Irregularity

by Nick Harkaway

  The night, when it came, came fast, as it seems night always does across a great ocean, a darkness that descends between the blinking of this eye and the next. The order was whispered through the ship; no light, no lamps, no noise, and at that whispering every lantern was extinguished and no more was whispered at all, except for some turnings of the wheel and the slow creaking of the sails.

  The game now was of guesswork and hope. Could our pursuer — whoever he was — follow us in this dark? Or could we execute some devilish cunning plan, as Captain Worth’s tight-lipped confidence seemed to suggest, and slip past him and back on to our intended course?

  I thought again of the mathematics that had created our destination, and wondered if the Frenchmen knew of them. If so, escape would be impossible, and we would have no choice but to fight, the enemy knowing our every move before we made it.

  “You can do nothing here,” whispered the Lieutenant in my ears. “Check on your cargo.”

  “Sir,” I replied, “If I check on my cargo one more time I do not think there will be any of it left for me to observe.”

  “Then sleep.”

  “Can you?” I asked, and he had the sense to render me no flippant answer.

  If night had come fast, dawn came faster, and I stood upon the deck not knowing where we were and, in my fitful state, beginning not to care, so long as we were near somewhere safe.

  Of the ship that had followed us, there was no sign, and when the lookout confirmed an empty horizon, a cheer went through our crew, and all sails were raised to take us back to our intended course.

  “A day — a day at most, Charles,” promised Captain Worth, seeing my poor efforts not to fret. “We shall reach our target soon.”

  I believe that exhaustion compelled my body to sleep, though my mind would have none of it, for I was woken at a hot, late hour of the sunset by a scrawny boy, who summoned me to the deck with the Captain’s compliments. Climbing upwards I found the wind had dropped to near nothing, and we were making way with the limpest of sails.

  Stood upon the prow, Captain Worth beckoned me close, and passing the glass into my hand pointed towards the horizon and said, “Do you see it now?”

  I looked, and beheld a small island of basalt rock, barely a comma upon the unending page of the ocean, a little protrusion that reminded me of those desolate lands where nought but fungus and tawny shrub grew in the side of the cliff, and where yet on these meagre pickings survived many birds adapted to nest in crevices, and insects to feed off of the birds, and more fungus which fed off the rotting bodies of the insects, life thus finding its way in even these most desolate of places.

  “Are you ready for your experiment, Mr Darwin?” asked the Captain. “It is twenty-nine hours, by my calculation, until the Queen is crowned; will this be sufficient?”

  “Most sufficient, if the scholars are to be believed,” I replied, near to both laughter and tears with the relief of it. “The effect of our actions will travel far faster than the news of our success.”

  “Then, Charles, you may as well begin, for we shall set every man to the longboat and have no other thought save the prize.”

  So began flurry and fluster, as a great many men began to heave my crates up from the hold. Indeed, in all my time tending to them on the voyage, I thought I had prevented not a single insect from breaching those wooden walls; yet as we pulled them free we found several hundred ants which had somehow crawled through the base of the crates and settled down to die on the decks of the cargo hold. How many more, I wondered, had ventured out and lived? Perhaps Captain Worth would be bitten after all.

  Our third crate was up on deck, and the wind was picking up strongly, taking us towards our target, when the cry came down, a sail, a sail to the west.

  At once all eyes turned in that direction and even I, now used now to the sight, could tell upon looking through the glass that it was our old friend the unmarked vessel bearing down on us once again.

  “What would you have me do?” asked Captain Worth. “I cannot fight her for sure, but I can run. If we run, though, we will not come any closer to your island, for I will not hazard my ship in a chase past those rocks, not even for Her Majesty. Are we near enough now for your experiment to bear fruit?”

  I considered the grave decision the Captain laid before me, as well as the vessel approaching, and said, “My task was to tend this cargo, and I have done it; yours was to take us here, and you have done it. If that vessel seeks to prevent us from seeing our mission through, why then we as surely defeat them in the completion of our task as if we had taken to them with cannon. We have come this far, and whether our enemy will give us opportunity to go any further is doubtful. I would choose therefore rather to die succeeding in this mission than be run down like an animal far from success; I say let us get it done.”

  At this, the Captain smiled his great smile, and gave order to head faster for the shore and bring those crates up on deck, and I do not think he turned back to look at the pursing vessel at all.

  I have, in poor scholarly form, and for the sake of my own interests, neglected to fully elaborate on the interests of the men who first engaged me upon this voyage. Let me then return you to some four months previous, to Mr Fellows sat inside my parlour, imploring me to consider the lycaenidae, and the question of Queen Victoria’s Coronation.

  And the mission — the great matter of state upon which our fortunes all turned, for which an exploit of scientific urgency was required? Why, how it shames me to confess it, but Mr Fellow’s chiefest concern was:

  “Rain,” he exclaimed. “This country is blighted by the most irregular weather. George the Third had to change wigs seven times when he was crowned. Seven! It was a most disgraceful and inauspicious beginning to his reign. George the First had mud, they said, up to his thighs and left dirty footprints all the way up the aisle to the Confessor’s Throne. Queen Anne’s gout was antagonised by a particularly violent downpour; William of Orange barely made it to his crowning the streets were so bad, Charles the First…”

  “You are concerned about bad weather on the Queen’s coronation?”

  “Concerned!” blurted the round civil servant. “It is more than concerning! It is a matter of the utmost social and diplomatic import! In China they throw mountains of silver into the sea to ensure hospitable conditions merely for sporting events! We would never go so far — not even for Her Majesty — the Treasury would never have it — but thankfully we have far more sophisticated methods of affecting our environment. No, Mr Darwin, what we propose is not some fanciful ritual, but an effort to change the weather though a seeding, you might say, of the sky. A disturbance planted in one corner of the Earth may, as it flowers and grows, trigger an event in another place! A child sneezing by a certain tree in Tibet may produce three months of rain in Yorkshire, the heavens being so connected! Our scholars, through the most exacting mathematics, ensure us by these means the most marvellous weather for Her Majesty’s installation as has ever graced the British throne. Which returns me to my original question, Mr Darwin: what do you know of the lycaenidae?”

  What do I know of the lycaenidae?

  I have observed that the species is common the world over, and notable for their delicate wings and recurring patterns of blues and coppers. The male has smaller forelegs than the female, though may sometimes manifest a metallic gloss to their skin. Delicately sized, yet some possess a spot at the tail which, to a predator, may appear to be the head of the beast, rather than the rear, and thus acts as a subtle yet elegant defence mechanism in the wild. The larvae are small, frequently flat, and can secret a substance which both attracts, and subdues ants, with which they share a mutually beneficial, some might say

  co-morphic, relationship. These are merely some generic facts that one may garner from a simple textbook, or even quiet observation of a busy English garden on a summer’s evening.

  What more may I say?

  I may say that, twenty two hours before Her Majesty, Queen Vi
ctoria, was to be crowned Queen and Empress, a small, little-noted ship of the British Navy pulled to off an entirely unregarded island of the South Atlantic, and, in defiance of the brigandly vessel that pursued it, set to about a remarkable experiment. Her sailors hauled up to the deck five great crates, within which the balance of nature had been for so many weeks, and against so many odds, most carefully maintained, the Basset pulled back her sails that there might only be an expanse of sky overhead. With a hey-ho and a heave-to, they toppled the lids of those wooden prisons and relased their cargo.

  From the larvae still unhatched in Portsmouth, a glorious transformation had occurred. Upwards and upwards they rose, every colour I had imagined, cobalt blue and azure green, wings of white cotton laced with violent, golden shimmers against the sun, copper blazon and red stripe, deepest black and yellow flare; upwards and upwards they rose, giddy to be freed into the sky, silver-veined and orange-breasted, dull maroon and brilliant violet, they danced around each other in a spiral, feeling their way towards the heavens; our weather-seeding project, our artificial wind, our wind made of a thousand, thousand wings which beat against the seas and the sky, and which wind would grow as they spread outwards, would twist and turn against the natural course of the world and break against another wind, and another again, until the clouds above rushed and twisted upon themselves like they too were caught in the rising dance. Before this sight, even our pursuers seemed to stall, for the winds turned against them and not a man, I think, thought himself of cannon, so mightily the sea rocked and the skies turned.

  And those clouds that twisted overhead, would pull in cold air, whose absence would pull in more, and where now heat had been, heat was not, and rain would fall and water would rise and all things would be transformed — just for a while, for a little, little while — and in England, in sunny, glorious England where my garden grows rich and the fruit hangs heavy upon the tree, for one day where the skies might yet have fallen, not a cloud would stain the sky, and the only wind would be as gentle as the beating of a butterfly’s wing.

  Our wind made of a thousand, thousand wings.

  The Heart of Aris Kindt

  Richard de Nooy

  “Who stitched him up, sir?”

  “The preparator. He was at work when I came in.”

  “But we …”

  “They took the heart, Ferdinand, and the rest of his innards.”

  “What?”

  “There will be no incision in our painting.”

  “But that’s preposterous, sir!”

  “Tulp’s letter is on the table.”

  The young apprentice removes his cloak and rubs his hands until they squeak and tingle. January’s stinging chill draws deeper into his bones as he circles the naked cadaver of Aris Kindt. The callous morning light falling from the high windows of the Theatrum Anatomicum lends the dead man’s skin a translucent sheen that leaves no blemish undisguised. Hurried sutures have raised an angry, Y-shaped seam upon the dead man’s abdomen.

  The young apprentice bows his head and mumbles a brief prayer before unfolding the surgeon’s letter with his winter-clumsy fingers.

  Amsterdam, 18th Day of January 1632

  Dear Sir,

  It is with some regret that, after due consultation with my esteemed peers, we have decided that we would prefer to see the torso depicted unopened, as it detracts from the overall composition and may cause consternation among our guests, particularly emissaries of the Church, who might question such a bold display of our enquiry into God’s intentions and creative genius. We assure you that our decision has nothing whatsoever to do with the manner in which the organs have been rendered, as this was of the high standard that prompted us to commission you in first instance. Should you feel that our decision has necessitated additional effort on your part, we would like to assure you that we are already considering future commissions that we would almost certainly leave in your good hands.

  Sincerely,

  Nicolaes Tulp, Praelector Chirurgic et Anatomie

  “He makes no mention of the heart, sir!”

  “Indeed, Ferdinand, indeed.”

  “Are these men of science, sir?”

  “Among the foremost, Ferdinand, but our friend here evidently confounded their principles.”

  “This is absurd. First the hand and now this!”

  “The client is king, Ferdinand. Let me hear you say it.”

  “The client is a meddlesome tyrant, sir. Why would they do such a thing?”

  “Ours not to reason why, Ferdinand.”

  “Whatever crimes he may have committed, sir, this man, too, is a creature of God and it is our duty as artists to celebrate the glory of His creation by rendering all of that creation as precisely as we can — alive or dead.”

  “Of course, Ferdinand, but God does not pay our fee, and the surgeons have every reason to conciliate the emissaries of the Church. To work. We have a great deal to do. And our silent friend will not stay fresh for ever.”

  “My father shall hear of this. The Guild of Surgeons in Dordrecht would never…”

  “That would be imprudent, Ferdinand. Bear in mind that it will be our word, as humble artists, against that of two dozen surgeons, well versed in matters anatomical and very well connected with the city council, before a committee of their peers. And what might we hope to achieve, Ferdinand? Do we wish to cast a shadow of ill repute upon the city’s finest surgeon? Will it bring Aris Kindt back to life? A man hanged by the neck is dead, Ferdinand, even if he dies a second time.”

  “Infuriating!”

  “Consider your career, Ferdinand, and at what expense it has been purchased. Your father’s investment must be recouped and I have mouths to feed. To work, young man, those details will not draw themselves.”

  16th Day of January 1632

  Master R and I today had the honour of attending the public dissection of Adriaan Adriaanszoon in the Theatrum Anatomicum at De Waag, presided over by Doctor Nicolaes Tulp, praelector of the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. It was truly a privilege to sit among the city’s most influential councillors and learned men to witness this rare event, which — as you know — takes place only once a year and is subject to the strictest protocol.

  We were permitted to sit in the front row in order to make our preliminary sketches, which I did with immense discomfort, knowing that some of the city’s mightiest men were looking over my shoulder. This was further compounded by the unnerving butcher-shop scent of the dead man’s viscera, deftly laid bare by the Guild’s preparator, who stood constantly at Dr Tulp’s side, scalpel in hand like a Sword of Damocles. I am not ashamed to admit that I had to make a concerted effort to retain my dejeuner, which rumbled like an angry behemoth in my guts. Fortunately, I did not defile and embarrass myself. Instead, the experience redoubled my respect for surgeons such as yourself and Dr Tulp, who conducted his duties with immense grace and precision under such gruesome circumstances, all the while enlightening the audience with the most fascinating revelations regarding the workings of the human body.

  The master and I both made numerous sketches of the proceedings. My hand, however, was seized by an annoying tremor as my body battled with both the winter cold and nausea, and my mind grappled with the knowledge that this poor wretch had been alive at dawn and now found himself the subject of such macabre scrutiny. Hanged for robbery and murder, which seemed all the more pathetic considering the absence of his right hand, hacked off in retribution for a previous offence. A one-armed bandit hardly sounds like a menace at all, but the facts speak for themselves. The court’s sentence was clear and, alas, predictable. Every society has a duty to rid itself of such elements, to incarcerate them or excise such tumours from its flesh. Perhaps it is a blessing that, in death, he could contribute to the advancement of knowledge within the community from which he had ostracised himself.

  The master and I later spent some time pondering the dead man’s unusual moniker, eventually concluding that the simpleton had fallen fou
l of the commoner’s penchant for abbreviation and, when some official had asked him who he was, had replied, “Ik ben Ari’s kind,” whereupon “Adriaan’s son” was duly registered as “Ari’s child”.

  The young apprentice cups his hands and exhales to ease his aching knuckles, stretches and clasps his fingers, then places his hands in the warm cavities of his armpits, staring at his sketch, which will now have to be redone. Without incision. The thought rekindles his ire. “What if the anomaly hints at something other-worldly?”

  “Please, Ferdinand.”

  “What if this man is a fallen angel?”

  “A demon seems more likely.”

  “But surely you agree that it was unusual, sir?”

  “It is unlike anything I have ever seen, but does that make it unusual?”

  “A dead man’s heart was beating, sir! Surely that can be described as unusual?”

  “I repeat, Ferdinand, it is unlike anything I have ever laid eyes on. Perhaps our own hearts will continue beating ever more slowly when we too are dead. We cannot be sure unless we dissect every corpse that makes its way from deathbed to crypt.”