20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (53 page)

When the others merely stared at her in a
confused, blank silence, she continued. "At least not in the way we
think of them. Caroline stated it best: they are like analytical
engines. I'd wager my entire CDV collection that that's exactly
what they are."

"You mean,
living
analytical engines?"
asked Christophe.

"Yes! A sort of manufactured
intelligence."

"That would imply that someone did the
manufacturing," said Pugh.

"Yes," Gemma replied. "Someone else. Perhaps
somewhere else. Someone else sent the Invaders to us."

"They simply used Mars as a base camp? A
staging area? What evidence do you have?" Christophe asked. "That
is quite an extraordinary extrapolation."

Gemma narrowed her eyes as she reviewed the
flurry of ideas in her head. "Remember the plans that they found
that were the basis for the
Fury
? The plans for the gravity
plates?" She pointed to Maggie. "Maggie's body follows their
typical design, even if she acts more like us. She was a ballet
dancer when the gravity was off. As if null gravity
is
her
natural environment. Why would they need gravity plates? Why have
those complicated ship designs at all when a simple cylinder meets
their needs? Unless those plans were for someone else? Their
masters, perhaps?"

Gemma paced the length of the room, and her
thoughts churned as she marched. "Look, the planet below us is the
only lead we have. We have to go down there and investigate it. We
came all this way. We have lost so much just to get here." She
paused and looked into Christophe's eyes, hoping he would see the
reflections of Jennie and Cervantes in her own. "It is dangerous,
yes! But so was building this ship in the first place. So was
leaving our home world and flinging ourselves out among the stars.
We have to eliminate the possibility that there is someone else
behind the Invaders, at the very least. We must do something; we
must make the rest of that danger worth it."

"What do you propose?"

"That we take the
Iron Wind
down to
the surface. We do not have to land. Just get a closer look. She
can fly in an atmosphere, yes?"

"Of course," Christophe said. "But where
would we start? Mars may be smaller than Earth, but it's still a
lot of country to explore."

Gemma rifled through her notebook and stopped
on a page of sketches. She plunked the book down and pointed to her
drawing of the nearly planet-wide rift.

"I suggest we start here. Shoot the rift and
search for any signs of life in the walls, past or present. It
would be an excellent place in which to shelter from those dust
storms we saw earlier."

"That is still a rather large territory,"
said Pugh. "It's thousands of kilometres long. It would be like
flying the North American continent from end to end."

Gemma peered more closely at her sketch. She
stabbed at the wider portion in the centre with her finger. "Look
at these side-chasms here. Some of them are far narrower than the
main canyon. Quite a cozy place in which to conceal a base."

"You have an interesting notion of 'cozy',"
Christophe replied. "But why not check out the poles first? That's
where the water is concentrated, even if it is all ice."

"Too cold," Maggie said with a shiver. "And I
do not require much water, apart from what I get when I feed. I
suppose the same would hold for them."

"But they would need more than just drinking
water, surely," said Pugh. "Industry needs water, coolant!"

"I'm not sure we can assume their needs are
like ours, but they could have underground sources as well," Gemma
said. "However, I suggest that the ship monitor the poles for any
activity whilst we poke around in the canyon. Have Alfieri put that
telescope of his to work."

"And if they attack us while we're on the
surface? The
Iron Wind
is unarmed. It's not a combat vessel.
The
Fury
won't be of much aid. If we crash, it is over. We
will have no means of rescue."

"That is a risk," said Gemma. "We would not
have much hope to fight back, even if we were armed, as most likely
we would be outnumbered. We would need only a small crew for the
craft, so we can minimize the risk. But honestly, I believe that if
they were going to attack, they would have already. We've been
orbiting in plain sight for hours and hours. And before you say
that it's too dangerous for me, just remember that of all the
members of your crew, I am the only one to have lived in harm's way
my entire life. At least now that danger will be for something
meaningful!"

Christophe regarded her for a moment as he
wrestled internally with the idea. "It will take a few days to fly
it from end to end. Are you ready for close quarters with me for
that long?"

"Close quarters with you?" Gemma asked,
firing a stern look back at him.

"I will chaperone, if you like," said Maggie,
"though I'm not keen on going down there."

He met her stare with a determined smile.
"I'm piloting the
Iron Wind
. I didn't come all this way for
nothing."

Gemma could not help but recall the last time
she had been on this deck. She hoped for a less painful experience
this time. Her ribs ached a little as she scanned the crew that had
gathered to see them off. That took her mind back even further.
When she had left Earth, there had been no one to say farewell to,
except perhaps the technician that had belted her into the launch
pod. This time, she had had a steady stream of well-wishers, from
Caroline to the Knopfs to Hui. How different! The thought made her
ribs ache even more, but for a different reason.

She plucked at the seam of her trousers.
Unused to such clothing, nonetheless she had yielded to Caroline's
insistence that they would be more flexible and useful than her
skirts. Christophe himself had appeared in a flight suit that she
had never seen before, one that was slim-fitting but allowed much
freedom of movement. Despite its practical cut, he still managed to
look rather dapper -- which given Caroline's silent reaction to it,
was having its intended effect upon the female of the species.
Gemma allowed herself a moment to watch him move in it, and then
she snorted as she recalled their near-miss in the orrery. She told
herself that it had just been the longing for warmth after a
funeral, and that was all.

She fingered the edge of her notebook -- a
fresh one with plenty of room for new sketches -- and watched
Maggie converse with Dr. Hansard as they moved towards the vessel's
hatch. She could not see the good doctor's face, and she could not
hear Maggie's responses in her head. Gemma smiled, though, as
Humboldt appeared in their path, took one of Maggie's tentacles in
his hand, bowed over it, and kissed it lightly.

"Oh my!"

Gemma heard the bubbling response this time.
Maggie shivered and jiggled her knitting bag, which was clutched
tightly in another limb. Whether it was with delight or disgust,
Gemma could not tell.

She felt a warmth next to her, and she turned
to the source of it. Christophe beamed down at her with his most
disarming grin as he set the bulky ditty bag in his right hand on
the floor.

"Looking forward to stretching my legs, so to
speak," he said. "I haven't piloted the
Iron Wind
since our
trip to the moon." He leaned down and whispered, "I am glad that
you and Maggie will be with me."

Gemma inclined her head towards him. "As am
I."

Mr. Pritchard approached them next and
saluted Christophe. Gemma could see a slight tremor in the man's
hand as he lowered it.

"All set, Mr. Pritchard?" Christophe asked.
"Or should I say,
Acting Captain
Pritchard?"

"All set, sir," he replied. "And I hope I'll
be just first mate again soon. Be careful down there, sir. And take
care of my two friends here." He nodded his head in Gemma's
direction. "I do wish Mr. Cervantes could have been here."

Gemma watched as Christophe gazed up into the
steel rafters of the cargo bay. He said, "Oh, he is here, Captain.
He is." Shaking off the dreaminess of his voice, he clasped
Pritchard's hand and shook it. "I'll fly better knowing the
Fury
is in your capable hands, Ron. We will be back before
you know it. Let me know the moment you hear from Admiral
Thorvaldson, should he respond."

As they continued to converse, Gemma felt a
hand on her shoulder. Pugh loomed over her with a wan smile on his
face.

"Come back safely, child. And watch out for
my son, would you?" He winked at her. "There is more than one
reason why he is the
Fury
's captain instead of her
pilot."

When the hatch sealed behind her, Gemma had a
quick flash of memory back to the last time she had entered a small
craft with this man. It seemed more than forty days ago. She smiled
at Maggie, who was attempting to secure herself behind the pilot's
seat. Yes, far more than forty days ago.

"It's fine if you are a little nervous, Miss
Llewellyn. I certainly am," Christophe said through a shaky smile.
"I haven't done
this
before."

The ride down was a haze of bumps and jolts
that Gemma would rather forget. The ride up from Earth in the small
capsule had been heaven compared to this, and now she was thankful
that her first ride had been sans viewports. She clutched a small
paper sack in her hand and prayed she would not revisit the heavy
breakfast that Frau Knopf had forced upon her.

The features of the Red Planet grew as they
neared the surface. The Rift started as a sketch on a crimson map,
then it was a dry riverbed, and then it yawned like a hungry beast
below them. Light and time, past and present, were merging at last,
as Alfieri had promised; Gemma was about to discover what happened
when they collided.

As they descended, Christophe angled their
course so that they would enter the gigantic corridor near its
centre and then turn north into the niche. She sketched and wrote
as quickly as she could in her notebook. She used the CDV of
Aronnax that Christophe had given her as a bookmark as she
worked.

The lack of blue in the sky and the lack of
green on the ground shocked her. Even the sun shone differently
here, as if she were viewing the world through smoked glasses.
Everything was dimmer; even the shadows were thin and weak. Dry
mountains thrust up above them as they dropped lower and lower. The
peaks faded into the distance in a haze of dust.

"So, Maggie, what do you reckon?" Christophe
asked. "Does it look like home to you?"

A few of her tentacles twitched before she
answered. "The sooner I get back to New Zealand, the better."

They passed over gullies that had not seen
water in ages. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, nor any
sign of the Red Weed that the Martians had spread upon the Earth,
nor the treasure that the crew had dreamt of hauling home. Caroline
had been correct; the entire landscape was one large patch of
rust.

Rocky waves rolled beneath their path, like
an ocean frozen in time. Some of the crests reached far into the
sky, but they were still lower than the impossibly high cliff
walls. As they plunged down into the canyon, they found the ground
even farther below them than they had anticipated.

"The canyon walls are kilometres high,"
Christophe observed. "I do not believe we'll be able to scan an
entire section of wall in a single pass."

"Let us start close to the ground, then,"
Gemma said. "We can pass back through if we don't find anything
down low."

Hours later, Gemma unbuckled her harness and
stood up. She stretched and yawned. Her neck was stiff, and her
eyes ached. The wonder of a new world had rubbed off, and a routine
boredom had replaced its lustre. Rocks and soil, soil and rocks.
Rocks shaped by no other hand than wind itself, wind and time.
Perhaps water had carved away at them, ages ago, but of a sentient
design or plan, there was no sign at all.

She rubbed her weary eyes. Squeezing past
Maggie's bulk, she took a few short steps to the back of the cabin
to work the kinks out of her tense muscles.

"What sort of a name is Moreau, anyway?" she
asked, just to have something to say.

"Pardon?" Christophe blinked at the sudden
question.

"Just curious. I get that Pugh couldn't
really give you his name without risk of exposing project Orion.
But why choose Moreau?"

Christophe emitted an amused grunt. "I had
always hoped that I was named after the artist, Gustave Moreau.
Turns out it was a bit of a sick scientific joke by the other
scientists on the project. Some wild tale going round about a mad
vivisectionist named Moreau that attempted to turn animals into
people. As the story goes, it didn't turn out well for
anybody."

"I read the journal articles on his
experiments long after they started calling Christophe that,"
Maggie growled. "The man was depraved. I was most displeased. But
by then it was too late."

"Jennie told me such a story, once," Gemma
replied, "but his name had escaped me, until now."

"I assure you, we're no relation!"

"I'd stick with the painter story, for my own
sanity. Though I suppose it's no worse than my own mother not
giving me her name. I am not sure where she got 'Llewellyn',
anyway."

"I suppose 'Aronnax' would have been too
obvious."

The awkward silence that followed was
relieved by the wireless clamouring for their attention.

"Still nothing," Christophe said into the
handheld microphone. "However, we have a long way to go."

"Take a rest when you need to," came Pugh's
crackling voice. "Show Llewellyn how to fly that bucket so you two
can trade off and catch a few winks."

Gemma took to the controls as easily as
Maggie had to null gravity. Learning was a welcome relief to her
brain after the unending tedium of the canyon landscape. She cast a
glance out of the viewport every few minutes to check for any signs
of habitation. She did not know what to hope for. At least Nothing
was peaceful, if a bit boring.