The Ministry of Time

Chapter V

“Your feet are swelling,” Goodsir observes.

Gore is back in the sick bay on Erebus. Stanley is tearing at his cuffs, bellowing for hot water. Gore’s frostnip isn’t close to the worst cold-induced injury the crew has seen—it isn’t even the worst Gore has personally endured—but Stanley’s panic is bracketed by the report Gore has just made.

“You’re quite sure you shot him dead?” Lieutenant Le Vesconte, the second lieutenant, asks. He is a veteran of the Opium War, cool and soldierlike, and like all soldierly men, given to tenderness about bloodshed.

In the same dry tone, Goodsir says, “Mr. Gore never misses.”

Gore is grateful for the assistant surgeon’s ironic calm. Goodsir is his friend, insofar as a commander and a lesser sawbones can be friends. No, that’s not fair, they are friends. Goodsir is a career scientist. If they had figs on board, he wouldn’t give them for the gold epaulettes on Gore’s shoulders.

“I thought he was a seal,” says Gore. “Poor devil. I ran over as soon as I heard him shout.”

“He was absolutely dead?” Le Vesconte asks again. He sounds like someone’s peeled the skin off his voice.

“Yes. Send a couple of men out to the body,” says Gore. “Take tobacco. Steel knives if we can spare any. Something we can leave that makes it clear we mean no further harm. Don’t interfere with the corpse in any way.”

“I’d be hesitant to arm those people, Graham,” mutters Le Vesconte. “In the circumstances.”

“Tobacco, then. Mr. Goodsir?”

“Sir.”

“Can I walk on these?”

Goodsir gives Gore’s feet an appraising glance. He takes one swollen arch and chafes it briskly.

“I know it doesn’t matter what I say,” he says. “You’re going to walk on them anyway.”

“Well done.”

Gore begins to cram his feet back into his boots. His gloves are by his thigh on the table. They have a brownish crust on them. The Esquimaux had bled through his furs. By the time Gore had reached his side, his eyes were already cloudy.

“I shot him through the heart, Harry,” he says vaguely.

Goodsir doesn’t respond, but he squeezes Gore’s arm. What for? Gore checks his inner machinery as he would a chronometer. Is that a feeling, sculling at the basin of his ribs? Does he need comforting?

Topside, the watch begins to stamp and shout. A tattoo of boots on the ladderway. Someone has sighted a party of Esquimaux, moving toward the ships.