Again, I’m just guessing.
This brings my little sermon to an end. Once again, I am traveling to the Sea of Veils, to the Lancet. Because what the three of us — Imab, Betydon, and myself — discovered there, was revelatory indeed. When I say that the Lancet is the key, I know of what I speak. If we had had more time… well, no matter. I will go up there again. To satisfy my own scientific curiosity, if nothing else. For that ship holds secrets. And it is, I believe, the focal point for what caused the horrible deaths of Imab and Betydon. For, if you have been here any length of time, you may have felt the presence of another. What this thing is, I cannot say, only that I believe it to be destructive and sentient. Something that may lie dormant or inactive for extended periods of time. A sort of potential energy waiting to spend itself. Lately, I’ve felt it building. I believe it is about to become kinetic.
God help us, God help any creature with a conscious, reasoning brain when that happens.
I will die, perhaps. But I will die knowing. Not just the nature of that thing (something that boggles the mind), but of the secret of the Lancet. For there, I think, are the keys to deliverance from this place.
This, then, is my mission. I leave you this letter, my chart. Help yourself to my gun and supplies. For I no longer will need them. Please, do not come after me.
May God protect you,
John R. Greenberg
That is where the letter ended.
Cushing stood there, amazed and informed, depressed and confused, feeling a great many things. Maybe there was hope now and maybe there was a complete lack of it. There were certainly a lot of questions he needed answered and, unfortunately, this Greenberg… the Hermit… was not there to answer them.
“What do you know about this guy?” Cushing asked Elizabeth.
She just sighed and shook her head. “He was a crazy old man who didn’t like people. My Uncle knew him… visited him sometimes.. . he was out of his head.”
“Maybe not.”
“We should go,” Elizabeth said.
Cushing found himself staring at her. “You didn’t want me seeing this, did you?”
She shook her head.
“You knew he was gone?”
“Yes.”
“And-”
“And I didn’t want you filling yourself with his crazy ideas. I didn’t want you to get filled with false hope,” she said to him, “because it is false.”
It was confession time. She told him her Uncle Richard had been something of an acquaintance of the Hermit. That he believed implicitly in the Hermit’s science. Uncle Richard spent days on end trying to find that vortex that would carry them out.
“But he didn’t find it?”
She shook her head. “No. He never did… and it broke something in him. Destroyed something in him. Made him give up. That’s what killed him… he had no hope left. None at all.”
“And Greenberg never returned from the Sea of Veils?”
“No one ever does.” She swallowed. “Can we please leave now?”
Cushing had a fair idea that Elizabeth was not telling him all she knew. The letter… it was dated in December. But this December or the last or five past? He knew Elizabeth wouldn’t tell him. At least not yet. But for his money, Greenberg had probably only just set out for the Sea of Veils a few months back. He didn’t know that to be true, yet he was certain it was.
“Please,” Elizabeth said. “We need to go.”
Taking the chart, letter, and gun, they did just that.
15
Maybe Gosling’s death had shut something down in him and maybe it had opened something else up. George was never able to figure exactly how he felt about any of it. He’d liked Gosling, trusted Gosling, had faith that Gosling would somehow, in the end, get their asses out of there. And now that he was gone? What was left? Sadness? Hopelessness? Maybe even something as crazy and improper as betrayal? Because it was there, all right, that insane sense that by dying, Gosling had abandoned them all. Abandoned them to Cushing’s theories and George’s own indecision, to Pollard’s weird sensitivity and Chesbro’s blind faith. That what they had now, was all they’d ever have… dead ships and crawling weed and stinking mists and fear. Yes, fear. Fear that every decision they made was wrong, that every turn they took was the wrong one, every road leading back into itself, a maze, a hopeless fucking maze. Without Gosling there, without his guiding hand and no-nonsense practicality, they were screwed. Literally.
For Gosling had been important.
Gosling had been necessary.
He was the heat and boiling steam and hot wetness in a pan and, without him, they were just the residue clinging to the lid. Yes, Gosling had been their motion and energy and drive. He kept them going. He kept them sane and together and hopeful. Gosling was the can-do guy, the quit-feeling-sorry-for-your-pussy-ass guy. Get your ass in high gear, boy, or swear to God, I’ll kick it there. That was Gosling.
Without him?
Residue.
Just residue clinging to the lid of the pan called the Dead Sea. And who was going to scrape that residue off? Who was going to be the one now to kick this little group of theirs in the ass and get it moving? That was the question and George didn’t seem to have any good ideas. In his mind, he could see them unraveling day by day until none of them gave a shit and they became like Elizabeth Castle… just beaten and squashed and accepting.
And George thought: Is that what you want? Is that what you really want to become?
And it wasn’t.
Gosling was gone, but they had to carry on in his spirit. He would have respected nothing less and nothing less was acceptable. George was thinking about the things Marx and Gosling had been talking about: finding a boat. Something with an engine, something that could plow them out of the weed and back out into the sea itself. Because George had been thinking that very thing himself all along. With a child’s simple logic he knew that if you came in through a door, then you had to go back the same way. And maybe it took quantum theory and Einsteinian physics for a certain Mr. Greenberg to arrive at this deduction, but George knew it intuitively.
16
The screaming came in the night.
Except, of course, it was not night really. George had been laying in his bunk, napping, and he had come awake to screaming. His cabin was dim and he stumbled out into the corridor, more than a little confused, his head full of fuzz.
Screaming.
Who in the Christ was screaming?
George made it up to deck shortly after Pollard, both dazed and shocked and they didn’t know what. Didn’t know what in the hell they were going to be staring in the face this time, only that it would not be good. Could not possibly be good.
“What the hell’s going on?” George heard himself say.
Pollard mumbled something incomprehensible and George was right behind him, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps as they scrambled along those salt-whitened decks, trying to locate the screaming.
“There,” Pollard said dumbly. “Oh, there… there… ”
It was Chesbro.
He was out into the weed about thirty feet maybe from the Mystic, in a run of oily, slopping water, stumbling about in the raft as it sank around him, seeming to deflate before their eyes. But it wasn’t deflating, it was… it was coming apart. It was fraying and shredding and collapsing. That dirty water around it was spraying up in gouts and boiling in foam.
“Christ, we gotta do something,” Pollard was saying.