The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (59 page)

“Bloody good job,” said the man on Brian’s right. “Sooner they’ve launched, the sooner we’ll be out of this rain. Let it fall on bloody Germany instead.”

The other men in the group laughed and Brian joined in.

They took shelter behind a wedge-shaped piece of concrete. Most of the men lit up cigarettes or pulled out one of the day’s electrosheets.

“I see that the Americans are protesting about the launches again,” said one man.

“One minute,” said the tannoy.

“Let them bloody whinge,” said another.

Brian accepted a cigarette offered by one of the other men. He took a drag, smelling the sweet lanolin on his hands. The tobacco was good, surprisingly smooth. A lot better than the stuff available in the USA nowadays.

“Ten seconds.”

Brian leant out from the side of the shelter. He could see nothing.

“Get back in here, you bloody idiot,” said one of the other men, good naturedly.

“Why not watch?” said the man who had offered the cigarette. He was sitting with his back to the wall, enjoying his smoke. “I don’t even know why they bring us out here now They might as well leave us to work. Nothing ever happens at a launching.”

Brian peeked around the corner of the wall. He had a good view down a wide road made of concrete squares to the raised lip of the bore hole. A yellow green haze danced in the light drizzle above the launch bore, rain drops sparkling as they fell into the electrocotton lined pit. The launch cylinder would be rifled in electrocotton to set it spinning as it travelled up through the bore hole . . . Brian felt the shock in the ground, a thumping at his feet as the explosive charge was detonated, he saw the yellow green haze brighten tremendously and form a ruled line into the sky piercing the clouds above, and then he heard the noise of the explosion.

It wasn’t that loud, but oh! he felt the power. Vibration seemed to fill his entire body, it set his heart and soul resonating ... but to the rest of the workers it was commonplace. Already men were returning to their work, and after a moment’s hesitation Brian followed them, but with a growing sense of awe. Only the English. Only the English could have thought up such a scheme. It was well-known, it had been reported in the electrosheets so often it had become commonplace, but to stand here at the edge of a launching filled one with awe at their sheer daring, their exuberance, their audacity! For the past fourteen months the English had been launching projectiles stuffed with electrocotton into space.

As he trudged back to work through the drizzle the latest cylinder was soaring higher and higher until it reached the discharge point. A current would be activated and the thousands and thousands of miles of invisibly thin electrocotton within the crates would spool out, twisting under its own charge to form a great loop in the heavens. A loop larger than the Earth, one of many arranged in series around the orbit of the Earth, an enormous electromagnetic cannon that stretched out 584 million miles in length. Already the Earth’s magnetic field was interacting with electrocotton launched a year ago. As the planet sailed through the great loops its axis of rotation was gently tilted around. It was a bold plan.

Brian couldn’t help smiling.

Not any longer. The damage of the last year was done, but the American government had done its calculations, and done them well. With the subtle changes Brian and others like him were making to the folding pattern, the Earth would not be tilting much further in that direction. His smile broadened into a grin that quickly faded as he made it back to the warehouse.

Arthur Salford was waiting there for him. He was dressed in a smart grey suit.

“Good morning Mr Fuller,” he said. “I see you took my advice and bought a raincoat.”

Max stood despondently on the balcony, looking out over the Paris skyline. The sun shone down from a brilliant blue sky, fresh white clouds scudding across its face.

“Cheer up Mr Fuller,” said Miss Scrobot, pouring coffee into a little white cup. “Surely you can enjoy this sunny morning with me?”

She held out the coffee and Mr Fuller accepted it. He took a sip. It was very good, he grudgingly thought.

“Oh Miss Scrobot,” he said. “It’s just the feeling of frustration. That all our plans should have come to nothing. That they were doomed from the very outset. The English have been on to Durham and his amateurish set-up for years.”

Miss Scrobot came close and took his hand in her warm metal grip. Max looked down in surprise. It was not like her to be so forward.

“Never mind, Mr Fuller,” she said. “At least you tried. You gave it your best shot. That is what your sex demands, is it not?”

“Ah, Miss Scrobot, but my best was not enough! And the English are so polite about it. That’s what galls me! They were such gentlemen, they caught me and treated me so well, as if it were all a game. They treated me to a decent lunch and then had me put on a train with that Mr Salford to travel back here. We talked about cricket and the Proms all the way back. And here I am again and still the world tilts.”

Miss Scrobot gave a little giggle.

“I think not,” she said.

Mr Fuller looked down at her.

“Miss Scrobot, charming though you are, I think it best that you do not make jokes at a time like this. Serious matters such as these are best attended to by my sex.”

Miss Scrobot gave a laugh.

“Oh Mr Fuller, will you ever learn to take my sex seriously? I hesitate to say this for fear of damaging your ego, but you would have found out eventually. Don’t you see; your mission was nothing but a diversion? It has always been thus. In this new age, physical force can play its part, but it will always be subordinated by the application of the mind. Long before you set out for England, far more subtle plans were at work. It does not take the mass application of saboteurs such as yourself to set the world aright, but rather the simplest stroke of a pen.”

Max looked at Miss Scrobot, his expression one of deepening anger.

“What do you mean, Miss Scrobot? Explain yourself?”

“It was necessary, Mr Fuller! The English must never suspect their scheme has been undone before it was even started. Two years ago, I was invited to visit the Royal Society. There, inspired by the example of my namesake, Miss Scorbitt, I set about atoning for the mistakes of my sex, all those years ago. All it took was an understanding of Mathematics, and the insertion of a simple digit.”

“Which digit, Miss Scrobot?”

“The number two, Mr Fuller. The electrocotton the English have placed in space is twice the amount required. The Earth will not just tilt, it will perform a loop! They will end up back where they started!”

Max stared at Miss Scrobot, his expression slowly altering to one of understanding, then admiration, then joy. He squeezed the mechanical woman’s hand tighter.

“Ingenious, Miss Scrobot! What can I say?”

“You could ask me to marry you, Mr Fuller,”

She looked down, shocked at her own daring. Max’s smile slowly widened.

“I would not dare do otherwise, Miss Scrobot. Or should I say, Janet? When a woman makes her mind up in these matters, what man can stand in her way?”

Janet Scrobot gave a mechanical smile.

“And in matters of Mathematics, Mr Fuller. Will you now admit to female proficiency in that field?”

Max smiled warmly at his metal companion.

“Not proficiency, Janet. Rather I would say, what man could compete with a woman’s wiles!”

“Oh, Mr Fuller!”

THE SECRET OF THE SAHARA by Richard A. Lupoff

In the last fifteen years of his life Verne continued to maintain a remarkable output of fiction, unfortunately all too much of it of minimal interest. Who today reads or even remembers
César Cascabel
(1890),
Mistress Branican
(1891),
Claudius Bombarnac
(1892),
P’tit-Bonhomme
(1893),
Captain Antifer
(1895),
Clovis Dardentor
(1896) or
The Will of an Eccentric
(1899)? Thankfully there were more exciting novels that captured some of that old adventurous spark, such
as L’île a hake
(1895) — also known as
Floating Island
or
Propeller Island —
about the creation of a massive artificial island that unfortunately meets with inevitable destruction because of man’s folly. Verne also wrote
Le Sphinx des glaces
(1897), or
An Antarctic Mystery,
his sequel to Poe’s
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
Other works of interest include
La Grande Forêt
(1901), or
The Village in the Treetops,
and the second Robur novel
Maître du monde
(1904).

Verne was so prolific that there were sufficient novels stockpiled to appear posthumously, and not all have been translated into English. One of these lesser known works,
L’Invasion de la Mer,
was being serialized in
Magasin d’éducation et de récréation
at the time of Verne’s death in March 1905. It used an idea Verne had touched upon
in Hector Servadac
and that was the possibility of irrigating the Sahara desert. In
L’Invasion de la Mer,
engineers are constructing a canal from the Gulf of Gabè in Tunisia into the Sahara but an earthquake disrupts the work and causes the Mediterranean to break through and create a huge inland sea. This novel was translated and serialized in America in a much edited version as
Captain Hardizan
in the
American Weekly
during August 1905, a fact long unknown to Verne devotees until discovered recently by researcher Victor Berch. The first full translation appeared as
The Invasion of the Sea
in 2001 and that version inspired the following story.

Although the Great Hall of the Republic could of course have been commandeered for the meeting, His Excellency the Governor General of the Province of Tunisie Française had chosen to entertain his distinguished guests in a smaller, private dining room. Such was a proper decision, for these more intimate surroundings were designed to encourage an open discussion of issues and exchange of views than would the more formal, even ceremonial, atmosphere of the flag-draped and sculpted Hall.

Here in the Governor General’s private dining room, a sparkling table had been set and the Personal Representative of the President of the French Republic had entertained his guests in lavish manner. The meal had consisted of a local endive and olive salad, baked Saharan langouste stuffed with salt-water crab, lamb shish kebab, chick-peas and tabouli washed down with Algerian wine, followed by baclava, thick Turkish coffee, and a sweet Hungarian Tokay.

Empty dishes, silver, and other detritus had been cleared away by silent and well-trained servants. Out of respect for their sole female member, the Italian Dortore Speranza Verde, a native of Tuscany, the men of the party had refrained briefly from lighting cheroots. The red-haired and green-eyed Tuscan physician had startled them by requesting a cheroot from her neighbour, the English historian, Mr Black, and drawing upon it with obvious pleasure.

Now as the Governor General, M. Sebastiane LeMonde, rose, the buzz of conversation which had followed the meal ceased and a hush descended upon the room.

“Madame,” the Governor General bowed toward the female physician, “and Messieurs, in the name of the President of the Republic I welcome you to French Africa and to our beautiful city of Serkout.”

A murmur of approval rippled through the assemblage, following which the Governor General resumed.

“I am authorized by the President of the Republic to offer special felicitations to Colonel Dwight David White.”

The Governor General nodded toward a tall, distinguished gentleman clothed in the grey uniform of the Army of the Confederate States of America. This officer’s skin was black; his hair, its tight curls cropped close to his skull, shared the colouration of his military garb. The uniform bore the gold frogging and glittering decorations earned in his distinguished career.

The Colonel nodded his acknowledgment of the Governor General’s felicitation.

“Sir, this year marks the one hundredth anniversary of a date in the history of your nation, the Declaration of Emancipation issued by your President, Mr Jefferson Davis. As a student of North American history since my first days at the
École
de Paris,
I have long felt that President Davis’s action was not only a matter of high morality, but a political move of the wisest. By declaring the enslaved persons of his nation free and equal citizens of that Republic and offering them fair compensation for the suffering and deprivation of their lives, he won for the Confederacy a new and most highly motivated Army, which led to the vanquishment of the Union forces and recognition of a new and shining ornament among the family of Nations.”