VII

Captain Jack Sparrow was in awe of the magnificent engineering at work below his feet. This technology was overwhelming. He ran from one end of the boat to the other, remarking over and over again at all of its impressive, novel features. "A boat!" he said, laughing. "They call this a boat!"

He had not, of course, forgotten the weighty responsibility delegated to him by the mysterious time traveler. Nevertheless, he trusted his perennial good luck to see him through the necessary details of his latest assignment. There was after all such thing as fate—a notion that still commanded a great deal of respect in his home century—and he had an inkling that all the appropriate ideas would come to him at all the appropriate moments.

In the meantime, he was convinced that he could find ample diversions in this new, refreshing epoch. This clever little boat was perhaps the first of these diversions. Francis Euler's daughter, he reckoned, would unquestionably prove to be another.

She was dressed at the height of that exotic future fashion. He studied her from a distance as she spoke with her father in hushed, earnest tones. Her tiny mouth squeezed even tighter as she formed hurried and indistinguishable words, and her brows drew close together to emphasize her displeasure. Euler, for his part, remained impassive. His posture was entirely unaffected, nor did he seem interested in her entreaties. Jack approached them.

"Does the lady find something to her disliking?" he asked, his eyes trained on her glowing, feisty eyes.

"Mr. Sparrow," said Euler. "Vhee are perfectly content vif zee accommodations. You vill find—I'm sure—zat our German vigor and resolve is certainly equal to any hardship vhee may encounter on zee sea. Even zose members of zee fairer sex—if zhey are members of our proud and sturdy race—prove zemselves to be uncommonly resilient in zee face of kvite staggering circumstances! Hypatia, Mr. Sparrow—she vill prove no exception!"

Hypatia Euler smirked at him. In a moment, she stood up and wandered away. Jack, however, found himself engaged in a completely unsolicited conversation with her father. The old man began once again to tap his cane against the ground, satisfied by the emphasis its heavy thuds afforded his encomium of Germany.

"Vhee Germans, Herr Sparrow, have a remarkable task zhat vhee must promptly undertake. You see, vhee vur not long ago a nation reduced to zhee most unflattering disorder. It is only recently zhat vhee have unified ourselves, and to us has fallen zhee task of inciting in zhis century—or in zhee century zhat follows it—a new Renaissance! Zhis vorld zhat vhee endeavor to summon up from fate is a vorld zhat reflects zhose kvalities zhat are intrinsically German—zhis beauty (my Hypatia) and strength, a certain physical and mental vigor, and above all zhee power to engage intellectually vif a reality zhat to previous generations has invariably remained inaccessible. Vhen vhee have successfully incurred zhis German Renaissance, Herr Sparrow, zhere is nothing zhat shall remain inaccessible to humanity. Do you understand vhat is meant by humanism?"

"Sir, I don't even understand what is meant by Germany." For Jack, after all, there was Spain and there was England—power was a navy! It was a colony or two abroad—and Germany was merely a backwards relic of the Holy Roman Empire. He studied Francis Euler with a combination of amusement and disgust.

"My Hypatia—I expect such great dings from her! So much depends on zhis, Mr. Sparrow: on zhis very young girl, and on zhis very mission zhat you are leading! You see, zhis expedition—vhich to you surely seems by all accounts unremarkable—is in reality zhee most portentous event of zhee millennium. Vhee, Mr. Sparrow—zhat is, my Hypatia and I—are reinventing zhee wheel! Vhee vill revolutionize zhee manner in vhich man travels. Zhee manner in vhich he relates to other men!"

Jack nodded thoughtfully. This was news. He hadn't anticipated that procuring valuable details would require so little effort or investigation. Francis Euler was volunteering enough information to pacify the Time Traveler for weeks. The more he discovered, the more favorable his outcome would prove to be.

"How interesting! Mr. Euler—if you don't find my asking too presumptuous—might you be referring to time travel? You see, I'm only asking because I've recently encountered something quite fantastic, and I wonder if it has anything to do with these portentous events to which you've just now alluded…"

Euler's eyes swelled and his thin, wrinkled mouth gaped in evident consternation. The corners of his eyes crinkled as his face broke into an ecstatic grin. He clapped Jack Sparrow over the shoulder and leaned close to his ear.

"My boy! Have you ever heard of a Tachyon?"

"Father!"

There, beside them, was Hypatia. Her bright eyes bore into Jack and it was not difficult for him to identify her expression of disbelief and suspicion. She seized her father by the forearm and glared at him meaningfully.

"Oh my, yes, Hypatia, you are right."

"And you," she whispered, "are just a crazy, eccentric old man. Mr. Sparrow, please forgive my father. He is a storyteller—a writer—and this is his craft. This very trip is, for him, a means of conducting literary research; and I'm afraid that without your consent, he seems to have recruited you as a probationary audience member. Mr. Sparrow, I implore you not to allow him to take advantage of you this way. His stories at first may seem intriguing, but put simply, they never end! It's a siren's call! You'll find yourself overwhelmed with his artifice—he's a talented man—but don't allow yourself to conceive of his fictions in terms of reality. These things he says—this common trope of his of time travel and imaginary particles—it's all entirely impossible! Fiction, Mr. Sparrow. Be very, very careful of this dear, frightfully odd old man."

Jack Sparrow nodded, nonplussed. He stared deeply into Hypatia's eyes, but her face betrayed no indication of her perceptions or impressions. There was a steely, formidable barrier woven across the otherwise beautiful attributes of her mien, but Jack was unsatisfied with the cursory appraisal she allowed him. No sooner had he begun to study her than she excused herself and once again vanished below deck. He considered following her. There was quite obviously something that Hypatia and Euler knew that he was not yet privileged enough to discover. But he had no doubt that he would eventually succeed in ingratiating himself with enough finesse to prevail upon even Hypatia, and she would promptly take him into her most guarded confidences.

Euler had resumed tapping his cane against the deck with a distant, thoughtful expression on his creased and jaundiced face. Jack quickly excused himself and wandered to the stairwell leading below deck.

He moved quietly along the narrow corridor. As he passed his contractor's room, he paused to identify the voices of those speaking inside. Unsurprisingly, Watson turned out to be the primary orator. But some desperate, eager tone in his voice captured Jack's attention. He leaned close to the door and distinguished the clipped English syllables from the permanent growling of the steam engine and the familiar noises of the sea.

"Francis Euler, Holmes!" he exclaimed.

Then Holmes was his only auditor?

"Francis Euler—one of the most distinguished German expatriates in England today!"

"I'm sure that I don't know who he is, Watson, or I would have solved this riddle by now. You mean it isn't his daughter you're after? His money?"

"The Eulers, I'm sure, are in no way poverty-stricken; but these aren't people who attract attention merely for their financial resources. I'm referring to the family's international reputation for intellectual prestige. Can't you think of any Euler, Holmes? Any prominent Euler?"

Jack heard the sound of shuffling feet. More pacing, he thought, smiling to himself as he imagined Sherlock Holmes rising to wander from one end of the narrow quarters to the other, pinching the bridge of his nose, and perhaps even mumbling under his breath.

"Don't tell me!" he said. "Euler…a prominent Euler…and you're sure that he's German?"

"Yes," said Watson. "By way of Switzerland."

That, apparently, provided the final and most critical clue of all. Jack listened intently.

"You don't say! By way of Switzerland—it can't be—Watson, do you know what this means?"

"That he probably also speaks French?"

"Watson, Do you mean to tell me than Mr. Francis Euler—that Hypatia Euler—is the direct descendent of Leonhard Euler ….Leonhard Euler…the most iconoclastic and influential mathematician of the turn of the last century?"

There was a pregnant silence. Jack leaned closer against the door.

"Do you realize, Watson, what this implies? Euler was a great number theorist, a graph theorist, a pioneer of infinitesimal calculus—in every way the most distinguished genius of his field and his era…His earlier work dealt at length with the rule of three squares and its relation to the Pythagorean theorem, Fermat's last theorem, the sums of two squares, the divergence of the sums of the reciprocals of two primes…This means….surely this means…"

"Holmes, don't be absurd!"

"It's not absurd, Watson. It's elementary. It's beautiful and elegant, and in every way just what I might have expected from him. It must be so. I'm amazed that I didn't realize it earlier, but to look at him, how could anyone see? How could anyone have imagined Pythagoras as such a feeble and—oh! Oh, but could it even really be?—Hypatia. Do you realize, Watson, that we could at this very moment find ourselves on a steamboat in the company of the most calculated serial killer in all of human history? Quite literally…these calculations—and my estimation of these calculations—prove so incomparably complex; surely only the inheritor of a truly remarkable mathematical comprehension could emulate such precision and manipulate numbers and forms in such a way as to transmit these…these messages…"

"Holmes, I beg you to quit immediately. How can you even begin to suggest that Hypatia Euler—that darling and most feminine creature—could in any way be involved in those grisly murders? You honestly repulse me. If you carry on this way, I'm afraid that our partnership will not sustain the strain. I'll dissolve our friendship sooner than I'll allow you to make any such unfounded accusations."

"Accusations? Of course I would do nothing of the sort. Why would I resort to something so vulgar? Why? When the plan is just unfolding…No, Watson. You'll never hear another word of it from me."

"Then you admit that you were only imagining things?"

"Grasping at straws, so to speak! Forget I said anything."

There was another long and painful silence. Jack backed away from the door and hesitantly continued to tiptoe through the corridor. What could this mean? The old man's cryptic allusions to what could only be time travel, his relationship to this deceased Swiss mathematician, his vision of a German Renaissance…perhaps most disconcerting of all, however, was this business of grisly murders. Jack rubbed his neck thoughtfully. He knew only what the Time Traveler had told him; the rest, presumably, was up to fate. He was comforted, knowing that somewhere—in some inaccessible fourth dimension—all of this had happened before, or was perhaps happening right now, or in any case was at least visible to someone—to the Time Traveler—wherever he was in space and time. Jack turned the corner, heaving a sigh of relief, and seized up at once in terror as he glanced down toward his feet. There, sprawled out over the steel planks, was the dead body of Hypatia Euler.