly, as if suddenly hearing a different question. He leaned forward in his leather chair, his strong, wrinkled hands clasping his knees. “Why are you so interested?”

  Theo shrugged. He had planned to play his next card later on, but he did not want Miles to consider his persistence too closely. “I might have overheard him threatening Shadrack.”

  Miles groaned. “You are incorrigible. How much did you hear?”

  “Not much. Just something about the right choice and the wrong choice. I was trying to figure him out. Should we be worried?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Miles said. He shook his mane of white hair. “Broadgirdle is so cunning that everything I have ever heard is pure rumor. No one has actual proof of what he does. If the rumors are true, then I suppose yes—we should worry.” He narrowed his eyes. “Did you hear the rest? About the Eerie?”

  Theo gave a broad smile. “It is a shame you didn’t find the Eerie, isn’t it?”

  Miles grimaced. “I’m sorry for deceiving you. The prime minister himself had given me the charge and forbidden me to disclose it.” He shook his head. “Believe me, it would have made everything much easier for me if I could have told you.”

  “You might be more than four times my age, old man,” Theo said affectionately, “but you still haven’t learned to break the rules when you need to. You should have told me.” At Miles’s rueful look, he went on: “Well, will you tell me now? What’s this all about?”

  “The thing is . . .” Miles began. “There are aspects of this that would be better for you not to know—for your own good.” Theo rolled his eyes. “No, truly; I am serious. Until we identify where—who—the threat comes from, it would be irresponsible to expose you to their unwanted attention.” He sighed. “On the other hand, I have never believed safety lies in ignorance.”

  “This gets more and more interesting. Spill it.”

  Miles stood up and considered his disordered study. Beside the glass cabinet, a collection of terrifying masks covered one wall, and framed maps covered the rest. The floor was a tapestry of strewn newspapers and books. On the desk, which Miles almost never used, lay a jumble of magnifying glasses, compasses, coffee cups, pencils, and crumpled papers. “Let’s go to the conservatory,” Miles said.

  Theo looked at him in surprise. “What? It’s going to be blazing hot there.”

  “Yes,” Miles said distractedly, getting up to leave. Theo hurried to catch up.

  The conservatory lay at the rear of the house. Though the weather was mild, the summer sun had warmed the glass-paned room, and the plants were luxuriating in the humidity. Immediately, the heat began to overwhelm them. Miles closed the door. He wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief and folded it carefully, tucking it into his striped cotton shirt. Theo patiently waited for an explanation.

  “What I can tell you is brief,” Miles said in a low voice, “but even my staff should not hear it.” By “staff,” he meant the elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Biddle, who respectively maintained the house and cooked his meals. Theo did not believe Mr. Biddle’s hearing was robust enough for eavesdropping, and he was certain Mrs. Biddle did not care in the least about the personal matters of her eccentric employer, but he nodded sagely and did not contradict. “I was attempting to find the Eerie,” Miles said, “because of their well-known healing powers. Someone is in great need of them.” He frowned with his bushy white eyebrows.

  Theo waited. “That’s it?” he asked after a moment. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  “I am about to explain!” At Theo’s impatient look, Miles settled himself in one of the wrought-iron chairs, gesturing to the one opposite. Then he leaned in. “The Eerie are legendary healers. No one knows how many of them there are altogether. Some call them not the Eerie but the Numinous. They live near the Eerie Sea—exactly where, we do not know—but occasionally a few travel beyond their realm, and where they travel they leave a trail of marvels. They might simply be a compassionate people, but Shadrack believes they are bound by a code that obliges them to heal anyone who crosses their path. Only this, he says, can explain such profound secrecy combined with such undisguised curative miracles.

  “The most gifted among them are called ‘Weatherers,’ and they are gifted indeed, if the stories are true. A blind woman gaining sight; a drowned man gaining breath; there is even a story, which I find hard to fathom, of a grievously injured child regrowing a limb that had been torn off by a bear.”

  Theo raised his eyebrows. />
  “Yes,” Miles agreed. “It beggars belief. But let me tell you something more. Shadrack had sent word to the Eerie Sea last August, asking for the aid of a Weatherer. You know what happened to his dear friend Carlton Hopish—so horribly injured by Blanca and the Sandmen that he has never regained consciousness. Shadrack, in his desperation, turned to the Eerie for help. There was no reply, and this did not entirely surprise him, for they are so impossible to reach. Then, to his astonishment, in January he received a letter from an Eerie woman named Goldenrod. She begged him for news of three Weatherers who had left for Boston in response to his call for aid. They had never returned to the Eerie Sea.”

  Theo whistled. “So they came to help Shadrack after all.”

  “Apparently they did. Or they tried. No one had seen them in or even near Boston. By then, Bligh had been elected, and Shadrack showed him Goldenrod’s letter. Bligh took matters into his own hands, sending trusted delegates to search high and low for the Weatherers. He found nothing.

  “Then, in February—you remember, when the snows were at their heaviest—a most inexplicable thing happened. At a farm on the outskirts of Boston, there was a pounding on the door in the dead of night. The farmer opened his door to find a man with an unconscious woman in his arms, the snowstorm raging behind them. The woman was grievously wounded. The man wept, and he gave no explanation but this: ‘I tried to kill her, and still she healed me.’ He repeated this time and again—‘and still she healed me.’ The farmer and his wife tended to the injured woman as best they could, and they sent the strange man, so overcome with remorse, for a doctor.

  “In the morning, the doctor arrived. But what he discovered confounded him. The farmer’s wife had settled the injured woman in bed, and she was still there, still unconscious—and surrounded by yellow flowers.”

  “Flowers?” Theo looked past Miles at the greenery surrounding them.

  “Indeed. Flowers that grew from her clothes, and her skin, and even from the bedsheets! I cannot conceive it myself. The doctor examined her, unable to make any sense of her condition, but he did find something vital: letters in her pocket sent by Prime Minister Bligh. The woman was the Eerie named Goldenrod.” Miles studied his worn boots and shook his head. “Bligh has consulted the best doctors in Boston, but nothing has changed. Though her body appears to have healed, her mind is still closed. She has been unconscious ever since she was brought to the farm.” His expression was vexed. “Bligh has cared for her as best he can, but she is fading.”