1. The Lake

There is a John Morland poem Henry Grey is trying to remember. It goes something along the lines of: Let it be revealed in the water and the sky / the glory of His mind. No, that isn't it, a reflection comes into it, the water mirroring the sky… He'd had it all memorized at one time, it had kept him company on walks across the moors. A mirror of the glory of His mind, he thinks. No, still not quite right. But it will do for now, while the sky is a bowl of pale blue and the great lake lies ahead, fading into a cloudy haze in the distance. Grey watches it greedily, wishing he could get closer. He watches a gathering of winged insects, seeming to form themselves into circles turning lazily around and around in the air just outside the window. A hunting formation? He takes out his battered notebook to jot the question down, flicking through pages of questions already written. Sketches crowd around the words, as if he never has time to even turn to a blank page. He raises his binocular telescope, bringing the birches near the shoreline into sharp relief, the eye-shaped lenticels in the pale bark seeming to stare back at him, as if following the train's progress. One blinks, he is sure of it, but when he keeps the telescope trained on them all the eyes are open wide, unmoving. He shakes his head, but makes a note in his book: Are they watching?

He had hoped to be alone to watch for the approach of the lake, but a group of gentlemen recline in armchairs by the far window, cigar smoke wreathed around their heads, obscuring the view outside. They are talking loudly and incorrectly about the depth and length of the lake. Grey angles his chair away from them, but it does no good.

"Doctor Grey, you look lost in your thoughts. Come and share some of them with us, for we have none of our own, I am sad to say!" It is the young Frenchman, the one with the beautiful wife, already making space for Grey among the smokers. "I was just telling these gentlemen that we have a man of science and learning in our midst, and now here you are. Perhaps you can lend us your wisdom. We were observing a… what is the word… a metaphysical paradox."

"The kind that are much beloved of the Russians," says a Chinese gentleman—large, bearded, and with surprisingly mellifluous English.

"We are discussing whether a thing is less beautiful if one knows that it is also dangerous. This lake, for example." LaFontaine gestures out of the window, without looking at it. "It is worthy of our greatest painters, and yet it is also poisonous, infected…"

"We do not know that it is poisonous," someone objects.

"Isn't everything out there poisoned?"

"Well, it depends on one's definition, and unless we really believe that the Company has sent someone out there to test it, we cannot definitively say—"

"The landscape, then," interrupts LaFontaine. "The landscape, in general, we can agree, is threatening to us. And yet it can also be a thing of beauty." He spreads his arms wide, and the gathered gentlemen hum their agreement. Only the cleric, whose name Grey has learned is Yuri Petrovich, refuses to give obeisance, sitting hunched in an armchair.

"But then does this threat lessen its beauty? Is the swan more lovely than the eagle, the placid whale more magnificent than the warlike shark?"

A paradox barely worthy of the word,Grey thinks, but nonetheless steeples his fingers together and makes a show of giving these platitudes thought.

"Beauty is subjective, of course," he begins. "But all of God's creation must be seen as beautiful, from the most humble, commonplace creature to the most rare. As a scientist and a man of God I say that neither familiarity nor danger should change the fact of their miraculousness. This lake—" He looks out of the window and catches a flash of silver, the silhouette of a tree thrown into relief upon it. "This lake may be fatal to human incursion but who are we to say there are not creatures who swim and thrive within its waters?" A mirror of the Heavens—is that it? The lines are on the tip of his tongue.

"But what purpose can this chaos serve? This absence of order, of meaning."

"But that's just it." Grey leans forward eagerly. It gives him a shivery feeling at the base of his spine when he is doubtful and certain at the same time, and that is how he knows he is moving closer to God. "Meaning. Why must we think that an absence of order equates to an absence of meaning? Is it not meaning enough that we should wonder? Is that not what God demands of us?" He feels his voice grow loud and strong. "It is not an absence of meaning that surrounds us. It is an excess of meaning! You ask, young man, whether beauty and danger can be seen to cancel each other out. Why do they need to? They give us meaning upon meaning which we may read, study, wonder at." He notices that while some of the gentlemen are nodding thoughtfully, others appear amused. "There is a poem," Grey goes on. "A poem by John Morland, perhaps you know him?" The gathered gentlemen stare back blankly. "No matter. He writes—"

"And so reveal in water and in sky, the mirror of the Heavens and the window of His eye." Yuri Petrovich's voice is rich and strong. He doesn't turn around.

"That's it," says Grey, a little taken aback. "I see that you are familiar—"

"Greater Siberia," interrupts the cleric, enunciating each word carefully, "reveals nothing but the absence of the Lord's eyes. It cannot be studied, you cannot hope to look for meaning in that which is an abomination."

The carriage has fallen silent. Yuri Petrovich's gaze is fixed outside, his back stooped. Grey has seen his type before; those members of the clergy who are weighed down by their beliefs yet grasp them ever more tightly; who wish others to see how they suffer, so that they may suffer too.

"And yet, sir," says LaFontaine, "you choose to travel through this, as you call it, abomination." He leans back in his chair, his tone careless.

"My father is dying," the Russian replies, his expression unchanging. "I cannot afford the months that the southern route would take."

"I am sorry," says Grey, into the silence.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. He will be with God soon and no longer troubled by the decay of this world. You should save your sympathy for yourself."

The other gentlemen exchange glances. Cigars are lit again and the space around Yuri Petrovich grows. "And yet he travels First Class," Grey hears someone say, in an undertone.

Grey says, "All things on this Earth are God's creation, as strange as some of them may seem. There is a place for each of them."

The cleric gives a twisted smile. "Here only the Devil walks, and leaves ruin behind him."

"My goodness, it is lucky we attended confession before we left," remarks LaFontaine, to appreciative chuckles.

Though loath to walk away from an argument, there is something in the cleric's demeanor that makes Grey turn back instead to his notebooks and observations. Still, he cannot help but feel energized by the challenge posed. The Devil? No, he is wrong, this man, and he, Henry Grey, will prove it. He writes out the lines from Morland's poem. He would have remembered them himself in the end, he thinks.

When Grey returns to his cabin later in the afternoon, and opens the wardrobe to dress for dinner, he finds that his clothes have been pushed aside to make way for a suit and helmet, thick gloves and boots. The engineer has begun to fulfill his part of the bargain. Grey touches the thick brown leather of the suit, the strong glass at the front of the helmet, and feels a shiver of anticipation.