20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (18 page)

His gaze fell upon the open windows of
Informatics and Communications. He did not have to be near Maggie
to speak to her, but conversing in person was so much better. He
made his way to the Ready Room, which served as his office and
conference room, just down the corridor from the bridge. He secured
the door behind him and strolled to the far wall.

A wooden mural depicting the history of
Terran ships sprawled across its surface, from a picture of
Odysseus' ship sneaking past Scylla and Charybdis to Nelson's
Victory
at Trafalgar. The
Nautilus
swam beneath the
original
Thunder Child
as it faced down a Martian walking
machine. Christophe never tired of viewing the minute details of
the
Santa Maria
or even the small tribute to his own
Kiwi
Clipper
.

He traced a particular wave in the top half
of the wall three times, and then he pushed in the figureheads of
the
Kiwi
and the
Santa Maria
simultaneously. They
were far apart; only someone with his long reach (or a well-timed
companion) could hope to unlock this combination. After a soft
click and grinding sound, the wooden panel receded and slid to his
left to reveal a dimly lit tunnel. He entered the corridor and used
a lever beside a rack of various small arms (and one very sharp
sword) to close the panel behind him.

Yes, a good long talk with Maggie always
cheered him up.

~~~~

Gemma

"Llewellyn,
do
try to keep up."

Dr. Pugh fussed yet again. For the past three
days, he had taught her the intricacies of the chemistry used in
his research. Her brain, famous in the Brightman Girl circle for
its nimbleness, felt taxed to its maximum capacity.

"Of course, Dr. Pugh."

She had cultivated a vast reservoir of
patience over the years, but her lessons with the elderly professor
were consuming it at a vastly accelerated rate. Gemma felt every
inch the ignorant schoolgirl, called on the carpet in front of an
exasperated headmaster. She stood a little straighter and squinted
at the glass panel again.

A sketched series of broken honeycomb cells
covered it, each labeled with various chemical symbols. Some of the
"cell" walls had double lines, and some had additional lines
sticking out from the corners, just hanging out in the air. These
extra fiddly bits and corners were the source of her mental
fuzziness. Gemma had spent enough time in labs to recognize the
symbols for nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. It was difficult to
adjust to the unlabeled corners representing carbon, and sometimes
carbon and hydrogen at the same time.

Bollocks
, she thought, allowing her
thoughts to run to the unladylike.
Why don't they just write the
C and the H where they belong? Why do they have to be so bloody
sneaky about it?

"To continue," he said, "we were discussing
the Code of Life. This architectural blueprint contained in every
cell determines the entirety of a cell's life: its functions, its
behavior, and its potential life span. Thanks to the Martians, we
know much about the Code's components: nucleic acids, sugars,
phosphates,
et cetera
.

"We had an extensive knowledge of these
components before the Invasion, to be sure. We were well on our way
to working out the Code of Life without their help. We knew about
the chemical guanine back in 1844," he said, pointing to one of the
honeycomb cells on the panel. "It was first extracted from bird
guano, hence the name."

He paused and looked at Gemma, waiting
possibly to see if her face would twist itself in disgust. When it
did not, he continued.

His large-knuckled index finger tapped the
others as he talked. "Adenine, 1885. Thymine and cytosine, just a
year apart in the 1890s. We knew there was some kind of Code thanks
to that old Swiss fellow, Miescher, back in '69. Kossel figured out
in '78 that there were five primary nucleobases, including what you
see here plus one other. We knew about guanine for ages, but it
took a while to determine its purpose and relationship to the
others. Now, Llewellyn, can you tell me from your vast laboratory
experience" -- he cleared his throat here -- "how you think the
Code works? How does it store instructions for its miniscule
Analytical Engine?"

Gemma reached into the pocket of her skirt
and fiddled with the grease pencil concealed there. She had used it
to decode messages on her stateroom mirror for the past couple of
days. She had wrestled with how to decode safely after her first
attempt to feed her first message to the goats. Shreds and scraps
of paper already lingered there, leavings from the goats' previous
snacks, and what she had found on them confirmed her suspicions:
there were others like her on the
Fury
. The message that she
found there was rather pedestrian, what looked like a recipe, but
there was no mistaking that someone wanted to hide it. She wasn't
the only one who had considered the goats as a disposal method. She
was glad that the mysterious other person had tried it first, so
that she could avoid their mistake and potential Discovery. She
doubted it had been her Watcher, if she even had one aboard. Gemma
had never known Brightman to use recipes in her normal rotation of
ciphers.

She had eaten the scrap of paper, after all,
washing it down with plenty of Darjeeling and some leftover
Bosworth jumbles nicked from the galley. Frau Knopf, at least, had
been pleased about her little treat. It was the stout matron's firm
opinion that Gemma was too skinny, and she was not shy in
expressing said opinion to anyone within earshot.

On the panel was a column of letters to the
right of the honeycombs, in sets of three: CGA, CGG, CGC, TAG. They
suspiciously resembled her own decoding work.

Gemma had filched one of the grease pencils
from her own glass panel the morning after the encounter with the
goats. She thought she might have trouble doing it on the sly, but
she was almost disappointed at how easy it had been. Bidarhalli
always had his back to her station -- at least he had the few times
she had visited it -- as he sweated over a set of equations on his
own panel. The Russian and Shaw had their own isolated lab next
door and were rarely in the communal lab. She was rather grateful
for that, as they were working with some rather nasty bits of
pestilence. It was the same with Alfieri, who divided his time
between his telescope and the tiny chapel, each in different parts
of the ship. The other biologist, Berndsen, spent a lot of time
with the ship's surgeon. Hui was in a state of constant distraction
with his own pet project and constant flow of messages from the New
Zealand labs. The linguist spent most of his time in the Cohort
conference room and in the Informatics chamber on the bridge. He
made great use of the Analytical Engine and worked closely with
Humboldt, of all people.

The pencil now had a permanent nest in her
pocket. Frau Knopf might be curious if she found one in her
stateroom, since it lacked any glass panel other than the mirror,
but no one could argue with a scientist carrying one in their
pocket. In fact, at the moment she found it to be quite
inspirational.

"It's rather like a cipher, isn't it?" she
asked. She pointed at the column. "The letters there, each one
represents one of those chemicals. A combination of those chemical
letters -- like CGA -- carries a meaning. Like an alphabet making
up words that only the cell can understand. Are there always just
three in a set?"

Pugh goggled at her and then rocked back and
forth on his enormous feet, as if he weren't sure whether to be
peeved or pleased. "Yes, as far as we know."

"Well then, with three-letter words, four
possible letters, that makes, what, sixty-four possible
combinations?"

"Mathematics is certainly not your weak
point, Llewellyn," he replied, apparently choosing to be pleased,
after all. "Indeed, though we don't think there are sixty-four
separate meanings for those 'words', so to speak, not really. Some
instructions can be represented by any of a set of such words. For
example, if the cell needs to assemble the amino acid alanine, the
Code could use either CGA, CGG, CGT, or CGC to represent that
instruction."

She pointed at the last one in the column.
"Synonyms, then. What about this one? What does TAG mean?"

"Oh, that one. Amino acids don't appear
singly. They are assembled in chains. A chain is encoded in one of
these sets of three, and then the blueprint tells it when to stop
the chain. TAG is one of several combinations that tells the part
of the cell doing the assembly to stop."

"Like the word 'STOP' in a wireless
message?"

"Precisely."

"Are there any other combinations for
'STOP'?"

He grinned at her for that one. It was a
fleeting ripple across his large and wrinkled face, but it was a
grin nonetheless. "TAA and TGA, child. I'll expect you to recite
all of them back to me tomorrow."

If he had expected her to be nervous at that,
he was mistaken. Mrs. Brightman had ground memorization into her
Girls' heads, and Gemma had been her prize student in that
category.

"Are all the combinations accounted for?"

He turned back to the glass panel and started
to add lines to the honeycombs. "Most of them, but not all.
Research is continuous," he said. "I can always ask Maggie where we
are on that, though."

"Maggie?" she asked. "Who is that?"

Dr. Pugh stopped writing on the board for a
second. His hand hung there in midair, grease pencil at the ready,
but writing nothing.

"A... fellow researcher," Pugh said. He
cleared his throat.

A sweetheart, perhaps?
Gemma thought
to herself. She was puzzled. Pugh was not married, as far as she
knew. Widowed, possibly. There should be no issue with forming an
attachment with someone else. Unless he just did not like to share
information about his affections with his colleagues. He
was
British, after all.

Pugh coughed into his hand before he
continued drawing on the panel, his back to her. "So, I'm given to
understand that you break your fasts with the Booleans?"

She decided not to press him on the matter.
There was plenty of time to allow him to let more tidbits slip out.
Besides, that bit of information did not seem likely to lead her to
Orion. However, demonstrating that she could keep mum with his
personal secrets might build some trust.

"Yes, Dr. Pugh," she replied with a deep
sigh. "With Chief Davies and Yeoman McLure. Mostly we discuss the
proper way to curtsy and Nigel's impending fatherhood. The baby is
due soon, I hear."

He waved an acknowledgement, back still to
her, as she prattled on. Then she realized that she was
prattling
, but perhaps it was because the Booleans made her
feel a part of the crew. Granted, it was easier to do her job when
she was not attached to the people around her -- Mrs. Brightman
always said so. But she found herself appreciating their efforts,
nonetheless.

She removed her hand from her pocket and
smoothed her skirts. She asked, "That wouldn't constitute a breach
of protocol, would it?"

"Oh, my, no!" he said, turning to look at her
at last with widened eyes. "No, not a bit. I think it's splendid.
In fact, I meant to encourage it. It would do you much good to have
friends your own age. I am sure that, given your Peculiar
Occupation, you have had little opportunity for that."

"Indeed," was her only reply, as a fleeting
image of Philippa flickered across her mind.

What in the world was motivating this man to
be kind to her -- in his own gruff fashion -- rather than chucking
her out the airlock? There was no anger in his voice, just a
wistfulness that recalled the mourning locket he had hidden.

She just hoped that in this flurry of
activity -- she hadn't forgotten the looming Knitting Circle of
Doom -- that she would have time to track down the elusive Orion.
Few details on what exactly that was -- a plan, a formula, a tool
-- were forthcoming. Opportunities to search were even fewer. Pugh
did not leave her in the office alone, ever. It was so piled high
with papers and journals that it would take months to paw through
it all even if she were locked into the office in solitary
confinement.

"So," she said with a slight swallow, asking
the question that she had been dreading to ask yet still felt she
must, "you haven't told the captain about me yet?"

"No. I don't plan to. If I did, it would put
him in a spot to do something about it. If he had to do what the
regulations say he has to do, he would be very put out. We can't
allow anything to interfere with his ability to make war on the
Martians, now can we? And I certainly don't wish to lose my newest
protégé." He nodded at her sigh of relief. "Just watch yourself,
though, young lady. I can't control what other people see or say to
him. Just make sure he doesn't find out otherwise."

She nodded. Discovery was always a danger no
matter the mission, and she still wasn't entirely sure she could
trust this man. She was entirely at his mercy, and there was
nothing else to do but trust him.

"There is something else you can do for me,"
he said.

He pulled two thick ledgers out of the pile
and handed them to her. The one on top was ancient, tattered, and
smelt of the sea.

"When you have a moment, I have a slight
mystery for you to help me solve. Hui has his pet projects, and I
have mine. Here are two different accounts of events revolving
around a certain man of personal interest to me. One was written by
my mentor, Professor Aronnax. Captain Moreau has carried it with
him for many years. Now it is in your care. The other is written by
a source that is not quite as familiar to the public. I want you to
read them both and tell me what discrepancies you find, if any. If
you find any -- and I believe you shall -- I'd like for you to help
me resolve them. You've spent your life gathering and calculating
data for others. Let's see if you can draw any conclusions worth a
damn. It is a separate issue from the Code of Life, but it does
have a little bearing on our situation. You
can
read French,
I take it?"