20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (35 page)

He touched her forearm with an absentminded
pat and strolled away. The gathering wound down as crewmembers left
by ones and twos. Caroline fussed over Nigel. Gemma paid her
respects to them as she pressed Nigel's watch back into his hands.
She could not bring herself to say much to him, not yet. He grasped
her hands and choked on his words as he expressed his gratitude. He
was not in any shape for conversation, so she let them be.

Gemma could not bear the thought of
additional, possibly indefinite, confinement in her quarters. The
captain was deep in conversation with Mr. Pritchard. She saw an
opportunity, and she took it. She slipped out of the bay unseen.
She thought Christophe might look for her in the Gardens first, so
she headed for the orrery instead.

It was quiet there. The normal squeaks,
rings, and roars that inhabited the corridors of the ship were a
reassuring background rumble here, like far away thunder. All she
could hear was the eternal grinding of the planets around the
little sun, and again rotating themselves, showing day and night,
night and day, season upon season, on each of the planets. There
was the ever-present scribble-scrabble-skitter somewhere in the
walls, but it no longer bothered her. She had been haunted by the
Man from Shanghai for so long that another ghost would not
matter.

She turned down the lights. As they dimmed,
the model of the sun lit up like a roaring fire. It lit her way to
the observation platform on the far side of the room. She wanted to
open the shield door and have a look at what lay outside by
herself.

With a trembling hand, she lowered the lever.
The shield rumbled as it rolled back into the wall. She found no
end to the stars that spilled across her view. She allowed her eyes
to relax and go out of focus. One after another, more stars
appeared. The more she looked, the more she saw, until the view
filled her eyes with countless points of light. It was not just
white light; every colour was there, from icy blue to fiery
crimson, so many hues that she became giddy. The power and majesty
of them all overcame her. Her knees gave way. She landed on the
deck floor, but she barely noticed the frigid metal beneath her.
She was enraptured. The stars beckoned her onward.

Never in London had she seen such a night
sky. The street lamps there concealed the view in their closer
light. Once, during her time in Sicily, she had had one brief night
alone on a dark beach during a new moon, and she had swooned at the
wash of light across the sky.

That glorious night on the beach paled next
to this.

She had never known such beauty existed. She
was filled with a sudden rage that Mrs. Brightman had kept her from
this, not only from this beauty and grace, but from the very
capacity for loving it. Out here in the wilds of the solar winds,
there was nothing to hold her back. Not even her Watcher could
restrain her now. She had severed her last anchor line to Earth,
and she was ready to sail free.

She knew those lights were far away,
mind-numbing numbers of miles and years away; but for the moment,
she could touch them by only reaching out her hand. The stars did
not care where she had been or what she had done. They only wanted
her to soar among them. The Milky Way surged before her like a vast
and deep ocean of night, with the light of the stars sparkling like
the moon on the sea. She had never seen such pure beauty in all her
life, even in her imagination. She had never had an inkling that it
even existed.

What other wonders waited beyond Mars? Would
she ever be able to go there? Her heart began to race with the
possibility ... could she just keep going, keep exploring? She felt
she had finally found her heart, her purpose. It was a purpose far,
far away from Mrs. Brightman.

She wished Jennie could have seen it. Jennie
would have loved it, too. She should have come. She should have
been there. The scar of her loss was reopened, and the pain was
both fresh and sweet. She longed for some message, some
reassurance, that her friend had still loved her at the end. But,
other than that wish, nothing bound her to Earth.

For a brief moment, she forgot her anger at
Brightman and her hatred of the Martians. She wanted to explore,
like Drake, Magellan, and Raleigh, like so many others who had
wandered the circumference of the Earth. She wanted to go farther,
farther than Cabot, farther than Vespucci, farther than any of them
ever dreamed that a human could. They had been to where the maps
end. She had wandered off those maps entirely and was somewhere in
the space Between Worlds. She felt the pull to go beyond that, as
if there were some other form of gravity out there calling her
towards it.

Brightman would never use her knowledge to
plunder or murder again. There would be no more Men from Shanghai
to haunt her dreams. She wanted to discover, not steal. She would
be a pioneer, not a thief. She was determined that, no matter where
her body might be, her heart would always be among the stars.

A sob of ecstasy escaped her as she pressed
her palm into the window, and she wept tears of joy at the
sight.

"So, you aren't so heartless after all."

She jerked her head towards the voice.
Christophe stood at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the
alcove. She was angry with herself for allowing anyone to sneak up
on her. She had not been in the orrery that long; this must be the
first place he searched for her. How could he have known?

She struggled to her feet and growled at him.
"Just how long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough," he replied. "I only wanted to
make sure you were alone. I thought perhaps you and Humboldt..." A
smile crept through his voice as the words faded. She could only
see a portion of him in the shadows, silhouetted in the light of
the chamber's sun. "Well, I saw you standing together at the
service."

"Oh!" Gemma was startled by his implication.
"Of course we did. We are friends."

"I see," he said with a shade of satisfaction
in his tone. He covered the stairs in two long strides. "I thought
I might find you here. I wanted to come here for a moment, anyway.
I could not think of what to say down at the airlock. The words…
the words just wouldn't come. I'd rather be here and remember him."
He swept his arm towards the window. The eerie veil that she had
seen over him at the service fell away with every word he uttered.
"This is what he lived for. The ship was part of him, you know.
There were many times when I think he should have been the captain.
He certainly deserved it more than I." He drew in a deep, slow
breath, held it for a long, stretched moment.

"I never had occasion to speak with him,"
Gemma said gently, "but he seemed a decent fellow. He certainly
commanded the crew's respect. I am truly sorry for your loss. I
hope we are able to discern the cause of the accident."

"My thanks," he replied. "I wanted to make
sure you were safe. I also wanted to say I am sorry for not coming
to you last night. For not updating you, that is. 'Twas a bit dicey
there for a bit, but we did manage to get the infant to safety.
From all reports, she is quite snug and safe with Humboldt's
cousin's wife."

"I'm -- I'm pleased to hear it," she
stammered with relief. The news did not completely quell her
irritation with him, but it did file the edge off it.

"I thought you might like to know that they
named her 'Gemma'," he continued. "Apparently, they had that name
picked out, if it were a girl, before we launched." He took a step
forward. "Interesting coincidence, that."

A flutter of joy struck her heart, and she
averted her gaze to her fidgeting fingers so that he could not see.
A message
, she thought.
She did send me a message. She
did think of me
.

"Yes. Quite. Quite interesting," Gemma
managed to say.

"Pugh said that this would cost you
something. I only have a vague idea of what that cost is, but I am
guessing that at the very least you will be, shall we say, sacked
from your institute."

"Something like that."

"You might have a difficult time finding
another employer, given your current location. Any plans?"

She had no answer for that. In her heady rush
to rescue the baby -- little Gemma, she thought with a blush -- she
had not thought beyond the moment. She had not expected to live
long enough to make plans. She shook her head.

"I might be able to help with that," he said,
taking another step closer. "But I'd have to know a little more
about you, first. Who are you, Gemma Llewellyn? Who are you,
really?"

"I don't know. I don't know who Gemma
Llewellyn is," she said. "Without Brightman, I don't know who I
am."

"I'll tell you what I know about her," he
said. He used his long reach to give her shoulder a light squeeze.
"She is brave. So very, very brave."

"Brave? I don't feel very brave."

"Oh, brave, and brilliant, and so much more.
I am proud to have such a woman as a member of my crew. You just
put your job -- and your life, I'll wager -- on the line to rescue
someone millions of leagues away. Someone you have never met and
someone whom you may never meet. Yet you did it. With that kind of
pluck and moxie, you can be whomever you choose to be."

He closed the distance between them. He slid
the hand on her shoulder around to her back and pulled her to him
in a loose embrace. She had been here before, during the long-ago
flare drill, but this time was different. It was not playful; there
was something very serious about it. She could feel his warmth
suffusing through the rough fabric of the uniforms that separated
them.

"You inspire me, Miss Llewellyn," he
whispered.

She did not know how to respond. She just
breathed as steadily as she could manage, both fearing and hoping
for what she could hear coming her direction.

"I might be able to help you, as I said,"
Christophe said. "No matter what happens with Brightman, you are
still a member of my crew. That will not change. I promise you
that. But in order to do that properly, there is something I need
to know." He brushed his fingertips lightly against her hair. "Do
you trust me?"

He hunched over, lowering his face towards
hers. She shivered slightly as she thought,
Oh, crickets, here
it comes
.

"Will you trust me?" he whispered.

His lips hovered just next to the sensitive
skin around her mouth. She could feel the heat of him, the heat of
the man that was both the captain of the
Fury
who had
finally taken up the full reins of command and the innocent lad
that devoured kiwis and cackled at Mark Twain. Like a cat seeking a
ray of sunshine, in that moment she wanted nothing more than to
sink into it.

This was the point where any other man would
have gone ahead and kissed her, but he just hovered there,
breathing, as if he were teetering on the edge of a fence, unsure
of which way to jump. For once, for one fleeting mad moment, she
anticipated it, wanted it. For once, she did not feel a choke of
revulsion in her throat, as she always had if playing this
particular role on a mission.

Why did he hesitate?

She shivered from the tautness inside her.
The tiger that had paced in her mind for the past day coiled up for
a pounce and made ready for the next move.

At long last, when she was about to tumble
off the sharp knife-edge of frustration, he brushed his chin up the
side of her face and rested his lips on her forehead, kissing it
with the lightest of pressures, more like a kiss for a sister than
a lover. He just held her in silence without making another move.
She leaned into his chest and rested her face on it, trying to hear
what wind was blowing in there. His breaths were tight and
controlled, as if he were trapping the words that he wanted to say
deep inside him and they were fighting their way out.

Christophe finally released a few of them.
"I've lost a brother today, Gemma. I need to know--"

"Captain Moreau?" Humboldt's unmistakable
voice floated through the darkness from behind them.

"Damn," Christophe swore softly as he
released her, straightened his spine, and turned to the saluting
Boolean in the doorway. Only a portion of his face was visible, but
she could sense he was stifling a scowl. "Yes, Mr. Humboldt?"

"Begging your pardon, sir. Chief Rathbone
asked me to find you. He has an urgent message for you from Admiral
Thorvaldson. Priority one, he said. I think it may be about the,
um, operation we just performed in London."

Under the cover of darkness, Christophe's
spine sagged with a resigned exhalation only Gemma could hear. He
took her elbow and guided her down the alcove's steps.

"I'll be on the bridge directly, Mr.
Humboldt." He swung his gaze back to Gemma, and his eyes glimmered.
"In the meantime, would you please escort Miss Llewellyn back to
Ladies' Country? I think I can trust you to get her there
safely."

Gemma shot the captain a smouldering look,
but he only mouthed the word
later
at her before exchanging
salutes with Humboldt and leaving them behind.

Gemma's insides were coiled tightly, and she
trembled with the energy of it. She wasn't even sure if she could
speak, and she certainly did not feel comfortable with Humboldt
seeing her in this state.

"Mr. Humboldt," she began, "we--"

He held up one hand to stop her. "I don't
have time for gossip just now, Miss L." He held forth a sheaf of
paper. "I'll take you back to your cabin, like the captain
ordered," he said, "but first I need to show you something."

They were still just inside the door of the
darkened orrery. He tugged her over to a spot that was still inside
the chamber but in the light of the corridor. He pulled a page to
the front.