by Lavie Tidhar
It was, he had to admit, a magnificent ship, though it was, in other terms, also an old one: steam-power was muscling in on the clipper ships, taking over their routes, speeding along from continent to continent and market to market, making the old sail-ships slowly redundant. The Nautilus, having sailed the trade routes all over the Everlasting Kingdom's domain, and beyond, was now a ship-for-hire, commanded by the eccentric Dakkar (the son of an Indian rajah, according to Verne's whispered comment) and run by a rag-tag crew of ex-navy sailors, ex-buccaneers, even (so said Verne) ex-pirates. Where Dakkar had picked his crew Verne didn't know. "Here and there and everywhere," he had said, spreading his arms wide, "wherever there is unrest and injustice and wherever men run foul of the law."
"Whose law?" Orphan had said, and the writer shrugged expansively and said, "On this planet, at this time, there is only one law."
"So Dakkar is not…" Orphan hesitated. "Like you…"
"Of the Bookman's party?" Verne shook his head. "Not as such. He is his own man."
What could be said about the Nautilus? She had a long, slim body, narrow hips and billowing sails; her decks were sturdy and sure, her bow rounded, her quarter-deck and forecastle joined, by closing in the waist, to form one continuous upper deck. The Nautilus carried ten mounted 18-pounder guns on the upper deck, firing through ports in the low bulwarks of the waist. The middle deck, where Orphan and Verne's cabins were also situated, carried twenty 18-pounders. It was less a trade-ship than a warship, Orphan privately thought, and he wondered what Verne – or indeed Dakkar – had in mind for her, and for him. Would they sail direct to Caliban's Island with all guns blazing? Would they attempt a stealthy landing, with a small boat lowered off the side of the ship at night? Or… But there was no point in wondering.
It was time to get some answers.
TWENTY-ONE
Gilgamesh's Journal
In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it: there they hoist us,
To cry to the sea that roar'd to us, to sigh
To the winds whose pity, sighing back again,
Did us but loving wrong.
– William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Answers, however, were slow in coming. When he confronted Verne in his cabin the writer spread his arms wide and said apologetically, "There is not much that I do know. What I found out – most of it – is in my book. Surely you've read it?"
"L'Île mystérieuse? Well…"
"No?" Verne looked childishly hurt. "Well, there is not much there to help us, I'm afraid," he said. "It is only an account of a journey, you understand. I was never able to actually reach the island, as I mentioned to you. Oh, I have attempted to describe it, from what little obscure records I managed to locate, from drunken sailors' tales, from people who have claimed to have been shipwrecked on the island… but there are too many mysterious islands, Orphan, too many wild tales and flights of wild fancy, to really give an accurate idea of what awaits you – us – there. Do you know, they say that on another island, somewhere in the Carib Sea, there is a being just like the Bookman? A brother to him, a twin who plots his own mysterious plots? They call him the Binder." Verne snorted. Orphan kept very still. "The Binder. And what does he bind, I wonder?"
Orphan, thinking of Byron's words, of the Turk's, kept very still. Where the Bookman kills, the Binder restores. But restores what?
"Tell me what you know," Orphan said.
In place of an answer the writer spread a map onto the desk. "This," he said, pointing, "is the Gulf of Mexica. This is where the mass of land we call Vespuccia ends. And this mass of water is the Carib Sea. This is the island of Xaymaco; this is the island of Hayti, and this is the place Vespucci called Cuba. They are rough, yet prosperous places, populated by a mixture of Arawak, Carib, Aztec and Europeans. They are nominally under rule of Les Lézards, but only just." He stood up and began pacing up and down the cabin, his hands clasped behind his back. "Somewhere in that sea, I am sure of it, is Caliban's Island." he stopped and looked at Orphan, frustration in his eyes. "There are stories that the island… that the island moves. That it is never in the same place. I am referring to sightings, reported by ships all over the Carib Sea and beyond it. Of course, most of these can be discounted, ignored, the ramblings of the drunk or easily impressionable. And yet…"
"You don't know where the island is?" Orphan said, surprising himself by nearly shouting. Verne grinned a little sheepishly. "There are ways to find it," he said. He gestured to a sea-chest that stood, closed and locked, by the porthole. "Before we left I arranged for some – specialised – scientific equipment to be delivered."
"Delivered from?" Orphan said, but he already knew the answer.
"Our employer," Verne said. "Don't worry, getting there this time is going to be as easy as – how do you say? – falling off a log."
As he stood alone on the deck and watched the water parting before the ship, Orphan was less than comforted by Verne's assurance. Falling off a log, he decided, was most likely painful, and possibly fatal. Not something he was quite looking forward to.
He watched the sun dipping into the sea. He looked back at the wake of the ship and the foaming water. Back on the deck, two sailors were playing cards, and another was lying asleep in a hammock.
Dinner that night was served at the captain's cabin, a simple but delicious affair of grilled fresh fish, potatoes (one of Vespucci's – or rather the lizards' – most widely appreciated gifts brought to Europe), shiny and fragrant in oil and spices, served with a good French white wine supplied by Verne. The captain didn't drink, though he raised his glass in toast to, "The King of England, may he take his rightful place once more!" which Orphan found oddly discomforting.
Two cryptic things had happened during the meal. One was said, during an otherwise ordinary, civil conversation that ranged over many topics and remained cautiously general on each. In the middle of the dessert course (xocolatl, perhaps the greatest of the gifts brought back), Verne had turned to Dakkar and said, in the middle of a discussion about giant squid, "Did you bring her?"
Dakkar had dabbed his lips with a napkin and said, "Yes," in a soft, almost imperceptible voice. Verne then began to talk about the weather.
At the end of the meal the second occurred. Verne had commended the captain's cook, and Orphan enthusiastically joined him, and the pleased captain ordered the cook to be called. When he arrived Orphan was surprised to see a tall, slim youth – no more than seventeen in his appearance – who smiled at them shyly. Verne spoke passionately of the menu, offered to hire the chef away from Dakkar, to great hilarity, and was vividly and amusingly drunk.
The boy had long, fine hair and a smooth, almost featureless face that had never, it seemed, been shaved. Before he left, as they were wishing him well, his eyes locked with Orphan's, for just a moment, and the boy nodded. It was a nod of acknowledgment, of recognition. It was the briefest of movements. Then the boy turned and walked out of the cabin.
"A really most excellent cook," Verne said, sloshing the wine in his glass just a little. Dakkar acknowledged him with a smile. He then ordered his men to leave.
"Caliban's Island," he said then, speaking to Orphan, fixing his cold dark eyes on him. "I have often tried to find it. A place of great evil, for it is the place the lizards come from. The place where they crashed to Earth." His fist thumped the table. "They must be destroyed!"
"Really, old boy," Verne said, "you need to calm down about this. You're scaring the kid."
"India shall have its independence!" Dakkar said.
"No doubt," Verne said.
The conversation concluded soon after that. If he had learned something from it, Orphan thought, it was only that neither Dakkar nor Verne knew anything about the island. They didn't even know how to find it.
&nb
sp; Yet Verne had instruments. A chest full of them in his cabin. He did not want to think of what they might be. They were the tools of the Bookman, just as Orphan was, a blunted tool made to strike at the Bookman's enemies.
Orphan climbed onto the deck and stood there, looking at the night. For a moment he thought he heard a whale's call in the distance. There were a lot of stars.
He swore again to himself that he would return. That he would save Lucy. And as for the Bookman…
Then he laughed, because he knew he was being absurd, and he joined a game of cards with three sailors and after an hour won a handful of coins, half of them unknown to him.
Days on the ship spent under bright clear skies… Flying fish pursued the Nautilus, silver fins flashing in the sunlight as they arced through the air. In the second week a pod of dolphins accompanied them from a distance. Occasionally, far away, he saw the disappearing hump of a giant whale.
He still had Tom Thumb's gun, and he practised shooting on the deck with some of the sailors. He played cards, and lost more than he'd won. Then, a week into the voyage, he returned to his cabin and found a book waiting for him on the bed.
He sat down and looked at it curiously. It was an old, weather-beaten notebook, bound in peeling leather. He lifted it in his hands, traced damage on the cover, opened it. Old, brittle paper. Foxed pages and water damage. Many of the pages were torn.
The handwriting inside jolted him.
Jagged and cramped, packed tight into the page. It was the handwriting of his friend.
It was Gilgamesh's.
He closed the book and held it for a long moment, his eyes staring into nothing, thinking of his dead friend. Where had this come from?
Then he noticed the note that must have fallen to the floor as he entered the cabin, and he picked it up and read it. I have tried to rely on primary sources as much as possible, it said. I found this journal fifteen years ago, in a junk shop in Marseille. Perhaps you would find it interesting. How true its account is I cannot say. The note was signed by Verne.
Orphan lifted up the journal and felt suddenly very far from home. He looked out of the porthole at the endless sea beyond, and thought back. Gilgamesh had been… a friend, and a part of his life. And now he was dead, and here was his journal, as old as a drowned ship.
He took a deep breath to calm himself, and blinked several times. Then he opened the journal – really, a small collection of leaves, incomplete and beguiling – and began to read.
A clear, calm day. The sea lies flat. We have left the Aztecs last night with a mutual exchange of many gifts, dancing and singing and drinking. I shall miss [unreadable], her smooth dark skin and her smile in the darkness… Everyone looks downcast today, despite the weather – we are all suffering last night's excess. Our course is leisurely, for now, and we plan to stop at one of the islands before entering the Atlantic and further stock up with provisions. A successful trip, and Amerigo is happy and carefree, almost a new man after the trials of the journey here.
...An amazing land! I have never thought to see such wild beauties as the forests of this new land, its strange animals and unknown flora. My notebook is filling up fast with lines of poetry, which I will attempt to structure into an epic narrative poem upon our return. I lie in a hammock on the deck and dream of glory, success following publication, a long life with many women, children and grand-children, at last, rich and old and famous, burial in Westminster Abbey… I smile even as I write this. But it is good to daydream. Our journey is nearly at an end, and has been successful beyond all expectations. We will be welcomed like heroes. I wonder – have we opened up this new world for good? Will the navy sail here now, to take control of this wild continent and its wilder islands, to establish trade missions and new colonies for the glory of Britannia? No doubt. Yet the people of these lands have civilisations of their own, some quite powerful and old. I do not take the Aztecs lightly, nor the others, the [unreadable] who are fierce warriors. Tomorrow we shall stop at Xaymaco, then home.
… The island is like a mirage, a tropical paradise unlike anything I have seen in my travels. Several of the crew disappeared today, seduced by this place, and I doubt they will be back. Amerigo is furious, but there is little he can do. Our priority now is to return and bring back the fortune we have found. The cook brewed xocolatl today – we have all become overly fond – nay, dependent! – on it, and I can only imagine what the response will be like back home! We are all going to be rich beyond our wildest dreams.
Open sea again. The weather is turning, wind building up and slowing us down. There is a storm on the horizon, coming near. Something has been troubling me, something in Amerigo's behaviour… …
I am filled with foreboding. The nature of the [unreadable] I have found out piecemeal, first from the Mexicas and later from the Arawak, although the stories are pervasive all around the Carib Sea. They concern an island which has no name, and they are told in whispers, though what they describe must have happened – if it happened at all – beyond any living man's memory. This is the way I heard the story for the first time, from a priest of Atlacamani, the goddess of storms. It tells of an epic journey – not unlike our own, perhaps – of a people called the Toltec, who lived in this part of the world and had built a flotilla of ships to go and explore the ocean, to find new lands and bring back their treasures. The fleet was not gone far (which I take to mean it was still in the Carib Sea or only recently outside it) when night – the priest was very specific on this, though I do wonder if it isn't some sort of an allegory – became day. Brightness washed the decks of the ships and the wind stood still, so that the ships found themselves stranded in midsea, and there was much panic. Not only light came from the skies, but heat, and as the sailors raised their heads to the heavens they saw a shooting star, growing in the skies as it plummeted down to earth. It grew so large and so bright that they had to shield their eyes against it. Many died that night. The star fell down and – by luck, or divine intervention – landed not in open water but on a small, remote island that was [unreadable[ from the ships. The resultant explosion blinded many of the men, and many died later, in months and years to come, of blisters and growths and sickness. The ships did not attempt to approach the island. The flotilla turned and sailed back from that place, which is known to this day only as the Place of Sickness. This is what the priest told me, and it is an old tale, more of a ghost story to be told around the fire than any exact account of a long-gone event. Yet I wonder… and so, I fear, does Amerigo.
… I should perhaps record the other stories, too, though I am wary of them. Little-told tales, heard as jokes or whispers from the Arawak. It seemed strange to me, indeed, that the ancient Toltec – or their inheritors the Mexica – never attempted to sail to the island, to examine it, perhaps to find traces of that fallen star. Yet the people of the islands were not so unified in fear, and I have heard tell of fisher folk and others who had, by accident or design, found themselves near this nameless island. Some have never returned. And some have come back sick, or dying, or insane, with tales no one would believe. Some even say the island moves, that it is rarely at the same place twice, and that it is haunted by a malevolent ghost. All nonsense, no doubt, yet Amerigo, who has heard the stories as much as I have, is enchanted by them. "It must have been a meteor," he said to me, "of an unusual size." His eyes became dreamy then and he said, "Would it not be a perfect ending to our voyage, [unreadable], that, after we have explored this world, we can perhaps explore the stones of another?"
I, too, was taken in by his enthusiasm, but only momentarily. Though the weather is now clear again and our speed stays at peak, Amerigo is suggesting a detour. He is determined to explore this island. I am fearful, but do not know why.
… Before leaving Xaymaco, Amerigo has taken on board a young Arawak man who claims to have seen the island. We are goin [unreadable] direction, though there is not yet a trace of it. The sailors are treating this as merely another excursion, and I wish I could s
hare their lightness of heart. Yet, though I am wary, I too am compelled to this island: I too want to discover this possible visitor from another world and learn of the truth in the old stories of the Mexica. The aura of mystery surrounds this island, and it is more attractive and irresistible than anything we have yet discovered. Tomorrow…
… We have found it! Even as I write the island lies before us, wrapped in clouds, cloaked in dusk. It is beautiful, though the eyes cannot penetrate far beyond the shore. Everyone on board is quiet as the island exerts a not-inconsiderable influence over us. It is at the same time inviting and brooding, peaceful – yet with an underlying, almost sinister feeling. I must know what lies beyond the clouds. I now regard those trifling lines of poetry I had written as just that – trifling. My masterpiece will be this island, its mysteries explored in verse so beautiful as to make the ladies weep. The landing party, with Amerigo and myself, will go at first light tomorrow. I–