Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (12 page)

The captain returned to his cabin. The Indian scientists retrieved such scientific instrumentation as they had in their cabins, and returned to the observation chamber. Le Petomain was in the pilot’s seat and Boucher in the captain’s chair. With de Chante gone, and Avocat and Pannier locked into their cabins, the boat felt deserted.

Lebret lit another cigarette and loitered for a while in the bridge. According to the depth gauge, augmented by the notches in the panel, the submarine had sunk to something approaching 100,000 kilometres (it was hard to be precise). ‘A remarkable depth!’ he murmured.

Le Petomain ignored him.

Behind the hum of the functioning submarine – the whirr of the propellers, the hum of the electrics – a distant moaning noise could just about be heard. It rose and fell.

‘Do
you
believe, Lieutenant,’ Lebret asked, offhandedly, ‘that we will be able simply to retrace our steps and return home? Even if we could locate whichever portal granted us entrance in all this vast quantity of alien water – and even supposing it permitted us to go back through – then the sudden pressure differential would surely tear us to shreds …’

‘Monsieur,’ Boucher interrupted him. ‘Please do not continue speaking. You cannot persuade me to listen to you. The captain has given his orders, and I intend to follow them.’

‘Commendable loyalty,’ said Lebret. ‘I’m sure.’ His tone of voice was not wholly respectful.

The background moaning noise rose in intensity, and Lebret suddenly realised what was causing it. It was Pannier, locked in his cabin, crying aloud his complaints. ‘Be quiet!’ bellowed Boucher.

The moaning ceased. But shortly the cook began banging at the inside of his door.

‘What does that old soak want?’ growled Le Petomain.

‘I’ll try to quieten him down,’ said Lebret.

He made his way along into the corridor behind the Bridge to Pannier’s door. Pannier presumably heard somebody moving outside his cabin, for he redoubled the force of his hammering. There Lebret stood, waiting for a pause in the noise. Eventually he called out, ‘Monsieur, please cease this clamour! It will do you no good.’

‘Let me out.’ Pannier’s voice sounded muffled, by the door, or by drink, or by both.

‘No, Monsieur,’ said Lebret.

‘Is it you, Monsieur Observer? Monsieur Vichy? I can’t expect comradeship from you, I suppose! Well, if you won’t let me out, at least fetch me a bottle from the kitchen. One bottle!’

‘I don’t think so, Monsieur.’

‘Come! You can’t stand on your honour to refuse me – you have none.’ The words were slightly slurred. ‘We’re all going to die – you can’t expect a man to face that fate
sober
? I’ll strike a deal with you, Monsieur Vichy – fetch me a bottle and I’ll stop banging and shouting. But leave me here to sober up and by the sacred colour blue I’ll bash this door off its hinges! I swear it.’

‘Monsieur,’ Lebret began, wearily. There was motion behind him, and he looked away from Pannier’s door to see Captain Cloche approaching.

‘Pannier,’ boomed the captain. ‘Be quiet! You are in enough trouble already – silence your mutinous racket. I am giving you a direct order.’

Without waiting for a reply he turned and moved ponderously back up the sloping corridor. Lebret danced after him.

‘Captain!’ he called. ‘Captain – might I have a word?’

Cloche’s broad back disappeared into the captain’s cabin; but he did not close the door behind him, and Lebret – tentatively – followed him inside.

The captain’s cabin was a sparely furnished, blue room. The captain sat himself heavily on the edge of his bunk, and looked up at Lebret. ‘Yes, Monsieur?’ he said. The inner lining of his eyes was red; the eyes themselves exhausted, lunar, distant.

Bang! Bang! Bang!
came with clattering regularity from Pannier’s room.

‘You look tired, Captain,’ Lebret said, a little stab of compassion starting up in his breast.

Cloche said nothing at first; but then he sighed. ‘You have not come here to discuss whether I am tired or not, Monsieur.’

‘No, Captain’ Lebret agreed. ‘I have not.’

‘I believe you have come to try and persuade me to take the
Plongeur
further down, to sink us deeper into these strange waters, so as to investigate this faint light.’

‘That is exactly why I am here, Captain,’ Lebret agreed. He tried a smile.

‘I won’t do it,’ said Cloche, simply. ‘That’s all.’

Lebret took a breath, and began to say, ‘An opportunity for scientific discovery of quite literally unprecedented …’ But his heart was not in it, and his sentence petered out.

‘We have never served together before, Monsieur, you and I,’ said Cloche, with a certain smugness. ‘But I think you understand me well enough to know that I am not a man to go back on a decision, once I have made it.’

‘No,’ said Lebret, mournfully. ‘Of course, you understand that the journey back might kill us all!’

‘It might,’ conceded the captain. ‘De Chante is dead already. Better, then, to die attempting to get home, rather than to throw our lives away chasing some blue-light chimera. Let us at least be men. Warriors of France. Not kittens distracted by … by a spot of sunlight on, ah!, on the floor reflected by … eh, by a shaving
mirror.’ He looked pleased with himself, in a severe sort of way, with this metaphor.

Outside, Pannier’s banging had fallen into a regular rhythm. The captain shook his head. ‘I may have to shoot that drunkard,’ he growled.

It was evident to Lebret that there was no changing the captain’s mind. He dressed his face in a smile – an unconvincing expression, even for him. ‘Good-day Captain,’ he said. He turned to leave the cabin, but instead of stepping out into the corridor he shut the captain’s door.

‘Monsieur?’ said Cloche. ‘There is more you wish to say? Rest assured, you will not change my mind.’

‘The blue light, Captain. What if it is the
sky
?’

Cloche looked dully at him. ‘What?’

‘I am serious. The blue colour of the sky! What if, by ordering the
Plongeur
to ascend, you were actually taking us
away
from the surface?’

Suddenly the captain laughed – one, two, three bark-like noises. ‘This is your latest surreal theory, Monsieur? First you claimed we had all died and gone to a watery heaven. Then you said we had entered an infinite sea! Now you are saying that all that has happened is that we have flopped upside down?’
Ha
!
Ha
! Cloche’s laugh was a peculiar thing – machinic, perfectly empty of warmth. ‘If it is so, wouldn’t we all be standing upon the ceiling?’ he asked.

‘Captain, listen for a moment, permit me to …’ said Lebret, fishing through the pockets of his trousers.

Thud
,
thud
,
thud
went Pannier’s fist against his door. Then he paused; then he banged again.
Thud
,
thud
,
thud
.

Cloche’s strange smile fell away. ‘You really believe it, don’t you? You are insane, Monsieur. I see it now – insane.’

‘Ah!’ said Lebret, finding what he was looking for in his left pocket. He pulled it out. It was a small pistol – a tiny gun, looking rather like a cigarette lighter with a spout.

Cloche saw at once what it was. ‘Oho!’ he snorted. ‘You think to intimidate me with that lady’s pistoletta?’

‘What choice do you leave me, Captain?’

Cloche’s sneer fell away. Without getting to his feet, he reached his right hand round to his left hip where his own, much more substantial weapon was holstered.

But the flap of his holster was, as always, buttoned up. It was this that gave Lebret time to act.

He did so without haste. With an almost leisurely motion, he stepped over to where Cloche was sitting. As he came, he held out his left, empty hand, keeping the right, with the gun in it, pointed at the floor. The cabin was small; it took only two steps to cross the floor.

What occurred next happened rapidly. Lebret slipped his left hand out and up, underneath Cloche’s beard, grasping his throat. His hand looked small, almost feminine; but the effect on the captain of its grip upon his windpipe was pronounced. His eyes popped open. His own right hand gave up its fumbling at the flap of his holster, and seized Lebret’s left wrist.

Thud
,
thud
,
thud
went Pannier, striking the inside of his own door.

The captain’s left hand joined his right, clutching at Lebret’s arm; but even with both he was unable to dislodge Lebret’s grip. The slightness of the fellow’s frame belied what was, evidently, a considerable muscular strength in his arm.

Lebret and Cloche locked eyes. Cloche’s lips parted. A hiss emerged; a gasping and rasping sound.

Then –
thud
,
thud
,
thud
went Pannier, out in the corridor. Lebret brought up his pistol. Even a small gun, like his, would make an unmissably loud report in the close confines of the
Plongeur
, and the closer confines of the captain’s cabin.

Lebret looked past the captain to the pillow at the head of his bunk, to muffle the gunshot. It was out of reach. To get it, Lebret would have to relinquish his grasp – and that would allow Cloche to retrieve his own weapon. The captain’s eyes followed Lebret’s gaze. He choked, rasped, and kicked out with his leg. His cheeks and brow were dark.

Lebret met the captain’s bulging gaze. With a rapid twisting motion he rolled his gun up in Cloche’s long white beard, twisting
it over once, and over again, until it was swaddled in the old man’s face hair. The tip of the little barrel rested against the underside of the captain’s chin.

Cloche’s eyes widened again as he felt the metal touch him. He gave another convulsive kick with his right leg, and tried wriggling his whole body away from his assailant’s hold. It did no good.

Lebret was waiting, his head slightly inclined. In his eye was the same perfect blankness you see in a heron’s eye, as it holds the fish against the unflinching riverside rock, drowning its prey in air. And then—

Thud
,
thud
,
thud
went Pannier. And tucked in the middle, another sound, almost exactly timed to coincide with the middle
thud
: a sharper-edged cracking sound.

Cloche’s head twitched upward. A thread of scarlet was picked out, suddenly, in the white of the left eye.

The force drained from his double grip on Lebret’s arm. The other man released his hold on Cloche’s throat, and brushed the captain’s hands away. They fell, nerveless, to flop against the mattress.

Lebret began to untangle his right hand, as if unpacking a present from a mess of white packing straw. He brought out two things: his small pistol in his hand, but also a long thread of grey wool. Lebret regarded this. It wasn’t wool – it was an upwards trailing thread of smoke.

It took a moment for Lebret to understand. He snatched his hand away at almost exactly the same time that the smoke kindled into a flash of flame, and the whole beard began to burn. A potent reek of singed hair filled the cabin. Flame tickled upwards.

Lebret stepped back.

Cloche’s body slumped slowly backwards, the back of his head striking the wall, his spine bowing out. His entire beard was alight now, myriad little orange-white flames shimmering across his chest and black smoke gushing upwards. This veil did not obscure the sight of the old man’s cheeks blackening and blistering.

Lebret pocketed his pistol, opened the captain’s door, checked
the corridor and stepped into it. He had just reached his own door and opened it when the sound of a klaxon split the air.

He put one foot inside his room, in time to be able to make it look as though he was stepping
out
of his cabin – drawing the door shut behind him – as Le Petomain and Billiard-Fanon hurried into the corridor.

‘Fire alarm!’ called Billiard-Fanon.

‘Is
that
what it is?’ replied Lebret coolly. ‘I did wonder.’

‘Smoke – seeping around the captain’s door!’ cried Le Banquier.

‘Is it locked? Is the door locked?’ Billiard-Fanon demanded.

But Le Petomain had already opened the door. He recoiled as a billow of foul-smelling smoke burlied out. Then he covered his mouth with the crook of his arm, and dived in. Billiard-Fanon followed, and Lebret came to stand at the door.

‘Shall I fetch water?’ Lebret called. He could see what was happening inside the cabin – Le Petomain hauling the blanket from the captain’s bunk and wrapping it around the burning skull.

The alarm sounded, a hammer-drill din. Pannier’s banging at the door redoubled in intensity.

Le Petomain wrestled the captain from his bunk and onto the floor so as to be able to fold the blanket the whole way around. But it was all too obvious that Cloche was dead.

Coughing, Le Petomain piled the rest of the blanket about the site of the fire. The flames were stifled, but smoke filled the room. Billiard-Fanon was weeping, either at the shock and tragedy of his captain’s death, or else from the stinging, foul smoke.

The alarm stopped abruptly, leaving only Pannier’s rhythmic thumping at his cabin door. Boucher emerged into the corridor. ‘Where’s the fire?’

Lebret gestured into Cloche’s cabin. ‘Too late, I fear,’ he added, as the lieutenant peered around the door.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ gasped Billiard-Fanon, rubbing his eyes on the sleeves of his shirt.

‘He—he caught fire,’ said Le Petomain, between coughs. ‘He was on his bunk, and somehow – he caught fire!’

‘But how?’ demanded Boucher.

‘Spontaneous human combustion!’ said the ensign, in a scared voice. ‘I read about it in a novel – an English novel. A devilish thing!’

‘Unlikely,’ observed Lebret, drily.

Le Petomain stepped out of the cabin. His face was streaked with smuts, and his eyes were watering. ‘He was on his bunk. Did he—did he light a cigarette, and fall asleep? Did his cigarette fall into his beard and set it alight?’