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.

13

When we finally reached the island, and I stepped out of the basket, Anotine was there to take my arm. The moment my foot touched the ground, I realized that our strange journey had wrought some change in me. It was as if the mnemonic world had gained a great measure of authority or validity, for everything appeared more vibrant, and I felt, for the first time, comfortable with my existence there.

All of the doubt I had felt while ascending in the basket was now gone, carried off by one of the clouds we had passed through. The urgency of my mission, which had been a constant nagging companion, had mysteriously vanished like the breakfast plates in Anotine's dining room. I concentrated now on the touch of her hand, and that thrilled me like nothing from my rapidly diminishing memories of Wenau ever had.

We left the Doctor sitting on the base of the giant winch, gazing into his sample of the ocean, and headed through the wood, walking side by side in silence. Anotine had let go of me by then, but I wanted desperately to take her hand. The leaves fell around us, and every so often a beam from that immaculate sun would pierce the canopy overhead and illuminate her face.

I was on the verge of touching her when I looked up and saw something approaching. It flew above the ground at shoulder height, threading a swift, treacherous path in and around the bases of the trees. My first thought was that it was a large bird of some kind, but I quickly came to realize it was the Fetch.

The sight of the flying head so shattered my state of mind that I could do no more than grunt. For a second, I thought the monstrosity was going to collide with us, and I froze in place. Its face came hurtling directly at mine. I could clearly see the milky whiteness of the eyes and an open mouth I believed, in my fear, would swallow me. At the last second, it lifted its left eyebrow slightly, and this subtle motion directed its course up and over us. It moved so swiftly that when I turned to watch its departure all I saw were a few tendrils of its black hair whipping around the trunk of a tree some twenty yards off.

"The Doctor must be on to something," said Anotine with, what I thought, an inappropriate complacency.

"You mean she is going to stare his discovery out of him?" I asked.

"That's an interesting way of putting it," she said.

"Doesn't it bother you that your thoughts are not your own?" I asked.

"My thoughts are my own," she said defensively, and I could tell that I had touched a nerve that had to do with something more than the processes of the Fetch.

I put my hand out and touched her forearm. "I'm sorry," I said. She lowered her gaze and sighed.

"Cley," she said, "you're not a specimen, are you?"

"That designation lies solely with you," I told her.

She looked up and stared as if trying to see through me. I removed my hand from her arm. A minute passed; then she turned, and said, "In that case, come with me. I have an experiment I'd like to try." She set off ahead of me, walking with determination.

Rather dejected, I followed her, seeking solace in the memory of the night I had shared her bed. We left the wood, traversed the field, and took a short set of steps up into the maze of the terraced village. It was late afternoon by then, and the sun had begun its decline.

As we traveled the alleys and open-air corridors, I looked up, studying the Panopticon. Noticing that the light was off in the dome, I tried to peer through the glass and detect movement, but it was far too distant for me to see anything. What I did see was the Fetch, returning from having feasted on the Doctor's thoughts. It flew around the tower a few times and then directly into one of the darkened open portals in its side.