20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (30 page)

"I think that can wait until after the
memorial service, can it not?" Dr. Pugh asked. "The crew needs some
time--"

"The crew needs to keep doing its job, Dr.
Pugh," Wallace said. "We need a first mate on the job now. They
need their chain of command." He jotted down a few words in the
margins of his paper. As he wrote, he said, "However, I think we
can wait on the change of quarters until after the memorial
service. Will that be acceptable, Captain?"

"Yes, Mr. Wallace. That would be acceptable."
He could not, would not, give in to this sinking weakness in the
pit of his stomach. There was too much to do, and he would do his
friend no honours by staring into space for the rest of the
journey. "I will recommend Mr. Pritchard."

"And the memorial service? Do you agree that
the suggested service in the protocols--"

"Yes. I know the protocols only too well.
It's much like the burials at sea. Your people thought of
everything."

"Just prepared for every conceivable
contingency, Captain. We can pull it together today and have it,
say, tomorrow evening after the day shifts come off duty?"

Christophe nodded wearily. How could a man's
life boil down to lines on a checklist?

Mr. Wallace checked his next item with a
determined stroke of the pen. "Any progress on the investigation
into the actual cause of the explosion?"

Dr. Pugh chimed in. "The findings are still
preliminary. We haven't found any evidence of an explosive device.
It appears that the mechanism itself was misaligned. Nesbitt
believes one of the valve gears was loose. We haven't ruled out
sabotage, but we have nothing to support it, either. Not yet."

"Very well. Let me know the instant your
people have anything else to report. How is Hui coming along on the
alternative weapon? Will we be able to defend the ship, should it
become necessary?"

"At this point, who knows? He is putting
every possible hour into it."

Christophe replied, "I'm giving them until
Braking Day to have something workable. If not, we may have to
consider aborting the mission."

Dr. Pugh's response was dry. "Either that, or
invite the tentacle-heads over for tea. But I don't think they'll
be very keen."

Mr. Wallace pinned them both with his steely
gaze. "That will be up to the Admiralty. So far, I don't see a
reason to abort our mission. Not our true mission." He set his pen
down beside the checklist. "We have to keep the world united for as
long as possible. Many of the old arguments are surfacing again,
gentlemen. The Invasion and the Hague Treaty have held things in
check for a while, longer than we could have hoped, but the effects
are starting to fade. Without external enemies to distract us, the
Treaty is just so many words on paper. War would have been a
nightmare even before the Martians. We did our best to collect
their technology, but it was impossible to confiscate it all. Word
has it that Germany has detailed battle plans, ready to go at a
moment's notice. Russia has created their own version of the Black
Smoke, even though it violates the very first Hague Convention of
'99! France has improved upon the walking machines and dabbled with
the Heat Ray. No more metal breastplates and horsehair helmets for
them. The days of Napoleonic formations are over. How much worse
will war be now?"

Wallace rapped his knuckles on the table. "We
have to keep their eyes on us, on this ship, for as long as
possible, until we can find some other way to quell the tensions."
He showed them another page inscribed with his precise penmanship.
"I've written an article on Cervantes' heroic sacrifice that will
be published in every newspaper around the world. We can get
considerable mileage out of this incident. Considerable. And if
anything else happens?" He shrugged. "Pressing on in the face of
adversity? Even better." He jogged his papers into a neat stack. "I
suggest we meet again later today with Father Alfieri to go over
the final details of the memorial service. Any objections?"

When Mr. Wallace finally left the room,
Christophe shuddered at the man's calculating demeanor. It chilled
him to the bone to think that the death of the sea-hardened,
sunbaked first mate, the finest man and most capable sailor he had
ever known, would be just another tool to someone back on Earth. He
was too shaken to even rage about it, as he had the day before. At
least Gemma had had Cervantes' best interests in mind.

"True mission?" Christophe asked. "True.
Mission. Elias, do you know anything about this?"

Pugh shook his head and leaned back in his
chair to stretch his impossibly long legs out beneath the table. He
stared up at the ceiling, as if he could find the secrets of the
universe written there.

"No," he replied without looking at the
captain. "But I should have guessed. Why else send only one ship,
instead of waiting for the fleet to be finished?" He mumbled
something harsh under his breath. "Well, there's nothing we can do
about it now. We are well on our way." Then he sighed deeply and
placed his hands behind his head, continuing his study of the
ceiling.

"Something else has come to my attention,
Elias, that may have something to do with the explosion. It may be
small, but I didn't want to mention it in front of Wallace, just in
case. Not yet, anyway."

"You don't trust him. Don't blame you. What's
going on?"

"Frau Knopf reported to me this morning that
some of the emergency cold rations are missing from the cargo bay.
The count is off from last week's inspection. Not enough to be a
crisis, but enough to get her notice. Not that anything escapes it.
What do you reckon, Elias?"

"Can't be because Maggie was feeling a mite
peckish," Elias replied, still boring holes into the ceiling with
his eyes. "I see no great cause for concern. Wouldn't hurt to poke
around the cargo bay. Perhaps they just got moved."

"Or maybe we have a stowaway. Maybe one of
the Shackleton lot decided to tag along. I'll have the lads in
charge of the bay have a look round when they have a moment. It's a
lot of ground to cover."

Pugh sat up in his chair. His voice shifted
to a more fatherly tone. "How are you holding up, son?"

Christophe took a deep breath and stared down
at his hands, clenched into white-knuckled fists. He flexed them,
feeling where his fingernails had nipped his palms. Without looking
up, he asked the question that had been haunting him since the day
before.

"Yesterday, when we -- when I -- why did you
ask Miss Llewellyn to be there?"

"You wouldn't listen to me. I thought you
might listen to her. Lately, you seem to have become rather
attached to that young lady," Pugh admitted.

Christophe straightened in his chair and
grasped the edge of the table. "Attached? Who said--"

"Maggie."

Christophe snorted. "Maggie talks too
much."

The scientist pegged him with a knowing look.
"Maggie doesn't talk at all, son."

"You know what I mean. Anyway, there is no
need to worry on that account anymore."

The air of concern that Pugh had carried with
him the past few days grew heavier. "If you must blame
anyone--"

"She's so ... so very cold. She's not who I
thought she was."

"Who did you think she was?"

"A lady."

"Oh, that she is. At least, the lady that she
was taught to be." Pugh shifted his lanky frame in the chair. "She
never lied to you about that, son. You only saw what you wanted to
see. Cold? Perhaps. Practical? Logical? Definitely. One must have
some store of logic to be a computer."

"A computer? I thought she was a
geologist."

"That bit
is
a lie. But I try not to
blame Llewellyn for that." Pugh took out his pocket watch and
fidgeted with it. "Let me tell you something about her 'college'.
They do teach science and mathematics, but to create computers, not
scientists. Computers that infiltrate laboratories and take what
Brightman wants."

"Why would anyone send their children to such
a place?"

"No one 'sends' their children there. It's
not just a school. It's an orphanage. It's a prison. The beast that
runs the place is as heartless a creature as you'll ever find. She
raised our Gemma, if you can call what she did
raising
. The
girl has known nothing else. Gemma doesn't know how to love,
Christophe. She can't know. She's never known what it's like to be
loved. Petunia Brightman doesn't have a maternal bone in her body.
Believe me, she would have been far better off being raised by
Martians."

Christophe sputtered, "How do you know
this?"

"I make it my business to know these
things."

"Sounds like you know from personal
experience."

"I do. Very personal." He sat up, his chair
groaning in protest, and leaned over the table. "Did you ever
wonder why I had no computers of my own? Why I never made use of
the Admiralty Computing Services for my work? Besides the fact that
I was afraid you'd try to get under their skirts?"

Christophe bit his lip at that and
shrugged.

Pugh continued, "It was bloody inconvenient,
doing a lot of the computation myself before we got the analytical
engines, but computers are far too dangerous. Before the Invasion,
my mentor made heavy use of them. One of my tasks was to oversee
their work. One particularly bright computer caught Aronnax's eye,
a certain Petunia Brightman. Except we knew her as Pearl Addison.
We were engaged in a line of inquiry that was severely
confidential."

Christophe frowned. "You rarely mention your
research from that time. But you were both biologists. What could
have been so confidential before the Invasion?"

"It was secret because such research was
highly controversial. Still is, actually. We researched the
inheritance of traits, specifically that of genius. You've heard it
called 'eugenics'. That research was why I was picked for the TIA
study of Martian Code, you know. Aronnax's main source of funding
was the Wollstonecraft Foundation."

"One of the founding organizations of the
TIA."

"Precisely. Addison -- that is, Brightman --
was fascinated by the topic. She rose in the ranks of the
computers, and she soon created the computing plans that they used
to plow through mounds of data. She could do more than calculate.
She understood the meaning behind the numbers, and she devoured any
literature on the subject she could lay her hands on. She had a
keen mind, and her charms won over Aronnax, even though he was a
confirmed lifelong bachelor. She seduced him, she stole his secrets
from him, and then she abandoned him. She sold the information to
his fiercest rival and started her purported school off the
profits. Years of work, lost to a fair face." Pugh sighed at the
memory. "He never really recovered from that betrayal. He lived on,
for a while, but he was never the same. I think that when he did
die, it was of a broken heart."

"Why would anyone do such a thing?"

"Only Brightman herself knows. She had tried
to make it as a scientist in her own right years before, but she
could never break out of the computer harems. She was stymied at
every turn. The scientific community has not been kind to those of
the fairer sex."

"But there are lady scientists, aren't there?
What about Madame Curie? Or the botanist that designed our Gardens?
Alice Eastwood?"

"Yes, they are out there. Eastwood did a
smashing job on our Gardens, and Curie has done some wonderful work
with radium. But society doesn't seem to be interested in a woman
doing pure research, doing science for the sake of science. Curie
had a difficult time getting funding for her radium until a
journalist convinced people of her desire to treat cancer with it
or some such maternal nonsense. Yet even she had more of a place
than Brightman did. Somewhere along the way, Brightman decided that
if she could not join them, she would beat them, and make her
living by taking from those who had rejected her."

A very dark question occurred to Christophe,
one that disturbed him even more than Gemma's behaviour of the day
before. "Do you think that Miss Llewellyn is here to steal from us?
Is that even her real name? Do you think she could be a--" He
stopped, not wanting to utter the word that perched on the tip of
his tongue. It was a dangerous word. He picked up a stray fountain
pen on the table and rolled it through his fingers. "That's a very
serious charge."

"I try to hold her in a different category
than Brightman. That woman's methods certainly show in Gemma's
behavior, however. Most of her previous jobs involved computing,
you know."

"She's never mentioned it."

"I'm sure she has mentioned very little. I'm
certain she
listens
very well, though. Part of her charms.
And part of the danger, for Brightman systematically and
methodically drains them of any capacity for warmth or affection.
And yet somehow she fills them with eternal gratitude towards her
for saving them from an orphan's life. They have no other higher
power than their headmistress, no other god before her. The TIA
propagandists could learn a great deal from her methods." Dr. Pugh
shook his head in disgust. "Brightman may train computers, but in
the process she creates machines."

Christophe tossed the fountain pen back onto
the desk. "There are days when I think it would be easier to be a
machine. If love did that to Aronnax, what use is it, then? What
use is there in loving?"

Pugh caressed the watch with his long
fingers. He popped it open and handed it to Christophe with a slow
hand.

"A great deal of use, son. Don't avoid love.
It's what holds us together in this savage world. Just don't let it
kill you, all the same."

Christophe looked at the photograph that he
had seen many times over the course of his life, the one of Pugh's
late wife and child, the family that he had lost in the Invasion.
He gave Pugh a puzzled frown. "There's something else you aren't
telling me."