Free The Dead Gentleman by Matthew Cody Page B

like a leaf in a storm. Each lurch threatened to upend what little remained of breakfast down my front—I’d had to change clothes three times so far since daybreak, and I was now draped in one of Scott’s oversized shirts. I would’ve felt ridiculous if I hadn’t been so busy praying for a quick death.
    “Still feeling seasick?” asked Scott, in what I suspected was the man’s one-and-only tone of voice—that of the booming announcement. He shouted commands as if he were piloting a ship of eighty men, but from what I saw, he and Merlin made up the whole crew.
    “Don’t worry, it’ll get easier,” he said.
    Something that Scott mentioned earlier suddenly struck me. “What do you mean, you conquered the last frontier of
this planet
? What other planet do you mean?”
    The Captain smiled. “Countless others, my boy. Countless! Other worlds, hidden under our very noses. Stuffed away in the folds of time and space!”
    “Now you’re just talking nonsense,” I said. “You’re having me on.” A fancy underwater ship was one thing, traveling to other planets was another.
    “Was that bridge troll nonsense? You think that fellow came from your neighborhood? Or Brooklyn, perhaps?”
    I didn’t answer. He had a point, there.
    “BEGINNING PREPARATIONS TO DIVE! You see, Tommy, that troll came through a portal—kind of a doorway to another world. Most people think of reality as being a dependable, solid thing, but it’s actually more like a block of Swiss cheese.Full of little pockets and holes. Full of doors. Can’t say we understand the science behind the portals, but they tend to appear in the most ordinary places. Old gardens, cellars, behind bookcases, even. Your troll came here from another world where blokes like him are commonplace. Probably the world of Faerie, judging by his looks, or maybe New Hamelin. Usually the doors stay closed, but it happens sometimes that a creature finds his way through. Most keep a low profile, since it doesn’t pay to draw too much attention. This nasty fellow just got too big for his britches, started making waves.”
    My stomach gurgled again at the mention of “waves.”
    “Besides,” the Captain continued. “The vast majority of people wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual about him if he were napping in their own bed. They wouldn’t see past the Veil.”
    “The Veil?”
    The Captain nodded. “The Veil is a kind of energy field that hangs over everything. Invisible, imperceptible, but it’s a part of nature, as real as the open sky or this vast ocean. And it’s very good at reckoning what belongs on Earth and what doesn’t. It softens the harsh realities of things that are too
different
—things most folks aren’t ready to face. It blurs the edges, so to speak, and makes the unbelievable into something … acceptable. It hides the portals to those other worlds and disguises the beings who come through them. To the common eye, a troll that crosses into our world becomes a big, ugly lug of a man, though still just a man. But the Veil is not all-powerful, and there are those who can see past it, who can lift the Veil and see the truth. Children often have the gift, which is why you’ve been having so much trouble these last few weeks. I’d say your Veil has been lifted—and then some.”
    “I’m not a child,” I said, maybe a bit too quickly. “I take care of myself.”
    “Mm-hmm.” Scott nodded. “Of course, my mistake.” He looked at me for a moment. I felt my cheeks redden beneath their greenish tinge.
    “But as I was saying,” he went on. “There are precious few adults these days who can see past the Veil. Some artists manage glimpses, but even they usually blame it all on an overactive imagination in the end. Take this ship, for instance. I knew a Frenchman once who looked out the window of a coastal hotel one blustery afternoon and spotted a great metal ship rising up out of the waves! A ship that had emerged intact from beneath the sea!