20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (8 page)

"Status, Mr. Cervantes?" the captain
asked.

The first mate gazed at the row of
brass-rimmed controls and the black needles dancing over pools of
white.

"All systems running normally, sir."

"Very well, then. Let go and haul!"

There were no bumps or shakes. The chamber
remained steady. Everyone in Informatics let out their breath at
last and smiled at each other. Some shook hands.

"That's it?" asked Gemma.

"Yes, that's that," Mr. Davies replied.
"We're on our way. It's debugging and solar flare drills until
Braking Day."

"Braking Day?" Gemma asked.

"We're slowly accelerating our way towards
the Red Planet. Midway through, we decelerate. As Mr. Humboldt so
aptly put it, we have to start braking at the right time or we'll
pass it right up. Precise timing is a must."

"It'll be a bit of a holiday, actually," said
Mr. Humboldt. "We've got to get that bit right. I don't think we
brought enough tea to make it to Jupiter."

The Booleans that were not on duty shuffled
out. Gemma heard them moving behind her as she continued studying
the bridge. At one point, the captain turned in her direction. He
winked at her with the smallest of movements, then turned his
attention to the bridge once more. She had watched him, as she had
been ordered, but so far she had only seen a popinjay in a military
jacket. She still was not sure why she was here or what exactly she
was supposed to watch for; usually her missions were more specific.
But she was here all the same, and she would do her job. Still, it
was a little embarrassing to her that she had captured his
attention with almost no effort on her part.

Caroline made her way over to stand next to
Gemma and Mr. Davies as the chamber emptied.

"Do you think we'll make it past the moon
this time, Nigel?" she whispered through a frown. She bit her lower
lip like a lost child.

"Hush, Caroline," he replied in the same soft
tone. He patted the yeoman's shoulder. "It will be all right. We've
done this before. And we're better, this time."

And with that, Gemma Llewellyn, Invasion
Orphan, departed for War.

~~~~

Christophe

"Now that we're underway, what's on tap for
the rest of the day?"

As he asked the question, Christophe swung
his lanky limbs onto the conference table and crossed his ankles.
Miguel sighed, as he always did when they were alone. He sat up a
little straighter in the adjacent chair and jogged the stack of
papers in front of him.

"This afternoon, we have a meeting with Gun
Control to discuss the final heat ray tests." He looked up from the
schedule. "I'd like to be involved in those, if possible. I spent a
lot of time with them on the maiden voyage, if you recall. I'd like
to see that through."

"I have no objections. What else?"

"Let me see. Ah, the launch tea party is
scheduled for the first dog watch--"

Christophe groaned. "Another official tea? So
we can all see Wallace's shining face again?"

"Yes, and you will see plenty of him on this
voyage, so I suggest you get used to it. But before that, the
Cohort will tour the Oberth Deck."

"Really?" Christophe withdrew his legs from
the table and sat up. "All of them?"

He sighed again. "Yes, all of them. And
tomorrow we resume the classes for the midshipmen. I suggest--"

"Miguel, old sport, my old
amigo
, I
think it is time to add something to the schedule."

"What?" It was Miguel's turn to groan. "Now?
We just left the station. At least let the crew settle in first.
You know how nervous they are about flares."

"All the more reason to go ahead and get a
drill over with. You never know when one will pop up. I want to be
sure that we're ready. Especially on the Oberth Deck. We have to
keep our scientists safe."

"Christophe," Miguel said as he winced and
pinched the bridge of his nose, "do I have to remind you of the
trouble you had in Gibraltar last year? With the governor's
daughter?"

"Miss Llewellyn looks nothing like the
governor's daughter."

"The barmaid in Saint Vincent? The minister's
daughter in Tortola? As your first mate, it is my duty to tell you
when you act like this." As Christophe flashed a satisfied grin
back at him, he continued, "I know why you named me after the
creator of the Man of La Mancha. I just don't know whether I'm Don
Quixote or Sancho. Some days it is both, I think."

Christophe leapt from his chair and headed
for the door. "Set it up. I will pipephone you from the Oberth Deck
when I'm ready to go."

Cervantes cupped his hand across his
forehead. "And this is why you'll never make Admiral."

~~~~

Gemma

"Would you like to see the orrery?" Nigel
asked.

Gemma was startled out of her reverie by the
sudden question. She had lingered with the Booleans after the
captain and his first mate had left the bridge. After the initial
excitement of the launch, everyone had quickly settled down.
Humboldt had turned the pneumatic tube system back on, and Caroline
and the others had resumed their posts at the keypunch
machines.

"I would," she replied.

She had seen such things before, and she
wondered how in the world a miniature of the solar system could be
so important as to need its own Boolean. At the same time, it would
be good to cultivate allies on the ship. It was going to be a long
voyage, and an even longer one without them.

"However," she continued, "that may need to
wait for later. I have a Cohort meeting to attend, and I need to
send a message back to my academy to inform them that we have set
sail."

"I can show you how. Follow me, please." He
turned to address the room. "Yeoman McLure, you're in charge for
the moment. Contact me if you need me, or if Humboldt gets out of
hand. Don't worry, Roger," he said, looking at Humboldt. "You'll
get that algorithm right. I have every bit of faith in you."

He led Gemma out of the Informatics chamber
and back into the corridor. After the door closed, he gently
touched her elbow and then withdrew it.

"Pray, don't fret for Caroline's sake," he
said. He walked slowly and spoke softly. "She will be fine. She has
survived much worse than a case of the nerves. The hair bob isn't
even new. She's worn it that way since we were children together at
the old Wickham Textile Factory. That's where we were apprenticed,
you know. The Jacquard looms there were a good proving ground for
Engine development, once the Neo-Luddite riots stopped. 'Twas loads
better than life on the factory floor, let me tell you."

Gemma shuddered as they passed through the
guarded door. Mrs. Brightman constantly reminded her Girls of the
Factory Orphans: the lost fingers and limbs, the filth and
starvation, and the acres upon acres of tiny graves. So many little
ones had died during the brief anti-technology insurrection of
1912, just one hundred years after Ned Ludd had led a similar
rebellion against machines. Many more had died just keeping the
looms in operation until the machines had taken over completely,
and many were homeless adults now that the textile factories were
fully automated. Just how many Invasion Orphans had those monsters
devoured over the years? How many times had she thanked her
mistress for saving her from such horrors?

She looked up as they arrived at the wireless
window.

"Here we are," Mr. Davies said. A stack of
glass slates sat to one side, each with a grease pencil attached to
it by a string. They resembled the glass panels that she had seen
on the bridge. "Just write the recipient's name here at the top,
your name, and your message below it. Then put it with the others
over here. They'll send it when they review the stack, and the
Admiralty will route it to the proper person. Don't worry, the A.E.
keeps a record of everything we send and receive, so you can always
ask us to pull it up later via punch card if you need to review it.
You can also send messages up from the labs via the pneumatics." He
glanced at the clock on the wall. "I must be off. See you at tea,
Miss Llewellyn."

He bowed to her and strode off in the
direction of the lift. Gemma picked up one of the blank slates. She
appreciated his help; here at last was someone who strove for
efficiency as much as she did. He would be a worthy ally.

As she wrote out her message, her eyes
flickered over the box containing the stack of waiting panels. She
read over the message on top in a flash, out of habit. It was
nonsensical; at least, it was to the untrained eye.

There were more abbreviations in it than
actual words, but that was a common enough practice. She reread the
message and allowed one eyebrow to arch slightly. Ah! She wasn't
the only one of her kind aboard! It did not surprise her all that
much. Mrs. Brightman was certainly not alone in her particular
field of endeavour. She felt a prickle in her scalp at the
possibility and wondered if she had worked for the mystery sender
in the past. That would prove an awkward reunion. She searched for
the name of the sender or the recipient, but both were smudged and
nearly unreadable. One of the operators chose that moment to
collect the stack, and she lost her chance.

To cover her disappointment, she finished
scribbling out her own message: "Departed Safely. Clear Sailing."
Or, as someone reading it would see, "DPRT SAFE STOP CLR SLNG STOP"
The "clear" keyword was an indicator that the message meant exactly
what it said; nothing was hidden or encoded.

"I'll take that for you, Miss," said a man on
the other side of the window. Gemma looked up into the eyes of a
tall, gaunt man. His smile was gentle, and there was a twinkle in
his hazel eyes. He studied her over horn-rimmed spectacles and
touched his fingers to his banker's visor.

"Warrant Officer Edmund Rathbone, at your
service," he said. He pointed to the badge on his arm. "Signal
Corps. Don't worry, I'm new on this voyage, too. I'll be happy to
send that message for you, love."

She responded, using her perfectly schooled
smile. By his accent, he was definitely of Guildford stock, but she
did not recognize his face.

"Would you prefer to pick up your messages
here, or would you like for me to send them down the tube?" He
pointed to the pneumatic tube behind him with his thumb.

"Here, please," she replied. "I could use the
exercise." Even though any of her messages would be in code and
therefore unreadable by most, she preferred to have them handled by
as few people as possible. If he sent them by the tube, someone
else might open the cylinder before she did.

She thanked him and then left to find the
laboratory deck. On her way, she mulled over the enigmatic message.
It was protocol to be aware of any other Brightman sorts in the
vicinity.

Especially if that "other" was a Watcher.

Every Brightman Girl on a mission had a
Watcher. That was also protocol. Everyone had someone that reported
on their movements, requested aid if needed, or took steps to make
sure that the job was completed. She had heard second-hand that
sometimes those steps were less than civil. The Watchers were
silent and unseen, especially where the Girls were concerned.

Gemma had rarely worried about her Watchers.
She prided herself on her ability to complete a job smoothly and
cleanly without intervention. She often made it a game to guess her
Watcher's identity, but the missions were so short that she often
had a limited time to puzzle it out.

The message she had seen had been in code.
Was it from her Watcher? They were by nature unobtrusive. It would
be unusual for them to leave something so obviously encoded just
lying about. Of course, they may have wanted to remind her of their
unseen presence; they did that sometimes. It was true that she had
not given her potential Watcher much thought until now. There had
been such a rush to get her to the launch point, and then the
nerve-wracking process of the rail-gun launch, that this was the
first time she'd had a moment to consider a Watcher. A shiver
danced down her spine.

She stuffed the question into her mental
steamer trunk. Now she had to prepare for her first meeting with
the entire Scientific Cohort. She hoped that she had met none of
them under other circumstances ... one that had found particular
items missing from his workbench, learnt that some of his reference
tables were badly skewed, or discovered his chalkboard equations
altered right after she had disappeared from his life.

She arrived at the lift. A silver-haired
Asian man, who was also wearing the brown jacket and badge of the
Cohort, waited there. An emerging smile carved even deeper wrinkles
in his face as she approached.

"Ah, you must be Miss… Miss…"

She recognized the accent from her time in
Shanghai. She nodded and smiled gently in return. He struggled once
more to say her name.

"Please, call me Gemma," she replied.

"Ah, Miss Gemma, then." He bowed slightly in
her direction. Another smile, this one of relief, broke across his
face. "I am Professor Hui Yutai, lead physicist. Dr. Pugh told us
to help you if we saw you. Have you been to the Research Deck yet?
No? I will show you the way."

When the lift doors opened, he gestured for
her to precede him into the car. "I am sorry I did not get to meet
you yesterday when you arrived," he continued, "but I was playing
with a pet project of mine and lost track of time. If you wish,
later, I will show it to you. I am sure you will be busy with your
own experiments, though."

Experiments
, Gemma thought.
Oh,
bother.

The lift swept them away to another deck; and
when they exited, she followed Hui to the right.