Hatch considered this. "It seems to me I'd be wasting my breath."
Neidelman gave a soft laugh. "You know me well enough, then. Shall we go below for a glass of port?"
Hatch shot a surprised glance at the Captain. Just that night, in the galley of the Cerberus, he'd heard that nobody was ever invited below on the Griffin; that nobody, in fact, even knew what it looked like. The Captain, although personable and friendly with his crew, always kept his distance.
"Good thing I didn't start lecturing you on your vices, isn't it?" Hatch said. "Thanks, I'd love a glass of port."
He followed Neidelman into the pilothouse, then down the steps and under the low door. Another narrow half-flight of metal stairs, another door, and Hatch found himself in a large, low-ceilinged room. He looked around in wonder. The paneling was a rich, lustrous mahogany, carved in Georgian style and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Delicate Tiffany stained glass was set into each porthole, and leather banquettes were placed against the walls. At the far end, a small fire glowed, filling the cabin with warmth and the faint, fragrant smell of birch. Glass-fronted library cabinets flanked either side of the mantelpiece; Hatch could see bound calfskin and the gleam of gold stamping. He moved forward to examine the titles: Hakluyt's Voyages, an early copy of Newton's Principia. Here and there, priceless illuminated manuscripts and other incunabula were arranged face outward; Hatch recognized a fine copy of Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. There was also a small shelf devoted to original editions of early pirate texts: Lionel Wafer's Batchelor's Delight, Alexander Esquemelion's Bucaniers of America, and A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, by Charles Johnson. The library alone must have cost a small fortune. Hatch wondered if Neidelman had furnished the boat with earnings from prior salvages.
Beside one of the cabinets was a small seascape in a gilt frame. Hatch moved in for a closer look. Then he drew in his breath sharply.
"My God," he said. "This is a Turner, isn't it?"
Neidelman nodded. "It's a study for his painting, Squall Off Beachy Head, 1874"
"That's the one in the Tate?" Hatch said. "When I was in London a few years back, I tried sketching it several times."
"Are you a painter?" Neidelman asked.
"I'm a dabbler. Watercolors, mostly." Hatch stepped back, glancing around again. The other pictures that hung on the walls were not paintings, but precise copperplate engravings of botanical specimens: heavy flowers, odd grasses, exotic plants.
Neidelman approached a small baize-covered dry sink, laid with cut-glass ship's decanters and small glasses. Pulling two tumblers from their felt-covered moorings, he poured a few fingers of port in each. "Those engravings," he said, following Hatch's gaze, "are by Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist who accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage around the world. They're plant specimens he collected in Botany Bay, shortly after they discovered Australia. It was the fantastic variety of plant specimens, you know, that caused Banks to give the bay its name."
"They're beautiful," murmured Hatch, accepting a glass.
"They're probably the finest copperplate engravings ever made. What a fortunate man he was: a botanist, given the gift of a brand-new continent."
"Axe you interested in botany?" Hatch asked.
"I'm interested in brand-new continents," Neidelman said, staring into the fire. "But I was born a little too late. All those have been snapped up." He smiled quickly, covering what seemed like a wistful gleam in his eyes.
"But in the Water Pit you have a mystery worthy of attention."
"Yes," Neidelman replied. "Perhaps the only one left. That's why I suppose setbacks such as today's shouldn't dismay me. Great mysteries don't yield up their secrets easily."
There was a long silence as Hatch sipped his port. Most people, he knew, found silence in a conversation to be uncomfortable. But Neidelman seemed to welcome it.
"I meant to ask you," the Captain said at last. "What did you think of our reception in town yesterday?"
"By and large, everyone seems happy with our presence here. We're certainly a boon to local business."
"Yes," Neidelman replied. "But what do you mean, 'by and large'?"
"Well, not everyone's a merchant." Hatch decided there was no point in being evasive. "We seem to have aroused the moral opposition of the local minister."
Neidelman gave a wry smile. "The minister disapproves, does he? After two thousand years of murder, inquisition, and intolerance, it's a wonder any Christian minister still feels he holds the moral high ground."
Hatch shifted a little uncomfortably; this was a voluble Neidelman, quite unlike the cold figure that just a few hours before had ordered the pumps run at a critically dangerous level.
"They told Columbus his ship would fall off the earth. And they forced Galileo to publicly repudiate his greatest discovery."
Neidelman fished his pipe out of his pocket and went through the elaborate ritual of lighting it. "My father was a Lutheran minister himself," he said more quietly, shaking out the match. "I had quite enough to last me a lifetime."
"You don't believe in God?" Hatch asked.
Neidelman gazed at Hatch in silence. Then he lowered his head. "To be honest, I've often wished I did. Religion played such a large role in my childhood that being without it now myself sometimes feels like a void. But I'm the kind of person who cannot believe in the absence of proof. It isn't something I have any control over. I must have proof." He sipped his port. "Why? Do you have any religious beliefs?"
Hatch turned toward him. "Well, yes, I do."
Neidelman waited, smoking.
"But I don't care to discuss them."
A smile spread over Neidelman's face. "Excellent. Can I give you a dividend?"
Hatch handed over his glass. "That wasn't the only opposing voice I heard in town," he continued. "I have an old friend, a teacher of natural history, who thinks we're going to fail."
"And you?" Neidelman asked coolly, busy with the port, not looking at him.
"I wouldn't be in it if I thought we'd fail. But I'd be lying if I said today's setback didn't give me pause."
"Malin," Neidelman said almost gently as he returned the glass, "I can't blame you for that. I confess to feeling a moment of something like despair when the pumps failed us. But there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that we'll succeed. I see now where we've gone wrong."
"I suppose there are even more than five flood tunnels," Hatch said. "Or maybe some hydraulic trick was played on us."
"Undoubtedly. But that's not what I mean. You see, we've been focusing all our attention on the Water Pit. But I've realized the Water Pit is not our adversary."
Hatch raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and the Captain turned toward him, pipe clenched in one fist, eyes glittering brightly.
"It's not the Pit. It's the man. Macallan, the designer. He's been one step ahead of us all the way. He's anticipated our moves, and those who came before us."
Placing his glass on a felt-topped table, he walked over to the wall and swung open a wood panel, revealing a small safe. He punched several buttons on the adjoining keypad, and the safe door swung open. He reached inside, removed something, then turned and laid it on the table in front of Hatch. It was a quarto volume, bound in leather: Macallan's book, On Sacred Structures. The captain opened it with great care, caressing it with long fingers. There in the margins, next to the printed blocks of text, appeared a neat little hand in a pale brown wash that looked almost like watercolor: line after line of monotonous characters, broken only by the occasional small, deft mechanical drawing of various joints, arches, braces, and cribbing.