Over the next eight and a half days, Nathan Drake became, according to the captain of Leviathan, one of the most persistent nuisances ever to receive official permission to wander through his ship.
The accusation developed gradually and, as the voyage carried them farther from France, acquired enough affection that Nathan eventually stopped pretending to be offended by it. He maintained from the beginning that the captain had only himself to blame. The man had been the one to promise him access to the bridge if he behaved himself, and the difficulty lay principally in the fact that Nathan's definition of good behaviour differed substantially from everyone else's. He obeyed restrictions when they were given, did not enter compartments from which he had been barred, touched nothing without permission and accepted without argument that a ship carrying thousands of men across an ocean patrolled by enemy submarines could not indulge every curiosity of a visiting scientist. Unfortunately for the men actually responsible for Leviathan, none of those restrictions prevented him from asking questions, and Nathan possessed a capacity for questions that seemed to expand in direct proportion to the number already answered.
Their first night at sea had belonged mostly to Mrs Hargreaves. Nathan had sat across from her while their wine swayed gently with the Atlantic and, for perhaps the first time in years, properly considered the life of the woman who had become so permanent a part of his own that he had stopped noticing how much time was passing around them. The conversation had begun with Horsley, as many of their conversations aboard the ship subsequently would, and ended somewhere Nathan had not expected, with Mrs Hargreaves calmly informing him that she had not surrendered her life by remaining at The Knapp because looking after him had become part of the life she had chosen. Her description of Nathan as her son had stayed with him long after dinner ended, and he carried it into the following morning with the peculiar discomfort of a man who could dissect an unfamiliar biological process without hesitation but found himself entirely unequipped for a few words of uncomplicated affection.
By breakfast, Mrs Hargreaves behaved as though nothing extraordinary had occurred.
Nathan was grateful for that.
She did, however, continue glaring at Horsley.
The rat had slept through most of the night inside the covered portion of his travelling enclosure and emerged with no apparent concern for the fact that France had disappeared behind him. Mrs Hargreaves watched him eat while taking her own breakfast with considerably better manners, occasionally shifting her attention toward the catches whenever Horsley investigated the front of the carrier. Nathan resisted pointing out that she had spent more time watching the enclosure than he had, partly because he had learned from the previous evening that Mrs Hargreaves could turn almost any argument back upon him and partly because the captain's promised tour occupied most of his attention.
That promise proved to be the beginning of the ship's difficulties.
Nathan's first proper visit below began innocently enough. The machinery spaces were nothing like the aerodrome workshops he had spent the previous weeks haunting in England, although there was something immediately familiar in the mixture of heat, oil, metal, human concentration and noise. Leviathan had seemed enormous from the French quay, but descending into her altered Nathan's understanding of the scale involved. Above deck she was a great hull, funnels and superstructure carrying an army westward; below, the apparent unity of the vessel dissolved into compartments, pipes, valves, gauges, electrical systems, pumps, passageways and machinery whose combined operation translated fuel, labour and engineering into the steady vibration Nathan had felt through the soles of his boots since boarding.
The deeper spaces possessed their own climate. Heat gathered differently there, carrying oil and hot metal into the air while machinery overwhelmed ordinary conversation until men accustomed to working around it learned to pitch their voices through the noise. Steel surfaces trembled beneath Nathan's fingers when he was permitted to rest a hand against a safe railing, pipes disappeared through bulkheads toward systems he could not yet identify, and men moved through the confined complexity with the unconscious confidence of people who had long ago stopped seeing the machinery as impressive because their work depended upon seeing it as ordinary.
Nathan found that distinction fascinating.
T followed several paces behind, dark lenses concealing his face while the machinery reflected in brief distorted streaks across their surface. If Nathan appeared almost boyishly interested in everything around him, T seemed deliberately unimpressed, although Nathan knew better than to mistake the absence of visible curiosity for inattention. T watched doors, ladders, junctions, men and routes; by the end of the first visit he would know which passage returned them toward their quarters, which doors had remained locked, where a man could disappear from sight and which crewmen had authority to move through areas Nathan could enter only under escort.
The engineer assigned to them expected, at first, that Nathan would be the easier of the two men to understand.
For perhaps ten minutes he was.
Nathan listened attentively while the engineer explained the broad arrangement of the machinery and supporting systems, asked several sensible questions about routine operation and wrote concise notes without interrupting. The engineer relaxed enough to begin volunteering details, which was his first mistake. One of those details concerned a component Nathan had not previously considered, and Nathan asked why it had been arranged in that particular fashion. The answer mentioned reliability, which prompted Nathan to ask what alternatives had proved less reliable; the explanation referred to an older practice, which led him to ask what had failed under that arrangement and whether the failure had been inherent to the principle or merely to the materials and manufacturing available when it was tried.
Within another ten minutes, the engineer understood.
Nathan had stopped behaving like a visiting professor and begun behaving as though somebody had placed an unfamiliar organism beneath a microscope and told him he could examine it for as long as he pleased.
"Why?" became the most dangerous word aboard Leviathan whenever Professor Drake said it.
The problem was not that Nathan challenged expertise. In fact, the opposite quickly became apparent. He respected expertise enough to assume that the man standing beside a machine knew things Nathan did not, and therefore he expected an answer worth hearing. If an engineer explained what a particular system did, Nathan wanted to know how it did it; if the man explained how, Nathan asked why that method had been chosen over another. Reliability invited questions about failure, efficiency invited questions about measurement, redundancy invited questions about the circumstances in which both systems might share the same weakness, and the phrase that's how it's done produced an expression of such immediate interest that several engineers eventually learned not to say it in his presence.
During his second visit below, one of them forgot.
"This valve remains where it is because moving it would require changing half the arrangement around it," the engineer explained, raising his voice over the machinery while Nathan leaned slightly closer to study the surrounding pipework without touching any part of it.
"That explains why you don't move it now," Nathan replied, tracing the route visually until it disappeared beyond the immediate compartment, "but why was it put there originally?"
The engineer stared at him, perhaps expecting the question to reveal itself as humour, while Nathan waited with complete sincerity.
Finally the man looked toward T.
T stood several feet away with his arms resting loosely at his sides, dark lenses offering no indication that the person behind them felt any sympathy whatsoever.
"Professor," the engineer said, "I wasn't here when the Germans built the bloody ship."
"Neither was I," Nathan answered pleasantly, opening his notebook again. "Do we have the original drawings?"
The engineer's expression changed with almost painful clarity as he realised that the obvious escape from the conversation had opened directly into another conversation, but before he could answer, T's helmet turned toward Nathan.
"No."
Nathan looked at him. "I only asked whether—"
"No."
"You don't know what I was going to say."
"You were going to ask to see the drawings."
"I was going to ask whether the drawings were available."
"That is the same thing with an extra step."
The engineer looked from Nathan to T and seemed to make a decision concerning which of them represented the greater threat to his afternoon. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," T replied.
Nathan stared at both of them. "This is absurd."
The engineer returned to his work before Nathan could discover another route back to the drawings, and T remained close enough that the subject never quite recovered.
That exchange escaped the engine spaces by dinner.
Nathan never discovered who repeated it, although by the end of the voyage he had accumulated several suspects and T refused to confirm any of them. The story improved during transmission. By the following morning Nathan had supposedly attempted to acquire the complete German construction plans for Leviathan; by afternoon he had apparently intended to redesign something once he obtained them, and by the fourth day a version circulated among the crew in which T's real purpose aboard the ship had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting Nathan.
He had been assigned to protect Leviathan from Nathan.
T made no effort to correct anyone.
Nathan objected principally because the story ignored how much he was learning.
The engine spaces fascinated him for reasons extending far beyond their scale. Aviation had occupied much of his thinking before France, but an aircraft engine represented a ruthless concentration of compromises: weight fought strength, cooling fought drag, power fought reliability, and every additional pound had to justify its existence because the machine was expected to lift itself into the air. The aircraft itself could not solve an engineering problem merely by accepting another ton of machinery. Leviathan belonged to a different philosophy. Here scale could become part of the solution, but scale introduced problems of its own, because the ship was not simply an engine surrounded by a hull. It was machinery embedded inside machinery, supported by pumps, electrical systems, ventilation, communications, fuel handling, maintenance routines and hundreds upon hundreds of human decisions made correctly often enough that thousands of people above could cross an ocean while thinking about almost none of them.
Nathan wanted to understand the relationships between those systems rather than memorise their individual functions, which was unfortunate for anyone who gave him an explanation containing the word backup.
"What happens if that fails?" he asked during one inspection, nodding toward a section of equipment while keeping both hands behind his back.
"We isolate it."
"And if the isolation fails?"
"We've another line."
"And if that line fails?"
The engineer turned slowly toward him. Sweat had gathered along his forehead from the heat of the compartment, and for a moment he appeared to be deciding whether Professor Drake constituted an operational hazard not covered by existing procedure. "Professor."
"Yes?"
"Do you spend your entire life imagining increasingly unlikely ways for things to break?"
Nathan considered the question with enough seriousness to make the engineer regret asking it. "More or less."
"Yes," T supplied from behind him.
Nathan glanced over his shoulder. "I was answering."
"You were taking too long."
The engineer laughed, the sound nearly lost beneath the machinery, and Nathan smiled before returning his attention to the system. "How quickly can the second line actually be brought into service after a failure under load?"
The engineer's laughter stopped.
T lowered his head.
Nathan looked between them. "What?"
It was not merely machinery that occupied him. Once the captain honoured his promise and allowed Nathan onto the bridge under supervision, Nathan discovered an entirely different collection of questions waiting there. He wanted to understand navigation, command routines, communication between bridge and machinery spaces, visibility, manoeuvring, how orders travelled through the ship and how quickly they returned as acknowledged actions. The vessel's extraordinary size fascinated him most when size became an inconvenience: how long did she take to answer certain commands, what changed in heavy weather, how much room did a ship of this mass require before intention became movement, how did speed alter fuel consumption, and at what point did increased speed create consequences elsewhere that made the apparent advantage less useful?
The captain tolerated him remarkably well.
For the first hour.
By the second visit he had begun anticipating questions.
"Before you ask," he said when Nathan's attention settled upon one of the bridge instruments, "yes, there is another system if that one fails."
Nathan turned from the instrument with mild offence. "I wasn't going to ask that."
T stood near the rear of the bridge, close enough to hear them without obstructing anyone's work. "You were."
"I was going to ask how frequently the two systems are compared to ensure the reserve remains accurate."
The captain stared at him.
T inclined his head. "Worse."
The captain's laugh came so abruptly that an officer at the opposite side of the bridge glanced around, while Nathan looked between the two men and began to suspect that permitting T to become friendly with the captain had been a strategic error.
Mrs Hargreaves became the other half of the containment effort, although she relied considerably less upon black armour and considerably more upon the authority of someone who had spent years discovering that Nathan Drake could occasionally be removed from his work if his objections were treated as irrelevant.
Meals became her preferred weapon.
The emotional conversation of their first night was never formally mentioned again, yet something had subtly changed in the ease with which Nathan allowed himself to be managed by her. He still complained, naturally, because surrender without complaint would have alarmed them both, but the word son had remained somewhere in him. When she told him to sit down for dinner he occasionally found himself remembering it, and the recollection made resistance seem faintly ridiculous.
On the third evening he returned from nearly three hours below decks with two notebooks beneath one arm, a question about ventilation still occupying the other half of his attention and every intention of spending the remainder of the evening comparing the French clinical records with what little information they possessed from Kansas. Mrs Hargreaves had already arranged dinner in the private sitting room, where the gentle Atlantic swell caused the wine in their glasses to lean against the crystal and return while Horsley's carrier remained secured against the wall.
"Sit," she said as Nathan entered and began, without greeting, to explain something he had noticed about the ship's airflow.
"I was going to—"
"Sit."
"I have several things I need to—"
"Nathan."
He sat, adjusted the chair beneath himself as the deck moved gently and placed both notebooks beside his plate.
Mrs Hargreaves looked at them.
Nathan followed her eyes, hesitated and transferred the notebooks to another table. "Happy?"
"Immensely."
T had entered behind him and remained near the doorway, apparently believing the order applied only to Nathan, until Mrs Hargreaves turned her attention toward the black-armoured figure as well.
"You too."
T looked at Nathan.
Nathan's smile arrived immediately. "You heard her."
"Don't."
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to point out that apparently you take orders from Mrs Hargreaves."
"I don't take orders from you concerning dinner."
"No, apparently you take them from—"
"T," Mrs Hargreaves said.
T considered the empty chair, then crossed the room and sat. "Everyone does eventually."
"Quite," Mrs Hargreaves replied, satisfied.
Nathan looked from one to the other. "I dislike this alliance."
"You created it," T said.
"How?"
"You brought us both."
Nathan opened his mouth, reconsidered and reached for his dinner instead.
Horsley became the other recurring subject of those evenings, largely because there remained absolutely no evidence that he intended to escape and Mrs Hargreaves became increasingly convinced that this proved nothing.
Unfortunately, Mrs Hargreaves required nothing but keen sight andtwo working eyes to become suspicious of him.
The carrier itself was responsible.
Nathan had commissioned reinforced edges, protected ventilation, secure catches, a removable tray, covered bedding, reliable food and water arrangements and fixing points so the enclosure could be secured against movement aboard ship. To Nathan these were sensible precautions for an animal he had no intention of losing. To Mrs Hargreaves, the amount of effort invested in preventing escape implied that escape deserved preventing.
On the fourth evening Horsley approached the front of the enclosure, rose with his forepaws near the inner edge beside one of the catches and began sniffing around the door.
Mrs Hargreaves lowered her wine. "No."
Nathan glanced over from his dinner. "He's smelling it."
"He's examining it."
"He's a rat."
"Yes."
"Rats investigate things."
"Yes."
Nathan waited for the conclusion and, when none came, gestured toward the carrier with his fork. "Then what exactly are you objecting to?"
Mrs Hargreaves narrowed her eyes at Horsley. "That one lives with you."
Nathan nearly laughed into his glass. "What does that mean?"
"It means I have learned not to trust anything in your house merely because it appears harmless."
"That is an extraordinary accusation."
"I once had a perfectly ordinary maid."
The humour disappeared from Nathan's expression before he could prevent it.
Mrs Hargreaves noticed.
She did not know what had truly happened to Nell, nor was she going to ask, but she knew one thing, only that the woman had become entangled in one of the more unpleasant episodes surrounding The Knapp and disappeared from the ordinary life of the house in circumstances Nathan had never explained to her satisfaction. Whatever thought had led Mrs Hargreaves to the remark, she recognised the boundary almost immediately and let the subject fall rather than pressing him.
Nathan appreciated that enough not to correct anything else.
He took another drink, glanced toward Horsley and found the rat washing his face with complete innocence.
Mrs Hargreaves pointed at him. "See?"
Nathan stared at her. "He is cleaning himself."
"After being caught."
"Caught doing what?"
"Exactly."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"It doesn't need to."
T had remained quiet through most of the exchange, but Nathan caught the faint movement of his head and realised the bastard was enjoying himself.
"You're supposed to be on my side."
"No."
"Whose side are you on?"
T looked toward Horsley.
Nathan's eyes narrowed. "Don't."
"Didn't say anything."
Mrs Hargreaves smiled into her wine.
By the fourth day, something else had changed aboard Leviathan. Nathan ceased being merely the peculiar English professor travelling under unusual authority and became, to a surprising number of men aboard, simply Nathan.
The transition happened gradually enough that he did not recognise it until T pointed it out. Nathan's questions had initially made the engineers wary, particularly once they discovered that an innocent answer could imprison a man inside a conversation for twenty minutes, but curiosity proved less threatening when it came without condescension. Nathan remembered what men told him, and more importantly, remembered the men themselves. A fireman named Sullivan who had explained part of the boiler routine on the second day was greeted by name when Nathan encountered him again on the fourth, and Nathan not only remembered the troublesome vibration Sullivan had mentioned but asked whether the adjustment made the previous afternoon had altered it.
"Morning, Professor," Sullivan called when Nathan appeared at the entrance to one of the permitted machinery spaces, then raised a warning finger before Nathan could speak. "And before you ask, she's running properly."
"I wasn't going to ask that."
"Then I apologise."
"I was going to ask whether the vibration we noticed yesterday changed after you adjusted the bearing."
Sullivan stared at him before turning toward T. "That's worse, isn't it?"
"Yes," T replied.
Nathan frowned. "Why does everyone keep asking him?"
"Because he knows when to stop you."
"I know when to stop."
Three men working within earshot laughed.
Nathan looked around at them. "I do."
That made it worse.
The laughter followed him deeper into the compartment, and Nathan found himself smiling despite the insult. There was something comfortable in it. He had never been particularly impressed by rank when expertise belonged to somebody else, nor had he ever understood the habit some educated men possessed of speaking to a labourer as though practical knowledge became less valuable because it had been acquired through grease, heat and repetition rather than a university. If Sullivan knew something Nathan did not, then for the duration of that question Sullivan was the authority and Nathan listened accordingly. The men aboard Leviathan noticed. They also noticed that he remembered their answers the following day instead of making them repeat themselves for his benefit.
Petty Officer Harris had complained once about a troublesome pump and found Nathan asking about it two days later. Another man mentioned a brother serving in France during an otherwise technical conversation and was startled when Nathan remembered the brother's name the next time they met. Nathan learned who had served aboard long enough to remember the vessel under earlier arrangements, who distrusted a particular component, who swore by a maintenance practice another engineer considered unnecessary and which men could answer a question from experience rather than simply recite procedure.
By the middle of the crossing he could enter some engineering spaces and receive groans instead of stiffened backs.
Nathan considered this considerable progress.
T interpreted it differently.
"You've collected another one," he said on the fifth day as they left an engineering compartment, Nathan slipping his notebook back into his coat while a sailor behind them lifted one hand in farewell.
Nathan glanced over his shoulder. "Another what?"
"Friend."
"He explained the feed system."
"Yesterday you didn't know his name."
"His name is Evans."
"That is my point."
Nathan looked toward the black lenses. "I speak to people."
"You interrogate people until they become accustomed to you."
"That is not friendship."
"No. I think it may be siege warfare."
Nathan laughed and continued along the passage, matching his balance automatically to the slow movement of the ship. "You have a very strange understanding of friendship."
"I know you."
"That isn't an answer."
"It is to me."
As familiarity grew, the men discovered that Professor Drake could be retaliated against.
Questions began travelling in the opposite direction, some genuine and others plainly designed to make Nathan experience his own methods. One engineer asked whether Nathan could explain exactly what the Institute did without using the words research, medical or government. Nathan spent long enough considering the problem that the men declared victory before he could construct an answer. Another asked whether T ever removed the armour, prompting Nathan to reply that he presumed so, at which point T slowly turned his helmet toward him and the entire group laughed.
A third man made the mistake of asking whether Mrs Hargreaves truly possessed more authority over Nathan than T did.
Nathan refused to answer on the grounds that the question was ridiculous.
Mrs Hargreaves heard about it before dinner.
"You should have told them yes," she said, cutting neatly into her meal while the Atlantic shifted beyond the dark window and their glasses moved almost imperceptibly with it.
"It would have encouraged them."
"They require very little encouragement."
"Neither do you."
"Eat."
Nathan ate.
The following afternoon, with their quarters secured and no visitor expected, Nathan gave Horsley a period outside the carrier. He had deliberately kept the rat's routine as ordinary as possible throughout the voyage, but confinement for more than a week was not something he intended to make unnecessarily unpleasant simply because travel complicated matters. The enclosure provided enough room for movement, food, water, bedding and a covered retreat, yet Nathan still preferred handling him regularly, partly to maintain routine and partly because there were moments when Horsley ceased being a question demanding measurement and became simply a small living creature Nathan had grown fond of.
He sat near the window with the rat resting calmly across both hands, supporting him without restraint while Horsley's forepaws settled against his thumb. The Atlantic beyond the glass had turned a hard grey beneath afternoon cloud, rising and falling in long swells that Leviathan absorbed with a slow movement rather than the nervous pitching Nathan associated with smaller vessels. Nathan ran one finger gently between Horsley's ears and along the brown fur of his back, feeling the minute warmth of the body beneath his hand and the quick, steady rhythm of breathing.
Mrs Hargreaves sat nearby with a book.
She had not turned a page for several minutes.
Nathan looked at her over Horsley's back. "You realise staring at him doesn't strengthen the door."
"I am reading."
"You haven't turned that page since I took him out."
"It is a difficult page."
Nathan glanced at the book, then back at her. "You are watching the rat."
"I can perform two tasks at once."
"You have no evidence whatsoever that he's trying to escape."
"Precisely."
Nathan stared at her. "That sentence still doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't need to."
Horsley shifted against his palms, placed one forepaw more firmly against Nathan's thumb and settled again while Nathan's expression softened almost unconsciously. There was something peaceful about handling him when no experiment followed. Nathan spent so much of his life reducing living systems into mechanisms, questions, variables and possibilities that simple care could feel almost corrective. Horsley was warm. His whiskers moved when Nathan's fingers approached his face. His ears shifted toward sounds in the room. He was alive before he was scientifically interesting, and Nathan occasionally needed reminding that one fact did not diminish the other.
"There you are," he murmured, stroking gently along the rat's back. "Four days at sea and still no grand escape."
Mrs Hargreaves looked over the top of her book. "He is waiting."
"For what?"
"Opportunity."
Nathan smiled down at Horsley. "Apparently you're a criminal mastermind."
Horsley began washing his face.
Mrs Hargreaves lowered the book and pointed. "Deflection."
Nathan laughed, cupped the rat securely and brought him slightly nearer his chest, where Horsley settled with the familiarity of an animal accustomed to Nathan's hands. For several minutes there was no notebook, no test and no hidden observation beyond what Nathan could not help noticing, and when he finally returned Horsley to the carrier he refreshed the water, checked the food, rearranged some bedding and secured both catches before testing each once.
Mrs Hargreaves watched him.
Nathan kept his back toward her. "Don't."
"I said nothing."
"You were going to."
"I was thinking."
"You've been spending too much time around me."
"That is exactly what I told you."
The rhythm of the crossing established itself around them after that. Nathan spent portions of each morning with the French clinical records and whatever additional medical information could be obtained aboard ship, then disappeared into whichever part of Leviathan the captain had been unwise enough to make available to him. T accompanied him whenever he left their private section, both because security remained his responsibility and because the captain had begun openly claiming that somebody needed to count the questions. Mrs Hargreaves read, wrote letters, spoke with stewards and the few passengers she encountered, and somehow managed to carry enough of The Knapp's domestic order across the Atlantic that Nathan occasionally entered their sitting room and experienced the absurd impression that the house had followed them aboard.
They came together most reliably at dinner.
Those meals acquired a significance Nathan had not anticipated after their first night at sea. He no longer watched Mrs Hargreaves with the melancholy scrutiny that had prompted their conversation about her mother and the years she had spent at The Knapp, but he noticed her more consciously than he had before. She mentioned people whose names he had heard for years without ever asking enough about them, books she had read while he was buried in reports and small habits belonging to a life that had always continued beside his own without requiring his supervision.
Nathan responded to this discovery in the only way Nathan knew how.
He began asking questions.
By the sixth evening Mrs Hargreaves had noticed the pattern.
"You are investigating me," she said as she cut into her dinner, her knife moving neatly despite a longer swell passing beneath the ship.
Nathan looked offended. "I am showing interest."
"You asked what my mother prefers for breakfast."
"That is conversation."
"You asked whether she has always preferred it."
"Context."
"You then asked when she changed tea merchants."
Nathan paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.
T sat across from him.
"Investigation," T said.
Nathan pointed the fork at him. "Nobody asked you."
"I was saving time."
Mrs Hargreaves smiled into her wine. "He does have his uses."
"I am surrounded by hostility."
"You crossed an ocean with us voluntarily," T reminded him.
Nathan stared. "That was my line."
"It was better when I used it."
The humour did not remain confined to their rooms. By then T had accumulated a mythology among the soldiers and sailors without doing anything to encourage it beyond existing. According to one version, he slept standing outside Nathan's door and had not removed his armour since leaving France. Another maintained that he had been assigned to Nathan after the professor dismantled part of a government laboratory merely to determine how it worked. A third insisted that T had once physically carried Nathan away from some dangerous machine after three separate warnings failed.
Nathan objected strongly to the third when he finally heard it.
"That's ridiculous," he told T as they descended toward another authorised machinery inspection.
"Yes."
"You've never carried me away from a machine."
"No."
"Exactly."
T continued down several steps before answering, "The voyage isn't over."
Nathan stopped.
T kept going.
"Why did you say it like that?"
No answer came from below.
The story became considerably more popular after two sailors overheard the exchange.
The crew's favourite interpretation of T's duties remained the simplest: the black-armoured man existed to rescue individual sailors and engineers whenever Professor Drake's curiosity exceeded humane limits.
That belief acquired substantial evidence on the seventh day.
Nathan did not, as later versions of the story claimed, corner an engineering officer. The man had been perfectly free to leave at any point, a distinction Nathan considered important and everyone else considered irrelevant. Their conversation began beside a bank of equipment with a straightforward explanation of a routine maintenance procedure, moved naturally into lubrication, wear and tolerances, then into temperature, inspection intervals, manufacturing variation and finally the question of whether the maintenance schedule reflected measured degradation or merely a conservative interval inherited from earlier operating practice.
For the first fifteen minutes the officer answered enthusiastically.
After half an hour enthusiasm became professionalism.
After forty-five minutes professionalism had become endurance.
Nathan noticed none of this because the answers were interesting.
"So if the interval is based primarily upon accumulated operational experience," he said, writing another short line in his notebook, "have you compared failures occurring immediately before scheduled maintenance with those occurring immediately afterward? If the rate remains consistent, the interval may be irrelevant to the actual mechanism."
The officer drew a long breath and ran one hand through his hair for what T had privately counted as the third time.
Nathan looked up. "Or perhaps not. Do you keep—"
"Nathan."
"One moment."
"No."
Nathan turned toward T. "I haven't finished."
"He has."
The engineering officer looked at the black-armoured figure with naked gratitude.
Nathan frowned. "He can tell me if he's finished."
"I am finished," the man said immediately.
Nathan looked genuinely surprised. "Why didn't you say so?"
The engineer stared at him with one hand still tangled in his hair. "I was trying to find an opening."
There was a short silence in which Nathan appeared to consider the structure of the preceding conversation as though determining whether this criticism was justified.
T turned away.
Nathan heard the sound that escaped him despite the surrounding machinery. "Are you laughing?"
"No."
"You are."
"No."
The engineer had begun laughing as well, partly from relief and partly because Nathan's expression had shifted from surprise into wounded dignity.
"Fine," Nathan said, closing the notebook. "We can continue later."
The engineer stopped laughing.
T stepped across Nathan's intended path, placed one arm in front of him and redirected him toward the exit. "No."
"I only meant—"
"No."
"I have perhaps three more questions."
A distressed noise came from behind them.
T kept Nathan moving.
By dinner the captain knew.
"I understand T saved one of my engineers from you this afternoon," he said when he encountered Nathan in a passage later that evening, his face already betraying enough amusement that Nathan knew any defence would receive an unfair hearing.
"That description is wildly exaggerated."
"I heard the man was contemplating pulling his own hair out."
"He already had his hand in it."
The captain stared.
Nathan realised that had not helped. "I was asking about maintenance intervals."
"Of course you were."
"They matter."
"I am certain they do."
"The question was whether—"
"No," T said from behind him.
The captain burst out laughing.
Nathan turned toward the armour. "You cannot simply say no whenever I begin explaining something."
"I've been doing it for seven days."
"That doesn't make it reasonable."
"It makes it effective."
The captain laughed harder and continued down the passage before Nathan could recruit him into the argument.
By then even Nathan had to concede that T had become remarkably efficient at recognising the moment curiosity was about to become captivity. A slight movement of one arm could prevent Nathan following an engineer toward equipment he had not been authorised to inspect, a single no could interrupt a question whose answer would inevitably produce six more, and occasionally T merely appeared in Nathan's peripheral vision at the exact moment someone mentioned a system Nathan had not previously known existed.
The crew noticed.
On the eighth day an engineer appealed directly to him before Nathan had even begun.
"T," the man called when Nathan opened his notebook beside a pump.
T looked toward Nathan.
Nathan stared back. "I haven't asked anything."
"Yet," the engineer said.
"This is becoming absurd."
T folded his arms.
Nathan looked at the pump, then at the engineer, then toward T. "Does the—"
"No."
Nathan closed the notebook.
The engineer grinned.
"I dislike what I've created here," Nathan muttered as he and T moved away.
"You didn't create it."
"Then who did?"
"The entire ship."
For all the humour surrounding Nathan's investigations, his curiosity was not purposeless. By the eighth day he understood enough of Leviathan's organisation to appreciate her less as a great object and more as a great system. From the quay in France she had been steel on a nearly incomprehensible scale; from within, she became thousands of dependencies layered upon one another, engineering joined to command, command to communication, communication to human attention, all of it supported by maintenance, supply, medicine, routine and the willingness of people to report failures before those failures became disasters.
The comparison with the Institute became increasingly difficult to ignore.
Nathan could no longer personally know every person working beneath the Institute. He could not inspect every culture, verify every barrier, read every maintenance sheet or stand behind every technician while a procedure was performed. Growth created capability, but capability purchased through scale carried a hidden price: distance between the person making a decision and the thing upon which that decision depended. The captain could not inspect every valve aboard Leviathan, yet the ship crossed the Atlantic because systems existed to ensure that the condition of those valves became someone else's immediate responsibility and, when necessary, information moved upward.
The sea was brutally intolerant of institutional vanity. A poorly maintained component did not care whether the officer responsible possessed an impressive title, and a hole in a hull did not become less real because the report describing it had been filed incorrectly.
Nathan wanted the Institute to learn the same lesson without requiring catastrophe to teach it.
That thought produced several pages of notes which had nothing whatsoever to do with ships.
The medical purpose of their voyage remained beneath everything else. Nathan met regularly with Leviathan's medical personnel, reviewed respiratory complaints and resisted the temptation to transform every cough aboard a crowded troopship into evidence for the question waiting in Kansas. Men became sick for ordinary reasons. Seasickness filled beds during rougher periods, minor respiratory complaints appeared and disappeared, old conditions travelled with the men who possessed them, and Nathan documented what deserved documentation without manufacturing significance where none had earned it.
He had left France uncertain.
Unless the evidence changed, he intended to reach America uncertain.
That discipline mattered precisely because the possibility interested him so much.
His evenings on deck offered a different kind of uncertainty.
Nathan began going above after Mrs Hargreaves retired or after dinner had ended and the medical records had ceased yielding anything useful, sometimes intending to remain only long enough to clear his thoughts before sleep. The first time he did so he expected several minutes and stayed almost an hour.
At night the Atlantic removed scale from the world.
Leviathan was enormous by any human measure, a moving concentration of steel, machinery and thousands of lives, yet darkness reduced even her to a temporary intrusion upon something immeasurably larger. The deck beneath Nathan's hands felt cold when he leaned against the rail, wind pulled at his coat and the nearest lights revealed only fragments of the water before blackness reclaimed it. Foam appeared beside the hull in pale streaks, existed for a few seconds and vanished astern, while beyond the ship there was no reassuring coastline, laboratory wall, city lamp or fence marking the point at which the known world ended.
There was simply ocean.
Nathan liked that more than he expected.
He had spent years discovering how easily the extraordinary could hide inside the ordinary. Africa had taught him that blank spaces on a European map did not mean empty land. The Institute had taught him how much remained unknown even after intelligent men believed they had reduced a problem to measurements. His own body had destroyed any comforting assumption that biology had already disclosed the limits of what it could become.
The Atlantic offered the same lesson on an almost insulting scale.
Human beings had crossed oceans for centuries, fought over them, mapped their coasts, laid cables beneath them and now built ships large enough to transport armies according to schedules, yet the confidence of surface travel concealed how little of the world below had ever been directly observed. Beneath Leviathan lay descending water into which daylight weakened and finally disappeared, environments shaped by pressure, temperature, darkness and isolation so complete that an organism could spend its entire evolutionary history without encountering anything resembling the conditions under which Nathan himself lived.
Some nights he simply watched the water and wondered what moved beneath them.
Not in the childish sense of expecting a creature from sailors' folklore to rise beside the hull, although Nathan's experiences had left him considerably less willing than most educated men to dismiss a story merely because it sounded ridiculous. His curiosity was broader and, in its way, more unsettling. He wondered about organisms that never reached the surface intact, animals shaped for pressures that would destroy familiar life, metabolisms adapted to cold and darkness, sensory systems evolved in places where sight offered little advantage and ecological relationships no human observer had ever watched.
He wondered how large life might become where water supported mass differently from land, how slowly something might age in cold depths, whether diseases existed within isolated marine populations that had never encountered a mammal, and how many branches of life moved beneath shipping lanes every day while the people above remained entirely unaware.
The uncertainty did not frustrate him.
It humbled him.
On their final full night at sea, with New York expected the following day, T found him standing there again.
Nathan recognised the armour before turning, not because T announced himself but because years of familiarity had made the subtle sounds of his movement distinct even beneath wind, engines and water. T emerged from the dimmer section of deck and approached the rail, his black armour absorbing most of the weak light while brief reflections moved across the dark lenses.
"You're supposed to be sleeping," T said as he stopped beside him, looking first at Nathan and then toward the Atlantic.
"So are you."
"I wasn't aware you controlled my schedule."
"I control everyone's schedule."
"No. You attempt to."
Nathan smiled and returned his attention to the water, while T settled beside him and for several minutes neither felt any need to speak. Silence with Mrs Hargreaves belonged to domestic familiarity, the ease of two people who had shared enough rooms that conversation no longer proved companionship; silence with T was different, closer to standing watch beside another man even when nothing visible required guarding.
A long swell passed beneath Leviathan, lifting the ship so gradually that the movement seemed impossible for something of her size, then lowering her again while black water rolled away beyond the reach of the deck lights.
"Have you ever thought about what it would be like down there?" Nathan asked eventually, looking into the water before turning toward T and gesturing faintly over the rail.
T followed the gesture. "Wet."
Nathan's head turned slowly.
T remained motionless.
"That may be the least imaginative answer you've ever given me."
"You asked what it would be like."
"I was expecting something beyond the first physical property encountered."
"Cold."
Nathan stared.
"Dark," T added.
"You're doing this deliberately."
"Yes."
Nathan laughed and leaned his forearms against the rail. "I mean really down there, far enough that all of this disappears."
He gestured back toward Leviathan, her lights, funnels, steel and human noise seeming almost indecently bright against the Atlantic.
T's humour receded as he considered the water. "Where there's no light?"
"Eventually."
"Pressure would kill us."
"As we are now, yes."
T turned his helmet.
Nathan caught the movement immediately. "That was not a proposal."
"With you, clarification helps."
"I am not planning to jump into the Atlantic."
"Good."
Nathan smiled and looked down again. "But think about it. We know almost nothing about most of this."
"We know there's water."
"T."
The armour gave him no expression to read, but Nathan had known him too long to require one.
"We cross it," Nathan continued, his voice quieter now, "and because we can cross the surface we behave as though we've conquered it. Look at this ship. Thousands of men, engines powerful enough to move all this steel, wireless communication, navigation, weapons, electricity. We built something like Leviathan and can send it across an ocean according to a timetable, yet a few hundred feet beneath us might as well be another world."
T leaned against the rail beside him. "You've been thinking about this for a while."
"Several nights."
"That explains why Mrs Hargreaves thought you were sneaking off to the engine room."
Nathan turned. "She said that?"
"She told me to find you."
"And you waited until now to mention that?"
"I found you."
"Wonderful."
The darkness reclaimed his attention almost immediately, and Nathan watched another pale disturbance appear against the hull before asking, "What do you think is down there?"
"Fish."
"T."
"Larger fish."
Nathan laughed despite himself. "You have absolutely no curiosity."
"I have curiosity. I also know what happens when I encourage yours."
"Humour me."
T became quiet, and the joke passed naturally rather than disappearing all at once. A wave struck somewhere below, its white edge briefly visible before the sea folded over it, while the ship continued westward with the unhurried confidence of something too large to appear fast from its own deck.
"Things nobody's seen," T said eventually.
Nathan looked toward him, genuine interest replacing the amused impatience. "Exactly."
"That doesn't mean monsters."
"I didn't say monsters."
"You were thinking it."
"I was thinking organisms."
"You think organisms can be monsters."
Nathan considered that, then nodded. "Fair."
T looked over the rail again. "I suppose there could be anything adapted to living there, within reason, things that never come near the surface because they don't need to."
"And things that perhaps couldn't survive here if they did. Pressure, temperature, chemistry, food availability, light or the absence of it." Nathan's enthusiasm entered his voice without becoming the rapid interrogation T had spent the voyage containing, because there was nobody here to question and no mechanism waiting to be understood by morning. "Imagine an animal whose entire world has never contained sunlight, not merely one individual but every generation before it. Everything about its senses would be shaped around a reality completely different from ours."
T considered that for a moment. "And it would probably think the surface was impossible."
Nathan turned toward him.
That answer pleased him enough that a smile appeared almost immediately. "Yes."
"If it thought at all."
"Of course."
"To something down there, this could be the mystery."
T gestured toward the ship behind them.
Nathan followed the movement and looked at Leviathan from that imagined perspective: an enormous disturbance passing through a ceiling of water far overhead, pressure and vibration announcing something incomprehensible, perhaps sensed only as noise by an animal that had no concept of engines, ships, men or war.
"That's rather good," Nathan said.
"Don't sound surprised."
"I am surprised."
"Go over the rail."
"You just told me not to."
"I've reconsidered."
Nathan laughed, but T's observation stayed with him. He looked downward and imagined perspective inverted, some creature moving through permanent darkness while the impossible vibration of Leviathan travelled through the water above. Perhaps it fled from the disturbance, perhaps followed it, perhaps lacked senses capable of distinguishing the ship from some other environmental event, or perhaps nothing larger than drifting life occupied the water anywhere near them.
The uncertainty was the appealing part.
"How deep do you think it is here?" T asked.
"I don't know."
"You could ask the captain."
Nathan looked at him.
T realised the mistake immediately.
Nathan's expression brightened. "He'll know whether there's a chart."
"No."
"You suggested it."
"I withdraw the suggestion."
"Or one of the navigation officers—"
"Nathan."
"You cannot introduce a question and then prohibit me from obtaining the answer."
"I just did."
Nathan looked genuinely offended.
T pushed away from the rail. "Inside."
"I am not a child."
"Then you can walk there without assistance."
"I wasn't finished."
"You'll still have an ocean tomorrow."
Nathan almost followed, then remained where he was and looked west into the darkness. "Not quite like this one."
T stopped.
Nathan's humour had gone by the time he continued, though the melancholy in his voice was quiet rather than heavy. "Tomorrow there's land, then trains, Kansas, hospitals and questions with answers attached somewhere if we look hard enough. This is different. We could spend the rest of our lives studying what's beneath us and still die knowing almost nothing about it."
"Does that bother you?"
Nathan thought about the question while the wind moved around them, then shook his head. "No. I think I like it."
"The not knowing?"
"The scale of it. The reminder." Nathan straightened from the rail and pulled his coat closer against the cold. "There should be things we don't know, T. Otherwise we'd eventually become unbearable."
T stared at him through the dark lenses.
Nathan frowned. "What?"
"You became unbearable ages ago."
Nathan's laughter disappeared into the wind, and they remained beside the rail for several more minutes before finally heading inside, leaving the Atlantic to continue existing without explanation beneath them.
The final morning began with no land in sight, but the knowledge that they were nearing America changed Leviathan before Nathan saw any evidence of the coast. Men who had settled into the crossing's routine began preparing for arrival, kit was checked and gathered, instructions moved through troop spaces, officers became less available for Nathan to inconvenience and the enormous human population aboard seemed to acquire a collective forward lean toward the destination. Nathan felt it in corridors that had become familiar during the previous week, where conversations now concerned disembarkation, onward orders, letters, leave, rail connections and the thousand practical matters that returned as soon as an ocean stopped separating a man from land.
Nathan's own preparations remained comparatively simple. The French records were secured, his notes packed, medical arrangements checked and the documentation Hale had assembled placed where it could be produced without digging through luggage under the gaze of an impatient American official. T had been ready before anyone else, naturally, and spent part of the day confirming routes and procedures around their eventual disembarkation with the same methodical attention he had given the ship itself.
Horsley required more negotiation.
Nathan took him out for one final period while their quarters remained quiet, allowing the rat to rest in his hands as he had several times during the crossing. Horsley was calm despite the changed activity beyond the cabin, his body warm against Nathan's palms while Nathan stroked him gently between the ears and along his back.
"You've survived the Atlantic," Nathan murmured, watching the whiskers move beneath his fingers. "Which is more than Mrs Hargreaves expected of your integrity."
"I never questioned his ability to survive," Mrs Hargreaves said from behind him.
Nathan looked over his shoulder. "Only his moral character."
"Precisely."
He smiled, gave Horsley another gentle stroke and returned him to the carrier, checking food and water before settling the covered section and securing both catches. Mrs Hargreaves approached immediately and tested one herself.
"He'll be disappointed," Nathan said.
"Why?"
"Eight and a half days and his grand escape never occurred."
"That we know of."
Nathan stared at her. "He's inside."
"Exactly where he wishes us to think he is."
"That is physically him."
Mrs Hargreaves looked at Nathan with mild pity. "You're very trusting for a scientist."
Nathan opened his mouth, searched unsuccessfully for a response that would not encourage her and picked up his luggage instead.
Their final passage through the ship revealed how thoroughly the crew had grown accustomed to them. T's armour, which had brought conversations to a halt during the first days, now earned nods from soldiers who had learned that the silent figure would usually return the gesture. Few had become brave enough to expect conversation from him, but a small inclination of T's head had somehow become sufficient for men to boast afterward that the black-armoured bastard knew them.
Nathan knew considerably more.
"Sullivan," he called when they encountered the fireman near one of the routes leading upward, "did the bearing stay quiet?"
Sullivan looked over and grinned. "All the way in, Professor."
"Then your adjustment worked."
"Looks that way."
"Unless—"
"No," T said.
Sullivan pointed toward him. "Listen to your keeper."
"He is not my keeper."
Mrs Hargreaves continued past with Horsley's carrier. "Unfortunately."
Several nearby sailors laughed, and Nathan looked after her with an expression of betrayal that only encouraged them.
He shook hands as they went, exchanged farewells and received more warmth than he had expected from men who had spent much of the previous week publicly complaining about him. Eight and a half days was not a long time, but life aboard a ship compressed acquaintance strangely. Nathan had learned their names, listened to their expertise, remembered their complaints and annoyed them with sufficient consistency to become part of the voyage's routine. They had learned in return that Professor Drake could be mocked safely, that T was more likely to rescue them from a conversation than murder anyone, and that Mrs Hargreaves could stop Nathan with a dinner plate more efficiently than most officers could with a direct order.
The captain found Nathan before the coast properly resolved itself, coming alongside him on deck while the professor watched the western horizon.
"Professor," he said, resting his hands behind his back, "I thought you might like to know that several of my engineers are looking forward to New York."
Nathan glanced at him. "I'm sure everyone is."
"Not for the same reason."
Nathan understood and smiled. "I've hardly bothered them."
The captain gave him a long look.
"T exaggerates."
"I've spoken to the engineers."
"They exaggerate too."
"One claims you asked him thirty-seven questions in a single visit."
"That cannot possibly be accurate."
The captain raised his eyebrows.
Nathan considered it. "He missed some."
The captain laughed and shook his head, looking toward the horizon again. "You know, when they told me Professor Nathan Drake would be aboard, I expected government trouble."
"And instead?"
"I got a man who wants to know why everything on my ship works."
Nathan rested both hands against the rail, feeling the faint vibration carried through the steel. "Knowing that it works is useful. Knowing why it works means you might understand what to do when it doesn't."
The captain's amusement softened. "That's what all those questions were about?"
"Mostly."
"Mostly?"
Nathan glanced toward him. "Some of it was curiosity."
"I knew it."
"A great deal of it was curiosity."
"There he is."
Nathan laughed, and for several seconds the two men simply watched the horizon while the wind carried the smell of the ship away behind them.
The measured sound of heavier footsteps approached.
The captain heard them too. "Your shadow?"
"T," Nathan corrected.
"I know his name now."
"That puts you ahead of most people."
T came alongside them, the grey daylight moving across his armour while two passing soldiers automatically gave him more room than necessary.
The captain regarded him. "Tell me something. Is it true your actual assignment is stopping this man from taking the ship apart?"
T considered Nathan.
Nathan's expression became warning enough that any sensible friend would have shown mercy.
"No," T said.
Nathan smiled triumphantly.
"My assignment doesn't provide enough manpower."
The captain bent forward laughing.
Nathan closed his eyes. "I dislike both of you."
"That's all right," the captain managed. "We're nearly there."
Land emerged by degrees rather than announcement, first as suggestions through haze and then as a coastline substantial enough that men began gathering wherever they could glimpse it without obstructing work. The harbour approaches brought more traffic, and Nathan's attention, which had spent the previous week descending mentally into the darkness beneath the Atlantic, abruptly spread outward across everything human beings had built upon its edge.
By late afternoon the light had begun its slow decline, and New York came properly into view.
Nathan had seen photographs.
As with Leviathan, the photographs had failed.
The city did not reveal itself as a single object. It accumulated across the horizon, first through smoke and distant structures, then through waterfront industry and finally through the vertical forms beyond, until Nathan realised he had unconsciously stepped closer to the rail. Mrs Hargreaves came to stand beside him with Horsley's secured carrier nearby, and even T, whose usual response to unfamiliar surroundings was to assess exits, threats and lines of approach rather than admire them, remained facing the skyline longer than necessary.
For several moments none of them spoke.
London had size enough to make a man feel small through accumulation, its streets, institutions, districts and history spreading outward until the city seemed less constructed than inherited. New York struck Nathan differently. It climbed.
Buildings rose from Manhattan in a concentration that made the skyline seem almost impatient with the ground, masonry and steel reaching upward in forms that would have dominated most European cities individually and here competed with one another for the evening sky. Some possessed ornate crowns or towers that caught the remaining light while their lower stories disappeared into haze, smoke and the dense confusion of the waterfront. Others rose in sheer blocks pierced by row after row of windows, each one implying rooms, offices, people, telephones, paperwork and businesses stacked vertically in a manner Nathan found almost audacious.
He had known, intellectually, that American cities were building upward.
Knowing it and approaching New York from the Atlantic were entirely different things.
"My God," Mrs Hargreaves said quietly.
Nathan turned toward her.
She rarely offered awe so freely.
Her gaze remained fixed upon the city. "How many people are in all of that?"
Nathan looked back at the skyline. "I don't know."
Mrs Hargreaves smiled faintly. "There's a first."
"I'm trying to appreciate the moment."
"Are you?"
"Yes."
"You've already counted at least three piers."
Nathan glanced at her.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Five," he admitted.
That drew a quiet laugh from her, though she did not look away for long.
The harbour itself refused to let the skyline possess all of their attention. Vessels moved everywhere, some large enough to demand space and others darting between them with the confidence of craft whose crews knew the water intimately. Tugs worked close to larger hulls, ferries carried civilians through routes that seemed alarmingly casual to Nathan after a week aboard a wartime troopship, cargo vessels and military transports occupied piers or moved through designated approaches, and smoke from funnels joined the industrial haze already hanging above the waterfront. Whistles travelled over the water from directions difficult to identify, answered by others farther away, while cranes stood along piers crowded with warehouses, railway connections, stacked cargo and men reduced by distance to moving shapes.
War had not transformed New York into France.
That difference struck Nathan almost as strongly as the buildings.
The French port had carried the exhaustion of a country living beside the wound itself: ambulances, wounded men, military urgency and infrastructure consumed by a conflict close enough that its consequences arrived physically every day. New York was militarised in another fashion. Uniforms were everywhere around the port, troop movements and shipping had become part of the harbour's machinery, and vessels connected the city to a war being fought across the ocean Nathan had just crossed, yet civilian life remained visibly entangled with it. Ferries still moved. Commercial traffic still pressed through the harbour. Lights appeared in windows as evening approached, offices and homes continuing their ordinary existence beside piers handling the requirements of an army.
Nathan found that almost stranger than France.
"Look at that," he murmured, gesturing toward the skyline where another tall building emerged more clearly as their angle changed.
Mrs Hargreaves followed his hand. "Which one?"
"The taller one behind—no, farther left."
"That does not narrow it down."
Nathan laughed. "Exactly."
She looked at him and saw the expression before he could hide it. "Oh dear."
"What?"
"You've found another city full of questions."
"I haven't asked any."
"Yet."
T stopped on Nathan's other side.
Nathan glanced at the black armour and then toward the city. "What do you think?"
"Large."
Mrs Hargreaves looked at him. "That's all?"
"Busy."
Nathan stared. "We discussed your imagination last night."
"And survived."
T's head turned slightly as another ferry moved across their view. "Different from London."
Nathan's expression softened into agreement. "Yes."
"Feels newer."
"Yes."
"Too many windows."
Nathan looked at him. "Too many?"
"Too many places for someone to watch from."
Mrs Hargreaves sighed. "And there he is."
Nathan laughed, but T had already begun assessing the harbour with his usual instincts, following rooftops, piers, approaches and the movement of people below. Nathan could hardly criticise him. His own attention was doing something similar for entirely different reasons, darting from cranes to railway lines, from railway lines to warehouses, from warehouses toward the towers beyond, trying to understand how all of it connected.
"Do you realise," Nathan said quietly to Mrs Hargreaves, "that somewhere inside all of that are probably a thousand offices devoted entirely to moving things from one place to another?"
"I had not realised that was the part you would find romantic."
"I'm not being romantic."
"You are looking at freight yards with the same expression most men reserve for cathedrals."
"They're interesting."
"Of course they are."
A group of American soldiers had gathered farther along the deck, many of them seeing the city with an excitement Nathan could hear even when he could not distinguish individual words. Some pointed toward familiar landmarks, others shouted guesses at buildings they plainly did not recognise, and one man removed his cap before another immediately knocked it back onto his head. Laughter followed. For men being carried through the machinery of a world war, the sight of home—or simply America—produced a looseness Nathan had not seen during the crossing.
He watched them for a moment rather than the city.
Then Mrs Hargreaves touched his sleeve.
"Nathan."
He followed her gaze.
The changing approach had opened more of Manhattan before them, and the sinking sun caught high windows in scattered bands so that portions of the city seemed briefly lit from within. Lower down, evening had already begun collecting among the piers, where lamps appeared one by one and moving vessels showed their own lights against darkening water. The vertical difference became more pronounced as the sky faded, upper floors still holding daylight while streets Nathan could barely see had already begun becoming night.
Nathan drew a slow breath.
For once no question immediately followed.
Mrs Hargreaves noticed and smiled. "There. You can do it."
"Do what?"
"Look at something without interrogating it."
"I have several questions."
"Of course you do."
"I simply haven't decided which one comes first."
"That is closer to the truth."
Nathan smiled and allowed himself to keep watching.
T's armour attracted fresh attention long before they reached the pier. Leviathan's crew had enjoyed eight and a half days to become accustomed to the black figure following Professor Drake through their ship; New York had not. Men on nearby craft stared upward, and as the troopship came nearer the waterfront Nathan noticed several people on the pier pointing openly toward T.
"T."
"Yes?"
"You're frightening America."
"It'll recover."
Mrs Hargreaves looked between them. "Try not to make an international incident before we've cleared the harbour."
"I am standing still," T said.
"That has never prevented you being alarming."
Nathan smiled. "I believe we've had this conversation."
"Several times."
"And yet no one appreciates how difficult it is to be criticised for standing."
"You wear black armour to dinner," Nathan said.
T turned toward him. "You invited me."
Mrs Hargreaves made a small approving sound.
Nathan looked from one to the other. "Again with the alliance."
The captain found them before docking was complete, approaching with the weary satisfaction of a man who had successfully delivered his ship, thousands of soldiers and one particularly troublesome professor across the Atlantic without losing any of them.
"There you are," he said. "I wanted to make certain you actually left."
Nathan turned from New York. "You make it sound as though I've been difficult."
The captain stopped and simply stared at him.
Mrs Hargreaves looked away toward the skyline.
T became suspiciously motionless.
Nathan frowned. "What?"
"I have engineers who are going to search their own machinery tomorrow morning simply to make certain you haven't hidden somewhere below."
"I never entered anywhere without permission."
"That isn't what they're afraid of."
Nathan smiled. "They'll miss me."
"One or two might."
"More than that."
"Perhaps." The captain's amusement softened as he offered his hand. "It has been an unusual crossing, Professor."
Nathan accepted it warmly. "Thank you for indulging me."
"Indulging you?"
"For the access."
"Ah. I thought you meant the crew."
Nathan laughed. "Them as well."
The captain glanced toward T. "And thank you for preventing him from learning absolutely everything aboard my ship."
"I failed," T replied.
"You slowed him down."
"Marginally."
"That may have saved lives."
Nathan looked between them. "This is becoming insulting."
Mrs Hargreaves adjusted her hold on Horsley's enclosure. "Only becoming?"
The captain laughed, then noticed the carrier and apparently remembered the other eccentric passenger whose presence he had accepted eight days earlier. "And the rat?"
"Still contained," Mrs Hargreaves replied.
Nathan sighed. "There was never any doubt."
"There remains doubt."
The captain looked at Mrs Hargreaves, then at Nathan and finally toward Horsley, who was doing absolutely nothing suspicious, before making the wise decision not to enter an argument that had apparently occupied the entire Atlantic.
"Good luck in Kansas, Professor," he said, shaking Nathan's hand once more before releasing it. "Whatever it is you're looking for, I hope you find your answer."
Nathan's attention drifted past him toward New York, where more lights were appearing as evening settled over the harbour. Beyond those buildings lay railways extending across a country whose physical scale he had studied on maps but had never experienced, and somewhere along those lines waited Kansas, Camp Funston, patients, physicians, records and a respiratory outbreak that remained stubbornly undefined.
"So do I."
The captain hesitated just long enough for Nathan to notice. "One more thing."
"Yes?"
"If you ever sail with me again, I'm assigning each engineer a maximum number of questions."
Nathan smiled immediately. "Per day?"
The captain's expression fell.
"Per voyage."
"That seems unnecessarily restrictive."
"Goodbye, Professor Drake."
"I could submit additional questions in writing."
The captain had already turned away.
"That isn't a no," Nathan called after him.
Without looking back, the captain raised one hand in a gesture Nathan chose, generously, to interpret as farewell.
T came alongside him. "He hates you."
"He came personally to say goodbye."
"To ensure you disembarked."
"That was humour."
"I don't think it was."
Mrs Hargreaves started toward the disembarkation point with Horsley secured beside her. "If the two of you are quite finished, America is waiting."
Nathan followed for several steps before stopping once more at the rail.
The others noticed and waited.
Behind him lay eight and a half days of Atlantic water, its surface now darkening into the same black immensity he had watched the previous night with T. Humanity had drawn routes across it, sent cables beneath portions of it, fought wars over it and built Leviathan large enough to carry thousands of men from one continent to another, yet beneath those routes remained depths neither Nathan nor anyone around him could pretend to understand completely.
Ahead was the opposite expression of human ambition.
New York rose into the evening with lights appearing by the hundreds and then thousands, tall buildings standing against the last colour of the sky while the harbour below churned with ferries, tugs, transports, whistles, smoke, cranes and men. The city seemed almost to challenge the ocean behind him, as though one represented everything the world still concealed and the other everything human beings intended to build despite that ignorance.
Nathan found himself smiling.
He turned toward Mrs Hargreaves and discovered that she, too, had paused to look back at the skyline rather than urging him onward. The city lights reflected faintly in her eyes, and for a moment Nathan remembered their first dinner at sea, the wine swaying between them and the quiet declaration that had altered something he had never thought to name.
"Well?" he asked.
Mrs Hargreaves looked toward the towers once more before answering. "I think your mother would be very annoyed if she knew you brought me to America before her."
Nathan laughed softly. "Probably. If i knew where she was"
The lie came smoothly enough that Mrs Hargreaves lips thinned, the interpreted sore spot making her regret the words as easily as they came.
Nathan smiled, then looked toward the city again. "I'm glad you came."
Mrs Hargreaves's expression softened. "So am I."
T waited several feet away, apparently granting them privacy while simultaneously making certain no one approached unnoticed.
Mrs Hargreaves adjusted Horsley's carrier. "Although I reserve judgement concerning him."
Nathan followed her gaze. "He hasn't escaped."
"Yet."
"We've reached America."
"He may have been waiting for America."
Nathan stared at her.
Mrs Hargreaves continued toward the gangway.
"You cannot possibly believe that."
"I didn't say I did."
"You implied it."
"That sounds like interpretation, Professor."
Nathan looked toward T. "Do something."
T began walking after her. "She's your mother."
Nathan stopped dead.
Mrs Hargreaves's shoulders moved once.
She was laughing.
Nathan stared after both of them with open betrayal before hurrying to catch up. "That is not what she said."
"It was close enough."
"It was not remotely close enough."
"She said son."
"I was there."
"Then why are you arguing?"
"Because you're deliberately—"
A sailor they passed grinned toward T. "Still working, are you?"
T inclined his head toward Nathan. "Unfortunately."
Nathan looked around at the laughter that followed him and realised, with some irritation, that Leviathan had managed one final victory before releasing him.
The gangway brought them down from the enormous ship into a harbour that became louder, dirtier and more immediate with every step. From the deck New York had been a skyline; at pier level it became people. Porters shouted, military personnel directed troop movements, papers were checked beneath electric lamps, carts rattled over uneven surfaces and steam drifted around machinery while whistles from somewhere beyond the warehouses answered the deeper calls of ships in the harbour. English surrounded Nathan in American accents sufficiently varied that he began unconsciously listening for differences, and the uniforms were familiar enough in purpose while foreign enough in cut and detail to reinforce the fact that they had crossed into another country rather than simply another British port.
T immediately became a problem for everyone who had not read the correct paperwork.
Heads turned.
One military policeman looked at him, looked again and then glanced toward the officer checking their documents with the unmistakable hope that someone else had already accepted responsibility.
Nathan noticed and smiled.
"Don't," T said.
"I haven't done anything."
"You're about to."
"I was merely appreciating the expression."
Mrs Hargreaves, standing beside Horsley's carrier while an official worked through the documentation Hale had prepared, sighed. "We have been in America for perhaps three minutes."
"Technically we were in American jurisdiction aboard the ship."
"Nathan."
He stopped.
The paperwork saved them from becoming a harbour attraction. Names were checked, authorisations examined, Horsley's existence rediscovered and reluctantly accepted, and T's documents produced the same sequence of reactions they had in France: suspicion, confusion, recognition that someone considerably more senior had already signed the relevant permission, and a rapid decision that further curiosity offered little professional reward.
Beyond the controlled area, the city waited.
Nathan caught his first real glimpse of street traffic through the opening between two warehouses, and the effect was almost comical after eight days of ocean. Motor cars, wagons and pedestrians occupied the same world with streetcars and delivery vehicles, people moving beneath signs and electric lights while buildings climbed beyond them so steeply that Nathan had to tilt his head to see their upper portions. The smell changed as well. Salt and harbour water remained behind them, but coal smoke, horse manure, petrol, hot machinery, food, damp timber and the collective breath of a vast city layered themselves over one another until New York possessed an atmosphere as recognisable as any laboratory.
Mrs Hargreaves emerged beside him and stopped.
Nathan had been prepared for the skyline to impress her.
He was less prepared for the expression with which she regarded the street.
"Well," she murmured.
Nathan smiled. "Still glad you came?"
She watched a motor car pass close behind a wagon while a streetcar bell sounded farther along the road. "Ask me after we survive crossing it."
T came to stand beside them.
Nathan gestured toward the city. "Now?"
T studied the traffic, windows, rooftops, alleys and crowd with professional suspicion. "Too many people."
"That is your response to New York?"
"It is an observation."
Nathan looked upward at the buildings, their windows glowing against the deepening evening while streets below remained full of movement. "Mine is that we're going to need more time."
Mrs Hargreaves immediately turned toward him. "No."
"I haven't suggested anything."
"You were about to suggest seeing the city."
"We have to pass through it."
"We have a train to organise."
"Not this instant."
"Nathan."
He smiled.
She knew that smile.
"We have crossed an ocean," he said, lifting one hand toward the towers beyond the waterfront, "arrived in a city none of us has ever seen, and you expect me not to look at it?"
"I expect you not to disappear into it."
"That is completely different."
"It becomes the same thing remarkably quickly."
T looked between them. "She's right."
"Of course you think she's right."
"Usually."
Nathan stared at him, then toward Mrs Hargreaves. "You've corrupted him."
"I think you'll find he arrived that way."
The city continued moving around them, entirely indifferent to the argument. Somewhere farther inland an elevated train passed with a distant metallic thunder Nathan could not yet place, and his head turned instinctively toward the sound.
Mrs Hargreaves saw it happen.
"No."
Nathan looked back. "I didn't say anything."
"You don't need to."
T's dark lenses followed the direction of the noise. "Train."
"I know."
Mrs Hargreaves looked from one to the other and seemed suddenly aware that she had brought two curious men into New York, one of whom possessed a scientific obsession with machinery and the other a professional compulsion to learn routes.
"Oh, this was a mistake."
Nathan smiled. "You said you were glad you came."
"That was before the railway made a noise."
Another metallic rumble travelled through the city.
Nathan turned toward it again.
Mrs Hargreaves took him lightly by the sleeve.
The gesture was so familiar that for a moment the Atlantic, France and the enormous city around them disappeared, leaving only the old rhythm of The Knapp: Nathan attempting to wander toward something interesting and Mrs Hargreaves deciding that he had somewhere else to be.
"Come along, son," she said.
Nathan looked at her.
She smiled just enough to make clear that the word had been chosen deliberately.
T turned away, but not before Nathan saw the slight movement of his shoulders.
"You," Nathan said.
"I said nothing."
"You were about to."
"Apparently I don't need to."
Mrs Hargreaves began leading Nathan toward the waiting transport arrangements, and he allowed himself to be moved several steps before glancing back at Leviathan. From the pier the ship was once again immense, her hull rising behind the activity of the harbour while men who had become familiar over the previous eight and a half days disappeared back into her scale. Somewhere inside were engineers now temporarily safe from his questions, a captain who had survived his curiosity and machinery Nathan had only begun to understand.
Beyond her lay the Atlantic.
Ahead lay New York.
Farther west lay Kansas.
Nathan looked once more at the illuminated towers, the harbour smoke moving between them and the thousands of windows shining against the evening, then adjusted his grip on his luggage and caught up properly with Mrs Hargreaves and T.
The mystery beneath the ocean could wait.
So could most of New York, however reluctantly.
Kansas had been waiting longer.