Memoranda

12

I COULD HEAR THE TIMBER SHAFT OF THE WINCH ABOVE us creaking with the strain of our weight. The pulley squealed and its cry traveled along the taut rope as we were slowly lowered in fits and starts. Increasing my grip on the Doctor's coat, I worked at trying to balance myself.

"You can look now, Cley," he said. "I'm afraid we're still alive."

I slowly opened my eyes as we passed the bottom of the floating island. I don't know exactly what I expected to see, but I never guessed that it would be a gigantic wedge of earth like the clump of dirt that trails the stem of a weed pulled from the ground. Tree roots jutted out the bottom and interlaced in a mesh that, though it was impossible, held the entire thing together. There was no rational explanation for how something so immense might stay aloft in midair. Only the imagination could so completely cancel the effects of gravity.

"Quite a marvel," said Doctor Hellman, smiling at the sight of the foundation as we descended beyond it.

I nodded, but could not hide my terror of feeling like an ant on a string.

"I am never more alive than when I am dangling out over nothing," he said.

"I can't say I share the sentiment," I told him.

"It takes some getting used to," he said. "If you can muster the courage to stare down over the edge of the basket, it will literally frighten the fear out of you, and I think you'll feel much better."

I inched my way across the wicker compartment and grabbed the rim of the waist-high wall. Cautiously, I leaned out a few inches and stared down. A blast of wind came up from below and blew my hair back as I took in a view of the silver ocean, stretching out endlessly to all points of the compass.. The sight was so awesome, I could feel my anxiety rapidly shrinking in the face of it.

After a few minutes of this, I turned back to the Doctor, feeling much better. "I think it worked," I said.

"Fear will always fall to wonder in those who are capable of it," he said.

"What should I do now?" I asked.

"We have to wait until Anotine has finished lowering us close enough so that we can get a good look at the surface of the ocean."

He sat down on the floor of the compartment, and I did the same. I thought that he might question me as Nunnly had, but instead he closed his eyes and rested against the wall. I looked up to see how far we had descended from the island, and as I craned my head back, my vision was obscured by an airy white substance that seemed suddenly to be everywhere.

"Doctor," I shouted.

Hellman never opened his eyes. He simply smiled, and said, "A cloud, Cley, a cloud."

The white vapor passed over us, leaving my clothes damp. When the last wisps of it had cleared, I looked up again, and there was the island, flying at a great distance like a kite on a string. For some reason, I cannot say why, that sight made me reach up and touch the breast pocket of my coat. Since the beginning of my mnemonic journey, I had forgotten about the green veil. Never really expecting it to be there, I patted the pocket and, to my surprise, found a thickness to it. I reached in and pulled out the scrap of cloth. The feel of the material against my fingers offered some solace as though it were a kind of rope itself, connecting me to my own place and time.

As the novelty of the adventure began to diminish, I realized that the thick, rolling sound of the ocean grew more distinct. The force of the wind also increased, causing the gondola to sway to and fro with a pleasant rhythm. Just as I was about to rise and check our progress, the basket came to a jarring halt. The Doctor's eyes opened; he reached up to get a hold on the edge of the basket and pulled himself to a standing position.

"Cley," he called over his shoulder, "you'll never see anything like this in Wenau."

I stood up, adjusted my balance to the rocking of the basket, and inched my way across the wicker floor to stand next to him. The initial sight of it made me slightly dizzy, for as we moved the sea had its own motion, and the whole world seemed, for a moment, a silver spinning top. We dangled no more than fifteen feet above the crests of the largest waves. I stared in awe at the lazy creation of thick, liquid mountains that curled at their peaks back into themselves and diminished. The swells in between were as deep as canyons, and the sight of them worked like a magnet, drawing my leaning body farther over the side.

Hellman laughed and clutched me by my shirt. "This pool is closed to bathers" he said, pulling me back. "How does it make you feel?"

"Insignificant," I said, "but not in a negative way."

"I know what you mean," he said, shouting over a particularly fierce gale.

"Why are we here?" I asked.

"You've got to get over the majesty of it," he said. "Only then will you notice the phenomenon. Keep staring for a minute or two and it will become clear to you. Look closely at the moment when the wave, in its descent, reaches a certain flatness."

I could not help but continue to stare. Then, slowly, my perception of the ocean began to change. I started to notice that everywhere, not only when it passed through an instant of flatness, there appeared to be designs that swirled across the surface of the mercury. I covered my eyes for a second and looked more intently, only to see that these were not merely designs but actual scenes involving people and places. When the scope of what I was witnessing struck me, I stepped

back away from the edge of the basket. The entire ocean was an ever-changing collage of animated tableaux that mixed into each other, then separated out into fresh revelations.

The Doctor turned and looked at me. "Dreams" he said. "The ocean is dreaming."

I moved back to the edge and looked down again to see a clear image of Below, sitting in his office back in the Well-Built City, injecting himself in the neck with a syringe of sheer beauty. The sight of this made me realize that the Doctor had been close in his diagnosis. What we witnessed, though, was not an ocean of dreams, but instead, true memories from the Master's life.

"I am convinced there is meaning to all of this," said Hell-man. "All I need do is interpret it. The same characters keep appearing as if it is a vast, continuous story, that I, unfortunately, have come to in the middle of its telling."

"What do you think it means?" I asked.

"All I can tell you is that I am certain it is a love story. Recently, something about it has been nagging me. It is as if there is a connection I am missing that lies right before my eyes, but I cannot put it together."

"When you have interpreted the entire thing, what do you hope to discover?" I asked.

"It's what we all want, Cley. I want to know why I am here," he said.

The Doctor had somehow come very close to the truth, and I was torn between explaining to him what I knew and saving my secret knowledge as an advantage that might be useful later. I nearly spoke, but then I realized that he would never believe me, and if he did, what would my truths say to him about his existence?

"Snap out of it, man," he said.

When I looked up, I saw that he had gone to the black bag he had brought with him. From within, he pulled a long glass cylinder with a glass jar attached to the end.

"Nunnly designed this for me," he said. "You see, it's retractable. He began pulling concentric cylindrical stems out of the main unit until he had an exceptionally long glass rod at the end of which was the jar. The contraption extended out over the sides of the basket on either end.

"This process would be much easier if I could use wire or string, but the nature of the liquid mercury is such that it would eat right through them. I've discovered glass will hold the stuff. Not even Nunnly could spin thread from glass."

"I think you are going to be short a foot or two," I said, seeing that the long-handled jar was no more than ten or eleven feet.

"Well, this is as big as he could make it without danger of it snapping under the weight of the sample I bring up."

"But what good is it?" I asked. "You will still be two or three feet short."

"That, Cley, is where you come in. You will hold me firmly by the ankles and lower me over the side of the basket, where I will scoop up a portion of the ocean."

"That's mad," I said.

"Quite," he replied. "Let's get on with it." Holding the unwieldy rod in one hand, he struggled up onto the edge of the basket, placing his free hand on the rope that connected us to the island above. He stood there unsteadily, balancing.

"What if I drop you?" I said.

"That would be unfortunate, but if you do, I want you to watch and notice if I appear as part of the story." Just then a huge gust of wind blasted the side of the basket. The Doctor began to lose his balance, and I lunged forward and grabbed him by the ankles.

Luckily he was a small man; otherwise, I never would have been able to hold his weight back. He hung down under our carriage where I could not see what was going on.

"The view is even better down here," he yelled.

I was grunting and straining merely trying to hold him in place, and wasn't about to start a conversation.

Just when I thought I was going to lose him, he finally called, "Heave ho, Cley. Don't jostle me too much, or we'll have to do it again."

I began to back up across the basket as slowly and steadily as I could. When his waist was even with the edge, the Doctor straightened his body, bringing the jar end of the glass device up in both hands, taking great care not to spill a drop. As his feet touched down on the floor, he said, "Cley, come quickly now and unscrew the arm."

The glass rod had threads in the end that attached it to the jar. I worked quickly to remove it and release the Doctor from its drag.

"Just let it fall into the ocean," he said. "This is my last expedition. The rim of the island will soon be too unsteady to support the winch."

I did as he said, and after watching it fall away into a growing wave, I turned to see him affixing a fitted glass lid on the jar. He held his specimen up in front of him, where it gleamed in the brightness of the sun.

"I think we've got something here, Cley," he said, smiling. "I should have thought of this sooner." He stepped over and handed me the jar.

I grasped the glass container tightly for fear of dropping it, and discovered that it radiated a subtle warmth. Doctor Hellman moved back over to the black bag and pulled out a wide-barreled pistol. Aiming straight up, he pulled the trigger and the gun discharged. There was no explosion, only a loud pop followed by blue smoke. A projectile sped out of the end and rocketed toward the island. I followed its course for a moment, then lost it.

"Look now," he said.

I tilted back my head and witnessed a red splotch, like a bleeding wound, spreading out across the resilient blue. It was not long after that we began to ascend in the same uneven manner as we had been lowered.

"Where does Anotine get the strength to lift us?" I asked.

"Nunnly's gears make the job easy. Turning the crank is no harder than reeling a bucket of water out of a well. Still, it would be a mistake to underestimate Anotine's strength," said the Doctor with a laugh.

I handed him back his small portion of the mercury sea and went to the side to get one last look. We were almost too far away for me to perceive the detail of the etched surface, but I managed to make out one final scene. A prodigious curl carried on its back a tableau of the Master and his demon son wrapped in an embrace. Then the wave fell into itself, devouring the portrait, and, with two more upward tugs on the rope, I could no longer make out any details.

Doctor Hellman and I again took up our positions resting on the floor of the gondola. Wearing a look of contentment, he held the jar nestled in his arms as if it were his own child. I thought his mood might make him talkative, and I asked him to tell me about the ocean's dream.

"A love story, you said?" I asked him.

"I was joking in a way when I said that, but what I meant was that my interpretation of what I have seen, the silver chronicle of what seems to be every single moment of one particular man's life, has a meaning that is greater than the sum of all its individual scenes. It is a total concept that lies just beyond my powers of description. This is why I call it a love story, because Love is a word I am familiar with, a word that haunts my own dreams, but for the life of me I can no longer grasp the concept of it. The significance of the story in the ocean and my inability to remember the meaning of this term leave me with an identical, unquenchable yearning. I feel they are one and the same thing."

"Are you any closer to them now from when you started?" I asked.

"I'm so close," he said, laughing. "So close now that everything is disintegrating. Perhaps if I had a long enough glass rod and jar with which I could dip into myself, I could bring out the answer."

I hadn't realized how badly I needed a cigarette until I found myself puffing on a lit Hundred-To-One that, without warning, materialized between my fingers. It tasted so good, I didn't bother to question its appearance.

"What about this man in the story?" I asked. "Who is he?"

"He's a man of great power and great weakness with the potential for both good and evil—a scientist and magician. The ocean has shown me this in detail. Once I saw him crack an egg and a cricket jumped forth, and once he built a crystal egg that held within it a world."

The wind rocked the basket in a circular motion. This and the Doctor's conversation made my mind spin. For the remainder of the ascent, I suffered from a sense of unreality as if I were the ghost of a ghost. All I had to anchor me was the insubstantial smoke of the cigarette. I pressed my hand against the pocket containing the green veil and remembered my own yearning.