Banner never left the helm without the safeties engaged. What in God’s name? Endless scenarios played out in this mind. Pirates. Bounty hunters. The Armada.
Cassidy wandered back through the ship. Food sat on the galley table, uneaten. Wine and coffee still undrunk. Cigarettes burned to grey cylinders of ash. He found Brewster’s pipe beside the chair in his quarters, packed, but unlit.
Silence closed in on him as the vacant ship drifted. It had become an abyss. An empty eggshell, unchipped, but having spilt its egg and yolk somewhere along the way. Cassidy clutched at his neck. He loosened his scarf which had been tied like a cravat and stuffed into his shirt. It didn’t help. His throat still constricted.
Cassidy stumbled to Banner’s quarters, pulled a thick vinyl disc of Beethoven from the bookshelf and wound the Edison talking machine. With trembling hands, he fit the disc over the pin in the turntable and placed the stylus on the edge. A flick of the switch and he adjusted the speed until “Ode to Joy” eked from the brass funnel as he fell to his knees and cried. He was asleep on the floor by the end of the second movement.
***
Cassidy woke to a silence even more barren than the one he’d fallen asleep to. The talking machine lay still, its spring unwound and spent hours before. He’d needed to see the Nubigena again so badly and hadn’t realised how much until now. Needed to see Banner and Brewster. Hear their voices. What little existence he had in this world was so tied up with them. Tied up with this ship itself, but even she refused to speak. He remembered looking up at her the first night at the hotel. The beautiful goddess of the storm, a half-tamed cloud that now lay dead around him.
He’d find them somehow. Cassidy stuffed thousands of Twilight and real banknotes from Banner’s desk into a canvas bag. No telling how far he’d have to go this time. How much information he’d have to buy. He climbed back up to his plane and shoved the bag behind the seat. After a deep sigh, he climbed back down to the gondola and took one last look around the ship.
Cassidy screamed down the row of cabins one last time. Something crashed at the end of the corridor. The sound had come from the aft section. He dashed for the stairs and up into the vast emptiness of the main cell. A shadow moved. He ran to it, grabbed its shoulders and turned it around.
Karl’s ancient features faced him, but the crazed eyes couldn’t focus. The old German pulled away, grabbed a spanner and began twisting nuts inside one of the strange machines he’d once showed Cassidy. Karl muttered to himself in German, but Cassidy couldn’t make out the words.
“Karl,” Cassidy said, running to him. “Karl. It’s Cassidy. Karl, it’s me.”
Karl looked up at him again, but went back to fiddling with anything he could get his hands on, though he didn’t seem to be actually doing anything. It was as if he were mimicking work without knowing what to do. Cassidy grabbed him by the shoulders again and locked eyes. “Karl,” he shouted. “Where’s Banner? Where’s everyone?”
The old man shrugged. “They are here,” he said, and tried to return to work.
“Where?” Cassidy asked, refusing to let him go. “Where are they?”
Karl flailed his arms as if pointing everywhere at once. “They are all over the place. I need to work. Fix everything,” he said, and pulled away. “So much work.”
Cassidy grabbed him again and pinned his back to one of the aluminium supports. “Karl. What happened here?” he said, trying to keep his voice calm and slow, but he knew he was still shouting. “What happened?”
Karl stopped struggling. He stared off as if watching something in the distance. “The Borealis. The colours. They come through like a storm,” he said. His face contorted as if he were re-experiencing the horror. “Not good storm. The colours,” he said, again. “The colours.”
Cassidy let him go. Karl sat down on the deck and looked catatonic. The last time Aurora Borealis had come through it had brought the ghosts. What had this one brought?
He considered restarting the engines and getting the Nubigena back in motion, but something inside told him that might be a bad idea. After all, where had Karl been all this time? He’d searched everywhere, including the hidden crawl ways where he’d once found Jayce.
Cassidy ran down the corridors, calling everyone’s name again. A gaunt shape stumbled out of a cabin he’d just checked. “Franz?” Cassidy said as the young German fell into his arms.
“Is Hell,” Franz said, trying to stand up. His wild eyes fluttered, then closed. He went limp for several seconds and he sat bolt upright. “They’re all in Hell.”
Jayce showed up on the bridge. Cassidy found him sitting at the navigation desk flipping switches on a dead console. Brewster sat smoking his pipe without lighting it.
Cassidy continued his back and forth search of the ship for hours. Exhausted, he sat down where Jayce had appeared. The young man was now fast asleep in his quarters. All of them were either asleep now or continuing pointless chores. None of them speaking much other than gibberish.
The helm still twisted back and forth, the pedals going up and down like a sea-saw. A hazy shadow materialized at the large wheel. It faded in and out of existence for several minutes before Cassidy could make out the concrete form of Banner, who clung to the spokes to keep himself upright.
Banner turned. Cassidy flinched. The captain’s face looked like nothing he’d ever seen. His normally cool grey eyes all but poked out of their sockets and red veins stood out against the white around his irises. “Banner,” Cassidy said, as the darting eyes tried to focus. “Banner! Dammit man, what happened?”
Banner blinked and shook his head. “How long?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Cassidy said. “I just found the ship.”
The captain nodded, as if half-remembering that Cassidy had been absent all this time. “The Borealis,” he said, and stopped, trying to find words. “There were others. Thousands. Dreams. Souls. I don’t know.”
He flexed his fingers on and off the spokes of the helm as if trying to milk reassurance from the solid wood. “It pulled us out to the fringes. Dragged us through...when it moved beyond, I guess we snapped back.” Banner shook his head. His eyes still appeared to be seeing other things. Other places. He seemed half on the Nubigena and half back in the Borealis. “Is anyone else—”
“You’re the last to show up,” Cassidy said, and gave Banner a squeeze on his shoulder. “They’re not well.”
Banner nodded. “It’ll happen again,” he said, and bit his lip as if trying to hold back what he was saying, even from himself. “We’ve got to get everyone off the ship.”
Chapter 27
“How?” Cassidy asked. He glanced out the windows. “I thought the Auroras didn’t hurt us.”
Banner shook his head. He paced the small control room, wringing his hands. “We’ve been sold out. The Everdream must know all our hideouts now. Must not want us back anymore and they’re just trying to kill us now.” He returned to the wheel and gripped it until his knuckles turned white. “Was it you, Cassidy? Just tell me. You’re the only one that hasn’t been with us, both times.”
“Me?” Cassidy asked, more shocked than hurt.
Banner shook his head and gave deep sigh. “No, of course it wasn’t you. Even if it was, I guess you’d have the right, considering you came back and saved us all.” He bent over the wheel and shook.
“Captain,” Cassidy said and put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re all going to die if you don’t get your head on straight.”
Banner spun on him. “How dare you—” he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head in anguish. “The Borealis field took us somewhere. I can’t explain what it did. I feel like we were tortured for years, and the Everdream threw it at us somehow...” He trailed off.
“Everyone else is babbling,” Cassidy said. “I’m not sure they even recognize me.”
Banner nodded. “It was worse than the void in some ways. They could be like that for a while. God!” He slammed a fist against the
helm. “I never thought—Cassidy, crank us up. We’ll worry about everyone later.”
Cassidy gave a nod and leapt into the navigation chair. The engines turned over and Banner straightened his shoulders a little. “Where are we going?”
Banner exhaled a large breath. “I don’t know how I can bear to lose her. She’s all I’ve got.”
Cassidy remained silent as the Nubigena skirted the Twilight borders. He was never certain what border meant in the case of the Twilight, but every time the crackle of green energy began, Banner turned the ship, only scraping the surfaces instead of heading straight into them like before.
He seemed to be doing it on purpose, as if testing the boundaries, either to find a certain gate, or as a bizarre form of navigation. Banner usually steered them starboard, but not always, and Cassidy gave up trying to understand whatever labyrinthine maze they were trying to make their way through.
“Check on them,” Banner said, breaking the silence for the first time in hours. “Get them all together.”
Cassidy glanced over the controls and gauges one more time. He only understood about half of them, but it made him feel better to check.
Going aft, he found the crew continuing menial tasks as if re-enacting the last things they’d done on the ship before their minds had slipped away. Brewster packed his pipe, smoked it and packed it again, each time standing up for a moment before sitting back down. Franz played billiards, over and over, while Jayce lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling.
Karl fixed and refixed the same engine over and over again. He still babbled. They all babbled, but didn’t talk directly to anyone, and their eyes still seemed to be seeing other places. Cassidy tried to herd them together, but they kept returning to their tasks the moment he let their arms go. Eventually, he locked all but Karl in the galley hall, hoping to keep them there long enough to get wherever the Nubigena was going. Karl refused to leave the engine room, insisting so much still had to be done even though he wasn’t even working on the engines anymore, but tampering again with the strange machine that wouldn’t turn on.
Cassidy reported back to Banner, who returned a grave nod and continued his journey through the borderlands that only he understood. After hours of what looked like pointless manoeuvring, they approached a black pyramid standing motionless on the dark edge of the Twilight.
Banner stopped the ship and regarded the structure.
“What is it?” Cassidy asked.
“A prison,” Banner said. “An asylum.”
“Is it one of the safe houses for dreams?”
Banner shrugged. “Call it what you will. I’ll never step inside again.” He breathed deep, exhaled and ordered Cassidy to throttle forwards. They moored to the tip of the pyramid and waited while a black slab of triangular slate rose from the surface and made its way to the main hatch.
Banner and Cassidy stood waiting as the slab connected and the Nubigena’s hatch swung open. A small man, almost a dwarf, stepped inside and gave a low bow. He wore grey robes and the creased lines of his face almost melded with the deep wrinkles of the fabric. His bald head and pointed Twilight ears gave him the look of an ancient Germanic creature said to have lived before the coming of man. A goblin, Cassidy thought. A gnome.
“I’m honoured,” the creature said. “My name is Lolem. I was told this ship would never grace our borders again.”
Banner nodded. “It’s an evil day,” he said, and opened the door to the galley. The zombie-like crew ambled out. “I need you to take care of them until I return. If I can return.”
Lolem furrowed his already wrinkled brow. “That is not usually our policy,” he said. “These places must remain a secret.”
“I know,” Banner said. “This is for me. It’s a favour.”
Lolem considered it for a few moments and nodded. “You’ve done us many boons in the past,” he said. “Can you get them onto my platform?”
Banner and Cassidy corralled the crew on. Brewster was the last to go. Cassidy wanted to say goodbye. He tried to get the airman to look him in the face, but Brewster stared past as if looking for something back on the ship. Cassidy pushed a pipe into his hands along with a pouch of tobacco and a box of matches. “We will be back,” Cassidy promised, as the skiff pulled away. He thought of Karl still in the engine room, refusing to leave.
“You can stay, too,” Banner said as Cassidy wheeled the hatch shut.
“Like hell,” Cassidy said. “Every time I let you out of my sight, something bad happens.”
Banner gave a weak smile, but his eyes twinkled. “Best Jonah I’ve ever had on my ship,” he said and made for the helm.
Cassidy followed close behind. The muscles in his chest tightened as the silence set in again. It was only he and Banner now. He, Banner and a crazed engineer roaming the Nubigena’s nerve centre.
“I had a dark premonition of this,” Banner said as he stood at the wheel once more and guided them away from the pyramid. “The first time I saw you, I feared that one day you’d be the only man left with me.” He turned and locked Cassidy with his grey eyes. “And if you’re my last man, I’ve done alright.”
Banner turned back to the helm. Cassidy took a deep sigh. This could really be it. The ship’s final flight and the captain’s last stand. A strange emotion that felt a mixture of pride and fear rose in his chest at the sight of Banner’s silhouette against the windows. God, what he wouldn’t have given for a storm. A real storm.
As the Nubigena turned starboard, Cassidy noticed a soft nimbus of crackling green light encircling the pyramid. This place was some pocket of the Twilight border. A tear in its fabric that had grown into a sanctuary. The green became brighter as they left, illuminating the walls of the slim channel they’d come through. Now he could see that the corridor had been almost as narrow as the ship herself. Any vessel coming here would be in constant danger of gating into who knew what if they flew deep enough into the sides. No wonder it was so well protected.
“They were my men,” Banner said, but more to himself than Cassidy. “I picked them all myself and rescued one by one. My ship. My ship. You might not think I care about them, but those boys were like—” He didn’t finish his sentence.
“Where to now?” Cassidy asked, trying to break Banner from his dark mood.
“I need to go back,” was all Banner said.
Cassidy feared he knew where that meant.
The captain manoeuvred between several more gates and took a hard starboard turn into one. The crackling light exploded around the ship and they were in a real world storm. The Nubigena had come out dead in the eye of another hurricane. The turning wheel of black cumulous twisted around them, the endless forks of blue lightning blistered a bright circle across the eye like an electric cornea.
They nosed down, protected by the still of the massive eye, and landed. Strange how the hurricane seemed to stop and wait for them as if protecting Banner’s unearthly stormship. Cassidy knew they must be near the coast for the hurricane to remain intact, but had never known what coast this was. They were in America, however. He was fairly certain of that because he’d seen this cemetery before.
Banner landed in the same clearing of gravestones. The nose and tail stretched well beyond the clearing, shading hundreds of statues and markers from the storm. Rain poured down the rounded sides and the buffeting winds dragged at the Zeppelin. The eye was still above, but seemed unstable as if it were breaking apart and coming back together, waiting for Banner, but uncertain. “Why is there always a hurricane when we come here?” Cassidy asked.
Banner glanced up. He looked confused. “Hurricane?” He looked about as if noticing the insane winds for the first time. “I don’t know,” he said, and started off for whatever grave he always haunted.
Cassidy wouldn’t stand back as the rest always had. He gave Banner several minutes head start, then trotted after him. He stopped as the captain knelt before one of the graves. He talked to it, though Cassidy couldn’t make out any words. It look
ed almost as if he were praying to it.
Banner cried. He prostrated himself and dug his fingers into the grass and wet earth. A shattered bottle lay inches away. He grabbed both sides of the tombstone as if he were shaking a man and shouted at the grey surface. “They’re gone,” was all Cassidy could make out at first, and then something that could have been, “I’m going to lose her.”
He means the ship, Cassidy thought. He actually means the ship. Cassidy stepped closer and shouted into the blistering wind. “So you can outlive your dreamer.”
Banner broke from his weeping to laugh. “My dreamer? I wish to God,” he said, turning. It looked as if the rain had dug grooves in his face. He looked old. Beaten.
“Who are you?” Cassidy asked, shouting louder than was necessary, even in the sounding wind. “What the hell are you?”
Banner glanced up at the gravestone and Cassidy read the engraved words in the blue flash of lightning: William Charles Banner, May He Find His Peace.
Cassidy fell to one knee beside his captain. “Your dreamer’s father?” he asked.
Banner laughed. “Ha. Never. This man’s father was an officer. A great military man with little patience for a son born lame. A son who spent his life in a wheelchair. Beat him for not being able to run from him.” Banner stood and kicked the curved stone hard. He kicked it again, harder, near the top. The stone cracked through the centre and another sharp blow from his heel left a jagged edge aimed at the sky.
William, and the bottom of the C, was all Cassidy could read of the name now. “I don’t understand,” Cassidy said, shouting over a roll of thunder. “What are you?”
“A failure,” Banner yelled. “And a damned lousy captain. A damned lousy man.” He stood and made for the ship.
Cassidy caught up in a few long strides. “You were dreamed by a god of a man,” Cassidy said. “You rode a galleon out of your dream and into another and out into the real world.”
Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) Page 21