20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (22 page)

She was deep into the description of Nemo's
mollusk collection when Dr. Pugh interrupted her study with a tray
of cheese and biscuits for a light lunch. After fussing over the
cheddar and potted Stilton, he planted her in front of the glass
panels once more and launched into another lecture.

She examined the sketches, which were little
more than intertwined and overlapping vertical lines. They
resembled spiral staircases and were a stark contrast to the
honeycombs he had drawn before. The one on the left, labeled
"HUMAN", had its pair of lines connected at regular intervals with
smaller horizontal straight ones. The "MARTIAN" one on the right
was similar, but the connecting lines were so close together that
they almost melded into a single block of colour. The overarching
label was "THE CODE OF LIFE".

"You were correct the other day. It
is
like a numerical cipher, except it uses combinations of chemicals
instead of numbers. The truly odd thing that we've found is that
humans and Martians use the same chemicals for their Codes of Life,
even though they originated on different worlds. At the same time,
there are differences. Do you see them?"

Blast the Socratic method
, Gemma
grumbled to herself whilst doing her best to keep a semblance of
placidity on her face. "The Martian one has more connecting lines,"
she replied after a moment's consideration. "The information is
denser."

Pugh nodded. "Quite correct. We believe that
they could carry out their major functions of life using the same
density as human Code. So why the extra? That's the mystery we are
trying to solve."

He cleared his throat after a moment of her
silence. "Feel privileged, Llewellyn," he said. "This is the heart
of my research. There are those who would kill to get even a
glimpse of it. Nevertheless, it wouldn't matter if you were to
share it back with your mistress. There are no Martians available
for her to examine or to make use of, so the information would be
useless to her."

Gemma asked, "If all the Martians on Earth
are dead, and we already have a plan to destroy the remaining ones
on Mars, why are we even bothering to study their Codes?" She
pointed to the diagrams on the panel. "And how did you decipher all
of that? Did the Martians carry machines with them to perform this
sort of analysis? Isn't that all a bit advanced? And if they did,
why would they bring that sort of machine with them when they meant
to conquer?"

Dr. Pugh was silent for a moment, and she
wondered what flour the gears in his head was grinding.

"Science!" he roared, jabbing a large gnarled
finger into the air. "Because we must know the secrets of the
Universe!"

She blinked at him, slowly, with no emotion
on her face. Governments do not fund science and exploration "just
because". She had a feeling that even the Martians did not attack
"just because". There was always a reason behind funding, or war,
no matter how strange or irrational that reason may be. She allowed
her face to say all of this to him in a stony silence.

He cleared his throat, lowered his hand, and
resumed his normal growly countenance.

"I should have known that that wouldn't work
with you, Llewellyn," he continued. "But, you know, I had to
try."

"Of course," she replied with her best
commiserating smile. She gazed at the photographs on his office
wall for a long moment, and Dr. Pugh's reasons -- if not the TIA's
-- suddenly seemed very clear to her.

She continued in a softer tone. "It's so
Captain Moreau doesn't have to give the order, isn't it?" she asked
at last. "I think deep down you agree with Alfieri. That you think
this mission is genocide. Just like they have to have a reason to
explore, they also have to have a reason, at times,
not
to
kill. You are looking for that reason, aren't you?"

"Yes," he sighed with a resigned slump of his
shoulders. "It's no use playing the cold natural philosopher with
you, is it? You have no heart yourself, but you can see right
through mine. It is a horrid Order, an absolute nightmare. I don't
want Christophe to have to execute it. He doesn't want to do it,
not really. But he will, if that is what they order him to do. I'm
hoping to give them a reason to rescind those orders, or to at
least amend them."

To hear that she had no heart was no insult.
A heart would only get in the way of her work.

She asked, "Even if it means this journey was
all for nothing?"

"Yes, even so."

Gemma felt a pang of sympathy for the man.
She had found murder to be a messy business, what with dispensing
of weapons and leaving false clues and so forth. The subsequent
memories and nightmares were never pleasant, either. If it did not
serve her mistress, and was not in immediate self-defence, she had
no use for the extra baggage that came with the act. Except for
that nasty piece of work in Shanghai, she had usually found a way
to escape such situations, rather than kill.

For the Martians, however, she would gladly
make an exception.

"I believe we have something in common with
them," he said as he pointed to the panel. "I want to know exactly
what that commonality is. Can we use it? That is, can we use it to
make a case for not killing them
all
?" He set the pencil
down into its tray. "I think your analytical abilities will be of
great help in finding that reason. Christophe was raised to
command, to lead, not to be a mass murderer. Not to live with this
on his conscience."

Gemma inhaled sharply as she prepared to
reply, but her words were lost in a sudden rumble that rolled
through the deckplate beneath them like a deep, close thunder. She
reached out for the desk to steady herself, looking to Dr. Pugh for
some clue as to whether or not this was normal.

It decidedly was not. His eyes went wide, and
his face lost all colour. He was listening, as Gemma was, to the
exclamations of the other members of the Cohort down the hall.
Their yelps of excitement and surprise echoed off the metal walls
of the corridor.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.

"I take it that this was unexpected?" Gemma
asked.

"Completely, completely unexpected. I hope
the engines weren't affected. We're still accel--"

The pipephone bell rang, and he picked it up
with an irritated acknowledgement. Gemma watched his eyes grow wide
as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line.

"What's wrong, lad?" Dr. Pugh asked. His
trembling hands had difficulty holding the handset. "Say
again?"

Gemma could hear broken pieces of the other
person's words. "Heat ray test… mate hurt… fire…"

"Fire?" Pugh exclaimed. "I'm on my way."

Pugh hung up the pipephone. He jogged towards
the corridor with his long loping gait without a word to Gemma, who
followed him long enough to watch him catch the lift. Bidarhalli
and Hui dashed out behind her. They each grasped one of the
sand-filled fire buckets that dotted the walls.

"Fire on the ship," Hui muttered, "is bad.
Very bad." They carried the buckets back into the laboratory and
left her alone again.

With no direction, no hint as to when he
would return, she returned to the office. She stared at the panel
and the journals that she had been reading. Another journal was
open on the corner of the desk. It had been exposed and forgotten
in his rush out the door. Not one to waste an opportunity, Gemma
circled around to view it. There was no guarantee, of course, but
he was likely to be gone for some time. She examined the page
without touching it, hoping to read it without leaving behind any
evidence that she had even noticed it. As untidy and disorganized
as Pugh might seem, he would know if a single speck of dust was out
of place.

She gazed down at the wrinkled page with its
smudged notes and sketches. Some of them were identical to what he
had just shown her on the glass panel. No secrets there.

A sentence began at the bottom of the
right-hand page: "
In the course of our experiments, we found
that Orion
" and nothing more.

Orion. It did exist. She paused to think
about her own alias: Artemis. The two were connected in Greek
mythology; Orion was the hunting companion of Artemis. In fact, in
some myths, Artemis was the slayer of Orion, sometimes by accident
and sometimes on purpose, depending on the particular version of
the story. Knowing Brightman's complex sense of humour, Gemma
wondered if Orion was a person as well. Part of her hoped that the
connection was not a hint of what she was expected to do with
Orion, once found, but she would carry out whatever was required of
her. She owed Mrs. Brightman no less than that. All she needed to
do was turn the page to move forward. She knew she could do it
quickly, deftly, without moving the book... why did she find
herself hesitating now, when she had been handed Orion on a silver
platter?

The image of a disappointed and angry Pugh
rose in her mind like mist condensing out of the very air. She
found herself cringing at the prospect, but she didn't know why.
She found herself struggling to move her hand at all. Her index
finger froze an inch from the page and hovered there.

The simple turning of a page had never seemed
such a complex matter. The reading of an open and forgotten page
was trivial, innocent even -- but the turning of it felt fraught
with -- what was it -- could it be guilt? Guilt for what? He was
her only protection here on the
Fury
, but that was not all.
Something in her ached at the thought of betraying what little
trust he had shown her, leaving his work open to her in this way.
She could not explain the feeling.

Everyone has a motivation
, Mrs.
Brightman had always said.
Everyone has a key that you have only
to grasp and turn.

Many times the key was predictable, almost
pedestrian, like pleasures of the flesh. She had already concluded
that the captain was firmly in this category. But such was not
always the case. Some were turned by the avoidance of pain. And
there were some whose keys were of a very different sort. Not warm
flesh in their bed, but a willing ear, a friendly smile, or a soft
word. They craved someone to impress, to make them feel powerful,
genius, needed.

No one performs for free
, Mrs.
Brightman had instructed her.
No one. There is always a price.
There is always a key
. Never had Gemma encountered someone
whose key she could not turn. It was her special gift.

She had discovered Pugh's key: Christophe
Moreau. He had rushed to the captain's side without hesitation at
the slightest call. He had even left her alone in his office, after
all his ominous warnings to the contrary. Worry and concern had
been etched deeply into his face as he departed. Whatever their
true relationship was, Pugh acted for Moreau's benefit. If only she
had the will to turn that key, Pugh would be putty in her hands, no
matter what he knew about her. Even Orion would not be safe from
her.

But how could she turn the key, if she could
not turn the page?

~~~~

Christophe

"Can someone please tell me how in the bloody
hell we left Shackleton without testing the heat ray?" Pugh shouted
into the chamber.

Christophe tried to hide the helplessness
that threatened to crush him inside. He knelt on the floor at the
head of Cervantes' crumpled form, surrounded by a pile of shattered
metal, gears, and wires. A gritty concoction of sand and blood
soiled his crisp uniform. Christophe looked back down at Miguel's
burnt and melted face; he barely recognized his childhood
companion.

The ship's surgeon was already there, tending
to an endless list of injuries: burns, lacerations, and limbs
jutting out at impossible angles. At least the man was blessedly
unconscious. As it was, Christophe's hands were slick with his
blood as he tried to halt the flood of crimson. There were so many
tears in his flesh, though, that Christophe felt like he was
plugging one of a million holes in a dike; there weren't enough
hands in the room to do the job properly.

Dr. Pugh knelt next to him, pushed the empty
fire bucket out of the way, and asked in a gentler voice, "What
happened, son?"

Christophe pointed at the open control panel
with his chin. He stammered, "We were test-firing the heat ray
against some of the growlers. Miguel reported that one of the valve
gears had a problem. Prevented the ray from firing. He was trying
to fix it when there was an explosion. Miguel was deep in at the
time and took the brunt. We managed to get the fire out before it
spread. The other crewmen were able to walk themselves down to sick
bay, but he..."

Christophe drifted off, sucked in a short
shallow breath, and tried to rein in the wild winds of his
feelings. Dr. Pugh rested a hand on his shoulder and gave it a firm
squeeze. The pair looked at the surgeon.

"What do you reckon, Paul?" Pugh asked.

Christophe regarded Dr. Paul Hansard with a
studied frown. He had seen that solemn look too many times on the
lunar voyage; it was engraved into his brain, even without the aid
of the redundant memory that Miguel always teased him about.

"Mr. Owen and the others will be fine, but
Cervantes' injuries are quite severe," the doctor said. "I need to
get him to the surgery. I may be able to staunch the bleeding. It's
the burns that concern me, especially the ones in his lungs."

There was a shuffle at the door. Mr. Rathbone
entered and took in the scene with horrified eyes. Christophe
watched the man navigate around the mud of sand and blood. He
shifted a loose sheaf of undelivered messages to his other hand,
saluted and said, "You sent for me, Captain?"

Dr. Pugh withdrew his hand from Christophe's
shoulder. The scientist rubbed the edge of his sharp chin with the
bony knuckle of his index finger. It was one of their many secret
signals to each other. This one, which told him to keep his chin
up, bolstered Christophe as he replied. He nodded in response to
the salute, since he could not release the pressure on Cervantes'
arm.