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IT’S AMAZING HOW QUICKLY you get used to something completely off the wall when everyone around you takes it for granted. If anyone had told me a month beforehand that I was going to become a fish, I’d have called them certifiable. But just a few days after receiving the news, the only major question I had left was why it had to happen. And that was because I was cocooned among people who thought and felt exactly the same.
‘Morbidly resigned’ is how I’d have described myself at this point. I still wasn’t sleeping - more a symptom than a cause. Wiles was right, though. It was just death: no more, no less. Obviously, if you tell most twenty-year-olds they’re going to die, you’re likely to afflict them with profound grief. But not me, not here. Like I said, it’s amazing how quickly you get used to something. At least I knew everyone else was going to die too. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound right.
The morning after we’d heard Wiles’s confession and seen him home, Ashanta and I hauled ourselves out of bed with the alarm and dragged ourselves off to a breakfast of toast and jam in a semi-stupor. Everyone else was spread out across the dining room. Endersby and Rita Patel were there when we arrived, facing each other and holding hands. They didn’t look to be in any rush. Wiles and Goulding came in quickly and ate at separate tables, determinedly looking at their food so they didn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes. Mason sat with a booklet in front of him and his legs crossed. Celia Soper toyed with a poached egg and a pepper pot. Dr Tomlinson arrived just as the hatches were about to close, looking pale. He went straight up to Mason and they left briskly. They returned half an hour later, and it was then, of course, that Tomlinson announced Bittacy’s suicide.
It affected everyone more deeply than I might have expected. Nothing you could put your finger on – maybe everyone’s eyes dropped a notch and there were a couple of gasps, no more – but I had a sense that the shared despondency had just increased. I’d say that, for some, it challenged the equivalent of Wiles’s claim that what was going to happen to us was ‘just death’. It had to be something more to provoke that sort of reaction.
Afterwards, we all went and sat on the deckchairs. I noticed we were all keeping together in a group much more now. Previously, you never saw Celia Soper or Derek Goulding out and about. Presumably, they had nice cabins and they’d been on the Aurora so long there was nothing new under the sun for them. Well, now there was, and they didn’t want to be left alone with it.
The day was sunny, but with just enough wind to make sitting outside pleasant. It was perfect weather for bush hats and sunglasses. Once we’d all popped ours on, we lay motionless on recliners, and it was impossible to tell which of us was awake and which asleep.
At noon, Dr Tomlinson appeared. Everyone knew he was busy with Midshipman Collins – or what used to be Midshipman Collins, if you prefer it that way – so we never remarked on his absence and when he appeared, we didn’t try to exchange pleasantries. We knew what he must be going through, just him and a ‘transformation’. We regarded him – at least I did: I can’t really speak for the others since they never broached the subject – with genuine admiration. We all said hello and sank back into torpor.
He unfolded a wooden seat from the pile and came and sat next to me.
“I’ve been busy,” he said. “The last time we met, we agreed I’d help you recover your memories.”
I wanted to ask how Collins was but it seemed too macabre. “I’m more than happy to wait if you’re still busy,” I said.
“I can spare ten minutes. It shouldn’t take any longer.”
“Here?”
“We need a proper chair. Come into the dining room.”
“Do you mind if I tag along?” Ashanta said.
We got up and followed him. Everyone else must have been listening, because they stood up without speaking and followed us. When we reached the dining room, they sat in a rough horseshoe facing me, but still without seeking anything in the way of permission. Just as remarkably, I found their presence strangely reassuring.
Dr Tomlinson seemed wholly oblivious to it. He took his pocket watch out. “You know the form, Hugo. Keep your eyes on the clock face, I count down from ten, you do as I say.”
I heard him telling me I felt sleepy and the last number I remember was five. I expected to find myself swirling back in time to find myself on a ladder with Ashanta above me and something terrifying beneath.
Instead, I got up, swept Dr Tomlinson aside and strode out of the dining room. I was unable to help myself and my heart pounded with terror. I cleared the safety railing at a single bound and crashed into the sea.
I had no idea what I was doing. My chest was thumping like it was about to explode. For a few moments everything went dark and I had an awful sense that Dr Tomlinson had engineered all this, just to get rid of me, when the blackness cleared and I found myself in another world.
I was climbing a mountain. Below me, to the left and behind, was a valley full of enormous buildings that flashed in the sun like they were made of cut diamond. They were arranged at odd angles to each other, almost as if there had been an earthquake and they’d caved in. But they gave the definite impression of having been constructed that way.
I was alone as far as I could see, but I had an overwhelming feeling of being watched. I was high enough up for the grass to be sparse. The sun was bright but I couldn’t see it. On the contrary, the sky seemed to be boiling like an asteroid was on its way. I sat down and all at once, I was underwater again.
I wasn’t particularly frightened this time. I was among the buildings I’d just seen from the mountaintop, although this time they were at the bottom of the ocean. Long, repulsive-looking beings with scales and no heads slithered in between the spaces. Once again, I had the feeling of being watched, but this time it wasn’t disinterested.
I was being dragged through the water somehow, then I was in a chamber. In the middle was a huge coiled worm with a tapering head. Behind it, I could see flashes of colour like the ones the bright fish had made, but they were indistinct. All around it, little vortexes hung like whirlpools. It seemed to have malevolent intentions for me, I don’t know how I knew that.
Suddenly, I was filled with horror. I could feel myself losing control of my body as it filled with all the chemicals evolution has devised to aid flight. The weird thing is, not all of me wanted to get out of there. In fact, the opposite’s true: a large part of me was transfixed with a longing to stay.
Then I wasn’t me any more. I was Mr Wiles. Somehow, I’d set myself goals I’d failed to fulfil and now it was too late. I saw the great wheel of reincarnation – a physical wheel, although I only intuited that from the miniscule section of its rim before me - and myself being drawn towards it for another stab at getting right whatever it was you were supposed to do in life. To say I felt aggrieved is an understatement, but I also realised it was nothing personal.
I awoke to find the entire ship’s company sitting around me in the dining room, looking at me with faces that covered, between them, the entire spectrum of expressible emotions. Dr Tomlinson looked as if he’d been thumped; Wiles looked tearful, Mason angry, Endersby and Rita Patel suspicious, Ashanta frightened, Goulding fascinated, Celia Soper elated. Behind them, what I assumed must be most of the remaining crew looked similarly divided. Then I remembered what this was supposed to be about.
“I don’t recall any ladder,” I said.
“You don’t seem to have ... remembered anything,” Dr Tomlinson said.
“Did I even speak?”
For a moment, no one replied.
“Enough to reassure even the most sceptical of us that everything’s going to be all right,” Celia Soper said.
Rita Patel sighed impatiently. “But what if it’s a trap?”
“‘They look like gods and goddesses’,” Goulding said. It was clear from his tone he was quoting me, although the statement bore no relation to anything I remembered.
“‘They live in all universes simultaneously’,” Wiles said in the same way.
Endersby and Rita Patel and Mason looked at them as if they were mad.
“That’s not what I heard,” Mason said.
“What do you mean, you didn’t hear it?” Wiles said.
“I mean, he didn’t say it,” Mason replied.
Endersby joined in on Mason’s side and Goulding joined in on Wiles’s, and they started arguing vehemently. Then it dawned on them that they couldn’t be mistaken to that degree: different people had heard me say different things. Personally, I wasn’t disposed to analyse the matter any further. I felt nauseous. I wanted to lie down.
Ashanta put her arm round me and shoo-ed everyone away. “Let’s get you back home,” she said. “You’re not looking too good.”
“Call me if there are any further side-effects,” Dr Tomlinson said.
When we got back to our cabin, I lay on the bed with a glass of water and asked her what she’d heard.
“You were gibbering,” she replied, getting on the bed and putting her arm round me. “One minute, Pilgrim’s Progress then Visions of the Daughters of Albion then The Divine Comedy and God knows what else. I never knew you were so well read. You certainly put the frighteners on them, though. I certainly wasn’t going to wade into the post-match analysis.”
“I’ve never read any of those books.”
She laughed. “You’ve obviously imbibed information about them without knowing. It happens all the time to some people. False-memory syndrome.”
“But why didn’t I come away with what I went in for?”
“What do you mean?”
“I went in to try and remember what happened when we were on that ladder. It worked for you. Why didn’t it work for me?”
“Just as a matter of interest, Celia Soper said it wouldn’t. She says the fish see you as a channel of communication. When you go into a stupor they’ll override your intentions and broadcast theirs. That’s what she said.”
I sighed. “Unless the fish have read Pilgrim’s Progress, Visions of the Daughters of Albion and The Divine Comedy, I think we can discount that theory. Did I say anything of value?”
She nodded solemnly. “For what it’s worth, you said we were on the right course.”
