20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (51 page)

She turned some of the pages and examined the
illustrations. There was much affection surrounding this volume. He
was lending her a treasure, a slice of his heart. She continued to
examine the book, mostly to avoid his gaze, and discovered a CDV
wedged between two pages. She turned it over to see the image of an
elderly professor, with spectacles perched on his nose between
twinkling eyes. Otherwise, he had the same unsmiling face that
everyone had in portraits from that time.

She read the caption aloud: "Professor
Aronnax."

"Yes," he said. "I thought you might like a
picture of him. I had to trade three different Nelsons and a Sophie
for it. Our new first mate drives a hard bargain."

She studied it more closely, looking for
traces of herself in his face. The spectacles made it hard to tell,
but they did have the same slight upturn in the corner of their
eyes.

"Thank you," she said.

This was a gift, even greater than that of
the loan of the book. This was one treasure she could not refuse.
She closed the book and pushed it back towards him, but he simply
pulled out his pocket watch and muttered something about being late
to a meeting with Hui.

"Silly mission," he said as he walked away,
"always getting in the way. I will see you at tea, my lady."

~~~~

Christophe

Now that they had settled back into a routine
-- drilling their orbital insertion and targeting procedures --
Christophe resumed his midnight readings in the gazebo. He hoped,
night after night, to see Gemma emerge out of the darkness and sit
beside him. He missed the Gemma that had laughed with him in the
still of the night a lifetime ago. But night after night, she did
not appear. He lamented the fact to Maggie as they toured the
orchard.

"It is good to walk in the light," Maggie
said. "Ship's day is so lovely."

They passed beneath apple trees that had
managed to avoid freezing during the power outage. Maggie tottered
along beside him, using some of her tentacles as legs, with the
tips of her tendrils curled into long feet. When they were alone,
she would drape a free limb about his shoulders; but if others were
about, she merely strolled beside him and allowed him the dignity
of his command.

Christophe replied to her in the privacy of
his mind, giving any of the crew wandering about the impression
that they were strolling arm-in-tentacle in silence.

"We seem to have come to some sort of
détente, after all that has happened," he said.

"That is good. I know you are fond of
her."

"Certainly! Ever since I met her. There is
something new around every corner with her. She is like no one else
I have ever known. You've talked to her. Has she said
anything--"

"She is still healing," Maggie replied. The
sound of her voice in his head was gentle but firm.

"She seemed much better at tea today," he
said. "Dr. Hansard said--"

"Christophe," Maggie said, "those are not the
wounds I mean."

"What do you mean, then?"

"I sometimes see past a person's words. Not
everyone's, of course. Wallace has found a way to shut me out, and
Rathbone is a complete mess. But with some people, I see memories
and feelings. I value privacy, and I will not violate hers. I will
say only this: she suffers. Deeply. Far more deeply than even she
knows. She was never loved, save by one, and that one is long gone
from her."

Maggie paused for a moment to pick up a
wayward basket of petunias. She repacked the soil around the
flowers and hung the basket on its hook on the ironwork pole beside
the path. She rubbed her limbs together to dislodge the soil. She
retrieved a lost blossom and held it in one tentacle as she started
walking again.

She continued, "We all take some comfort in
knowing the story of our lives. Even if the story is horrible, at
least we have a sense of continuity. But she has had her story
ripped away. Her life was a lie. How would you feel if someone told
you that you were not my little bud?"

"I could not even imagine it!" His face
contorted in imagined pain. "How disconcerting!"

Mr. Owen, enjoying some rare off-duty time,
appeared on the path ahead of them as he walked in their direction.
He froze for a moment, eyes wide and jaw so slack it nearly brushed
the ground below him. Finally, he managed a watery salute, dove
down another path, and disappeared into the cherry grove.

Maggie merely shrugged as they watched the
branches rattle in the man's wake. "Nor I," she said. "Imagine how
she feels, discovering the opposite. That someone who claimed she
was an orphan was really her mother. Someone that should have loved
her as I love you, as Elias loves you, used her in horrid and
unnatural ways. She never knew a mother's love, and very little of
any other kind of love, except for a single friend that is now lost
to her."

"A friend who was my sister."

"The same. That one was as dear to her as any
sister or brother."

"Like Miguel was to me."

"Yes. Dear, dear Miguel." She fell silent for
a moment, and her tentacles went limp with sorrow. She twitched and
resumed her walk. "She has lost what made her feel important. What
gave her life meaning -- her teacher, her mission here--"

"Her mission," he said, his voice distant.
"In all the kerfuffle, I had forgotten all about it."

"I will leave it up to her to tell you what
it really was. Suffice it to say, she will not carry it out. All
that is over. Everything she knew and valued until she set foot on
the ship no longer matters to her. And now, she must rebuild
herself from the ground up."

"I could help her with that."

"Perhaps, but not yet in the way you wish.
She needs care and support as she does so, but for the most part
this is something she has to do herself. Far too many others have
done the defining for her. It will take time." She squeezed his
hand with the tip of her limb. "You ask her to make a leap, when
she cannot yet see the other side of the chasm. Let her build a
bridge there. Let her learn the language before you ask her to
speak it. Remember what the priest said about love? She now sees
glimmers of what he meant, but just glimmers. Be her friend, as you
are now, until she is able to understand more."

He licked the corner of his lips, as if to
wipe away the frown that threatened to pull them down. "And if she
is never ready?"

"Then she is never ready. Look elsewhere for
what you seek. It may be that she is like me and has no need to
mate. Or will always associate such things with a life she no
longer wants. It was a kind of slavery, my bud. She had to play
many roles. But never herself. Warm embraces were thresholds to
secrets. Kisses, merely keys. Romance was just a tool, a means to
someone else's ends. She needs time, and space, to reframe her
thinking, and see love for what it truly is, in all its forms. If
you care for her -- not just want her -- you will give her that
space."

"I've never had to do that before." He shook
his head. "I'm supposed to be the hero here! At least according to
all of those wretched CDVs. I'm supposed to
do
something."

"You can do something," said Maggie. "You can
be her friend."

"I'm not sure I know how to be just friends
with a woman."

"Then you need to learn that language as
well."

Not long afterward, just days shy of their
destination, Christophe spent the evening with
The Prince and
the Pauper
. Prince Edward was just inviting the uncannily
similar-looking Tom into the palace when a small figure emerged out
of the darkness and climbed the gazebo stairs. She held a familiar
book in her hands.

Christophe sat up straighter on the bench to
make room for her. She sat down next to him, not quite close enough
for their knees to touch. She held the book out to him.

"Finished already?" he asked in as casual a
voice as he could muster as he took it from her, careful not to
brush her hands with his fingers.

"Yes," she replied. "Quite the thrilling
tale. Thank you."

He waited a moment for further commentary,
but none came. He shifted in his seat, unsure of what to say next.
He prayed that she could not smell his breath. He had given up the
Men-T-Fresh Tonic of late, and he found that he was more
comfortable without the slightly burning sensation of it in his
mouth. Besides, if a man were not courting a girl, what use would
it be? He shifted in his seat again when he realized she was still
staring at him.

"You didn't come here just to return a book,"
he said.

"No," she replied softly.

He stacked both books on his other side and
asked, "What can I do for you, Gemma? Do you require yet another
infusion of Twain? There is plenty more."

She laughed, and he could feel the frost
between them melt a little.

"I admit, the distraction was welcome," she
replied. "Between everything that has happened and my work for Dr.
Pugh, I've needed… needed something."

"And what does old Elias have you working on
these days? More Code of Life?"

"That and another project. Sort of a pet
topic of his. I've encountered something rather odd in my reading.
I had hoped it was just an error, but--"

"Oh, now, let me guess. The Nemo paradox?
That old chestnut? How did it go, again?" He hunched over, elbow on
knee, chin on fist, in a parody of Rodin's famous statue. "On the
one hand, old Aronnax, your father, writes in a journal that he met
Captain Nobody -- one of
my
fathers, as rumour has it --
back in 1867. They parted ways in 1868 when the
Nautilus
went down in a maelstrom off the coast of Norway. Am I right so
far?" He switched elbows and knees to his other side. "On the other
hand, we have Cyrus Smith, the engineer who claims to have landed
on Lincoln Island in l865 after escaping from the Confederates in a
balloon in the middle of a hurricane. And it's a mysterious place,
this Lincoln Island, as it is home to the now-retired Captain
Nobody. He is their enigmatic benefactor for four years, until they
meet him in 1869, just before he shuffles off this mortal coil,
along with the
Nautilus
. Do I have it right?"

"Yes! Have you read both journals?"

He chuckled. "More often than I've read
Twain. Like you, I've wanted to know more about my other
progenitor. Quite a mystery, isn't it, that he had a seven-month
adventure with Aronnax whilst he was nursemaiding Smith?"

She shot him a sly smile and continued for
him. "And that Smith claims to have read Aronnax's account before
it even happened? I'm inclined to chalk it all up to errors in
translation at this point, unless someone actually traveled in time
like that fellow." She wiped a joyous tear from the corner of her
eye as she pointed at the book she had returned. "But that's not
the biggest mystery of all. I don't think Pugh is interested in
dates."

"Oh, really?" he asked with an arched
eyebrow. "What, pray tell, do you think the good professor really
wants to know?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he could
feel her gaze examining his face -- not an altogether unpleasant
experience. Hope rose in his chest.

"Aronnax seemed to have no inkling of Nemo's
origins. However, Smith says that Nemo revealed that his real name
was Dakkar, a Prince of India." She pointed at him. "You, my good
Captain, are quite the handsome fellow, but you look nothing like a
Prince of India."

He nodded. "I have thought that, too. But
Maggie states that she made no mistake, that she used his
Code--"

"That is where things get dicey," she
replied. "This whole paradox revolves around assumptions, evidence,
and assumptions about evidence. I believe Maggie when she says she
used the Code she was given. But how can we be sure it was his?
Perhaps she was given someone else's by mistake? Nemo supposedly
died -- twice -- decades ago! With no body to be found. No Code to
compare against. Just some hair sample out of nowhere." She
wrinkled her nose in thought. "By the way, no one has stated how
that sample was acquired. Did someone from either encounter nip a
lock of hair from him?"

"I believe Smith did, just before they
scuttled the
Nautilus
. At least, that's what I am told."

"That particular tidbit wasn't in the
journal. And how did we -- meaning Pugh and Maggie -- get hold of
that sample from Smith?"

"I don't know. A family secret, perhaps."

"Perhaps," she replied with a smile. "Or
perhaps they are not entirely sure themselves. It could be Smith
himself! Very well, then, at this point we will merely have to
think of your 'other' father as Mr. Mystery. Perhaps we will have a
better shot at determining his identity that way."

"Then, perhaps," he said quietly, "you can
figure out what went wrong with me."

"Wrong?" She leaned back as she pronounced
the word, as if she had tasted something foul. "Wrong? I would not
say that. I would not say that at all." She crossed her arms and
harrumphed, then spoke again. "Don't worry for a moment about what
Code you may or may not have. It's your actions that count. That is
why this is just a pet project, I'm sure. Besides, Pugh and Maggie
are your family. You led us through the power outage safely. You're
about to get us to Mars! You are the first spacefaring captain in
history! You did that with your head, your heart, and your
backbone, not your Code."

Chastised, he grinned at her sheepishly.
"Well, I didn't do it alone."

"No one does." She cleared her throat and
studied her hands. "At least, no one should."

"May I remind you, you're not alone, either?
Maggie has pretty well adopted you for her own, and I think Yeoman
McLure would punch anyone in the face who said you were any less
than family. Elias adores you, and you have given him some peace
where his missing daughter is concerned." It was his turn to look
away. "And my sister. The one I never knew I had." He looked back
at her. "You never really were alone, as long as you had her
friendship. She was to you what Miguel was to me."