The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (64 page)

“You are assuredly aware, Mr Wells, that the fortunes of my family were greatly expanded at the beginning of the century with the landing and subsequent loss of the Golden Meteor.”

“I remember it,” Wells said coldly. “Although I doubt you were even alive then. The world believed that the meteor would make gold as common as iron. Your father bought mining stock at bargain prices and, when the meteor fell into the North Sea, his holdings increased tenfold.”

Jean winced. “That is correct, Sir, to my deep shame. And it is in the hope of undoing that great wrong that I have come to you.”

Wells gave him a sharp look. Lecoeur was very young, not more than twenty-five. He radiated earnest naiveté. In this world such innocence was almost a crime.

“And how do you propose to rectify this social injustice?” he asked.

Lecoeur took a deep breath. “I intend to see to it that the Golden Meteor never falls into the sea,” he announced.

Wells raised his bushy eyebrows. “Don’t you think it would be more practical simply to donate your fortune to those in need?”

“No,” Lecoeur said firmly. “Although that is certainly a laudable endeavour. It’s not just a matter of redistributing wealth now. The damage was done nearly thirty years ago.”

He leaned forward, his hands clasped in entreaty.

“My father thought he was getting rich, doing his duty as a banker to increase the wealth of his clients,” he continued. “But you know what happened. With the cornering of the gold market, social unrest increased. Anarchy became rampant. Eventually the powder keg was lit. You know the results: assassination, revolution, the Great War. Mr Wells, what do you think the world would be like if the War had been avoided? We are now in the midst of an economic depression. Communists run Russia and Germany is starting to rearm. What would England and France be like if the best of our young men had lived to fulfil their potential? Sir, my own two older brothers died at the Somme. I would do anything to prevent that.”

He gazed at Wells with great brown puppy-like eyes. Despite himself, Wells was touched. But he knew what was coming.

“M. Lecoeur,” he began. “I know what you are going to ask me and it is literally impossible. The time machine is highly imperfect. The one time it was used, the operator was nearly lost.”

“I understand you have been working on the machine since then,” Jean answered. “My informants tell me that it now might be able to manage short trips through time with an astonishing degree of accuracy.”

Wells leapt to his feet, knocking over a vase full of chrysanthemums. “Just who have you been talking to, Sir?” he asked in astonishment. “And what right have you to invade my privacy in this manner?”

Lecoeur remained calm. “An unlimited amount of money will buy almost any information,” he said sadly. “I am prepared to commit such gross insults to social custom in order to achieve my goal.”

“Are you also prepared to die?” Wells glared down at him.

“Of course,” Jean blinked away his tears. “I would give my life if my brothers could be spared as well as the millions of others who died because of my father’s greed.”

Wells collapsed back into his chair like a punctured zeppelin.

“You realize that, even if you succeed, the War may come all the same,” he asked.

“I must try,” Jean answered. “My studies indicate that it was this one event that led to all the human disasters of this century.”

From the experience of a lifetime, Wells was fairly sure this wasn’t true. It took more than one avaricious banker to destroy the world. It needed at least two. But Lecoeur’s argument was persuasive. Wells thought back on the horrors of the past years and the fear that the worst was yet to come. Perhaps the man should be given the chance. The recent tests of the machine did indicate that short jumps through time might be completed with some accuracy It was possible that Jean Lecoeur could go and come back alive.

Two weeks later Jean Lecoeur sat in the cellar of Wells’ house, staring in awe at the fabled time machine. Jean was dressed in the clothes of 1904. He had also procured a large amount of pre-war money from various countries.

“I imagine life has not changed that much,” he explained.

“Money seems to make everything much easier. In the event of success, I shall be sorry to lose my fortune, but it is for the greater good.”

Wells grunted as he twiddled with various controls.

“You’ll arrive in London,” he said. “In the basement of this house. After that it’s up to you to get to Greenland where the meteor landed. If you succeed, you’ll need to get back here and into the machine without anyone, especially my younger self, seeing you. Otherwise, you may change history even more, perhaps undoing the good you intended.”

“I understand,” Jean tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry. “You are certain that you can get me there two weeks before the event?”

“Approximately,” Wells answered. “Remember, this machine is still experimental.”

“I’m trying
not
to remember,” Jean said. “Are you ready?” Without answering, Wells threw a switch and the world around Jean Lecoeur turned inside out.

He woke up in the blackness of the cellar, retching and cold. It took him a few moments to remember where he was and that Wells had cautioned him to make no noise.

There was another moment of complete terror as Jean groped his way to the door near the coal chute. What if he had gone too far back? His money would be worthless if he arrived before it was printed.

The cool rain of a London summer evening greeted his exit into the alleyway. The clop of hooves and the creak of coach wheels came from the street. There were no auto brakes squealing, nor the blare of radios. He hurried out into the street. There was a newsstand on the corner. Jean ran to it and gave a cry of joy. It was 1904 and July 19th! He had a month before the fateful day.

Jean inhaled the moist air. He had done it. Now to arrange passage to Greenland. He still had to arrive before the meteor fell and then stop his father from sending it to the bottom of the sea.

Even with the large supply of antique cash he had brought, Jean found it difficult to book passage to Greenland. Treasure seekers, government officials, and the curious were all eager to see the landing of a meteor made of gold. At last he managed to get a berth on a fishing boat for a price that would normally have bought him a suite on an ocean liner.

The port of Upernevik, in Greenland was equally chaotic. Jean had never heard so many languages spoken at the same time or with such urgency. It seemed that everyone in the world had come to see the meteor.

But, while the others were all fixated on reaching the predicted landing site of the meteor, Jean went at cross purposes to the crowd. He was desperate to find his father, Robert Lecoeur, and the instigator of the event, Zéphyrin Xirdal.

Jean had never met M. Xirdal. His father had explained that the man was very rich, very brilliant and completely mad. M. Xirdal was also a recluse, not from any particular misanthropy, but because, if he were invited to join a party, he would forget about it immediately upon returning home. Consequently, he received few invitations.

It was Zéphyrin Xirdal who had first noticed the meteor, although others claimed that honour. It was also Zéphyrin who had invented a machine to attract the golden orb toward the earth, not for any particular desire for gain, but to see if he could. Jean’s father, Robert, was possibly Zéphyrin’s best friend, as well as his banker and godfather. So it was to Robert Lecoeur that Xirdal applied when he decided to set the meteor down in Greenland. Robert had purchased the landing site for Zéphyrin.

It was this advance knowledge of the landing that allowed Robert Lecoeur to speculate in gold mines. Somehow, Robert had convinced Zéphyrin to use his machine to send the meteor into the ocean, thus causing mining stock, at an all time low, to increase to a hundred times the price Robert had paid. Jean had heard the story many times as a child.

It was this artificial tampering with the world economy that, Jean believed, led to the social unrest that resulted in the horrors of the Great War. It was for this that Jean set out on this dangerous quest. Zéphyrin Xirdal must be prevented from sinking the meteor!

Jean knew that his father and Xirdal had arrived on the yacht
Atlantic.
He managed to find a member of the crew who told him that M. Lecoeur and his odd friend had arrived several weeks earlier and were already on the property that M. Xirdal had bought near Upernevik.

With growing uneasiness, Jean joined the flock of treasure hunters. He was frantic to get to the front of the pack. What if he arrived too late? Of course his efforts were entirely misunderstood by everyone else.

“Who do you think you are?” a badly-dressed man shouted at him in English when Jean tried to pass him. “It’ll do you no good, young man. That meteor is mine!”

“Of course, Sir, if you wish it,” Jean replied soothingly. “I have no interest in the gold. I’m only concerned for my father, who left earlier. I really must find him before he comes to harm.”

At that statement, the young woman standing next to the man smiled in commiseration.

“Then we must let you go,” she said. “My name is Jenny Hudelson, and this is
my
father, Dr Sidney Hudelson, the co-discoverer of the meteor.”

Jean bowed. He remembered something about two Americans who had happened to be the first to spot the golden meteor and exactly at the same time. It had been an amusing paragraph in the history of the event.

Another man pushed his way into the group. “‘Co-discoverer’ indeed!” he snorted, over the attempts of a young man to quiet him. “I, Dean Forsyth, was the first to gaze upon the meteor. This man is a charlatan!”

The two young people looked at each other and sighed. Jenny explained the situation to Jean, who would have preferred to take his leave at once.

“Francis is Mr Forsyth’s nephew,” she nodded toward the young man. “We were to be married until this horrid meteor caused a rift between our families. How I hope it sinks into the ocean! That would make everything the same as it was before.”

“Oh, no, Mademoiselle!” Jean said in horror. “You do not know what you are saying. That would be a catastrophe!”

He tipped his hat and hurried on. It was already the eighteenth of August. The meteor was due to land the following morning.

A storm blew in that night, driving all the visitors to seek shelter. It would be impossible to reach his father in such conditions. Jean was able to find a few square metres of floor space in one of the wooden buildings of the town. He tried to remain awake in order to set off as soon as the wind died down but weariness from travel and anxiety caused him to fall into a deep slumber.

The arctic summer dawn shone directly into his eyes, waking him. Was it his imagination or did the light seem brighter than usual?

Cursing himself for giving in to sleep, Jean dressed quickly and set off to find the but where his father and Zéphyrin had set up the machine to attract the meteor.

At once he realized that the light of the sun, low on the horizon, was nothing to the glowing splendour of the meteor, now descending rapidly toward the earth. The heat of the approaching ball of gold was intense. It was so bright that Jean couldn’t see the path in the glare. He was forced to crawl the final distance to the hut.

He had almost reached it when there was a crash that shook the entire island and caused Jean to be thrown flat against the ground, clutching at it as if he feared he might slide off the earth.

He didn’t see the door of the but open and two men rush out toward the fallen meteor, only to be driven back by the piercing temperature of the glowing gold.

Zéphyrin Xirdal and Robert Lecoeur stared in rapture at the giant golden nugget.

“It’s not solid, of course,” Zéphyrin explained. “You can see the fissures. But it’s still more gold than any one country has ever possessed.”

“And now it’s yours,” Robert breathed.

“Yes.” Zéphyrin seemed less enthralled than the banker. “I wonder what I can do with it.”

“Don’t worry, my boy,” Robert smiled. “I’ll help you think of something.”

Zéphyrin nodded. “Those people from the town will be here soon. Why don’t you go back to the but while I let them know that I have claimed the meteor.”

Robert protested this, but Zéphyrin was firm that the machine should be guarded and that only he could convince the crowd that the meteor was only on this earth as a result of his invention.

The crowd rushed to the place where the meteor now gleamed, brighter than the sun and, seemingly, almost as hot. Jean had just ascertained that he was neither blind nor deaf as a result of being so close to the crash. He had just commenced his trek to the but when the masses overtook him. Once there, they were astonished to find the way to the meteor blocked by a ring of fences and the person of Zéphyrin Xirdal.

“This is my property,” he announced. “As is the meteor.”

In the uproar that followed, Jean was able to sneak past and make his way up to the crude but where he knew his father had waited. Eagerly, he knocked on the door.

“You are trespassing, Sir,” Robert Lecoeur greeted him.

For a moment, Jean stood transfixed, his jaw hanging. His father could never have been that young! He looked just like the family portrait, taken when his older brothers were little and he not even thought of. The anger, however, was familiar.

“Please, Sir!” he begged. “I must speak with you. I know that you plan to send the meteor into the ocean. You cannot do this!”

“What are you talking about?” Robert stared at him. “Why should I wish to lose all that gold?”

“I . . . I don’t understand,” Jean stammered. “Aren’t you planning to buy mining stock and resell it at exorbitant rates when the meteor is lost?”

Robert drew himself up proudly. “I have no such intention,” he said stiffly. “My godson, Zéphyrin, is the owner of the meteor. I have a responsibility to protect his property.”

“And you aren’t worried that it will be taken from you by some government?” Jean asked.