20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (45 page)

Christophe was tired, so very tired. He
pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his closed eyes with the
tips of his fingers. Exhaustion settled into his joints; he ached
with it. The world was upside-down, and if they did not fix the
power soon, it would be unanchored entirely.

There was no protocol for this. He had never
anticipated getting his most reliable news from a public-house
barkeep, but then again he had never anticipated fighting his own
command. He was truly flying without a net now. If he were on the
Kiwi
, he would know what to do: find some remote and exotic
island and tell the rest of the world to go hang themselves. What
could he do here, in space? The endless sky around them bound him
to a narrow set of options.

He could not stop now, even as he heard the
siren call of his hammock, not until he knew his crew could rest in
safety. They were all weary. Fatigue crept into the corners of his
vision, and his stomach growled from inattention.

A pile of cold rations waited on one of the
panels for the busy bridge crew. He opened one of the wrapped bars,
tore off a corner with his teeth, and swallowed it as quickly as he
could manage with a straight face. As tasteless as it was, it took
the edge off his hunger while he mulled over the next problem, the
one that would need resolution as soon as the current crises were
over.

It wasn't Wallace. It wasn't Rathbone. They
were safe enough where they were. It wasn't even the conundrum that
was Miss Llewellyn. She was injured, and she might even hate him
now, but she was safe. It wasn't even the possibility of another
ship looming over his shoulder.

Should they go on to Mars or return to Earth?
Could
they go back now? That was the real question. He did
not have enough information to make the call. It would be all he
could do to keep them alive long enough to decide. In all his
training, in all those years, no one had ever posed that question:
what do you do when your command turns against you
?

He shivered in the growing chill; the cold
was just another reminder of how far away he was from the South
Pacific. Even with the engines down, the ship's momentum took him
farther and farther away from his beloved sea. Without
acceleration, the time it would take to return stretched out
endlessly.

Even the heated portions of the ship were
cold. The walk back from sick bay had turned his fingernails blue.
The bounce in his step along the way disturbed him. He wasn't sure
how much longer the manufactured gravity would hold out. He was
saving the majority of power for the most basic life support and
for the Gardens. If they made it to Mars, they would need the food
it provided in the future, not to mention its contribution to the
air recycling. The animals in the stable could stand cold better
than the vegetation -- even if the stable deck would be rather
messy if things started floating about there -- but if they
couldn't get the power up soon, they wouldn't have to worry about
cabbages or goat manure or anything else.

A crewman's voice broke into his thoughts:
"Captain? Dr. Pugh on the pipephone for you, sir."

Christophe nodded at him and picked up the
handset. "A little heat would be nice, Elias," he said into it,
trying to still the chatter in his teeth.

"So would a cup of tea, a side of bacon, and
a fat rascal or three," replied the tinny voice of Pugh. "Not sure
we'll get any for a bit. It's touch and go on the power, lad. We
think it will be at least several more hours. Pritchard is a real
trooper, though, and he is charging through. One would almost think
he had a bit of Martian in him. I'm not sure if he is a better
engineer or first mate. Either way, he is due a promotion."

Christophe allowed himself a faint smile.
"Another one. To captain, even. Once everything else is working, we
will be able to solve that bit at our leisure. A problem that
simple would be a luxury."

"How are you holding up, son?"

Christophe faced the wall so that the bridge
crew could not see his yawn. They were all going to have to get
some rest, and soon.

"I am hanging on," Christophe replied as he
fought the urge to lean on the panel. "I need to swap out the
bridge crew. We're losing focus up here."

"You need rest, too. Even you need
sleep."

"I will when everyone else can. Occupational
hazard of captaincy. It is probably time to swap out the cranking
crews as well, and see if we can get the batteries to last a little
longer. How is our friend?"

"Wallace? Oh, Maggie is keeping a close watch
on him, don't you worry. He's not going anywhere."

"Has she... has she said anything to you? I
have not heard from her in a bit."

"Not a peep. I think she is focused on
something."

Oh, she's focused, all right
,
Christophe thought. He hoped that her analysis of Gemma's Code
would be complete before it was too late to give the man a little
comfort. He heard a gasp from the direction of the wireless
room.

"I'm needed here. Keep me informed."

"Take care, son."

"You, too, Da," Christophe replied
softly.

He hung up the pipephone and turned on his
heel to investigate the noise, almost grateful for any distraction
from the impossible decisions that kept rearing up in his path.

Humboldt stood up from his chair at the
wireless machine. With a moon-pale face, he stumbled his way over
to the window that separated him from the bridge.

"What is it, Humboldt? What news?"

The man swallowed hard as he tried to still
his trembling hands.

"It was all for nothing," he stammered. A sob
escaped the man. "Oh, Captain! It was for nothing, nothing at all.
Cervantes. Nesbitt. Wallace. The
Fury
. We're all going to
die for nothing."

"What do you mean? What's happened?"

"The war, Captain. The one Wallace said he
wanted to prevent. It's started. The world has declared war on the
TIA."

~~~~

Gemma

"That cannot be!" Gemma exclaimed.

Her yelp jolted Caroline from her slumber.
The Boolean, eyes heavy with sleep and confusion, blinked at Gemma
in the dim light of Hansard's office.

"Wha'?" she mumbled. "Nigel here?"

"Not yet, Caroline. Rest, dear."

"Yessum," she said and was fast asleep at
once.

Gemma sorted the cards with trembling hands
into jumbled piles. In her mind, she said, "That cannot be. Mrs.
Brightman said--"

"Why would you believe anything that woman
says?" Maggie replied. "She lied to you about Jennie. That was not
her only lie."

"How do you know this? How long have you
known?"

"I made the discovery just a few moments ago.
Your Code, like all Code, takes time to examine."

"How did you--"

"You must forgive Christophe, my dear. He had
his reasons, but you must ask him what they are."

Gemma growled in her throat as she examined
her mass of hair. She had thought there was a bit missing, but she
had chalked it up to her fight with Wallace.

"You said my parents are still alive. Who?
Where?"

"No, my little gem, I said they did not die
in the Invasion. Your father, alas, died before it happened. Sadly,
that meant I also had no chance of knowing him. However, I must
say, you come by your scientific talents honestly."

Gemma's mind whirled. If Maggie could
identify the man personally, then she had had access to his Code.
The hair on her neck stood on end as a chill deeper than the one on
the slowly freezing ship crawled across her skin.

"Who?"

"Our Elias' beloved mentor."

Gemma rested one hand on the journal that had
followed her around the ship like a shadow. Her eyes were wide and
wet with wonder. The man that had written this diary, had traveled
with Nemo, and had taught the man that had fought so hard to save
her from herself, was her father.

Her father had written these words.

"Aronnax," Gemma replied, and the name barely
slipped out of her throat into the room. "My father is Pierre
Aronnax."

"Yes. As he was a confirmed bachelor, he had
no other family save Pugh to handle his affairs. Pugh keeps a lock
of his hair in a mourning locket. When I came along after the
Invasion, they gave me a few strands of it. They were trying to
collect as much Code as possible, you see. I have not used his Code
otherwise, but it seems that someone else did."

"Someone else."

She choked back a shriek as she re-opened the
back flap of the journal and re-read the list of computers there,
the list that she had seen earlier. Brightman's alias fairly
floated off the page. She marked the date and worked figures in her
head.

"Oh."

"Do you see the connection?"

"I am a computer, Maggie," Gemma said, her
veins seizing up from the ice forming in them. "I can do the
calculations. I came by my other talents honestly as well, it
seems."

She studied the last few pages of the
journal, the ones describing the late professor's last research
project. These pages came after his adventurous tale, and they had
not been included in his published account.

They contained, in the loftiest of terms, a
plan for researching the Code of Life and how to manipulate it, and
how mankind might benefit from the artificial insertion of superior
genes into existing Code. There were older, long-standing,
time-tested names for this sort of research. It was the sort of
research that filled Brightman's hidden office to overflowing.

Selective Breeding. Animal Husbandry.
Eugenics.

Gemma concluded, "Brightman took more than
Aronnax's research. She took a secret of her own. She took life
with her." She slowly, gently, closed the file and pushed it away
from her. "My life."

She numbly gazed at Caroline's hunched-over
form and wished she could join her in rest, but she thought it
would be a very long time before she would sleep in peace again.
The word
mother
floated in her mind, cut free from any true
significance or sentiment. It was just a cold fact, as cold as the
woman who had raised her. She could feel a young Brightman's train
of thought pulling into the station. After exposure to such ideas,
it seemed that the lady had performed her own version of Code
engineering to combine her genius with that of Aronnax.

Jennie. Gemma realized with an inner growl
that Brightman had tried again, this time with the Code of a
brilliant young Boolean named Nigel Davies. Brightman's keen
interest in the infant made perfect sense in this light. That,
then, was to be the source of the next generation of Brightman
Girls and Watchers. Had her friend been aware of the plan, or had
she been a willing participant?

She looked down at the next card in her
shaking hand. It was a painted CDV depicting an armoured Christophe
kneeling to a queenly Sophie the Steamfitter, who was knighting him
with her welding torch. She had a tawdry smile on her face, as if
she anticipated a roll in the hay afterwards. The world saw him as
the pinnacle of strength and daring, the hero's hero; everyone but
Gemma seemed to want a piece of him.

Did her mission mirror Jennie's? To capture
Christophe's Code in the same fashion? Had that been Brightman's
plan all along? One that even an eternally grateful Gemma might
have refused if she had known it beforehand? Gemma had cut off
communications with her before things had become clear.

She didn't need a Maggie to capture
Moreau's Code
, Gemma thought.
All she needed was me
.

She thought of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
and his patchwork monster, stitched together from bits salvaged
from the dead. She thought about Aronnax and science, about theft
and heartbreak, and about the vicious spiral of history. The
bizarre origins of Captain Moreau swirled about her, and she
realized she had more in common with him than she had ever dreamt
possible. She clutched the edges of her shawl to her, but she could
not get warm.

She said aloud, in the barest of whispers,
"Like Christophe, I am bespoke."

~~~~

Christophe

"Who has declared war on the TIA?" Christophe
demanded.

"Everyone," Humboldt replied, choking on the
words. "Russian warships are firing on the blockade of the
Bosphorous. France and Germany are invading and claiming their own
quarters. Luxembourg City's in flames."

"And London?"

"Jules don't know, sir. London's quiet.
Parliament's still meeting -- oh, it's chaos down there. That's all
I know. But he'll try to find out."

"All right. One crisis at a time. At the
moment, we can only help ourselves. Humboldt, stay by the radio and
find out all you can. In the meantime," he said, raising his voice
for the entire bridge crew to hear, "this news doesn't go outside
the bridge until the power--"

"My son," Maggie broke into his brain, "come
to us. Elias is ill."

"What happened?" he asked her, picturing the
dear old man keeled over from cranking the flywheels.

"I am afraid he fainted when I gave him some
rather startling news."

Christophe lowered his eyes as his heart
rolled over.
Sister
, it whispered to him in the middle of
the fury that bloomed like a fiery rose in his chest.

"I told you to wait and tell me first," he
thought as loudly as he could. "I wanted to be the one--"

"I can see him by the flywheels. He is not
waking! I go to his aid!" Maggie declared.

"No, Maggie, wait, you'll be seen! They don't
know you! Wait for me!"

There was no answer.

"Maggie?"

Still there was no answer. Without a word to
Humboldt, Christophe dove for the pipephone and attempted to call
the Oberth deck. No one picked up. The hairs on the back of his
neck stood at attention. He shivered even harder, and he knew this
time it had nothing to do with the bridge's temperature.