Philip Jose Farmer (11 page)

Fogg was knocked off his feet. Passepartout came tumbling off Kiouni’s neck. The elephant whirled and began running in the opposite direction along the edge of the islet. Passepartout fell without injury, rolling on the floor and coming up on his feet as if at the end of an act. His hair was wilder than ever, and his blue eyes were huge. Fogg returned to the hole in the center while smoke from the explosion, blown downward at first, rose around him. He knelt down and looked into the shaft. The watch case, for it had contained no watch, could be set to explode its contents or to convert them into a gas. This would be expelled at a high rate of speed to fill any small chamber. Its effect dissipated almost immediately so that he did not have to fear breathing the air coming up from the shaft.

Mr. Fogg’s face kept its serenity, but his log records his astonishment and alarm at what he saw. The cylinder had continued to sink into the shaft in the floor of the room below. Even as he watched, it stopped with its top about three feet above the floor. Beside it lay a short, stocky dark-skinned man dressed in gorgeous garments. His wrists and fingers were covered with bracelets and rings bearing pearls and jewels that only a very rich rajah could afford. His hair and beard were gray, and his hook-nosed face was wrinkled. Fogg knew that the gray and the wrinkles were only makeup. Rajah Dakkar of Bundelcund had not wanted his agelessness to be rumored about. Such a story would have brought him to the attention of the Eridaneans far sooner than it had, and the British might have become aggressive 
if they thought he had a secret for prolonging life.

The rajah had opened the lid of the cylinder before it had stopped sinking. If it had not been for the anesthetic gas, he would have been out of the room by now with the distorter. But the device, encased in a big golden-plated watch with several inset diamonds, lay nine feet directly below Fogg. He only had to remove from around his waist the magnet and the long thin silken cord to which it was attached and to drop it straight down. The gold covering would not be affected, but the steel plates and the steel works within would be sufficiently magnetized. And then he could pull the treasured object up by the cord.

But a man was standing by the marble cylinder and reaching out for the device. Something stopped him, perhaps a sense which told him that he was being observed. He looked upward. Fogg did not cry out, though how even he kept his self-control is difficult to understand. He knew the man. His beard was gone, and the eyes were no longer black but a dark gray. Fogg might not have recognized him now if it had not been for the extraordinary width between the eyes.

The man was now wearing the uniform of an officer of Her Majesty’s Indian Sappers, which accounted in part for Fogg’s failure to recognize at once that he had seen him only recently. Once the effect of the uniform passed, Fogg saw the resemblance between him and the man he had seen standing in the doorway near the Reform Club. Yes, it was he. The man he had served under, the man in the doorway, the man now about to take the distorter were the same. But how had he arrived ahead of Fogg? Had he come via a distorter?

The man mouthed one word, faintly.

“Fogg!”

So, he did not recognize Fogg as a former member of his crew. If he had known, would he not have wanted to let Fogg be aware that he had penetrated his disguise?

Fogg uttered the man’s name softly.

“Captain Nemo!”

 10 

Fogg records in his secret notebook many things that were puzzling about this man’s presence, though he had no time to think of them then. Why was he, a Capellean of good standing as far as Fogg knew, with the traitor rajah? Or had he talked Dakkar into believing that he himself had become a traitor? How had he gotten here? Why had he not been overcome by the gas?

The last could be accounted for by a quickness in running out of the room when the watch fell. Or perhaps he had been outside and had just entered.

Fogg let the magnet fall down the shaft onto the watch. Nemo had no weapons; his bolster was empty. Doubtless, the rajah permitted no one except the most trusted guards to be armed in his presence. Nemo, acting on his reflexes, shot his hand toward the nonexistent gun, realized the situation, cried out—Fogg heard it faintly—and dodged away. Fogg could no longer see him. But if he believed that the watch was another bomb, gas or explosive, he would leave the room and perhaps 
slam the door behind him. Yes, there was a muffled slamming noise. But he might come back at once. He might be behind armed men whom he’d sent into the room to determine if the watch case held anything deadly. Or, quick thinker that he was, he might perceive the significance of the cord attached to the case, guess it held only a magnet, and would come charging back in with a gun.

He would also be sending armed men into the huge room. Fogg was surprised that none had appeared by now; at any moment he expected to hear the explosions of rifles. He glanced up and looked around. No figures were emerging from the archways. So, the rajah had wanted as few people as possible to be near the distorter. He had had faith that a few men in the car above and he and Nemo below could take care of the Eridaneans.

But the soldiers would soon be here.

Now another distraction occurred. Passepartout was pulling one of the men out of the water who had dived out of the car. He was doing it with all possible speed to get out of the way of Kiouni, still racing along the perimeter. The explosions had frightened the huge saurians in the water long enough for one man to get away. The other had not been so lucky. Some crocodile, quicker to recover than the others, had seized him. Only the roiling of the water as the crocodile turned over and over, trying to tear a leg or arm off, showed where the man was.

Fogg had not time to shout at Passepartout to abandon the man if the elephant came around too fast. He turned his attention back to the shaft, lifted the magnet again, swung it a little to one side, and dropped it. This time it fell squarely on the rajah’s watch, and Fogg drew it up swiftly.

Before he had gotten it out of the hole, he saw the face of the rajah, now recovered, directly below him. It was contorted with rage, and he held in his hand a Colt revolver. He pointed it upward. Fogg could either drop the device and fall back out of the way or be shot. In fact, even if he dropped it, he might not get away in time.

The rajah’s face passed from rage to triumph. Fogg decided that he would have to try to dodge. If he continued to draw up the device, he would be shot anyway. His only chance, not a very good one, was to throw himself to one side at the same time yanking up on the cord. If he did not get the distorter away from the rajah, then he was stuck here. And he would be stuck later in various unpleasant ways.

The rajah cried out in English for him not to move or he would get a bullet between his eyes.

Fogg wondered how the rajah knew he was an Englishman. He also wondered if the rajah’s reputation as a marksman was deserved. Next to a certain Captain Moran of the Indian Army, the rajah was supposed to be the best hunter in India.

He had just made up his mind to throw himself to one side, since death was better than being captured alive in any event. A shadow fell on him. Something half-dark and half-glittering sped down the shaft. As if it had sprung out of some hidden magician’s compartment on his body, the handle of a knife was sticking out of the rajah’s throat. He had had to lean backwards to point the gun up and so had left his throat exposed.

Dakkar’s eyes glazed, and he crumpled. As his revolver hit the floor, it discharged. There was a shout, and a soldier fell into view face down. He must have been struck by the ricocheting bullet.

Fogg serenely pulled the magnet and device up, turned the magnet off by pressing the stem on the watch case which held it, pocketed the case, reset the magnet, and lowered it down the shaft again. He then proceeded to draw up the revolver.

“Where did you get that throwing knife?” he said.

“From a man whom I rescued from the crocodiles,” Passepartout said. “Alas, not reptiles but a pachyderm was what he should have feared.”

He pointed at a gruesome object, what was left after Kiouni had found him lying in his path. The beast had stopped running now, but it was still trumpeting, and its eyes looked dangerous. Its feet and trunk and tusks were splashed with blood.

“Splendid,” Fogg said, and Passepartout smiled with pleasure.

“I learned more in the circus than just to tumble and to walk a high wire, sir.”

“Obviously.”

“So what now, sir, if I may presume?”

“There is a very dangerous man in the palace,” Fogg said. “If he were in London, he would be the most dangerous man there. Or anywhere. He should be killed, but that is impossible now. Indeed, if we do not make an expeditious retreat, we shall be the ones to suffer death. Still...”

“Yes, sir?”

“Never mind. We must not test probabilities too far. Ah, I see the soldiers are coming through the archways. Get up on the elephant quickly.”

“Without a rope ladder, sir? Besides, he does not look as if he would give permission, ladder or not.”

“If he will not give permission, we leave without him.”

Fogg removed another watch from his pocket. He set it and placed the magnet between it and the distorter. The three were now bound together by the magnetic field. He lowered the trio into the shaft a few inches. He had nothing to put on the cord to keep the three objects from slipping further except the body of the trampled man. He did not have time to drag the corpse to the shaft and place it on the cord. The first fire from the guns of the soldiers was ringing in the dome. Fortunately, the Bundelcundians were excited and were, probably, poor marksmen to begin with, as were many of the ill-trained natives of that day. Moreover, only five had rifles; the rest were equipped with matchlock muzzle loaders, unrifled weapons with not much accuracy. But as soon as enough came in, the volume of fire would ensure their hitting their target. The elephant, big as he was, would be hit even if no one was firing at him. Wounded, he might turn on the two men, who would have no place to go except into the pool.

Fogg shot three bullets from the rajah’s revolver as cooly as if he were on the firing range. Three soldiers dropped. The others ran behind the scanty shelter of the archways. Fogg removed the last of his watches and hurled it. This struck just beyond the edge of the walk, skittered across it toward an archway, and stopped. It began whirling and emitting a thick smoke. This quickly spread over the walk on that side of the room and out across the lake. The winds were blowing it from the archways, helped by the draft created by the opened trapdoor in the top of the dome. Cries of fear and a number of loud coughs came through the smoke.

Still holding onto the end of the cord, Fogg approached the swaying beast. He started to speak softly the loving words he had 
learned from the mahout, then realized that the beast could not hear these. He spoke more loudly while he held one hand out to the beast. It watched him with rolling eyes, but Fogg’s composure and the lack of fear-scent steadied Kiouni. Fogg had thrust all disturbing emotions into another circuit of his mind—he would pay heavily for it later—and was as cool and unafraid as he looked. The elephant allowed him to get close and lowered his trunk to feel along his clothes. Passepartout got to the extreme other side of the islet, crouched, and then ran straight toward the animal’s tail and pulled himself on up and over onto the animal’s back. Fortunately, he managed to get hold of the howdah before the startled beast began running around again. Fogg had hurled himself to one side just in time and then he stood near the shaft and began trying to quiet Kiouni down again.

The Frenchman threw out the rope ladder, which trailed along a few inches on the floor. He got onto the beast’s neck and did his best to imitate the Parsi. This, with Fogg’s renewed words, brought Kiouni to a standstill. By then, some of the soldiers had run out from the cloud to the far side of the pool and begun firing. Even so, the smoke hindered them.

Fogg climbed up the ladder quickly and drew the rope after him. Kiouni was urged toward the shaft, finally coming to another stop a few feet from it. This was as close as Fogg dared get him, since soldiers might now be in the chamber below. He was not certain that this was close enough, but he must take the chance.