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... a pair of lips?

‘Is there something wrong?’ asked the mouth.

‘Er,’ said Chris. ‘Er.’

‘What do you see?’ asked Matheson Catcher.

Erskine Morris cast his eyes around the room, trying to avoid looking back at the horror lurking out in the corridor.

‘Whahhg?’ he heard himself say.

Catcher fixed his little round eyes on his prey. Prey?

Damnation, Morris, you’re letting the fornicating idiot get to you. ‘You are aware, of course, that the human species has reached a critical point in its development.’

Erskine nodded dumbly. Catcher joined in with the nod.

‘The Age of Reason is the single most significant occurrence in the entire history of humanity, Mr Morris. For millennia, mankind has been bound by ignorance and superstition. We have been at the mercy of chaos. At the mercy of Cacophony.’

‘Cacophony?’ Erskine queried, without thinking.

‘Cacophony. The spirit of the irrational. The force that makes sane men believe in magic. That makes us as hysterical as women.’ Catcher was still nodding, like a machine that someone had forgotten to turn off. ‘But we have it in our power to end this tyranny of nature, Mr Morris. To bend the terrible forces of Cacophony to our will. We have a responsibility to make this world a world of Reason, built by rationalists, not by charlatans or jungle-gods or witch-doctors.’

Erskine nodded again, but on the inside he was saying: Reason? Have you seen that, that thing out in the corridor?

Christ, man, is that what you call Reason?

And perhaps Catcher knew what he was thinking, because he turned and looked the monstrosity straight in the metaphorical eye. ‘A creature of havoc, Mr Morris. An agent of Cacophony. But by mastering the powers of Reason, the beast has been tamed. Subverted to the will of the... to our will.’

Erskine was half-expecting the cursed man to shout ‘All Hail Reason!’ at that point, but instead there was just a moment’s silence. He suddenly realized that Catcher was expecting some kind of reaction.

So he just nodded again.

‘This is the purpose of our group,’ Catcher concluded.

‘This should be the purpose of the Renewal Society, and of every other such society that this nation has produced. To make our Earth a New Jerusalem of science and stability. The world is balanced between Reason and the abyss of reasonlessness, Mr Morris. We have a duty to the future.’

He made a mechanical motion with his arm, indicating the room around them. ‘This is what Reason can achieve,’ Catcher concluded. ‘And Reason will remake the world.’

The thunderheads opened, spilling out heat and fire and bad fortune. More than light. A flash of fate. And had there been a gunshot? Duquesne could have sworn she heard a gunshot, exploding out across New York.

There was a low groan from below her feet, or perhaps a hundred groans in chorus. She looked across the deck. There were two seamen to starboard, faceless and nameless members of the crew, engaged in a heated debate about the relative merits of prostitution. They hadn’t noticed it. The flashpoint had passed, and they hadn’t noticed a thing.

But below deck...

She slid across the boards as the first drops of rain began to fall, stopping before the hatch that led down into the cargo hold. She glanced back at the mariners. They weren’t watching her, hadn’t even noticed her. Duquesne tugged back the bolt and pulled open the hatch.

She was ready for the smell. Ready enough that she didn’t have to cover her face, or shut the hatch again, or even turn away. Even when she climbed down the ladder, she kept breathing normally, determined to remain in control of her senses.

There were perhaps eighty blacks in the cargo hold. Most of them were laid out along the floor, backs slick with spilled water and human waste, though a few of the smaller ones were loaded onto the shelves that had been bolted to the walls. The waves lapped against the side of the ship in perfect synchronization with the tides of heat and fever that washed across the hold, a living spectrum of body-scent and branded flesh. If the cargo made any sound, Duquesne