by David Walton
The cook grudgingly touched his cap and said, "M'lord."
"What's your name?" Sinclair said.
"Piggott, sir. And any that calls me Piggy'll be scraping off the hogging, if you catch my meaning."
Sinclair turned to Tate. "The next time a man takes a ration of beer which is not his own, that man will feel the lash." Tate opened his mouth, but Sinclair put up a hand to stop his objection. "I don't care who it is. That kind of theft endangers us all."
"That's not all that's missing, lord," Piggott said. "There's a block of cheese gone, half a salted fish, and nine cakes of raisins."
Sinclair raised an eyebrow. "Nine?"
"I know my stock. Don't matter that I'm blind. Nothing goes missing in this galley without I know about it."
"Did you ask the purser?"
"Aye, and he says naught was done with it."
"Perhaps rats got in."
"Rats don't carry off a fish. And they leave scat."
"I told you, it was the ghost," Tate said.
Sinclair rounded on him. "What are you talking about?"
"Ask him. The door was locked. I'll bet my sword it was the ghost that took those things."
For a moment, Sinclair didn't answer. He knew now what must have taken the food, and it was no ghost. Trying to conscript sailors who weren't superstitious was like trying to hire a blacksmith without calluses. If the tamarin stayed loose, it would cause fear and tension, and that he couldn't afford. "Ghosts don't eat raisins," he said.
"This one does," Tate said. "My men have seen it on watch. I saw it myself from the masthead, too— like a sailor high in the rigging, as insubstantial as mist, the stars shining right through him."
"Bosun's mate says his rum has gone missing, too," Piggott said. "You're telling me a ghost wants rum to drink?"
"I'm telling you what I saw," Tate said, his red beard sticking out from his chin. "Chelsey's whole crew died aboard this ship. Of course it's haunted."
"And I'm telling you, keep your men away from my stores."
"I don't take my orders from you."
"You do if you don't want to die of starvation halfway from here to Horizon," Piggott said. His ability to fix either of them with his mangled eyes as if he could see them perfectly well was unnerving.
Tate leaned toward him, his face growing red, and opened his mouth to speak, but Sinclair rapped on the table. "Mr. Tate, that's enough. I think you'll find that extra rations of beer and stolen rum are the reason for these ghost sightings. You are charged with keeping peace and order, not filling men's heads with a lot of superstitious nonsense." Of course, Sinclair had been filling men's heads with superstitious nonsense just the night before, but this was different. He didn't want the men afraid to do their work.
Tate was suddenly peaceable. "Yes, my lord."
"Mr. Piggott, back to your duties, and no more about this, if you please."
"Aye, sir," said Piggott. Feeling his way forward with a stout pole he used as a cane, he managed to bump heavily into Tate, and Sinclair felt sure that he'd done it on purpose. Tate growled, but didn't retaliate.
"Good day, men."
Sinclair ducked out of the mess, shaking his head. Despite his instructions to Tate and Piggott, everyone on board would hear the stories. The missing stores, however, had given him an idea. He found Parris in his cabin, caring for his still- unconscious daughter.
"I know how to help her," Sinclair said. "We need to catch the tamarin."
Parris shrugged. "Yes, but how?"
"By making sure it can get into one of the storerooms but not out again."
"You think it's like the beetle. That it passes through some things and not others."
"Maybe even the same things."
Parris grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "We'll need candles."
THE Western Star was built to carry enough stores to provision seventy crewmen and ninety passengers for a voyage of four months. Half of the honeycomb of compartments that made up the seven decks of the ship were dedicated to storing food and drink. Most of that space, however, was empty, since there hadn't been time to purchase enough fresh provisions before their hasty departure. Only two large storerooms contained the food for the first leg of their journey, and it was here that Parris and Sinclair set their trap.
They set out slats of wood on the floor edge to edge, careful to leave
no space between them. With a bucket, they scooped wax from a bubbling pot of melted candles and drizzled it over the wood until it was completely covered. When the wax cooled, they separated the slats and meticulously scraped off any drops that had seeped through and hardened on the wrong side. Maasha Kaatra helped, working silently alongside them.
The African made Parris nervous. Partly it was his size and evident strength, and the curved sword he always wore at his belt, though Parris had rarely seen him draw it. In London, it was rare to see a black man armed with a weapon. Partly it was the deep blackness of his skin, as different from Parris's indoor pallor as it was possible to be. Most of all, though, was the simple fact that he had Sinclair's ear, and he had his trust. There was a history between the two of them that Parris didn't know, a friendship born of past adventures, which made it that much harder for Parris to predict or control what Sinclair might do.
When they ran out of candles and Sinclair went to search out some more, Parris took the opportunity to speak. "Why do you follow him?" he said.
Maasha Kaatra didn't need to ask what he meant. "When I was a boy, I read a book called Theory of the Balance Of Nature by Jabir ibn Hayyan."
"Geber the alchemist," Parris said.
"As he is known in the West. He sought a recipe for the creation of life. He even claimed to have created a snake from elemental substances."
Parris snorted.
"I know," Maasha Kaatra said. "It doesn't matter. He planted questions in my mind about life and death, questions that have never left me."
"And you think Sinclair will lead you to answers?"
Maasha Kaatra pulled his sword from his scabbard so suddenly that it was out before Parris noticed the motion. He met Parris's eyes. "Sinclair let me kill the men who bought me as a slave and killed my daughters. I put this sword through their bodies and watched them die. When I was finished, I turned the sword on myself, but Sinclair convinced me to live. We seek the same magic, he and I. To turn death into life." He slid the sword smoothly back into its scabbard. "Besides, my brother betrayed me to become ruler in my place, only to be overrun by the Blue Sultanate. I have no home to return to."
Parris swallowed, still watching the sword. He didn't know what to say, but Maasha Kaatra didn't seem to require a response. He picked up a slat and resumed scraping the wax.
When they completed the work, the ship's carpenters nailed the wooden slats in a crosshatch pattern on the inside walls, ceiling, floor, and across the opening of both storerooms, with the waxed side placed inward, toward the middle of the room. The hope was that the tamarin would be able to pass through the scraped side of the wood into the room, but once there, would not be able to bypass the waxed wood to get out. Of course, they would have to tear down the slats before anyone could get any food from the storerooms again, but for the time being, it would do.
CATHERINE was hungry. She was always hungry, and the food in this place never seemed to satisfy. She followed the smell and passed easily into the room as she did the others, though the opening had been blocked with bars of wood. She ate greedily. Sated for the moment— though it wouldn't last— she turned to leave and found her way blocked.
Trapped! He threw his body against the wood again and again, ignoring the pain, trying to break out. He screeched and climbed the walls, smashing shelves, looking for a gap. Nothing. But the wood slats across the opening weren't strong. He could break through them. He crashed into the bars again, and heard one snap.
A MIDSHIPMAN pounded on the door to Parris's cabin to tell him he was wanted below. Parris raced down to the storerooms to
find Sinclair there before him. One of the two rooms was wrecked. Shelves littered the floor in splintered pieces, mixed with the torn remains of food. The wooden slats on the walls and even the ceiling were gouged and split. The idea had worked, at least— the slats had apparently made its escape more difficult— but there was nothing inside.
The slats rattled. Parris jumped back with a shout.
Sinclair laughed. "Yes. It's still in there."
Parris peered through the gaps, angling his body to get a view, but he could see nothing. Not a shimmer, not even a shadow. The wood crashed with an unseen blow, startling him again. One of the boards split and hung loose. The wax might prevent it from passing through, but it wouldn't stop the creature from breaking out. Which meant the tamarin, though unseen, was truly part of the material world. How could it be both tangible matter and invisible spirit? Substances could change from one form to another, as when water transformed into its spiritual form when heated, but nothing could be both physical and spiritual at the same time, could it? Yet this creature was. It was beginning to look to Parris like the whole world was as much of a mystery as the human body. By the time they reached Horizon, they might find that nothing they thought they knew was really true.
"We'll need to reinforce these slats," Sinclair said. "This won't hold it for long." He clambered up the ladder, shouting. In moments, one of the carpenters arrived with wood and nails. He crossed himself and murmured prayers under his breath, but he did the work.
Sinclair reappeared, carrying a bellows from the cook house and a sack of flour. Behind him, another sailor labored with a bucket of water.
"Now let's see what our friend looks like," Sinclair said.
He lifted the bucket and hurled the water through the slats. Much of it landed on the floor, but a screech from inside told them some of it had hit its mark. Sinclair scooped a handful of flour from the sack and funneled it into the mouth of the bellows. He inserted the bellows between the slats and worked the handles up and down. Clouds of flour dust billowed into the storeroom.
White eddies spiraled in the air in the wake of the invisible thing inside. Parris's pulse quickened. As the white powder clung to it more and more, the tamarin became increasingly agitated, twirling and shrieking and throwing itself against the walls. Soon they could tell it was about the size of a small man, though a dozen limbs flew in every direction, and it climbed up and down the walls with disconcerting speed.
It paused its mad charge in the middle of the storeroom, and they could see its chest heaving with exertion. Suddenly, beneath the clinging flour, the creature itself turned completely visible.
Parris stared at the brilliant red fur, the pincered front limbs and the hooked ones in back, the many entwining tails, and the all- too- human face. It was just like Catherine had drawn it, though now in living color. Its thicker tail, the one with the sharp tip, was ringed with a stiff flap of moist flesh like a cuff . If that tail was used to pierce flesh, the flap might provide the same suction as a leech's mouth, anchoring it to the wound. That would explain the shape of the mark on Catherine's back.
It was repulsive. Parris could hardly stand to look at it, knowing that
those horrible limbs had wrapped themselves around his daughter's body and thrust themselves into her flesh.
"Kill it," Parris said. "Kill it now, before it figures out how to escape."
"We won't learn much if we kill it," Sinclair said.
Parris tried to keep the desperation out of his voice. "I don't care about that. That thing has Catherine in some kind of trance. If it escapes, we might never be able to catch it again. We can't see it; we can't touch it. It could murder everyone on this boat, and we couldn't do anything about it."
"What if we kill it and Catherine still doesn't wake up?" Sinclair said.
Parris had no answer to that.
"Wait. Be patient. We have to study it and learn."
SINCLAIR'S studies only frustrated Parris more. Sinclair seemed willing to take his time, instructing men to haul materials and devices from his alchemical distillery on the main deck, and then tinkering with them interminably. Once he began, his experiments were so tame that Parris despaired of finding any helpful results from them before it was too late for Catherine. When Sinclair began viewing the tamarin through glasses of varying colors and thicknesses and recording the results, Parris couldn't stand any more.
"My daughter is dying," he said. "We have to do something!"
Sinclair peered at him through a sliver of red- tinted glass. "I am doing something. What else do you suggest?"
Parris threw up his hands and stormed back to his cabin, where Blanche was trying to spoon a thin broth into Catherine's mouth. Occasionally she would swallow small amounts of it, but it wasn't enough. She needed to eat. She was growing paler, and her hands felt thin and weak. Parris stroked Catherine's hair and talked to her, trying to reason things out. Trying to think what he could possibly do to the tamarin to break the bond between them.
Chapter Thirteen
THE Western Star reached the Azores. Parris refused to go ashore with the rest of the passengers and crew, unwilling to leave Catherine. Sinclair drove the loaders hard, anxious to continue the voyage, and in only three days they left the islands behind. The empty storerooms were now filled with hundreds of barrels of hardtack, haunches of salt pork and beef stacked to the deckhead, casks of salted fish, cheese, rice, nuts, raisins, dried peas, prunes, oatmeal, and butter— this mostly for the officers' table— and a small pen of live pigs and chickens to be kept on the forecastle. There were barrels of fresh water, as well as thousands of liters of beer, which would keep fresh on a long journey better than the water.
Sinclair invited a select few to his cabin to celebrate. They were passengers, mostly, intellectuals from various fields. A roasted pig lay across the center of the table, an apple in its mouth, circled by platters piled with fresh food. Parris sat by himself, eating his meal but not tasting it.
Sinclair rapped on the table with a knife. "Delicious as this food is, it's not why I invited you here. We need your help. As some of you may be aware, Stephen Parris's daughter is dying."
The cabin fell silent. Parris looked around, startled.
"What none of you are aware of is that his daughter's consciousness is trapped by a Horizon creature on board this ship. An invisible creature that can walk through walls."
"Superstition," said a portly gentleman in a vicar's black clothing. "That's not possible." His name was Andrew Kecilpenny, and he sat next to a gaunt man with a jovial smile named Gibbs. During the first half of the meal, Kecilpenny and Gibbs had argued constantly, apparently out of long habit.
"Of course it's possible," Gibbs said.
Kecilpenny opened his mouth to reply, but Sinclair raised a hand. "I assure you, it's not only possible, it's true. Parris and I have captured this creature and seen its qualities for ourselves. What we need are ideas." He briefly explained what they knew about the tamarin and the need to release Catherine from its bond.
Parris gave Sinclair a grateful smile. There were ten men in the room. Surely, with all these minds working on the problem, they could come up with a solution.
"It must be a spirit," Kecilpenny said. "Physical creatures can't walk through matter. It's a known fact."
"You just mean Aristotle believed it to be a fact," Gibbs said. "That doesn't make it true."
"How can you disagree with Aristotle? Every philosopher for two thousand years has built on him. Demetrius. Galen. Thomas Aquinas. Even heathen mussulmen like Avicenna. Everything we know about physics, anatomy, government, rhetoric, biology, all the physical sciences, came from Aristotle."
"Actually," Parris said, "I made a study of blood veins recently, and found that they originate from the heart, not from the liver. Galen was wrong about that. Aristotle, too."
"Aha!" Gibbs wagged a finger at his friend. "I told you. Aristotle was wrong."
"In that particular, anyway," Parris said.
"It doesn't matter," Parris said. "The tamarin is a physical creature. It eats meat, breaks wood, leaves footprints in flour."
"That doesn't mean it couldn't pass through matter," Gibbs said. "Like all physical things, it's made up of particles swimming in a void. With the right inducement, those particles could pass right by each other and out the other side."
Kecilpenny rolled his eyes. "Gibbs is an atomist. Never mind that Aristotle buried that philosophy two millennia ago."
Gibbs reached across the table and pulled the apple out of the pig's mouth. "Think about it. Let's say I cut this apple in half." He did so, slicing it neatly through the core. "Then I take one of the halves and cut that in half. I keep on cutting with a very sharp knife until I get down to the smallest possible piece that can't be divided. That's what Democritus called an atom— the uncuttable, most basic piece of matter."