20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (44 page)

"Miss Llewellyn, it is good to see you up
and--"

A sharp slap from Gemma's hand cut him
off.

"Ow," she yelped. She clutched at her
screaming ribs, and her face twisted into a grimace. "That's for
shooting me."

He touched his face, where her hand had left
an angry mark across his cheek. "It was just the Leyden pistol.
It's not lethal."

Her teeth chattered in the cold and broke up
her reply. "It may not be lethal, but it is painful
nonetheless."

"For your pain, I am indeed sorry," he said
as he pulled a blanket down from a shelf beside the door. "But you
brought it on yourself. Next time, listen to me. But Humboldt is
right. You should get some rest while they work."

He unfolded the fabric and stepped closer to
her again, lifting it to her shoulders. She jerked away from him,
and it tumbled to the floor.

"Don't touch me," she hissed. "I don't want
you to touch me. I don't want Humboldt to touch me. I don't want
anyone touching me."

"Gemma," Christophe replied, "you heard what
I said. You know what's happening. We may not have much time. Don't
you need some kind of human warmth or comfort? I know there are ...
barriers... between us. Don't you need to... to spend time with
someone, even for just a little while, if this is the end?"

"Need? Who are you to know what I need?" she
asked. "Who said I need to be with anybody? I'd rather spend my
time figuring out how to survive this, thank you very much."

She stomped her foot at him, and the action
jarred her from head to toe. She groaned yet again and scowled at
his stunned silence.

"What I need is to be left alone! I am tired
of men pawing at me," she said. "I am tired of Brightman. I am free
of her, but I am not free of what I am: a thief that happens to be
good with numbers. A thief and a trained killer, Captain. That's
all I'll ever be. I even thought, for a fleeting moment in the
orrery, that I could be something else. But no. No. Wallace brought
it back. He brought it all back. I'm sick of shadows. I'm sick to
death of death. But I track it with me everywhere I go, like tar
stuck to my soles."

"Then Rathbone was telling the truth? You
have--"

"Yes, Captain. Yes, I have done many, many
things in Brightman's name. Make of that what you will." She
touched the latch. "You once asked me who I was. This is it. This
is who I am. A heartless beast." She opened the door and slipped
through it. As she latched it behind her, she whispered, "Maggie
isn't the monster on your ship, Captain. I am."

Gemma's agitated mind, the shuffling of the
crewmen, and the antiseptic smell of the chamber would not let her
rest. The stunned expression on Christophe's face as he had left
sick bay haunted her. In a pretense at distraction, she rifled
through the Smith journal. Frustrated, she flipped to the last
pages to see how it ended, since she might not get another
chance.

Smith and his crew were exploring a watery
cavern in a canoe provided by their mysterious benefactor. They had
just encountered a vessel with a terribly familiar description when
Smith guessed at their angel's identity:
Nemo
.

Gemma frowned. Smith's journal stated that
the date of that encounter was October of 1868. She flipped back to
the end of Aronnax's journal and read the date of the maelstrom:
June 1868. Nemo had died the day after Smith's men found him, even
though he had been on the island for their entire sojourn. He had
perished of nothing worse than illness and old age. The
Nautilus
had served as his sarcophagus when Smith followed
the old captain's wishes and scuttled the submarine, never to be
seen again by the eyes of man.

She flipped back and forth between the two
journals. She was beginning to see what Pugh found so fascinating
here: Nemo seemed to be in two places at once, with Aronnax between
1867 and 1868, yet also with Smith on the island from 1865 until
1868. To make matters worse, Smith claimed to Nemo that he had
already read of Aronnax's adventures. Her inner scientist nagged at
her. Smith would have to have read it before landing on the island
in 1865, although another two years would pass before Aronnax and
Nemo met. It had not been written yet.

She sat back, stunned, her exhausted mind
unable to absorb the overdose of oddity. She closed both of the
books and hoped to read them again when she had recovered her
faculties. Perhaps her addled brain had read the dates
incorrectly.

It was all in the past. It could wait.

At the bottom of the stack, she found the
slim volume that the good Frau Knopf had read aloud during the
Knitting Circle,
The
Lady of Shalott
. Bored and
mildly curious about its ending -- and thinking she may never get
another chance to do so -- she opened the book and read the
verses.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,

Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her blood was frozen slowly,

And her eyes were darken'd wholly,

Turn'd to tower'd Camelot;

For ere she reach'd upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.

"She dies," Gemma grumbled. She flung the
book to the end of the bed without bothering with the last lines.
"All that, and she dies. For what, a broken heart? What a
disgusting notion."

"But people do die of broken hearts, little
jewel. It happens all the time. What would you have done?"

Gemma felt Maggie tugging at her mind again,
from wherever she was in the ship, with the voice of the Man from
Shanghai. Gemma closed her eyes to listen, and she could see the
Man as well.

"I would have tracked down the source of the
curse and eradicated it. Permanently."

She could almost feel Maggie's smile in her
head as she replied, "I thought as much."

"Why him? Why are you always
that man
when you talk to me?" Gemma thought, addressing the apparition in
her head.

"I needed an image from your past. I didn't
think you'd accept me in my true form," Maggie said.

"Point taken," Gemma replied. "I think I have
graduated to seeing you as you are. I am becoming accustomed to
it."

The Man from Shanghai smiled at her before
the mental image of him shimmered and dissolved, and the wriggling
form of Maggie took his place. His voice still rang in her head,
though.

"I am not sure of my voice," Maggie said, "as
I do not actually have one of my own. Your teacher's, perhaps?"

Gemma was certain that her cringe was visible
to the others in sick bay. "Oh, please, let's not. Frau Knopf?"

"I love her dearly, but her accent is rather
difficult. What about your friend?"

Gemma thought about that for a moment.
"Caroline? Or do you mean Jennie?"

"Yes, Jennie," Maggie said, with a dreamlike
timbre that resembled her memory of Jennie's voice. It was oddly
comforting.

"Strange to say, but that is better," Gemma
replied.

She looked up and noticed Caroline shuffling
through the main door of sick bay with a bulky box in her hands.
She glanced at Gemma before waddling over to Hansard's office. She
gave the closed door a helpless look. Gemma groaned, creaked her
way off the cot, and opened the door for the Boolean.

"Nigel is on his way," Caroline said as she
struggled through the door with the box, which was packed to the
gills with cards. "He's bringing a portable reader down from
Informatics. It's a bit heavier than this. Won't fit in the
pneumatics. Perhaps it's a good thing the gravity plates are losing
power in the corridors."

Stumbling with fatigue, Caroline tripped and
lost hold of the box. Punchcards flowed across the table, along
with quite a few CDVs.

"Bugger!" Caroline yelped. She shook with
frustration. "And that's Humboldt's collection, too. He asked me to
bring 'em down for him."

Gemma picked up one of the punchcards and
noted the preprinted number in its corner. "Do you use these in
order, Caroline?"

"Yeah," she replied, "Should be able to put
them back in sequence so we can read 'em, but I'm so tired that the
numbers are blurry."

Gemma pointed to the chair next to her. "Sit,
then. I can do this while you rest a moment. I can see well
enough."

As Caroline pulled out the chair and plopped
down into it, Gemma sorted through the cards. The CDVs were nearly
their twins in size and shape, and she silently commented on them
to Maggie.

"There is a difference?" Maggie asked.

"Mostly the CDVs are just a way to pass the
time," Gemma replied as she continued to sort through the pile. She
discovered a rather naughty one of Sophie the Steamfitter and
grimaced. "Some more disgusting than others."

She spoke aloud to Caroline. "Would you like
some cold ration?"

She only received a soft snore in return.
Gemma smiled softly at the mass of brown hair buried in a set of
crossed arms. She let the Boolean be. The poor girl was exhausted,
and there was really nothing for her to do until Nigel arrived with
the card reader.

Gemma continued to work, grateful for
something to occupy her thoughts. She set Humboldt's CDVs aside in
their own pile as she found them, noting the variety of pubs and
actresses. She tucked the saucier ones into the bottom of the pile;
she wondered how Caroline had reacted to seeing her beloved heroine
in that state of undress.

Still, Gemma felt the need to talk to
someone. The slight pressure in her head she felt when Maggie spoke
was still there. She focused on that pressure and sent a thought
along it, hoping Maggie would hear her. Gemma was still unsure of
the alien's location. Her Curiosity was hungry, though, and the
punchcards had offered up a question.

"How do you do it?" Gemma asked. "Exchange
information, I mean."

She was pleased to hear Maggie reply, "I
believe other second-gens send data directly from their minds, much
like I am talking to you, but in Code instead of words."

"You mean, like the wireless?"

"Yes. Alas, something happened with me.
Perhaps it is my human Code. I can only talk to humans this way. It
works well, though. I can talk to you from anywhere on the ship,
like I am now."

"Like a wireless pipephone in our heads?"

"Precisely. I cannot communicate with any of
the other second-gens except in person, by other means. That has
only happened twice."

"Do you get on?"

"As well as could be expected. They have no
sense of humour."

Gemma chuckled aloud, but the noise did not
wake Caroline. "Do you have any memories of Mars? From your
parent?"

"Sadly, no. I hope to acquire some memories,
good memories, when we are there, if we do not have to battle. I
rather agree with the priest. I hope we do not have to fight."

"I am not sure we will be in any shape to
fight, at this rate. I suppose Christophe has no memories of Mars,
either?"

"You cannot copy what is not there, my little
gem."

Humboldt's voice came to her; he had said
much the same thing about the analytical engine. That led to
another question.

"Do you store your memories in your Code of
Life?" Gemma asked.

"In a manner of speaking. Elias believes my
parent was already dying as I formed, and that affected the copy
process. I received more human Code in my life Code than I should
have. I think it overwrote my memory Code. But I've been writing
new memory Code as I go. I was very young when Christophe budded,
so he did not inherit many memories from me. However, if I choose
to bud again, that bud will have many memories. It will know
you."

"So that's the extra Code that Pugh was
studying," Gemma replied. She chewed that thought over. "Wait. You
would have told him that already, correct? He already knew, didn't
he?"

"Perhaps he wanted you to work it out on your
own. He does that sort of thing. I think he was preparing you to
meet me, eventually. I don't think he anticipated our early
encounter."

"No one did. Do you remember your parent at
all?"

"No. For the most part, Elias and Frau Knopf
cared for me until I could manage on my own. That did not take
long, though. We mature quickly. Instead of treating me like a
specimen, though, Elias made me part of his family. He
is
my
family, as is Christophe. As now are you."

Gemma allowed herself a faint smile at that
and said, "I do not remember my family at all. I was just an infant
during the Invasion."

"With all your skills, you did not try to
find them? At least their names? I am certain you could have found
their names, and rather easily. It is just a matter of matching
Codes."

"You make it sound so simple! Brightman
discouraged us from even thinking about our parents, let alone
searching for them. And I knew nothing about Codes until now. I had
no Code samples to work from. And I certainly had no way of
analyzing them!" Gemma paused, remembering her discussion with
Alfieri, about seeing into the past from a distance. She continued,
"But, now that I can think about them, now that I can think about
anything at all, I can't help but wonder if my life would have been
different if my parents had not died in the Invasion. Would I have
been
this
?"

The image in Gemma's mind paused its
tentacles in the air. Maggie simply froze for a moment, whether in
sadness or contemplation, Gemma could not tell.

"But, my darling jewel," Maggie said at last,
"your parents did not die in the Invasion."

~~~~

Christophe

On the bridge, Christophe scratched his chin
and felt the scraggly beginnings of an emerging beard. He had
barely paused to eat in the rapid fire of events since Cervantes'
memorial service, let alone shave. He looked at his pocket watch to
check the time, but he wasn't sure if it was time for breakfast or
tea. He could hear the noise of Booleans working through the open
window, and he could hear the tap-tap-tappity-tap of Humboldt
talking to his cousin back at the Badger and Tentacle. With Wallace
under guard, he felt safe working from the command deck.