20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (31 page)

Pugh flashed him a brief glimpse of a smile.
"I've had my eye on Brightman for some time. Partly because of
Aronnax." He pointed to the watch. "Partly because of her."

"Your wife?"

"My daughter."

"Your daughter?"

"I don't think she died in the Invasion."

"What? But I thought--"

"More than one person turned the Invasion to
their advantage, Christophe. A crisis can ferret out the best and
the worst that humanity has to offer. Brightman harvested the
Invasion Orphans for her own uses. The Martians left her quite a
crop. But, perhaps even worse, she did not limit herself to
orphans."

Christophe looked at him with growing horror
as he pushed the watch back to Pugh. "Why have you never told me
this?"

"What possible good would it have done you?
You didn't need the distraction. I wasn't with my wife when the
Invasion hit. I was in Paris, settling Aronnax's estate. By the
time I was able to get back to Woking, it was too late. I found my
wife but not my child. She was simply gone." He snapped the pocket
watch closed. "I've been trying to locate my daughter ever since.
In the intervening years, I've discovered that Brightman was in
Woking at that time. Collecting. There is a strong chance that my
child is among Brightman's so-called students. It's been difficult
to confirm that, though. My daughter was still a babe in arms when
the Invasion came, so we would not recognize each other now.
Brightman has a network of people that keep her cache of students
incredibly secure, so it has been a chore to access them."

"How could she have gotten away with this for
so long? I mean, to hire out so many girls that leave their
employer all of a sudden, so often? Surely someone would have
noticed."

"Even the legitimate computers do not last
long. Many march out of the laboratory and straight down the aisle.
At least, that is what most people expect to happen. It's even
easier when they never use the same name twice. That's what happens
when you put people beneath your notice, Christophe. They become
invisible. It gives them a kind of power over you, if they only
realize it. And if they do realize it, as Brightman did, then it's
Katy-bar-the-door." He rolled the watch between his hands. "To
stick to the point, some of the Code of Life research that we've
done might help me confirm my suspicions. I once hired a man to
track the Girls in the field and get a sample from them, like a
lock of hair, so I could find someone with enough Code in common
with me. There were two likely girls left of the right age. One is
reportedly deceased. Killed in Action, as it were. He tracked the
other one to a laboratory in Shanghai."

Christophe's face went numb. "What happened?
Did he find the girl?"

"Don't know. The local constabulary found him
in an alley with a crushed windpipe. There was no sample on his
person or at his hotel. They never discovered his murderer's
identity, but I'm certain it was one of Brightman's lot. She took
boys as well, kept in a separate facility. They do the truly nasty
jobs, including keeping a watch out for the Girls. After word of
that incident got out, no other investigator would go near my
case."

"Surely the TIA could--"

"An international consortium of robber barons
and self-aggrandizing philanthropists that thinks of itself as a
sovereign nation has better things to do than look for a girl that
everyone assumes perished a quarter-century ago. I had to take
matters into my own hands to get access to that one last living
candidate, and now she is a member of the Cohort. That bit was
relatively simple, in the end. Petunia has friends in high places.
Friends that are also my friends. How else would she have… no. No.
I think I've said too much on that account. All I can say is, ask
me no more. Not now. As far as I know, Gemma hasn't stolen
anything, even when she's had ample temptation and opportunity. Of
course, I have kept her 'visible' and in my notice as much as
possible. Her wireless messages are in cipher, like everyone
else's, but they are far too short and too infrequent to include
anything vital. She hasn't yet found what Brightman wants. No
crimes have been committed, as of yet, so there is nothing for you
to do here. There is a possibility that she really is a scientist.
Or she will be, when I am done with her." He stuffed the watch back
into his pocket. "Let me deal with our Miss Llewellyn. I need to
know."

"You haven't confirmed it yet?"

"I've been trying to gain her trust, first.
I'm a bit nervous about finding out the truth, finding out that --
that you may have a sister, in a manner of speaking." Dr. Pugh
unfolded himself from the chair and yawned. "You have things to
settle here, so I will take my leave. I will let you know what I
discover."

He departed, leaving the young captain alone
with his thoughts. In all his life, he had never known Elias to
keep anything from him; now he had just revealed something so
deeply held that Christophe had never even guessed at it. What else
had he kept hidden all these years?

He recoiled from the idea of what Brightman
had done. Discipline aboard ship was always strict, sometimes
cruel, but there was always a reason behind its severity. Life at
sea was brutal, and discipline was required just to survive. He had
heard that schools could be difficult, but he could not imagine any
reason why life at any school would need to be harsher than life on
the waves.

He could not puzzle out why someone would
want to browbeat those wide brown eyes and that upturned nose
dusted with freckles into some sort of unfeeling automaton. And now
there was a possibility that this strange girl was part of Pugh's
family, and by extension part of Christophe's family. It unnerved
him to think that he had felt more than brotherly affection for her
before the incident with Cervantes. A small part of him was
grateful to Pugh for holding him back from further pursuit, as
agonizing as the process had been.

Sister. Stranger. Definite Victim. Possible
Thief. He didn't know which to hope for. He was so stunned from
Miguel's sudden absence that he could not endure any more shocking
revelations. He could use a long talk with Maggie, but he had no
time for it.

One thing was certain, though. He had known
Pugh long enough to know that if Gemma Llewellyn were indeed his
daughter, this Petunia Brightman would have hell to pay. She was
not the only one with friends in high places.

~~~~

Gemma

The dreaded Knitting Circle of Doom was upon
her.

The picture was surreal: Gemma hurtled
through space at a heretofore-inconceivable speed to rain
destruction down on a faraway world full of slimy tentacled aliens,
and in the meantime, she faced down the steely menace of a crochet
hook.

She had dreaded it like nothing else. Gemma
was equipped to discuss science with scientists, or at least to bob
her head in feigned interest. She could pump numbers through an
equation in the blink of an eye. Despite all of her training and
accomplishments, she had no idea of what to say to the other
ladies. She knew how to hold her teacup and how to be coy with men.
But in a group of women who were not Brightman trained, she was
lost.

It was not even much of a break from her
strange research for Dr. Pugh. The second journal, written by an
engineer named Cyrus Smith, seemed to have no connection to Aronnax
at all, at least in the parts she had read. Smith's story began in
1865, two years before Aronnax's adventure. His escape with several
other men from imprisonment during the Americans' Civil War had
been a thrilling tale. She found the hurricane that they had
encountered to be a bit fantastic, but no less so than Nemo's giant
squid. Having nothing else to do, she had plowed on through the
text, hoping to find some glimmer of Orion in it.

The knowledge that Caroline would be at the
Circle had been some small comfort to Gemma, as she had grown quite
fond of the girl. However, when she got to the parlour, Caroline's
chair was empty.

"There are only seven of us on the ship!"
Frau Knopf snarled to no one in particular. She had put away the
teacups and now sipped from a tumbler of liquid that smelt of
evergreens and cinnamon. "How can we have a proper circle with only
five!"

The miscount caught Gemma's attention, but
she chalked it up to the matron's irritation and to the general
excitement over the news that Nigel's wife had gone into labour
that morning.

Gemma looked past her steel nemesis and
studied the women around her. These women had spent most of their
time in the galley and the stables on the journey so far, and this
was the first time she had seen them. As it turned out, she didn't
have to worry about what to say to them; they barely spoke English.
She could hear them whispering to each other in some Eastern
European tongue. They consulted each other on their various pieces
of handwork and cast the occasional suspicious glance at Gemma.
Frau Knopf read a poem aloud to them while they worked, so Gemma
did not have to converse at all. Gemma didn't know whether to feel
awkward or relieved.

Frau Knopf had stated that the wool had been
sheared off the
Fury
's own herd of sheep, down on the stable
deck. She had then handed Gemma the crochet hook, a hank of black
thread, and a pattern for making lace written in German. She had
said little else; the matron did not seem inclined to idle
chatter.

As Gemma struggled to grasp the pattern, Frau
Knopf read to them. To Gemma's ears, it was a lot of nonsense about
a lady trapped in a tower in the days of Camelot. Frustrated, she
set the booklet aside and listened for a moment.

There she weaves by night and day

A magic web with colours gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,

And so she weaveth steadily,

And little other care hath she,

The Lady of Shalott.

"What rubbish," Gemma muttered under her
breath.

Even as she whispered them, her words did not
feel quite real. They felt hollow and rehearsed, as if from a
script written by someone else. She found herself hanging on to the
words in spite of herself. Besides, she did not want to give the
good matron a reason to withhold her daily bacon.

And moving thro' a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear.

There she sees the highway near

Winding down to Camelot:

There the river eddy whirls,

And there the surly village-churls,

And the red cloaks of market girls,

Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

An abbot on an ambling pad,

Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,

Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,

Goes by to tower'd Camelot;

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror's magic sights,

For often thro' the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights

And music, went to Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead,

Came two young lovers lately wed;

"I am half-sick of shadows," said

The Lady of Shalott.

The delicate thread hung limp in Gemma's hand
as the last two lines lodged in her heart like an arrow.
I am
half-sick of shadows
, Philippa had once said to her, not long
before she had left on her final journey. Had this poem been in
Philippa's little library, too? Was this the beauty that she had
tried to share with her?

"Bah," Frau Knopf said as she put the book
down. "I will finish this next time."

She said something to one of the other ladies
in their language, and one of them rose in reply. She reached
behind the bookshelf into some dark and hidden place, retrieved an
unlabeled record, and replaced the eternal strings and flutes with
it. When she lowered the needle, a new music emerged from the horn,
one that Gemma had never heard on the wireless in London. A voice
of pure velvet crooned to her absent lover in a tone both mournful
and seductive. A muted trumpet and wailing clarinet shadowed her
words and punctuated the lonesome moan of her song.

"Ah," mused Frau Knopf as she closed her eyes
and bobbed her head along with the music, "I am so very glad that
the Martians missed New Orleans. There are some things even the TIA
censors cannot keep silent."

"I've never heard this kind of music before,"
Gemma said.

"It's the blues. American blues. Helps
exorcise one's own sorrows. As does this." She swirled the liquid
in her tumbler and stared into it. "Mr. Pritchard smuggled the
albums up with the bacon. Not illegal, mind you, but Mr. Wallace,
he has no ear for it. My Karl--"

A clamour of rattling interrupted her, and
they all turned to see Caroline bursting through the door. She
stopped just inside and bent over, hands on her knees, trying to
catch her breath. Frau Knopf rose and touched her shoulder.

"Whatever is the matter, child?" Frau Knopf
demanded.

"I'm all right," Caroline gasped as she
looked around the room. "It's Nigel. He just got a message. About
his wife, I think. He's gone wild! He won't let me near him! Gemma,
d'you think you could get some sense out of him? Father Alfieri is
in a meeting with the captain and Mr. Wallace about the memorial
service, and the yeoman won't let me in to see them. But Nigel
respects you, he does. I think he might talk to you."