"Metaphysics is a dark ocean
without shores or lighthouse, strewn
with many a philosophic wreck."
—Immanuel Kant
CHAPTER TWO: Woe Betide the Annan Water.
JULY 5, 1912
"Are you going to just sit there?"
"As compared to what? Standing?"
"Not standing. Rowing."
"Hadn't planned on it."
"So you expect me to shoulder the burden?"
"No, but I do expect you do to all the rowing."
"And why's that?"
"Coming here was your idea."
"My idea?"
"I've made it very clear that I don't believe in the exercise."
"What, the rowing?"
"No; I imagine that's wonderful exercise."
"Well, then what?"
It took a monumental effort of will for Booker to resist the mounting urge to hurl himself overboard— if not for the quiet, at least for the fact that leaping into the ocean would quite probably make him somewhat drier. Instead, he settled for rifling through the contents of the box that the sister Lutece had handed him for what felt like the fifteenth time(1). There were various odds and ends: photographs and postcards from New York and the city of Columbia, a card printed with New York's coordinates, and a tarnished silver badge; there was a volcanic repeating pistol, with a small carton of .38-caliber cartridges; a blurry, underexposed photograph of the girl, Elizabeth, the back scrawled with Samuels's insistent reminder to 'bring to New York unharmed!', as if he'd forget why he was out in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of yet anotherargument between the siblings Lutece; a scrap of stock-card inscribed with three pictograms, the meanings of which continued to elude him; and a key in the semblance of a thaumatrope, with a bird on one side and a cage on the other. Booker twirled it idly between his thumb and forefinger for a moment, watching the bird blur into the cage and back out again; then he dropped it back into the box and made yet another attempt to get the siblings Lutece's attention.
This was easier said than done. Samuels had been right when he'd advised Booker not to get them talking: they hadn'tshut up since their little skiff had departed from the steamer Cornucopia, several hours previously.
"Perhaps you should ask him. I imagine he has a greater interest in getting there than I do."
"I imagine he does, but there's no point in asking."
"And why not?"
"Because he doesn't row."
"Excuse me," Booker interjected irritably, "how much longer?"
It would have been easier to rob a bank(4). "He doesn't row?"
"No, he doesn't row."
"Ah! I see what you mean. We've arrived."
The miserable little dinghy came bobbing erratically to a halt. Booker peered up through the beating rain to see an ancient, crumbling lighthouse, shrouded by a thick halo of fog, its light sweeping forlornly around over the empty black sea.
…The Hell is a lighthouse doing way out in the middle of the Atlantic?
No answer to Booker's internal dialogue was forthcoming, however. When it became apparent, after several moments of awkward silence, that he was not about to move, the brother Lutece prodded his knee and said, "Go on, then."
Booker looked down and found that their boat had come to rest beside a wharf as ancient and dilapidated-looking as the lighthouse to which it led. Between the rain, the fog, and the seething, choppy ocean, it was almost invisible, even when he was staring straight at it. Booker didn't really trust the structure, but he was damned if he was going to stay in the boat with the twins a moment longer.
He stretched a hand up to the nearest rung and grimaced when his fingertips met the slimy, rotten wood. The ladder seemed frail at an optimistic best, but it held his weight, and Booker climbed gingerly up onto the creaking jetty. It was, unsurprisingly, entirely deserted.
Turning around, however, revealed the eccentric(5) duo already piloting the rowboat away. They were still arguing, though Booker blessedly could not discern the subject over the combined din of the roaring sea and the steadily-lashing rain.
It took him a long moment to realize that there was even a problem; then he shouted, rather more desperately than he really would have liked, "Hey—! Is someone going to meet me here?"
"I should certainly hope so," the brother Lutece shouted back.
"It does seem like a dreadful place to be stranded," the sister added cheerily, and Booker groaned and slapped his forehead in utter frustration, making a mental note to add 'punching Samuels' to his list of tasks to complete if he ever made it back to New York.
But he couldn't just stand here moping about in the pouring rain. Maybe there would be someone inside the lighthouse. At the very least, he'd be out of the storm, so Booker set off down the jetty in the direction of the tower.
The boards were uneven and slanting, warped and slick from who knew how many years of exposure to the sea and sky; and every dozen seconds or so, a volley of waves would wash over them and around Booker's ankles, forcing him to tread carefully lest he be dragged away into the rushing dark.
He made his meticulous way towards the lighthouse, only to be blocked just before its base by a part of the wharf that had collapsed entirely. To continue on from there, he was going to have to scramble up a jagged tumble of boulders, slick with seaweed and sharp with barnacles. Booker heaved a weary sigh. Why was nothing ever easy?
Several minor cuts and a whole lot of swearing later, he made it to the relative safety of a low-walled walkway that curled halfway around the lighthouse to a large wooden door, upon which was pinned a note. The paper was splotchy and stained by the rain, and the dark red ink(6) had run, but the writing was still legibly addressed to him, and warned quite clearly that this was his last chance. It was not in a hand that he recognized, either as Samuels's haphazard scrawl or the Lutece twins' identical impeccable copperplate. Delaney, then? But he and his gang still believed Booker to be dead, didn't they? That had been the deal: bring the girl to Samuels and he wouldn't have a good portion of the New York underground trying to kill him.
…Again.
Thoroughly unnerved, Booker knocked heavily upon the lighthouse door; then, not sure whether or not to take the lack of response as a good sign, he slipped cautiously inside. The ground floor of the lighthouse was as deserted as the wharf, but tinny music was drifting down from somewhere up above him, jazzy and faint. After a brief inspection of his surroundings, which revealed nothing except the mildly irritating fact that his host appeared to be deeply religious, Booker headed up the stairs.
And stopped dead in his tracks.
"Oh, shit."
Someone had been here to meet him, but that someone appeared to have been stabbed multiple times, and then shot for good measure. Another note, pinned to the bloodstained burlap sack that had been pulled over the unfortunate soul's head, warned Booker yet again of what he was supposed to do (bring Samuels the girl), and how many chances he had left to do it (none).
He ought to have been worried, or angry, or pitying, but in actuality all he felt was severe aggravation. How much of a simpleton did Samuels think he was? He raised his eyes to the ceiling and said aloud, "Alright, already! I get the point!"
There was no answer; the corpse appeared to have been the tower's only resident.
Idly hoping, for said cadaver's sake, that death was as rapturous as its former occupant had seemed to believe, Booker poked around the chamber a bit more thoroughly before heading up another set of stairs in the hopes of finding some indication of what he was supposed to do next. It seemed unlikely that the entire city of Columbia was hidden away in the lighthouse, and Lutece had been maddeningly uninformative as to the purpose of their diversion here.
His search, fortunately, was not entirely fruitless: there was a map stuck with pins mounted upon the far wall, and what looked like a train schedule tacked next to it. Each row of the schedule appeared to correspond to a pin on the map; one such pin off the coast of Maine marked the lighthouse's position, at least according to Booker's best estimation. He doubted there would be a train coming here any time soon, but at least he might be able to get a boat back to the States if he couldn't figure out what he was supposed to be doing here.
There was a phone on the cluttered desk below the map, as if placed there for the express purpose of answering this question(8), but it was dead. He hadn't really expected anything different, so he dropped the receiver back onto its cradle and continued upwards, emerging onto the widow's walk that encircled the very top of the lighthouse. The rain had lessened to a fine, steady drizzle that, up here where the wind blew stiff and sharp, stung at Booker's skin like needles. Far, far in the distance, the lights of the shore shone faintly against the horizon. Every few seconds, the beacon came arching past on its tireless round, warning passing ships away from… what, exactly? There were no shipping lanes this far from shore; even the Cornucopia, the ship that had come the closest to the lighthouse on its route to Newfoundland, had only passed within more than an hour's rowing of the place. And any ship that was coming here specifically would know what to look for, so what was the point?
Nevertheless, the tower's lantern shone so bright that even shielding his eyes did little to keep Booker from being blinded. He fumbled his way around the widow's walk, feeling faintly foolish as he did so. There wasn't going to be anything up here. There wasn't going to be anything anywhere in this goddamn lighthouse, it wasn't even supposed to be out here, and what was he even doing up in this—
Booker stopped abruptly. There was a large, heavy door leading into the lantern room: a door far larger and more ornate than the sort that had any business in the wall of a wayward lighthouse. What appeared to be an elaborate lock, strung with three bells, was affixed across the front of the door, barring the way; above each of the bells was an engraved pictogram, and after a moment in which he just stared stupidly at the strange door with its strange lock, Booker realized he recognized them.
Hastily, he rummaged through his satchel until he found the Luteces' cedarwood box, and managed to fish out the scrap of stock-card. The symbols did indeed match, he saw, which meant the bells must serve as some sort of combination lock. Why they couldn't just use a good sturdy padlock like everyone else, Booker didn't know; but it wasn't his business, and anyways the sooner he got back out of the rain, the better. He dropped the card back into his bag and prodded at the bells experimentally. They produced a series of pretty, mournful chimes. Booker was now almost certain that the people who'd built this place had endeavored to make it seem as melancholy and poetical as possible. Great. The sooner he was done with this job, the happier he'd be.
The last bell gave its chime, a high note that held for a long moment without fading.
Quite a long moment, actually, longer than it ought to be, and growing louder. That was odd. Booker narrowed his eyes and peered more closely at the mechanism, which was now vibrating frenetically.
What in the world—?
Very suddenly there came a noise, much like a foghorn, except that it was about ten times as loud and seemed to issue from directly behind him. Booker jumped and looked around in alarm, but there was no indication as to its source. A moment later, the sound came again, much more faintly, as if muted by great distance. Then again, more closely, and then the sound of the rain was all but blocked out entirely by a great cacophony of low fluting horns.
Booker gave up. He was either dreaming, dead, or the victim of a ridiculously elaborate prank, but either way, he thought, he just wasn't going to question it anymore.
The lock split and folded upwards out of the way, and the door clunked and whirred and swung open to reveal…
A chair. A shiny leather-and-steel barber's chair, set into a dais about a foot above the lantern-room door, as innocent-looking as if its presence here wasn't absurd to the extreme.
"Oh, for the love of—" Muttering obscenities in Samuels's direction, Booker circled the chair, vaguely expecting it to explode as soon as he touched it. Wouldn't be the strangest thing he'd seen this evening by far, but… traps, especially overcomplicated ones, weren't Samuels's style. Bullets and bowie knives and the bottom of the Hudson, straightforward and efficient, were, so this left dreaming, death, or reality as available options. Booker's dreams were never this detailed, and if this was Hell(9), the Church was going to have a whole lot of explaining to do; so, now feeling the inexplicable and slightly maddening urge to laugh, he decided rather helplessly on reality.
This having been settled, there wasn't really anything left but to go sit in the fancy chair. He wasn't eager to stay here making conversation with the corpse on the passing chance that a ship would stop by, and he wasn't about to try swimming to shore any time soon, either. This much fanfare over something as incongruous and yet as mundane as a red barbershop chair had to mean something, so, incautiously pushing his doubts to the back of his mind, Booker climbed up and settled himself into the chair.
And then had the gall to act alarmed when restraints immediately affixed themselves around his wrists and ankles. He jerked against them in surprise, and when they failed to release, fought all the more desperately to break free.
It was to no avail, of course. The process, whatever the hell that actually was, had already begun. Heavy plates were folding upwards out of the floor and damn it, why hadn't he noticed their outlines when he'd walked in? A gentle female voice was telling him to stay calm and prepare for ascension, which predictably had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. Booker struggled valiantly to break free, but against heavy iron shackles even he was outmatched.
Oblivious to its occupant's efforts, the chair raised up off its dais with a loud pneumatic whirr. The cone of metal panels closed around it, trapping Booker in a claustrophobic pod broken only by a small, circular porthole. He caught a flash of fire below him, and then the floor of the capsule sealed itself off beneath his feet. Before he could register anything other than immense foreboding with a generous helping of Oh, you've gotta be kidding me, the entire thing began to vibrate, and a cacophonous roar started up beneath his feet. There was a massive jolt— Booker was reminded, in the vague far-off way that one is when they feel sure that they are about to die, of his introduction to electrical sabotage— and then, suddenly, he was flying.
All right, now I'm dead, he thought, still in that detached, faintly amused way; then he realized that no, he was still in the little pod, and he was, in fact, flying. He gave one more heave against the shackles that pinned his wrists and ankles, just in case, but they still held him fast. There was nothing he could do but stare out the porthole in utter bewilderment and try to remain calm, as lighthouse, jetty, ocean, and world fell away below him. Rain smeared the glass, momentarily opaquing everything beyond, and then the absurd flying machine broke through the clouds with a cheerful "Hallelujah!", and he stopped trying to make sense of the night's events entirely.
There was a city in the sky.
Booker's little flying machine drifted gently above thick, puffy storm clouds, their crests burnished purple-gold in the pale predawn light. And in, and above, and amongst these clouds, there were buildings.
They rested atop clusters of massive, colorful balloons, crawling upwards against each other in a rising tangle of brick and cobblestone; they flanked narrow, dim alleyways and wide, verdant boulevards shaded by broad-leafed elms; they formed floating islands the size of a city block, and blocks the size of cities. Huge propellers churned the clouds into long, fanciful curls, which wound themselves gracefully around towers that glittered in the rising sun. Dirigibles paneled in auburn wood and filigreed brass drifted to and fro, their silhouettes like so many fish flitting about in this exquisite archipelago.
And in the middle of it all, taking up a good third of Booker's field of vision, there was an angel.
It was easily twice the size of New York's bronze Lady Liberty, and older by far. Whereas Liberty, though dimmed by her thirty-year vigil over New York Harbor, still shone a muted golden when the sun was right, this angel's wings had been tarnished a dark, mottled blue-green from weather and wear. She looked out over her soaring kingdom with an expression of serene, profound, and utter sorrow, and her outspread hands seemed as much a supplication as a blessing.
Booker realized his mouth was open. He shut it, embarrassed at having been caught gawking(10). When Samuels had said 'Columbia', this was not what he had imagined at all. He'd known about the city, sure, in the way one knows about the existence of slime molds but never really devotes much thought to the matter of their existence. He'd regarded the entire affair with the same vague disgust one might have for slime molds(11) as well; the war had been over for two decades when news went out of the city's secession, and shunning an entire country when it had failed to uphold their aggressively-misguided beliefs just seemed childish.
Well, whatever Booker had been expecting, it wasn't this entire, impossible city spread out below him in all its airborne glory. He'd seen zeppelins before, of course— it was hard not to, in a city that had just finished constructing the world's largest aerodrome— but a whole little world supported by nothing but hydrogen balloons strained credulity at the very least. Yet here it was, the errant city-state, shame of the South, drifting across the summer dawn in all its shining gold-edged glory.
By that point, Booker's pod had descended to the level of the lower tiers of buildings, and then abruptly there was a mechanical-sounding clunk and the vessel came to a halt, landing on a railed walkway that overlooked what appeared to be some sort of federal or governmental complex, all white marble walls, domed roofs, and ivy-wrapped pillars. Booker sighed in relief: he'd never been overly fond of small spaces, and he had a great deal of work to do.
But before he could begin figuring out a way to extricate himself from the chair, there was another loud mechanical grinding noise, and the little pod began to descend. Sunlight filtered down through slits in the wall of the shaft, broken occasionally by a narrow catwalk or the silhouette of huge, churning gears. There was writing engraved into the walls of the shaft, carved so that it caught the slanting beams of light and threw them unavoidably back into the eyes of whichever unfortunate person happened to be trapped in the capsule at the time. Booker did his sullen best to ignore the words, which spelled out some bullshit about someone called 'the Prophet' and the glory of this 'new Eden'.
And then at last the pod came to rest, setting down on a dais much like the one from which it had originally ascended. Beyond the porthole, Booker could see tiered candelabras, and a flash of brilliant stained glass. Several moments later, the restraints at his arms and ankles mercifully released, the capsule door whirred outward and folded down, and Booker was free.
The first thing he thought upon his release was, Oh, great. More water. He'd only just started to feel dry again, and there was a rather large puddle on the capsule's floor beneath his feet. But he wasn't about to stay sitting in this chair until someone came to collect him or, worse, until it decided to take off again, so he got stiffly to his feet and assessed his surroundings more thoroughly.
Water poured steadily from two great spouts at opposite ends of the chamber in which he stood, filling the lowered floor below the dais to about knee-height before rushing off, down a set of curving stairs. Directly across from him was another raised platform beneath the huge stained-glass window he'd glimpsed on his descent.
'Window' felt an insufficient word to describe the piece; it took up the entire wall from floor to ceiling and depicted an elderly bearded man, gesturing to a group of fawning supplicants towards a gold-haloed city in the sky. Despite Booker's general distaste in regards to the subject matter, he had to admit it was an impressive work of art. He sloshed across the room towards it, grumbling half-hearted curses as icy water once again soaked through the legs of his pants and into his boots. It was quite cold in the stone chamber, despite the multitude of candles that grew from every available surface like mushrooms, and he found himself hugging his arms to his chest. He wasn't about to shiver in front of this mural— he didn't want to give it the satisfaction.
Booker, you're going insane, the little voice he'd begun attributing to his subconscious(14) nagged, but he ignored it. He studied the colorful glass intently for a moment more, and then looked down, intending to move on. A glint of light, as of the reflection from something metallic, caught his eye. He bent and fumbled around under the rack of candles, coming up with a few large silver coins: a wayward offering, perhaps, or loose change dropped by an inattentive worshiper. Either way, Booker thought wryly, as he turned the coins over in his palm, he'd more need of them than the mural did. He tucked the money into his pocket and moved on in the direction of the stairs.
They led down and around a slight corner to another circular chamber much the same as the first. This room's space, though, was filled almost completely by a statue of the man from the stained-glass mural. That had to be their so-called Prophet, then. Comstock, hadn't his name been?
Above the statue was a carved marble banner that read, in crisp capital letters, The seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of Man.
"Seed of the prophet, huh?" Booker regarded the carving with a small, cynical smile. Well, whatever these people wanted to think was holy, he supposed. Shaking his head, he continued down the last few steps, only to find that the water here was a good deal deeper, brushing at the hem of his overshirt and chilling him to the bone. Eager to be out in the sun, he hurriedly rounded the base of the statue and nearly collided with a man in a long white cassock, who stood at the top of another flight of downward-spiraling stairs.
"'Scuse me," Booker said, trying not to sound quite as harried as he felt, "but where am I?"
The man in white gave him a broad and earnest grin. "Heaven, friend," he said. "Or as close as we'll see 'til Judgment Day."
Booker found himself pressing his mouth into a thin line. Well, so much for learning anything useful. Irritated, he took his leave of the man and entered the adjacent chamber.
And stopped dead in his tracks. There was another stained-glass wall here, this one casting every shadow and angle in lavender and indigo and silver, a brilliant contrast to its precursor's orange, scarlet, and gold. The figure it depicted was a solitary woman, and even in such an unforgiving medium as glass, Booker could tell that every detail had been rendered with exquisite care. He stared up at her upswept dark hair, her midnight-blue walking gown, the haughty set of her narrow, icy eyes. Her accompanying marble banner proclaimed, And in my womb shall grow the seed of the Prophet.
Booker had no perception of how long he stood there in the cold, rippling water of the temple, staring at the woman's face. He wanted to shout at her, to kick something, or laugh, or fall to his knees, or make a witty remark. In the end, though, the first coherent thought that came to him was a disgusted, He knew— Samuels knew! That goddamn bastard knew she was here, that's what this is about—!
Finally an odd, tight sort of resignation settled in, and he managed to gather his wits about him enough to make a further inspection of the room in which he stood. The lavender light that filtered through the window fell over rows of wooden pews, the water between scattered with pink lilies. There was an altar spanning the raised floor below the window, and Booker sloshed towards it with that same detached feeling that had been settling in ever since the strange firework-driven flying machine had lifted off from the lighthouse— God, had it only been an hour or two ago? It already felt like he'd spent days in the labyrinthine temple. Before the table, more flowers were strewn: lilacs and roses and lilies, lilies, lilies.
The flower of mourning… Booker thought, idly picking one up from the damp cobblestones and inspecting it. It was fresh, perhaps only just cut this morning, and gave off a cloying, dusky scent. Scowling suddenly, he cast the flower aside, dragging his fingers over the heavy velveteen drape that had been laid across the altar. At the end of the table, surrounded by flowers, candles, and coins, was a device. Booker picked it up and studied it, curiosity momentarily overcoming the stew of bitterness and confusion. He'd never seen the object's like before: a heavy wedge of dark wood, half-concealing a small black disc not unlike a phonograph. A series of dials and buttons formed a half-circle around the base of the disc, each of them labeled in fine ink print. At one edge of the wooden wedge was a small brass trumpet, again much like that of a gramophone; at the other was a faded, water-damaged tintype of the woman, set under a circle of glass. The device was odd enough to warrant further study, but Booker wasn't planning on sticking around, and so, glancing about to make sure he wasn't being observed, he stuffed it surreptitiously into his bag.
Behind the array of offerings, there was a painting of the woman, set into a heavy gold frame, and Booker paused again to trace her face with his fingertips. It was clear that this portrait had been the reference, if not the actual inspiration, for the window: she bore the same blue walking gown and the same cool, haughty expression. Pearls dotted her ears and throat, their fastens picked out in bright gold paint. Booker sighed and made to move on, but something else caught his eye. He leaned down to inspect the frame more closely, and found that there was a plaque set into its bottom edge, which he had not noticed, transfixed as he'd been by the lady's face.
In Beloved Memory of Our Lady A. Comstock
(May the Prophet bless her and keep her.)
1869 – 1896
So she was dead after all. Perhaps it was for the better, Booker thought; at least then there wouldn't be the danger of having to face her while he was here in Columbia.
Either way, though, he wasn't keen on spending any more time in Lady Comstock's memorial, so he moved on. There was a third alcove off of the central vestibule on the other side of the statue, but all Booker wanted by then was to escape. He caught a glance of that chamber's glass mosaic as he passed by, though. A multitude of bright, pale colors depicted the Prophet Comstock and his Lady smiling over an infant child, as blue-eyed and dark-haired as its mother. The piece was entitled The Lamb: the future of our city.
Booker resisted the urge to make a face at the mural as he passed. The priest, or worshiper, or whatever the agonizingly-optimistic man in white was, gave him a curious look. He was no doubt wondering what business Booker had looking so dour in such a holy place, but the latter ignored him. He headed down the stairs, hands stuffed into his pockets, kicking sullenly at the burbling water as he spiraled downwards. At last he reached the bottom and surged into the chest-high pool that filled what appeared to be the final chamber. This room was easily twice as large as all of its predecessors combined. Its vaulted ceilings disappeared into gloom, supported by thick, fluted columns of marble. Between each two of the central walk of columns were poised a pair of stone angels, wings unfurled, outstretched hands holding tall white candles. Their wings were limned in blue by the brilliant light of the sky, which shone through a massive, but mercifully veneration-free, window at the far end.
Between Booker and freedom, however, lay a long expanse of water, dotted with bobbing candles, and, at the end of this, an entire congregation of figures in white cassocks. Beyond them, gesticulating wildly and speaking with passion and volume in equal force, was poised a single figure in black. He cried with great fervor upon the glories of the Prophet, and his victories, and his trials.
Booker grimaced. Wasn't that just lovely. There didn't appear to be any other way out of the huge hall; he was going to have to interact with at least a few of them if he was going to get out of here. Hopefully he wouldn't have to speak very much.
Shivering, Booker waded down the length of the vault, sending candles spinning and bobbing in his wake. Water lapped over several of them, snuffing them out, and he felt a small surge of vindictive(15) satisfaction. One last candle floated between him and the cluster of white-robed votaries, and he flicked it over resentfully, watching the flame sputter out with a grim little smile. Then he splashed forwards again, up a shallow flight of slick stone steps, and shouldered his way through the solemn crowd.
The priest gazed up at him from one final, shallow pool of water. "Is it someone new?" he said, with the same eagerness and fortitude with which he'd delivered his sermon. "Another traveler from the Sodom below, come to join us in our new Eden?"
Booker sighed. "I just need passage into the city," he said wearily.
"Ah, but the only way into the city is through the cleansing waters of baptism," said the priest, extending a calloused hand to him with somber grandeur. "What say you, brother? Are you ready to wash away your sins?"
Booker wasn't all that fond of the idea of punching out an unarmed priest who obviously didn't mean any harm, no matter how unpleasant the prospect of being further saturated with the frigid, and probably highly unsanitary, waters of the temple. He sighed again, adjusted the strap of his rucksack against his shoulder, gritted his teeth, and took the priest's proffered hand.
The priest immediately hauled him down into the lower pool, yanking him off-balance with a loud splash.
"I bless you, brother," he cried, "in the name of our Prophet, in the name of our Fathers, and in the name of our Lord!"
And with that, he grabbed Booker by the hair and shoved him bodily into the water. Unprepared for this sudden dunking as he was, Booker inhaled quite a lot of it, choked, and struggled valiantly to get his face back into the air again. The priest, perhaps taking the meaning of Booker's thrashing about, grasped him by the collar of his shirt and heaved him upright again. Booker sputtered and coughed violently, eyes stinging, water streaming from his nose and mouth. Before he could catch his breath, though, the overzealous priest exclaimed, "I don't know, brothers, but this one doesn't look clean to me!" and shoved him under again.
Then, suddenly, Booker was let go, only to be taken by a fierce and turbulent current and dragged away. Distantly he noticed himself bobbing to the surface once or twice, and caught flashes of blue sky— brilliant, verdant leaves— marble wrapped in rose vines—
Then the water took hold of him once more.
Moments later, darkness followed.
.
1. It was, as a matter of fact, the seventeenth(2).
2. Eighteenth. You're not counting the time that he dropped it and had to put everything back(3).
3. Ah, you're right; my mistake. Eighteenth it is, then.
4. He speaks from experience, I see. An outright paragon of moral fortitude, this one.
5. The adjective our good Mr. DeWitt's thoughts might best have been condensed into was a good deal stronger, and has therefore been modified for the sake of our more delicate readers. The man does have such a colorful vocabulary.
6. At least, he sincerely hoped it was ink(7).
7. It was, of course. Why, what sort of dreadful cliché were you expecting? Honestly.
8. It wasn't. You didn't really think we were going to make this that easy, did you?
9. Booker wasn't really the religious sort. This being said, he had no illusions that he'd be going to Heaven, if in fact there was an afterlife; and if there wasn't, he wouldn't be around to know anything about it. A true master of deduction, our Mr. DeWitt.
10. The fact that nobody had actually caught him notwithstanding.
11. This is entirely unfair; slime molds are eminently fascinating life-forms and—(11)
12. Robert(13).
13. Right. Sorry.
14. Incorrectly, of course. You'd think the man would have noticed it wasn't his own voice, but no. I told you this was a bad idea.
15. Childish is what it was, but Mr. DeWitt objected to that particular adjective rather forcefully for some reason.
