20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (29 page)

"Such an act belongs in the doctor's hands,"
Gemma replied with irritation at the hinted request. "Why do you
need me?"

"Christophe has to give the order." Dr. Pugh
swallowed hard. "They can't do it without his approval. But he
won't give it. He won't listen to me. I thought he might listen to
you."

"To me?"

"After your... conversations."

"What?" Gemma asked in shock. How could
Christophe have told this man about their private moments, as
innocent as they were?

"How do you know--"

Dr. Pugh shook his head and rested his hand
on her narrow shoulder. "Never mind. Later. Talk some sense into
him. Please, Gemma."

Dr. Pugh released her, and they rejoined the
group of men at the foot of Cervantes' bed. She stood at the corner
and looked at the mummy that lay upon it. Only the mouth of the
first mate emerged from the swaddling bandages, and the breath that
came out of it was laboured. She sensed that the only reason he
wasn't screaming was the heavy sedation.

The dispute burned around her, and no one
would agree with Christophe. Pugh's words about Christophe and "The
Order" trailed across her memory. It dawned on her now that he
might not be capable of giving such an order, when it came down to
it.

Christophe turned to her as he looked for
support, any support at all.

"Gemma! Tell him we cannot do this!
Please!"

The others started, stunned at his
familiarity with her. Pugh glared at her with a
get on with
it
expression.

Gemma wrangled Christophe away from the
cluster of men and into the doctor's small office. He argued with
her every step of the way. She latched the door behind her as
firmly as she could without slamming it. To pull punches now would
be foolish. They had no time for this nonsense. The
Fury
had
already lost its capable first mate. It could not afford to lose
its commander to grief and mawkishness. How in the world could the
TIA have put faith in such a man?

"Enough!" she exclaimed. "Christophe Moreau,
you must do this."

The stunned expression on his face only
strengthened her resolve, even though her words struck him like
bullets.

She pressed on in his silence. "You are not
here to play at being Sinbad the Sailor," she continued, using the
same tone Mrs. Brightman had used with her after the Shanghai
Incident. "We. Are. At. War. If you are going to be
Captain
Moreau, you are going to have to make the tough decisions."

"Even if it means that I am signing the death
warrant of a man who has been my friend since childhood? My
brother?" His voice grew louder with each word. The barest hint of
water shone on the lower lid of his left eye and threatened to
emerge.

What would she do, if it were dear Philippa
on that bed with no hope of recovery? Would she make the same
decision if it had been her friend's porcelain skin that had been
melted, her dear one's glossy black hair that had been scorched
away?

"Yes, even so," she said. She spoke slowly
and evenly. "You are the commander. The lives of the crew, even
mine, even your own, are in your hands, Captain! You have to make
this call."

"How can you be so cold?" His voice rasped in
disbelief. She could feel anger coiling up within him, an anger
that surprised her after her talk with the happy young lad in the
Gardens, the barefoot one that read Twain. "Gemma, I am not a
machine. Are you? I thought you of all people would
understand."

"Why, because I'm a woman?" she asked.

"I thought--"

"You're
not
thinking. At least not
with your brain. That's the problem. Think, Captain. Remember. On
your last voyage, you lost half your crew, but you survived that
particular loss. You will survive this one."

"Do not presume to lecture me. I've seen
death before, many times. Don't you think I have?" He blinked,
hard, and sat down on the doctor's desk. "When you're at sea, Death
is a member of your crew! Sometimes it's brutal. Scurvy eating away
their teeth. Gales sweeping them overboard like toys. Water so cold
that they freeze to death before we can pull them out. But it was
Death's decision to take them, not mine. I've never had to murder a
member of my own crew before. I've never had to give such an order
before."

This man had been hailed as a Deliverer, a
Warrior; up close, his much-vaunted iron will was no more
substantial than Sophie the Steamfitter's garter belt. Gemma
confronted an awful truth: that this man lacked the will to do what
must be done. If he could not give The Order once they reached the
Red Planet, the
Fury
would be lost. Gemma could not allow
that. She had a mission to complete, even if she did not yet
understand it.

"Pugh has sheltered you far too much," she
declared. "You are in a savage land now, far more savage than the
sea. You cannot give any quarter, for you will receive none. Death
is also on the
Fury's
roster. Are you his commander, or is
he yours?" She poked his chest with rapid taps, like a radio
operator sending a telegram. The pokes grew harder with every word.
"Get this through your thick pate: Cervantes is only the first. Get
used to it."

"You're just a geologist, Miss Llewellyn." He
knocked her hand away. It was hard enough to feel but gentle enough
to avoid injuring her. "You play with rocks all day. What do you
know of holding a life in your hands?"

The Man from Shanghai would have told him
that she knew plenty. Her icy gaze bore into him. Her face was
blank of sentiment.

"He is your friend, Christophe. You owe him
release."

She reached for his hand and held it between
her two smaller ones. It was clammy. He looked at that hand and
pursed his lips. He pressed his trembling fingers into the top of
her hand in silent response.

She continued, "I am not saying this won't
haunt you. It will. Of that I have no doubt. But that does not
relieve you of your responsibility. The only thing you can do for
him now is find the cause of his demise. Like it or not, this is
the job you took on when you put on that uniform."

"You question my courage?"

"No. Your judgment."

He jerked his hand away from her as if her
palms were burning coals. He squeezed his eyes shut, removing her
from his sight so he could avoid her words. A single hot tear
escaped from his shut eyelid. It ran down his face, dripped off his
jaw, and splashed onto the floor. When he opened his eyes again,
they brimmed with fury.

"You heartless beast," he snarled.

He wiped the cuff of his sleeve across his
cheek and marched out the door. She let him go without a word. It
was his turn to act.

Gemma stood there, frozen to the spot, her
heart a glacier, listening through the open door as he gave the
order to Dr. Hansard. He was the courageous captain, the darling
hero of the CDVs, once more; the lighthearted lad was back in the
Garden where he belonged. As Christophe spoke to the surgeon, she
could feel the fragile connection that they had formed over the
last few days snap. Whatever it had been -- friendship, attraction,
simple commiseration, she did not know -- it was gone now.

She slipped out into sick bay and leaned
against the wall, forcing herself to witness that which she had
advocated. She owed Cervantes that much, stranger though he was,
because she would have done the same for Philippa.

At least the captain got to say goodbye. At
least he had that much. With Philippa, there had been no hand to
hold, no forehead to kiss, no eyes to close, no body to bury. She
had simply not returned.

She remembered the day that Mrs. Brightman
had told the Girls that one of their number was not coming home.
Mrs. Brightman had always discouraged displays of sentiment. All
Gemma had been able to do was stare out the window, into the grey
misty rain, and let the sky weep for her. The wind had wailed in
her stead. When she had been exhausted enough, she had simply sat
back in the chair in front of the fire in Brightman's third-best
parlour and stared into the flames. She had simply listened to the
thunder.

Even now, she could not tolerate passionate
scenes. On that dark day long ago, she had closed the door --
forever, she had thought -- on attachments to any other person.
That chamber inside of her, that aspect of Gemma Llewellyn, was
dead. It only felt a flicker of phantom pain every now and then,
like the itching an amputee might feel in a missing arm. She knew
what this action would cost the captain.

Mrs. Brightman had not allowed her to wallow
in her grief then, and she could not allow Christophe to wallow in
his own grief now. The rest of the ship depended on him to hold it
together. She would rather have him hate her for knocking him about
with the baton of reality than see him as a pitiful and pathetic
creature lashing about for comfort. She could offer him neither
succour nor absolution, but she could offer him the distraction of
anger.

Everyone has a key that you have only to
grasp and turn
, Mrs. Brightman had said.

Gemma had found the captain's key, and that
key was cruelty.

She leaned her head back against the wall,
letting the background hum of the ship sing to her. Even the
skittering and scratching in the walls had a wretched tone to them.
Part of her wished she were back on Earth, where she could hear it
rain, where she could just lean back and listen to the thunder.
That was all she could do here, lean against the wall to witness a
dying man's last rites and listen to the thunder in his captain's
heart.

~~~~

Christophe

"Cervantes' death was a complete and utter
waste."

Christophe's words lashed out across the
table at Pugh and Wallace. He felt the loss keenly, as if someone
had hacked off his right arm. Anger and frustration thrashed inside
him, threatening to break free. It was a struggle to stay in his
seat.

Wallace responded in a calm, composed voice.
"I disagree, Captain. Our late first mate is a hero. He died in the
line of duty. In the hands of the right journalist, no death is
ever wasted."

"What, what?" Christophe snarled in growing
disbelief. Was the geologist's coldness infecting the rest of the
ship? It was bad enough that he remembered every frozen word she
had uttered in perfect detail. The conversation replayed in his
head, even when he tried to stop it. Did he have to hear it from
everyone else?

Wallace's tone was arid and precise. He might
as well have been discussing train schedules. "You've provided us
with a genuine hero, Captain, and that's precisely what we need at
the moment. Sophie the Steamfitter has taken our friend to her
plump white bosom. People will devour that image. They will
remember him with every cry of
Terra vigila
."

"Not to mention enshrine him over the lager
taps at the Badger and Tentacle," Pugh growled.

Wallace waved the response away. "Why, there
are memorial CDVs on the presses as we speak."

"So soon?" asked Dr. Pugh.

"Why do you think we took photos of the crew
before we launched? We only missed the geologist, and, well, no one
would miss her."

Christophe had noticed the busy photographers
that had swarmed the launch site for weeks, and he had noticed
their absence on the day he had departed. He had assumed that all
the photographs had been for historical purposes. Apparently,
history had not been their only motive. He felt a chill go down his
spine as he thought about the TIA, preparing to commemorate the
deaths of his crew, one at a time or otherwise.

Wallace continued, "His death is unfortunate,
to be sure. But even death has its uses." He leaned over the table
and scratched at the grain of the wood with a short stubby finger.
"A hero may keep the wolves of a world war at bay a little longer,
Captain. This will suit our true mission. Just wait. You will see.
Victory is relative."

Wallace droned on about history and victory.
Christophe tuned him out and recalled his younger self, lying in a
hammock on the deck of the
Kiwi
, staring at the stars and
dreaming about sailing among them. He had imagined the parades and
the parties for his crew upon their triumphant return. Now he
wanted to visit that younger Christophe, shake him out of that
hammock, and order him to keep his bare feet planted on that teak
deck. Now he knew. He knew what space was. Cold and empty, empty
except for darkness and death. His great adventurer's theme had
become a funeral march.

Wallace tapped the list in front of him with
his fountain pen and recalled Christophe's attention to the matters
at hand.

"We need to inform his next of kin," the
Cultural Officer said.

Christophe shut his eyes and stared into the
darkness behind his lids, trying to do something, anything, to hold
on to himself. "I am his next of kin. So is Dr. Pugh."

"No wife?"

"The
Fury
was his life entire,"
Christophe said with a shake of his head.

He might have been talking about himself. He
opened his eyes and forced them to focus on Wallace. He had to have
captain's eyes now.

"Personal effects?"

"Everything he owned is in his stateroom. He
led a sailor's life. He traveled lightly."

Wallace nodded as he checked off another line
on his list. "We'll need to move them so that the new first mate
can take possession of his cabin. You do realize you will have to
appoint an acting first mate, yes?"

Christophe nodded. He was indeed aware of
that need, but he had tried to put it from his mind. It would be
too final.

There was so much to do. A death was the end
of the story for some, and the beginning of another chapter for
others. He would have to grit his teeth in the face of this
shifting wind, put his hand on the wheel, and steer once more.
Gemma's harsh words of yesterday still echoed deep inside him. She
had been right; deep down he knew she had been right even as she
had said it. That didn't make hearing the words any less
excruciating.