Dan Simmons - The Terror

Lieutenant Fairholme spoke. “The men are taking it as a hopeful omen that we blundered across the two bears on the ice and were able to kill them, Captain. Everyone’s looking forward to the feast at midnight.”

“Why wasn’t I told of the bears?” demanded Crozier.

The officer, maintop captain, and cook looked at one another. Birds and beasts and faeries nearby looked at one another.

“The sow and cub were only shot late last night, Captain,” Fairholme said at last. “I guess all the traffic between the ships today has been Terrors coming over to the Carnivale to work and get ready, no messengers from Erebus making the return trip. My apologies for not informing you, sir.”

Crozier knew that it was Fitzjames who had been negligent in this regard. And he knew the men around him knew it.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Carry on.” But as the men began setting their masks back in place, he added, “And God help you if Sir John’s clock is damaged in any way.”

“Aye, Captain,” said all the masked shapes around him.

With a final, almost apprehensive glance back through the violet room toward the terrible black compartment – almost nothing in Francis Crozier’s fifty-one years of frequent melancholy had oppressed him as much as that ebony compartment had – he walked from the white room to the orange room, thence from the orange room to the green room, then from the green room to the purple room, from the purple room to the blue room, and from the widening blue room out onto the darker open ice.

Only when he was out of the dyed-sail maze did Crozier feel that he could breathe properly.

Costumed shapes gave the glowering captain a wide berth as he made his way toward Erebus and the dark, heavily cloaked figure standing at the top of the ice ramp there.

Captain Fitzjames was alone near the ship’s railing at the top of the ramp. He was smoking his pipe. “Good evening to you, Captain Crozier.”

“Good evening, Captain Fitzjames. Have you been inside that… that…” Words failed him, and Crozier gestured toward the loud and lighted city of coloured walls and elaborate rigging behind him. The torches and braziers burned bright there.

“Aye, I have,” said Fitzjames. “The men have shown incredible ingenuity, I would say.”

Crozier had nothing to say to that.

“The question now,” said Fitzjames, “is whether their many hours of labour and ingenuity have gone to serve the expedition… or the Devil.”

Crozier tried to see the younger officer’s eyes under the muffler-tied bill of his cap. He had no idea if Fitzjames was joking.

“I warned them,” growled Crozier, “that they could waste not one pint of oil or one extra lump of coal on this damned Carnivale. Just look at those fires!”

“The men assured me,” said Fitzjames, “that they are only using the oil and coal thay have saved by not heating Erebus these past weeks!”

“Whose idea was that… maze?” asked Crozier. “The coloured compartments? The ebony room?”

Fitzjames blew smoke, removed his pipe, and chuckled. “All the idea of young Richard Aylmore.”

“Aylmore?” repeated Crozier. He remembered the name but hardly the man. “Your gunroom steward?”

“The same.”

Crozier recalled a small man, quiet, with sunken, brooding eyes, a pedant’s tone to his voice, and a wispy black mustache. “Where in the hell did he come up with this?”

“Aylmore lived in the United States for several years before returning home in 1844 and enlisting in the Discovery Service,” said Fitzjames. The stem of the pipe clattered slightly against his teeth. “He maintains that he read an absurd story five years ago, in 1842, describing a masqued ball just such as this with such coloured compartments, read it while he was living in Boston with his cousin. In a trashy little piece called Graham’s Magazine , if I recall correctly. Aylmore can’t remember the plot of the story exactly, but he remembers that it was about a strange masqued ball given by a certain Prince Prospero… and he says that he is quite certain of the sequence of the rooms, ending in that terrible ebony compartment. The men loved his idea.”

Crozier could only shake his head.

“Francis,” continued Fitzjames, “this was a teetotaling ship for two years and one month under Sir John. Despite that, I managed to smuggle aboard three bottles of fine whiskey my father gave me. I have one bottle left. I would be honoured if you would share it with me this evening. It will be another three hours until the men begin cooking up the two bears they shot. I authorized my Mr. Wall and your Mr. Diggle yesterday to set up two of the whaleboats’ stoves on the ice for heating incidentals such as canned vegetables and to build a huge grill in what they are calling the White Room for the actual cooking of the bear meat. If nothing else, it will be our first fresh meat in more than three months. Would you care to be my guest over that bottle of whiskey down in Sir John’s former cabin until it’s time for the feast?”

Crozier nodded and followed Fitzjames into the ship.

Crozier and Fitzjames emerged from Erebus some time before midnight. The Great Cabin had been ferociously cold, but the deeper cold out here in the night was an assault on their bodies and senses. The wind had come up slightly in the last couple of hours and everywhere the torches and tripod braziers – Fitzjames had suggested, and after the first hour of whiskey Crozier had agreed, sending out extra sacks of coal and coal oil to fuel open-flame braziers to keep the revelers from freezing – were rippling and crackling in the hundred-below freezing night.

The two captains had talked very little, each lost in his own melancholic reverie. They’d been interrupted a dozen times. Lieutenant Irving came to report that he was taking the replacement watch back to Terror; Lieutenant Hodgson came to report that his watch had arrived at the Carnivale; other officers in absurd costumes came to report that all was well with Carnivale itself; various Erebus watches and officers came to report coming off duty and going on duty; Mr. Gregory the engineer came to report that they might as well use the coal for the braziers since there wasn’t enough to fuel the steam engine for more than a few hours of steaming come the mythical thaw and then went off to make arrangements for several sacks to be hauled out to the increasingly wild ceremony on the ice; Mr. Murray, the old sailmaker – dressed as some sort of mortician with a skull under his high beaver hat, a skull not so different from his own wizened visage – begged their pardon and asked if he and his helpers could break out two spare jibs to rig a wind shield upwind of the new tripod braziers.

The captains had given their acknowledgments and permissions, passed along their commands and admonitions, never really rising out of their whiskey-induced thoughts.

Sometime between eleven and midnight, they bundled themselves back into their outer slops, came up on deck, and then went out onto the ice again after both Thomas Jopson and Edmund Hoar, Crozier’s and Fitzjames’s respective stewards, came down to the Great Cabin with Lieutenants Le Vesconte and Little – all four men in bizarre costumes squeezed over and under their many layers – to announce that the bear meat was being cooked up, that prime portions were being set aside for the captains, and could the captains please come to the feast now?

Crozier realized that he was very drunk. He was used to holding his liquor without letting it show, and the men were used to him smelling like whiskey while he was in complete command of situations, but he hadn’t slept for several nights and this midnight, coming out into the chest-slamming cold and walking toward the lighted canvas and glowing iceberg and movement of strange forms, Crozier felt the whiskey burning in his belly and brain.