"So it's Govert's dream which I bottled", Lisabeth knew, while she looked at the helpless scientist, who didn't seem to know how he had got into the water.
"How....., what?" he stuttered, standing in a huge fan of fantastic colours, which were apparently unnoticed by the crew but which almost blinded Lisabeth. Nevertheless, she fought her way to him and pulled him by a sleeve of his black coat now glossy with sea water.
"Come on Govert...." she said, "You, at your age. You certainly will catch a cold if you stay here like that".
Gosseling followed her like a puppy across the deck to her cabin. There she made him take off his clothes before she led him to her berth where she tenderly tucked him in.
"What's happening?" he asked when, after a while, the quiet was restored.
"Your dream has ended", she said bluntly. "So has mine, by the way", she added a little later. She was then silent for a while. "What was the last thing you did before you found yourself in the water?" she enquired, already knowing the answer.
"I have to think about that for a moment", the scientist meditated. "I woke up and went to your carriage. That's what I can remember anyway".
"And you were thirsty", Lisabeth added. "So you looked around for something to drink".
Suddenly the scientist could remember everything. "Of course, the bottle!" he said, shaken. "That was it, wasn't it?"
Lisabeth didn't want to confirm this right away.
"I've been walking around with that soldier's bottle for quite some time, Govert", she said, taking a rum bottle from under her pillow. "Just take a look at this".
Gosseling reached for the bottle and inspected its contents.
"There are Muscovite Colours in it", he saw at once.
"That's correct", Lisabeth said. "It's you own dream about the Glasswork".
"My dream?" he asked in wonder. "My dream is supposed to be in this bottle. How can it be?"
"I did it", Lisabeth said. "To make an end to it all".
For some moments, Gosseling had to reflect deeply, but even then didn't seem willing to believe it.
"It still keeps you busy, doesn't it?" he asked. "You still can't admit that you had the Glasswork destroyed when in a stubborn mood. You carry around the fragments to conceal the fact that you were wrong. Now that you have killed my dream by permitting me to see all those broken pieces, then my dream isn't over because of that, but because of a stupid bottle filled with sea water!"
"But that's the same!" Lisabeth cried out in desperation. "Don't you understand anything? It's all the same! You never would have looked into that bottle, if I hadn't caught your dream! That's how they try to turn a dream into a nightmare. The Glasswork is the same as Stormy's spray water and Mary O'Lein is...".
"What am I?" Mary O'Lein asked with interest.
"I didn't know you were here", Lisabeth said with an unexpected sudden calm.
"I knocked three times, but you are making a hell of a lot of noise," the captain answered with a generous laugh. "Outside there is even more noise", she continued good- humouredly, while she wiped her forehead with her hand which held her whip. "And I only just manage to ensure my authority".
"What kind of problem is it?" Lisabeth asked.
Mary was amused by her would-be lack of understanding.
"Him!" she pointed. "He's rather alive for someone who was knifed in his chest and then got a seaman's burial right after!"
"Who cares?" Lisabeth said, unconcerned. "One can always make a problem out of nothing".
"Very funny", Mary retorted. "But you're right. I don't care either, but unfortunately the entire crew does. Those little men are not very broad-minded. In fact they are rather superstitious, you know".
"I understand", Lisabeth said. "I fully understand, but his presence is just a by-product of sloppiness. A minor failure in my plan which, by the way, promises beyond expectation."
"Oh does it? And would it be possible for this minor failure to disappear from this ship as soon as possible?" Mary O'Lein politely asked. "We still have to go to Vladivostoc with the Stormy and therefore we dearly need those superstitious little men".
"Can't we make them believe in a kind of fairy tale? You must know them by scores. Something about sea monsters, perhaps." Lisabeth suggested.
"Oh Lisabeth, please stop that nonsense!" Mary laughed. "This isn't kindergarten. This is the Stormy!"
"A proud ship of Her Majesty's fleet" Lisabeth added.
"Is the Muscovite Glassware aboard?" Gosseling asked, cutting across the discussion.
"In a way", Mary O'Lein answered unruffled. "Anyway, we're going to bring it back to Upper Mongolia".
Govert was not very satisfied with the answer. "How can you bring it back when it's only 'in a way' aboard this ship?"
"Stop it, Govert!" Lisabeth cried. "Everything is fine with the Glasswork as long as you don't ask too many questions. The Glassware will go to Upper Mongolia and that's that. The case is closed! Hear what Mary O'Lein says."
Govert didn't seem very impressed by her fierce words.
"Perhaps Alexej has it?" he continued, undisturbed. "Is that what you mean by 'in a way'?"
"Stop it, Govert. You can't do that here! Just listen. The crew is alrady revolting again." Lisabeth was becoming nervous because of the continous yelling from the sailors, who seemed to be right in front of her cabin. "You have to stop right now, Govert! Think of something else, vanilla ice cream or an aardvark. Everything is fine, but don't try to figure out how things work here, please!" Entreatingly, she looked at him, but already saw that was no use. Govert Gosseling was trying hard to place his recent adventures in a understandable context, while the crew wanted his blood.
"Quick Govert, get dressed", Lisabeth said, seeing just one option left.
Mary O'Lein understood what Lisabeth was up to. As soon as the scientist had roughly put on his clothes, Mary O'lein threw the door wide open and showed her booty to the crew, who seemed to have all gathered at the cabin door.
"Backward, stupid cattle!" she shouted. "Let the captain pass!" and she cracked her whip until they cleared a path for her. Then the three walked to the foredeck.
"You really have to go through it, Govert, but you won't feel any pain", whispered Lisabeth before she, with Mary O'Lein's assistance, pushed the scientist, courageously defending himself, over the bulwark.
The scene had a reassuring effect on the crew, who then went back to work without further grumbles.
"He didn't know his place", Lisabeth said when the scene was over. "He certainly would have brought us severe trouble". And the captain fully agreed.
"You look shaken, Govert!" Anne-Christine said when she became aware that Govert was roaming about in her carriage. "Did you sleep well?"
Hearing her voice, Govert dropped the soldier's bottle in surprise, letting it hang at the chair's back as before.
"I slept, but I went through an awful nightmare", he confessed. "I was aboard the Stormy and Lisabeth just threw me over the bulwark into the water."
"That's a nightmare indeed", Anne-Christine agreed. "Lisabeth never would do such a terrible thing to you in reality. She couldn't, because she has become very attached to you".
"I thought so myself, but when I dreamt, it seemed ever so realistic", the scientist said, hardly convinced by the soothing words of the Lady of the Castle. "And there was another thing", he added. "I was there because she had caught my dream in a bottle. That made it turn into a nightmare. And the Glasswork was in smithereens!"
"You certainly passed an awful night", Anne-Christine commented. "So many dreadful things together, You are still soaking wet through sheer worry!"
"That's sea water!" Govert replied, sure of himself, which made Anne-Christine laugh outright.
"Just look at how that sweet little Lisabeth sleeps. So innocently, she wouldn't even hurt a fly, would she?"
"I don't know, Anne", Govert answered. "In my opinion, I slept as usual, but the nightmare began long after I was fully dressed. It started right here, immediately after I took Lisabeth's bottle to...."
"Good morning, everybody!" Lisabeth cried, jumping out of bed and in the best of moods, starting to dress without losing a second. "Is something wrong?" she asked when she looked at Anne-Christine's and Govert's faces.
"Govert had a bad dream", Anne-Christine explained. "He's just a bit upset about it."
"I dream badly every night" Lisabeth said, kissing Govert on his chin.
"You still aren't wet behind your ears and you smell like salt water", she teased him. She looked him straight in the eye, while she clipped the soldier's bottle to her belt and saw that she had done right when she made him disappear from the Stormy in time. A few moments longer might have turned to disaster.
"I also dreamt about the Stormy", she said.
"That's hardly a surprise. You dream of the Stormy every night", Anne-Christine added. "How are things going?"
"Oh, quite all right, as planned", Lisabeth began. "We were on the verge of a mutiny last night, but now everything is back to normal again and Mary O'Lein still intends to bring the Glasswork back to Upper Mongolia, which seems to me a most promising development."
"Not if they arrive there before us!" Anne-Christine retorted.
"And not if the Glasswork is only on the Stormy 'in a way'", Govert added.
Lisabeth waved those objections away. "With a little confidence, everything will turn out fine. The only way that things turn out wrong is when you start going your own way. That's over now. The whole process is in a much too delicate stage."
Govert answered with an uncertain "hum" while Anne said: "Well, for the moment, I still found it all rather amusing, but it mustn't take too long from now on."
"I was told that they are working on a train track right into Mongolia but that it isn't finished," Lisabeth said. "So we'll have to travel the last stretch on horseback. Then we'll go to the mine in which Mary O'Lein wants to have the Glasswork vanish. Isn't that a good idea?"
"All right then. But as soon as this happens, we'll return to Weezebeecke", Anne-Christine stated. "I'm longing to see Ruyters and to sleep in my own bed again".
"But first, let's have breakfast", proposed Lisabeth, pulling the bell-string, which made a servant leave the last wagon to ask them what they needed.
"Lisabeth", said Govert Gosseling a week later, when he knew they were alone for the first time, "the Glasswork doesn't exist any more, does it? You carry it at this very moment in the bottle at your belt, don't you?"
"What I have at my girdle is of no interest, Govert", Lisabeth answered. "You have been on the Stormy twice, so you know that something like 'the Muscovite Glassware Dream' still exists there. And I'm doing everything to prevent this dream turning into a nightmare".
"Of course you are, and you do it most cleverly", Govert had to admit. "But if you confine yourself solely to these few carriages, then you can forget it all. You've known for some time now that the Glassware is gone. I know it, too and Anne- Christine doesn't need any proof. She knows this kind of thing by intuition and she is here only because she loves our company, it seems".
"You are a real scientist!" Lisabeth said laughing. "If you confine yourself solely to these few carriages, as if that were possible. The Muscovite Dream survives only when you keep on thinking in two parallel ways. Haven't you yet understood that? The Glassware still exists on the Stormy in the shape of the spray water in which the same colours are present or were present, because I caught them now in Mary O'Lein's rum bottle!" She tried to look sincere, but could hardly prevent herself bursting into laughter. "Come on, Govert!" she said. "Don't complicate it all. We'll bring that Glasswork to Upper Mongolia and everything will turn out fine". "Also my disorientation", she added silently.
"Which disorientation?" asked Govert, who seemed to have overheard her last words after all.
Lisabeth didn't mind. "You have your problems with a few pieces of Crystal, which make your world spin, but I have also a dream which enables me to continue believing in the future. A dream which I have had for a long time and don't ask me why. No-one will ever be able to tell me whether this dream will come true or not. I think it will, though I'm not fully convinced yet. But I strongly believe that I may have found the right entrance to reality after all. That entrance is at the crossing between dream and reality. At that crossing, the difference between the two doesn't exist. They are similar at that point and that's the only place where you could jump from one to the other. This happened once before when your Time Projector in my Crystal Castle managed to show the present time. That caused my jump to the Stormy. At such a crossing dream and reality unite, for they become one for a moment. So everything will have an end, for if there are no dreams left, everything will become the same, won't it? I don't want to lose my dream, so I travel with you, like I travel aboard the Stormy. On the very spot where Anne and you, as well as Mary O'Lein and Alexej, pass along, there my journey will end and there I will be able to regain control over my dreams by making the big leap once more. If I did that now, it wouldn't work. You can leave the Stormy but you certainly mustn't do it by trying to understand all that happens. You saw what happened when you tried to do that. There was an instant mutiny. You just can't do that and I won't do it any more." I let myself float to the crossing between dream and reality, without wondering what the truth is. We just have to clinch our teeth for a moment, to make it all turn out fine, that's what I promise. Besides, if we went back now, then we would always would feel it was unfinished."
"That certainly would be the case", Gosseling admitted, while a thousand thoughts fought with each other in his head.
The Stormy was being moored just when the train reached the end of the track. The Czarina provided three little steppe horses, which were given saddles and victuals, so that Anne- Christine, Lisabeth and Govert could continue their voyage without delay.
There were more problems with the Stormy. The authorities in Vladivostoc found it hard to cope with the unexpected arrival of a British man-o'-war, especially at a time of international tension. After hours of tough negotiations, Mary O'Lein was still at point zero.
"We would just like to travel to Upper Mongolia with three persons. That's all. We have no hostile purposes", she repeated for the hundredth time to a suspicious civil servant. "We just need some horses and some victuals."
"You need a visa", the civil servant added. "And that will bring you severe trouble for you are a British citizen and it happens to be that the seal for British citizens has been lost for some months now!"
"Oh no, that can't be true!" Mary O'Lein exclaimed in desperation. "Why exactly the seal for British citizens? You may lose any seal in the world but not my seal!"
"That's the way it is", the unshaken civil servant continued. "But you don't have to despair, for we already gave orders to the sealmaker in Novosibirsk to make a new one."
"And how long will that take?" Mary O'Lein hopefully asked.
"Without additional complications, it will take about a month", the civil servant estimated. "But that's far from certain for, at the moment, even with that seal, we can't declare those entries as we ran out of D-forms this very morning. I just filled in the very last D-form which I possessed.
"And another D-form will take yet another month?" Mary O'Lein wondered.
"Far more than that", the civil servant declared. "You never know with D-forms, but they'll take at least two or three months".
"Landlubbers", she groaned. "They only cause trouble! But you don't lose such a seal that easily. We two, we'll look for it right now. We'll search through the entire office until we've found it."
"You can't!" the upset civil servant stuttered. "This office has never been tidied. Since I've been in charge here, which is 50 years, this has never happened and I prefer to keep it that way!"
"You just wait and see, grandpa!" Mary O'Lein cried, losing patience. "The choice is yours: either you search with me or I'll blow your office to pieces with all the A- B- and C-forms it contains. Well?" While Mary O'Lein crawled around the wooden floor on her knees, together with an aged civil servant, Anne-Christine, Lisabeth and Govert Gosseling were riding through a landscape which formed the transition between the Siberian tundras and the vast Mongolian grass-covoured lands. Lisabeth enjoyed feeling the wind blow through her hair again after a long period in a railroad carriage.
"This is where I feel at home", she declared, spurring her horse.
Only at dusk, after Anne-Christine and Gosseling had begged her three times, was she prepared to dismount and to help install a provisional camp. Near a fire made with loose birch-tree branches, they all spread their blankets, ate some dry flat bread and made tea in their own jugs, before they laid down to rest with their heads on their saddles.
"What a bunch of idiots!" Mary O'Lein cried after she returned with three horses to the Stormy late that night.
"What was the matter?" Lisabeth called back from the ship.
"A sheer disaster!" Mary O'Lein said. "A little civil servant had lost his seal. But we made it and we can leave now!"
"Now?" Lisabeth wonderd.
"We've lost enough time", was the captain's opinion. "Grab some food, take a warm blanket and come along!"
"And don't forget to tell Alexej to take the Glassware with him!" she called after Lisabeth.
"The bottle!" Lisabeth thought, while runing to and fro. "I may forget everything else but not Govert's dream!" And this was the first thing she gathered from under her pillow. Then she warned Alexej and collected all the other things she would need.
Carrying only the most necessary belongings, the three seamen were travelling together on horseback not long afterwards. Neither journey met any complications and soon, after a few days, they were riding through the vast hilly Mongolian landscape where very few other people were to be found. From time to time, they were lucky when they could buy some food from a nomad or when Lisabeth was able to ask them the way to the gold and silver mines.
"Do also ask him how far it is", asked Mary O'Lein, after Lisabeth had once more done what she could.
"Just a little bit over a one day's journey", Lisabeth translated.
"Then we install our camp here", Mary O'Lein decided. "I'm tired and I want to sleep. If we go on tonight, then we may reach our destination in one leap so this may well be our last camp before making the Glassware vanish."
"The Glassware?" Lisabeth wondered. "On the Stormy I wasn't allowed to think of it, without provoking disasters. Could it still exist, then?"
In order to find out more about it, she spread her blanket next to Alexej's. Carefully, she slid her hand to his trousers and, after having caressed him gently, she realized that Mary O'Lein wasn't so very wrong.
"Tomorrow, on the crossing with Anne and Govert, we'll see further", she thought before she fell asleep.