20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (49 page)

Suddenly he was very glad that Gemma was most
definitely not his sister.

The remainder of the Cohort occupied the rest
of the table, in a rare show of solidarity. Dr. Hansard sat with
them in Pugh's place, as he was still resting in his cabin. The
medical officer chewed the end of his unlit pipe with vigour as he
kept an eye on everyone else. Father Alfieri was there as well,
beaming at Maggie. His sermon on love was about to be put to the
test.

There was a glaring no-man's-land of empty
tables between the Cohort and the rest of the crew. The back walls
were lined with people that had chosen to stand instead of sit near
that particular table. Mutterings of "Martians" and "secrets" and
"ghosts" slinked through their conversations like serpents in tall
grass; murmurs with an edge of alarm had supplanted the old
whispers about treasure.

Maggie's voice slipped into his head. "Are
you certain they are ready for this? I am not sure I am."

"They are my crew, Maggie," he thought back
at her. "I trust them. All will be well."

Christophe cleared his throat and waited for
the silence, which took longer than usual to settle over the group.
He nodded to the waiting Mr. Pritchard, who bellowed at them to
come to attention.

The reaction was immediate, sharp, and crisp
as the entire hall -- even the Cohort, which didn't have to --
stood at attention. Long discipline could still tamp down fear,
even if only for a short time. He let them stand in silence for a
moment, partly to gather his own strength and partly for them to
get used to the idea of sharing space with Maggie.

At long last, when the shuffling and scraping
and inevitable coughs had died out, leaving only silence behind, he
said, "Be seated."

He took a deep breath and unfurled his
thoughts before them. "The last few days have seasoned us a bit. We
are becoming true spacefarers! There are always storms ahead when
one sets sail. This was one of ours. The explorers of old often
faced such terrors and lost crew on their way. We have not been
spared that fate.

"Every crew, no matter the sea, suffers loss
along the way. One hopes that at the very least, it will be a
terror from without, and not one from within. We did not escape
that fate, either. We have left our home behind us, but not
ourselves. We packed our imperfections and carried them with us
like luggage that refuses to remain behind. At the same time, we
have also brought our courage, our fortitude, and our perseverance,
as all of you demonstrated during these many anxious hours. I
congratulate you. I thank you. Because you give me hope. Hope that
another virtue -- curiosity -- will prevail as we face our next
adventure on this odyssey. Some of you are already very familiar
with a certain member of our crew. Others of you only met her the
other day as she assisted our Mr. Pritchard on the Oberth deck. The
rest of you only know her via rumour. And that we are about to
remedy.

"It is my pleasure to introduce you to a very
important member of the Scientific Cohort: Maggie. Many of you have
already called her 'the ship's ghost'. Crew of the
Fury
,
this is Maggie. Maggie, meet the crew."

He had hoped that she would say something,
but she simply hunkered down next to Gemma, trying and failing to
make herself smaller. He had never known her to be so shy, but then
again this was her first time in such a crowd.

"What does it... eat?" asked one of Dr.
Hansard's orderlies.

"
She
, not
it
. Like her
progenitors, she subsists on blood." He had to shout over the
worried murmurs that rolled through the crowd in a swift current.
"But not human blood. Honestly, she doesn't like the taste. She
lives off the animals on the stable deck. We store their blood for
her during normal slaughter operations. They are not just our food
supply. They are hers."

One of the wireless operators stood up.
"But... wasn't she part of the Invasion? She seems... friendly
enough, I s'pose... but ain't this fraternizin' with the
enemy?"

"No. She is a loyal Terran, just like you,
even if she is not human. Maggie did not take part in the Invasion.
In fact, she was born just as the war ended. Her progenitor died in
the process. She is as much an Orphan of the Invasion as many of
you are. She has never harmed anyone."

"But what about Rathbone?" the operator
asked.

"She was defending Miss Llewellyn at the
time. If Rathbone had never attacked her, he would have been safe
as houses. I am certain any of you would have done the same if you
had been there. She will not harm you, but she will defend herself
and anyone else in harm's way. She will defend this ship. Many of
you bore witness to how she assisted Mr. Pritchard in finishing his
work to bring the power back online.

"She has been an excellent friend to Dr. Pugh
and myself these many years. My hope is that she will make many
more friends among you. And, even if you choose not to associate
with her outside of your duties -- as is your right -- I expect all
of you to show her the same courtesy that you would show Dr. Pugh.
Her name is Maggie, and you will refer to her as such. Not 'the
Martian'. Not 'Tentacle-Head'. Not 'It'."

Frau Knopf stood and turned to the crowd with
a stern face. "And if I hear of any one saying bad things about my
Maggie, well, then, no bacon for you!"

Christophe swallowed a chuckle at the sudden
sharp intakes of breath. Frau Knopf did not threaten. She never
simply threatened. He could feel the crew wrestling with the
promise of a baconless existence versus their fear of the unknown.
Would the bacon win?

Mr. Pritchard stood up with a smile. "I've
had the pleasure of meetin' Miss Maggie up close and personal. Does
the lady have a surname, or is it just Maggie?"

"Just Maggie," Christophe replied, grateful
for the levity in the man's manner. "We tried to call her Professor
Maggie once upon a time, but she wasn't very keen."

"How does she communicate?" Mr. Holomek, one
of the midshipmen, asked. "Does she speak the King's?"

"She can hear you if you speak normally. She
understands German and a smattering of French as well. As for her
speech... Maggie, say hello to the crew."

"Um... hello," said Maggie's nervous voice in
his head.

A shiver ran through the crowd as they
touched their ears and heads, and twitters of "did you hear that"
floated towards the ceiling.

It always astounded Christophe that anyone
would find this unusual. Her voice had always been with him, since
before he knew what a voice was. Before he had understood her
words, he had understood how she felt. She was comfort; she was
home. It was difficult for him to comprehend how some people had
never had such love. He had never been an Orphan. He had always had
her.

He glanced at Gemma, and he felt sorrow for
anyone who had not had that gentle benevolent presence since
childhood. The tentacle intertwined with Gemma's tapered fingers
made him happy. At least, Gemma was starting to feel such a steady
presence now, even if it was Maggie's and not his.

"She does not have human vocal cords," he
assured them. "Instead, she can speak directly into your mind. It
may feel strange at first, but you will grow used to it."

Yeoman McLure jumped up onto her seat and
added, "It's just like in them scientific romances, lads! We're
living in one!"

One of the remaining engineer's mates got to
his feet. "That's all well and good. So long as she keeps to her
knittin' and we keep to ours, I reckon we'll get on just fine. I'm
more concerned with Mr. Nesbitt and the others what Mr. Wallace
killed."

"Yeah," shouted another one, "what about
Wallace? He's more dangerous than she is. He's the one what killed
somebody. We gonna space him?"

Christophe held his hands up in a reassuring
gesture. "Our fallen comrades will be remembered in a memorial
service tomorrow evening. Maggie will be present. She is free to
attend any shipwide events she wishes, like the rest of us. As for
Wallace, I think enough blood has been spilt on this voyage as it
is. We will keep him under lock and key until we return to Earth.
He will be tried by an appropriate court and jury, and they will
determine his fate."

"But what if there ain't no court?" someone
else asked. "We've had no communication with the Admiralty. What if
the TIA ain't there when we get back? What do we do then? What do
we do now? Should we even go to Mars?"

"All very good questions. It is true that the
Admiralty is in an uncertain state. We have attempted to send
messages to Admiral Thorvaldson and have yet to receive an answer.
What news we have been able to get says that the very Treaty that
created the TIA is in danger of being dissolved."

He allowed that to sink in, but before the
full impact of it stole their attention, he continued. "For the
moment, we have to answer for ourselves. No matter what is going on
back home, no matter what individual factions may be at war, one
thing has not changed: we still have a mission. We are too far away
to make any difference back there, except for the fact that we can
investigate this danger. So, we will do our job, with or without
the Admiralty or the TIA or whomever replaces them. We are one
crew. We are for Earth!
Terra vigila
!"

A tepid war cry rippled through the crowd and
faded out.

"Listen to me," he continued. He didn't have
them. Not yet. "We are drawn from many nations, many backgrounds,
many religions, and races. Even different species!" He gestured at
Maggie, who trilled back at him. "But we all have one thing in
common: we all want to protect Earth! Are you with me?"

"
Terra Vigila
!" Louder this time.

"Will you stand with me?"

And they shouted back in throaty unison, so
loud that the walls shook:

"
Terra Vigila
!"

~~~~

Gemma

"Blimey, this is taking a bleeding eternity,"
Caroline said.

Seated at the desk in Gemma's stateroom, she
typed away on the portable card machine. She had propped Rathbone's
The Riddle of the Sands
-- nicked from the parlour, as Gemma
had suspected -- upon the desk, on top of Gemma's copy of
Lyell.

"It will be worth it in the end," Gemma said
from her bed, where she nursed her bruises and nibbled on pastries
from the tray brought to them by Frau Knopf.

Dr. Hansard had shooed them out of his
office, for he wanted to neaten up the disaster that the gravity
outage had made sick bay. Fortunately, most of the poisons and
medicines had been locked down, or they would truly have had a mess
on their hands.

Gemma glanced over the first decoded messages
again. There were so many of them, both coming and going. Wallace
had kept the wireless very busy, indeed. They had decoded the last
message first, and Gemma read over it again with great
satisfaction. The other ship, the
Orestes
, had encountered
engine trouble not far into their own voyage. As of their last
message, they were currently in orbit around the moon and were
desperately trying to repair their radio wave generator.

"Poor blighters!" Caroline had said. "I'm
sure they're just following orders. I hope they have their solar
flare shielding in place."

The other captain, a certain Andrew Straker,
had recommended that Wallace hold off on his actions until they
signaled that they were able to continue. Judging from the
timestamp, the message had arrived just as Wallace was picking up
his axe.

The pity of it was, if he had only received
the message earlier, Nesbitt and his men might still be alive. She
wrestled with the thought. It had been his choice to kill them; he
could not excuse himself with an accident of timing. Gemma still
found it difficult to excuse herself for Mr. Chapman's death,
self-defence notwithstanding, now that she knew who he was.

Wallace had told the truth. There were no
messages after that one, and no way to determine where the other
ship was now without contacting them directly. Christophe had taken
the reprieve in stride. Having shared more than one round of lager
with Straker at the Badger and Tentacle in the past, he'd said, he
was not eager to meet him again without the beneficial company of a
nearby keg.

Christophe's next orders were rather
creative, even by Brightman's standards. He had asked Gemma to
encode a message to Straker from Wallace saying that he had,
indeed, delayed his action and asking that they reply as soon as
they were able. He then asked Humboldt -- whom he had transferred
to the Wireless section for the time being -- to devise a method to
track their position using their wireless signal in case they ever
answered.

In the meantime, Humboldt had surmised, they
could at least guess the other ship's position using the difference
between the send and receive timestamps of the messages, if they
bothered to reply. Humboldt was happy to have a question to keep
him busy whilst he recovered from his own injuries. Boredom
terrified the man.

A rattling of her wardrobe caught her
attention. Caroline jumped at the sudden noise.

"Oh, it's just Maggie," Gemma said as the
door opened and revealed a waving tentacle. "So that's how you've
been getting into my room all this time! Why aren't you using the
hallway now?"

"Everyone may know about me, Gemma," came
Maggie's mental reply, "but not everyone is quite as accustomed to
my cheerful face as you are. I would prefer to ease them into
it."

She rolled her bulk out of the cabinet and
onto the floor.

"Oh, hallo, Maggie," Caroline said.

"Caroline," Maggie replied with a strong
blink of her eyes, her version of a nod. "How goes the decoding,
ladies?"