The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (37 page)

The car found somewhere to park that was right by the river, so they didn’t have to go far to eat. Maddy had been baking. She had made a quiche, and she had made a salad from Wal-Mart; she had made eggs, too. Perhaps that was too much egg for one meal, she had thought, when she was packing the bag this morning, but by then it was too late. They spread a blanket, just like she had seen, and put the food out on it. The ground was uncomfortable, but she wasn’t going to complain. Nicholas seemed to be calmer out here, and she didn’t want to stir up his animosity again. It was peaceful, apart from the insects and the stones in the ground. It was unlike anything Maddy could quite recall.

Nicholas had a small box with him and, after they had eaten, he placed it on the blanket with a flourish. When Maddy opened it up she saw that it contained a selection of cakes, courtesy of NutriMentPlus. She could tell that from the way they were square, to make packing and delivery easier.

He must have sensed her disappointment. “Maddy? What is it?”

It was hard to put into words. It was a feeling she hadn’t quite recognized herself until now. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought we could do it differently today. Eat differently. So I made everything. None of this came from the outlet.” NutriMentPlus was supposed to give you everything you wanted, before you even realized you wanted it, but Maddy had fumbled her way towards the realization that what she really wanted was to be the same side of a hundred kilos as Tracy Wordsworth. And she wanted this lovely man as he was now, in the flesh.

Spontaneity struck again. Nicholas reached for a rectangular chocolate éclair and hurled it into the river. A jam tart followed.

Maddy took a doughnut and hurled it out into the middle of the flow. She collapsed back on her elbows, laughing more than she could ever remember laughing. This was turning out to be quite a memorable day!

11  Matters go so far

In which matters go so far that the inhabitants of
Sunny Meadows, the reader, and even the author,
demand an immediate denouement

The Advisory Board of New Town thought the demands of their neighbours some kind of practical joke. Indeed, they thought it quite a funny one, and laughed each time someone mentioned it. Then, a member of the Board, or perhaps a family member, looked up the records and found that it was true that New Town Athletic had beaten Sunny Meadows Wanderers 1-0 in February 1974, and that Bomber Wilkins had scored from the penalty spot. They found it even more amusing that this absurd challenge was actually based on historical fact! How charming a conceit! But a re-match . . . Why actually
play
football when you can watch the sim matches on the vee? Why play when you can see reconstructions of Pele, Best, Platini, Zidane and the Nevilles battling it out on the big screen?

This response did not go down well with the newly invigorated citizens of Sunny Meadows. “They’re rubbing salt in the wounds,” one grumbled. “They’re scared,” said another. “And what about the Challenge Shield in ‘93?” said another. “That was a clear off-side!”

And so, the good people of Sunny Meadows gathered before the rainbow-hued frontage of the Dewberry Mall. Dr Bull had a good view of this, for the mall was just across the street from the NutriMent depot, the very heart of his operation. He and Gideon went out on to the street, to stand on the fringe of the crowd. He wanted to see how far this would go.

“We’ll show them!” cried someone near the front of the crowd. “We’ll march on New Town and beat the living crap out of them.”

“Anyone got a car?” asked a more sensible voice nearby.

“Fascinating,” mumbled the doctor. “They’re really going to do it, Gideon. I may have to refine my models. They’re really going to take action . . . Gideon?”

His assistant was no longer there.

Suddenly, at the front of the still-growing crowd, a young man stepped up on to something so that he was head and shoulders above his fellows. “Stop,” cried Gideon, for it was the doctor’s assistant who now addressed the crowd. “This should not be happening. It has gone too far. You are under the influence of an altered biochemistry. This must—”

He was going to say “stop”, but the word was prevented from escaping his lips by Dr Bull’s very firm grip around his assistant’s windpipe.

The crowd fell on the two. It looked like being a good scrap, and they were all up for a good scrap right now. Nobody understood what the fight was about, but they all started to land blows and kicks when—

12  Denouement

In which the denouement takes place

When a formidable explosion blasted them into silence. They stood, and turned. What had been the NutriMent depot was now a burning shell of a building.

And Maddy Wheatfen stood just outside its hanging gates, looking rather self-conscious at having so much attention focused on her. Her skin was blackened, and her blouse was in tatters, which only compounded her self-consciousness. She hadn’t meant the whole place to blow up, when she set fire to the outlet feed vats . . . it just, kind of,
did.
In a particularly satisfying way.

“Let him go,” she said, waving towards the biggest heap of struggling bodies and hoping they would work out what she meant. “Dr Bull.”

Maddy had realized, while throwing NutriMentPlus cakes at the birds on the river the other day, what it was that had happened to her community. It was the feed, the pipes carrying NMP supplies direct to the consumer, exactly what you need before you even know you need it, wherever you are. What a sophisticated way of getting other substances to each individual in exactly the right dosage! What a marvellous means of experimenting on an entire population. She had done some reading on the vee. Journals and stuff. She had understood enough to confirm that Dr Bull was capable of such an arrogant act.

“He got carried away,” she said. ‘We all got carried away.” She saw Nicholas in the crowd, looking almost as shamefaced as he should for getting so worked up over a silly little ball-game. “It’s good to get carried away sometimes, but just not too much, okay? I think it’s time we all got back to reality, just a bit, don’t you think?”

But reality would never be quite the same again for the good folk of Sunny Meadows (which could, really, have been almost anywhere). All had been transformed by recent events, and Maddy found it hard to believe that a single person here would return to the ways of old.

Released from beneath the crowd, Dr Bull lost no time in slipping away, followed by his ever-faithful assistant. Maddy wasn’t sure if the expression on his face was the chastened one of someone who had learnt a hard lesson, or if he was simply planning to claim the insurance and go off and set up elsewhere. To tell the truth, she wasn’t sure which of those outcomes would be best.

She caught Nicholas’ eye again. He smiled, and she smiled back. He came to her, and kissed her, and wrapped her in an embrace so powerful that she had to rise on tiptoes and then her feet even left the ground for a moment. Or maybe she imagined that part.

It was all chemistry, she thought. That’s what Dr Bull would argue, and she was happy to believe him for now.

THE VERY FIRST AFFAIR by Johan Heliot

Doubtless the satire of Dr Ox helped recharge Verne’s own batteries for he now embarked on the book that comes closest to rivalling
20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea as his best known and most popular —
Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, or Around the World in Eighty Days.
The novel was serialized in the Paris daily magazine
Le Temps
from 6 November to 22 December 1872, which apparently tripled its circulation during that period as readers waited anxiously to find how Phileas Fogg had overcome his latest problem and whether he could meet his deadline. The book, published early the following year, outsold all of Verne’s other titles during his lifetime.

The idea of circumnavigating the globe in eighty days was not entirely original to Verne. Several sources have been suggested, including the 1871 edition of
Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide,
which not only suggested the journey could be completed within “78 to 80 days” but also described a route almost identical to that undertaken by Fogg. Verne’s genius was not only to combine this with a series of cliff-hanger adventures and fascinating characters, but to add the twist of the extra day arising because of crossing the International Date Line, a fact that Verne cleverly keeps hidden until the end. The idea had first been used by Edgar Allan Poe in a short story “A Succession of Sundays” (1841), which Verne had reviewed in 1864, but whereas Poe used it as a puzzle, Verne used it to considerable dramatic effect.

The character of Phileas Fogg, like Captain Nemo, is mysterious and enigmatic. We never really get to know him, despite our closeness to him throughout the adventure. Verne created two other fascinating characters in the novel, Fogg’s servant, Passepartout, and the stupid Detective Fix who, on the trail of a bank robber, pursues Fogg around the globe. We shall meet both these characters, and learn a lot more about them and Fogg, in the next two stories.

You can call me Passepartout, since I’ve already gone by that name. But you may rest assured that’s not my true identity. Furthermore, I’m not the only one who has lied in this respect in this tale. The masks will come off when it’s time. Don’t you worry about that.

Phileas Fogg’s crazy wager had everyone in the world on the edges of their seats for eighty days, at the end of 1872. I was at the peak of my form at that time. Despite my tender age, I had already practised numerous trades — acrobat, fireman, gymnastics instructor — all of which required perfect physical condition, muscles and flexibility. I was in such good shape that, despite my modest stature, I easily defeated larger men in most of these disciplines. It was for that reason that the French Information Services, founded in June 1871, after we lost the war to Prussia, contacted menthe
Statistics and Military Reconnaissance Section
(for that was its true name) was responsible for obtaining any information France considered vital, using any means available. For that purpose, the Section needed vigorous, strong-willed men, with a taste for adventure.

That suited me to a T, although nothing could have prepared me for the most remarkable adventure that could possibly be imagined.

At that time, you see, few people were aware that travel between worlds was possible. Even fewer were able to make such trips.

So, when I was assigned to the service of this unusual Englishman for my first mission, I had no idea about Phileas Fogg’s true nature. Yet, his very name should have aroused my suspicions! What could be more nebulous than “Fogg”? What could be more inconsistent, more deceptive?

The man I met on Wednesday 2 October 1872 appeared to be in his forties and in relatively good physical condition, apart from a slight stoutness. He towered head and shoulders above me and his hair was a blonde mop. In other words, he could have been anyone, since there was absolutely nothing particular about his appearance and certain specialists were already highly skilled in the art of disguise.

Everyone now knows the conditions in which the wager concerning the journey around the world was placed, that very day, in a hall in the Reform Club, in Pall Mall, not far from another famous club — I’ll return to this later. Obviously, there was nothing of chance about it. The
Statistics Section
could never have guessed the form in which the challenge would be issued to Fogg, since no one had even heard tell about the eccentric Englishman just a few days earlier!

At this point, I would like to provide some clarification about travelling between worlds and the information collected by the secret services in this respect. Those who specialized in communicating with spirits, namely famous metapsychics such as Camille Flammarion and mediums of the calibre of a Daniel Dunglas Home, all agreed that, although there was nothing difficult with respect to travelling in the form of an astral body, they still knew nothing about the theory that made this “common marvel” possible. For some time, it had been accepted that the entities with which the meta-psychics communicated were not the souls of the deceased, but rather spiritual residues of individuals who were quite alive, yet living in other worlds. The mediums’ abilities to concentrate and certain mental predispositions granted either by Nature or Chance provided invaluable bridges between our inaccessible neighbours and ourselves.

In short, when the
Statistics Section
got wind of Fogg’s extravagant project, my superiors’ hearts skipped a beat. I

was immediately assigned to get as close to the Englishman as possible and collect as much information about the man as I could.

I have no intention of going into our expedition in any detail at this time. Everyone knows our itinerary, the methods of transportation we used, the successive ports of call on our journey, from London to Suez, from India to China, from San Francisco to the Far West, and so on. The fictionalized versions of our adventure (particularly that of M. Jules Verne), the theatrical adaptations (I’m thinking of Adolphe Dennery’s wonderful play) and, more recently, Mr Méliés’ unparalleled screenplay have all popularized the ‘terrestrial’ episodes of our tribulations.