Dan Simmons - The Terror

The southern horizon was glowing a subdued, washed-out yellow, and most of the stars in that half of the sky had paled.

“I almost can’t believe it’s returning,” said Peglar.

Bridgens nodded.

Suddenly there it was, the disk of red-gold rising hesitantly above dark masses that looked like hills but must be low clouds far to the south. Peglar heard the forty or so men on the deck of Erebus give three cheers, and – because the air was very cold and very still – he could hear a duplicate but fainter cheer coming from Terror , just visible almost a mile to the east across the ice.

“Dawn stretches forth her rosy fingertips,” Bridgens said in Greek.

Peglar smiled, mildly amused that he remembered the phrase. It had been several years since he’d read the Iliad or anything else in Greek. He remembered the excitement of his first encounter with this language and with Troy and its heroes as Beagle had been anchored off São Tiago, a volcanic island in the Cape Verde Islands, almost seventeen years earlier.

As if reading his mind, Bridgens said, “Do you remember Mr. Darwin?”

“The young naturalist?” said Peglar. “Captain FitzRoy’s favorite interlocutor? Of course I do. Five years on a small bark with a man leaves an impression, even if he was a gentleman and I wasn’t.”

“And what was your impression, Harry?” Bridgens’ pale blue eyes were watering more heavily, either out of emotion at seeing the sun again or just in reaction to the unaccustomed light, as pale as it was. The red disk had not completely cleared the dark clouds before it started descending again.

“Of Mr. Darwin?” Peglar was also squinting – more to bring back memory of the thin young naturalist than because of the sun’s wonderful illumination. “I found him pleasant, as such gentlemen go. Very enthusiastic. He certainly kept the men busy transporting and crating up all those damned dead animals – at one point I thought the finches alone were going to fill the hold – but he wasn’t above getting his own hands dirty. Remember the time he joined in the rowing to help tow old Beagle upstream in the river? And he saved a boat from the tidal wave that other time. And once, when whales were alongside us – off the coast of Chile, I believe – I was amazed to find that he’d climbed all the way up to the crosstrees on his own to get a better view. I had to help him down, but not before he looked through the glass at the whales for over an hour, the tails of his coat flapping in the breeze.”

Bridgens smiled. “I was almost jealous when he lent you that book. What was it? Lyell?”

“ Principles of Geology ,” said Peglar. “I didn’t really understand it. Or rather, I did just enough to realize how dangerous it was.”

“Because of Lyell’s contention about the age of things,” said Bridgens. “About the very un-Christian idea that things change slowly over immense aeons of time rather than very quickly due to very violent events.”

“Yes,” said Peglar. “But Mr. Darwin was very keen on it. He sounded like a man who had experienced a religious conversion.”

“I believe he had, in a manner of speaking,” said Bridgens. Only the top third of the sun was visible now. “I mention Mr. Darwin because mutual friends told me before we sailed that he is writing a book.”

“He published several already,” said Peglar. “Do you remember, John, we discussed his Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S . Beagle in the year I came to study with you… 1839. I couldn’t afford to buy it, but you said you’d read it. And I believe he published several volumes on the plant and animal life he saw.”

“ The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S . Beagle,” said Bridgens. “Yes, I purchased that as well. No, I meant he has been working on a much more important book according to my dear friend Mr. Babbage.”

“Charles Babbage?” said Peglar. “The fellow who tinkers up so many odd things including some sort of computing engine?”

“The same,” said Bridgens. “Charles tells me that all these years, Mr. Darwin has been working on a quite interesting volume discussing the mechanisms of organic evolution. Apparently it draws in information from comparative anatomy, embryology, and paleontology… all great interests of our former shipboard naturalist’s, you may remember. But for whatever reasons, Mr. Darwin is loath to publish and the book may not see print, according to Charles, in anyone’s lifetime.”

“Organic evolution?” repeated Peglar.

“Yes, Harry. That’s the idea that species, despite all civilized Christian agreement to the contrary, are not fixed since creation, but may change and adapt over time… much time. Mr. Lyell’s amounts of time.”

“I know what organic evolution is,” said Peglar, trying not to show his irritation at being talked down to. The problem with a student-teacher relationship was, he realized not for the first time, that it never changes while everything around it does. “I’ve read Lamarck on the concept. Also Diderot. And Buffon, I believe.”

“Yes, it’s an old theory,” said Bridgens, his tone sounding amused but also slightly apologetic. “Montesquieu has written about it, as has Maupertuis and the others you mentioned. Even Erasmus Darwin, our former shipmate’s grandfather, had proposed it.”

“Then why would Mr. Charles Darwin’s book be important?” asked Peglar. “Organic evolution is an old idea. It’s been rejected by the Church and other naturalists for generations.”

“If Charles Babbage and other friends Mr. Darwin and I have in common are to be believed,” said Bridgens, “this new book – should it ever be published – offers proof of an actual mechanism for organic evolution. And it should give a thousand – perhaps ten thousand – solid examples of this mechanism in action.”

“And the mechanism is what?” asked Peglar. The sun had disappeared. Rose shadows faded into the pale yellow gloom that had preceded its rising. Now that the sun was gone, Peglar hardly believed he had seen it.

“Natural selection arising from competition within the countless species,” said the elderly subordinate officers’ steward. “A selection passing along advantageous traits and weeding out disadvantageous traits – that is, ones which add to the probability of neither survival nor reproduction – over vast amounts of time. Lyellian amounts of time.”

Peglar thought about this for a minute. “Why did you bring this up, John?”

“Because of our predatory friend out here on the ice, Harry. Because of the blackened skull you left back where the ebony room had once echoed to the ticking of Sir John’s ebony clock.”

“I don’t quite understand,” said Peglar. He used to say that very frequently when he was John Bridgens’s student during the five years of Beagle ’s seemingly endless wanderings. The voyage had been planned as a two-year venture, and Peglar had promised Rose he would be back in two years or less. She had died of consumption during Beagle ’s fourth year at sea. “Do you think the thing on the ice is some form of species evolutionary adaptation from the more common white bear we’ve encountered so frequently up here?”

“Quite the contrary,” said Bridgens. “I find myself wondering if we might have encountered one of the last members of some ancient species – something larger, smarter, faster, and infinitely more violent than its descendant, the smaller north polar bear we see in such abundance.”

Peglar thought about this. “Something from an antediluvian age,” he said at last.

Bridgens chuckled. “In a metaphorical sense, at least, Harry. You may remember that I was no advocate of any literal belief in the Flood.”