The Japanese Devil Fish Girl (34 page)

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Authors: Robert Rankin

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There were sufficient provisions on board to accommodate all on the voyage home and all agreed that God had spared them and that they were blessèd indeed.
 
As evening fell, George left Darwin to steer the ship and walked with Ada on the open observation deck.
 
‘Will all be well?’ he asked of her. ‘Do you believe we are safe?’
 
‘All
will
be well,’ said Ada. ‘The worst is over for us.’
 
‘I
am
thinking,’ said George, ‘that perhaps those Martians might just be left alone. Do not get me wrong – I do not like them and they would have eaten me – but if they never attack us and spend the next thousand years awaiting the Great Blasphemy, where would be the harm in that?’
 
Ada linked her arm with George’s, smiled at him and said, ‘I was myself thinking something along those lines. You are a good man, George. A very dear man indeed.’
 
Moonlight bathed the observation deck. A gentle breeze whispered, a high-flying parrot cooed softly.
 
George took Ada in his arms and kissed her.
 
‘Ada,’ said George. ‘I love you, Ada. Will you marry me?’
 
A moment passed that seemed to George a lifetime.
 
‘Of course I will marry you,’ Ada Lovelace said.
 
*
 
Three days later the Martian airship touched down upon the cobbled vastness of the Royal London Spaceport at Sydenham.
 
Bedraggled passengers, their finery gone, their high-blown spirits deflated, shook George and Ada by the hand and traipsed down the gangway to be greeted by bewildered onlookers.
 
‘Darwin,’ said George to the monkey close at hand.
 
‘Would you care to be the best man at my wedding?’
 
‘That will not please the professor,’ said Ada, laughing as she said it.
 
‘
That
to the professor,’ said George, making a rather rude gesture.
 
‘I suppose we must speak with someone in authority,’ said Ada. ‘Explain, well,
everything
really.’
 
‘Let us do it then,’ said George in reply. ‘And then we will take a hansom and I will introduce you to my family. It is a long time since I have seen them. I hope they will be as happy to see me as I will be to see them.’
 
Together they strolled down the gangway, Darwin hard on their heels.
 
They had not strolled a further ten yards, however, when they heard certain sounds behind them that caused them to pause in their tracks and turn back.
 
Those certain sounds were of engines, roaring into life.
 
‘Oh no!’ cried George. ‘He would not.’
 
But he had.
 
As George and Ada and Darwin looked on, the Martian airship, now piloted by Professor Coffin, who waved at them through the windscreen and displayed the casket of jewels that Ada had been given as a going-away present, lifted off, swung about and soared away into the sky.
 
35
 
Z
ealous officialdom saw to it that things did not go exactly how George had hoped that they would. That he and Ada were immediately arrested and led away in handcuffs for interrogation lacked somewhat for the ‘triumphal homecoming’ that he had had in mind. He and Ada had, after all, brought back the survivors of the
Empress of Mars
safe and sound and once more to England. That at the very least had to be worth a medal or two and a tea of sweets with the Queen. The hand-cuffing and the frogmarching lacked for a certain dignity and suitable gravitas. And George became a most grumpy George when he found himself tossed into a pokey cell.
 
He called out for justice and demanded that he might speak with someone of high office in the Government of the realm. A spaceport guard in an ill-fitting uniform entered George’s cell and struck him down with a steam-driven truncheon, which he assured George was ‘quite the latest thing’.
 
At length George was conveyed to the low office of a minor body in charge of passport control. His handcuffs were removed and he was flung into a chair before a crowded office desk. George’s guard left the room, informing George that he would be waiting outside and no funny business would be tolerated. The minor body viewed George Fox across the crowded desk.
 
George was asked to produce his papers.
 
George explained that he had none.
 
George was then told that in order to enter England he would need to display papers of indenture and permission to travel. An entry visa, accompanied by letters of recommendation, sealed with the authorisation of at least three diplomatic envoys and a license for the unclassified hairy-boy that—
 
‘It is a monkey!’ protested George. ‘Darwin, my monkey butler.’
 
The minor body ran his fingers down the passenger list of the
Empress of Mars
. ‘Lord Brentford had a monkey butler called Darwin,’ he observed. ‘And Lord Brentford is numbered amongst the deceased.’ He gave George a very hard look and then made notes with a hand-driven pen that was not the latest thing.
 
‘And you claim that you were a passenger yourself on the
Empress of Mars
?’ said the minor body.
 
‘I was,’ said George. ‘And where is Ada Lovelace?’
 
‘Ah yes,’ said the minor body. ‘Your accomplice.’
 
‘My
what
?’ asked George.
 
‘Your partner in subversion and crime. I understand that she too claims to have been a passenger on the
Empress of Mars
, but her name does not appear on the passenger list.’
 
‘Ah,’ said George. ‘Oh dear,’ said George. ‘I can explain,’ said George also. But he was not altogether certain that he could. Not to the satisfaction of this minor body, who clearly took his job most seriously.
 
‘Look at you,’ said this body. ‘Your accomplice is dressed in her undergarments like some music hall floozy and not only do you sport a suit that is clearly two sizes too small, but you do not wear a hat!’
 
The minor body made big notes of this scandalous sartorial faux pas.
 
‘I suspect, sir,’ said he, ‘that you are a Prussian spy, or indeed one of the American anarchists whom I am informed by the survivors attacked the
Empress of Mars
in New York.’
 
‘This is absurd,’ said George. ‘I rescued these people. Ada and I rescued them. Ask any of them, they will tell you.’
 
‘Ask
them
?’ asked the minor body. ‘Are you quite bereft of your wits? Those survivors are members of the aristocracy. One does not trouble the likes of them with such trivialities.’
 
George made a most exasperated face. He was most exasperated.
 
‘No, hold on, hold on, hold on,’ cried George. Suddenly seeing a light at the end of what looked to be a
very
long dark tunnel. ‘My name is on the passenger list. Oh yes, indeed it is.’
 
‘Is it now?’ asked the minor body. ‘So what is your name, pray?’
 
‘My name is George Fox,’ said George Fox. ‘
Lord
George Fox, so you can just release me now, give me a nice cup of tea and then allow me to return to my aristocratic country seat. Go to it, my good man.’
 
The minor body stiffened slightly in his chair. ‘A lord?’ said he. ‘You?’ said he. ‘In a suit like that and no hat?’ said he also.
 
‘I am a survivor of an airship wreck,’ complained George. ‘But I am on the passenger list. Go on, look me up.’
 
The minor body turned pages. Most slowly indeed he turned them. But presently he paused in his turning and uttered a single, ‘Oh.’
 
‘Yes,’ said George. ‘Oh indeed. Now release me and bring me some tea.’
 
‘Lord George Fox,’ said the minor body, and he began to smile.
 
‘Splendid,’ said George. ‘And I am pleased that you are able to affect a detached attitude and see the humour of your own folly in doubting me.’
 
The minor body looked up at George. ‘Not as such,’ said he. ‘You see, I have here,’ and he held up just what he had there, ‘a warrant for the arrest of Lord George Fox, issued by the Penge Constabulary at the request of a number of tailors and outfitters with whom this very Lord George failed to settle before he boarded the
Empress of Mars
.’
 
The minor body intoned the list. ‘Jonathan Crawford, suiting to the gentry. Elias Mainwaring, purveyor of quality canes and umbrellas. Louis Vuitton – manufacturers of superior luggage.’ And several others that George had quite forgotten but had no particular wish to be reacquainted with.
 
George Fox groaned and his striking chin sank towards his chest.
 
‘We have you, sir,’ said the minor body, ‘in the parlance of the
Police Gazette
, “bang to rights” and no mistake.’
 
George did further groanings.
 
‘Do you have anything to say for yourself before I call back the guard to return you to your cell?’
 
George felt hard put now to think of
anything
.
 
‘I will have to ask you to turn out your pockets,’ said the minor body. ‘It appears that the guards have neglected to search you. Can’t have you producing a set of skeleton keys and making your escape, can we?’
 
George shook his head. ‘I suppose you cannot,’ he said.
 
George rooted through his pockets and produced his few meagre possessions, his gold watch, a handkerchief, this trifle and the next. He placed them before him on a slightly less crowded area of the minor body’s desk.
 
‘Is that everything?’ asked the minor body.
 
‘Everything!’ said George, with a dismal nod.
 
The minor body poked about amongst George’s personal belongings, took up something and asked George, ‘What is
this
?’
 
George viewed the item the minor body held in his hand. A slim glass phial of colourless liquid topped by a screw-on cap.
 
‘Ah,’ said George, and a faint smile flickered at his lips.
 
 
‘I really do have to ask you,’ said Ada Lovelace as she and George were driven away from the Royal London Spaceport, not in a police wagon but in a rather nice landau carriage drawn by matched black geldings, ‘exactly how you achieved this.’
 
‘Wave back at the nice minor body,’ said George. ‘He is bidding us good fortune.’
 
Ada waved. ‘Just how?’ she asked of George.
 
‘Charm?’ suggested George. ‘Force of personality? Justice, perhaps?’
 
Ada kissed George on the cheek. ‘So
not
the Scent of Unknowing,’ said she. ‘Which is what
I
would have employed.’
 
They shared a moment of carefree joy and George Fox treasured this moment.
 
‘So,’ said Ada, ‘my bold adventurer and husband-to-be. Whither are we bound?’
 
‘Well,’ said George, and he made a certain face, ‘we are both in rags and penniless too, so there is only one thing for it.’
 
‘Beg on London Bridge?’ said Ada. ‘Surely not.’
 
‘No,’ said George. ‘Do what those in their teens have done throughout this century and will probably continue to do throughout centuries to come, when they are in financial trouble. Go home to Mum and Daddy.’
 
Ada Lovelace made a face, the perfect match of George’s.
 
‘Yours or mine?’ she asked him, thoughtfully.
 
‘In our present state of dress, I am thinking
yours
,’ said George.
 
 
There can sometimes be a terrible problem with dates. Getting dates right, remembering dates. George had no trouble remembering that Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron. She had told him that she was and he had seen the newspaper cutting. George had not, however, mentioned at the time that he had ‘done’ Lord Byron at school. And that Lord George Gordon Byron, the sixth Baron Byron, had been born in seventeen eighty-eight and died in eighteen twenty-four. And that this was now eighteen ninety-five and Ada could scarcely be more than eighteen.

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