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The Ships of Aleph
    Every day, I ask myself the same question: would I be happier now if I had never sailed off the edge of the world?
    As a child, I wondered what lay beyond the sea. One of my earliest memories is of asking my father that very question as he sat by the fire after a hard day hauling the nets. He said simply, ‘Such matters are for God to know, Lachin,’ and drew on his pipe. I may have pestered him further; I remember mother telling me to let him rest.
    But for me, God was not the answer. God was real, of course. He looked down on us every day; sometimes he answered our prayers. And sometimes – rare, terrible times – he sent punishment.
    I saw that for myself once. I was eight years old and had recently experienced a small injustice of my own. I was playing in the woods with my brother and his friends. The boys shook the tree I was climbing and I fell and broke my leg. They claimed it was an accident, of course. The injury healed slowly, and left me with a permanent limp. During my recovery I was housebound, and overheard the women gossiping. Our neighbour’s brother believed his wife had been with a peddler who had passed through the village not long before. The talk went too and fro, as such things do, until one stormy spring night he took her up to the cliff and pushed her over. He claimed she’d wandered out alone after an argument and must have fallen. The priest said the truth was for God to decide. So, the next time a storm rolled in, the man was pegged out on the cliff top above where his wife’s body had been found. Sure enough the lightning came, and the next morning he was reduced to a burnt and lifeless corpse. He was guilty of killing his wife, and God had judged him. But what of the wife? Had she wronged him, or was that purely gossip? We would never know now, and though the incident was talked of for years afterwards no one other than me cared that the full facts would never be known. I did not want gristle to chew over with my fellow villagers: I wanted reasons, explanations. I wanted the truth.
    Because the sea is the heart of life on the coast, it was only natural that my questioning mind kept coming back to that. I wondered at the tides: they came and went with the seasons, so something in the heavens must cause them – but what? I wondered at the fish: do they venture beyond the bay out into the Current? Perhaps, my father said, but we cannot go there. Why, I asked? Because our small boats would be destroyed in the open sea; besides, he added, we have no need: God provides.
    Though I loved to go out on my father’s boat, my lameness and my tendency to day-dream made me a liability. I was apprenticed to the priest, who taught me my letters and what wisdom he had. I used that knowledge to record my observations on the few scraps of precious paper I was allowed. I even created a table of tides, which some of the fishermen said was of use, though perhaps they were humouring me. Most people preferred knowledge passed down by word of mouth or won by hard experience.
    When I reached my sixteenth year, I persuaded the priest to write to his superiors in the hope of finding me a rich sponsor in one of the inland burghs. I began to dream of travelling to places where knowledge was prized, maybe even to Omphalos itself with its University and Cathedral.
    No reply came. But next spring, the Duke arrived.
    He came without warning, accompanied by fifty men and supplies sufficient to last the summer. He told us to gather by the well and explained that he had come to our ‘modest hamlet’ because our bay was the most suitable for his project. Before explaining what this project was, he went on to say that he had heard this place was home to a fisherman’s son with a keen and enquiring mind, he hoped to enlist this young man’s help.
    Around me, people drew back. My voice shaking, I asked what he planned to do.
    He told me he wanted to discover what lay beyond the Current. He would build a