The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (52 page)

“But your paradise is balanced upon the tip of a needle! It takes all your efforts to keep it from toppling. And as Brown has revealed to me, you are soon to run out of strength.”

“Ah, poor Brown! We will see that he gets the kindly care and attention he needs to overcome his alcohol-sodden delusions. No one is going to harm him. He is one of us.”

“Are you claiming that his presentation of the situation is incorrect?”

“No, not at all. But Harbert was not privy to our secret search, a quest that has now borne fruit. We have secured the allegiance of a new savant, a mastermind whose fertile brain will more than compensate for the absence of our beloved Captain Nemo.”

“You believe then that this newcomer can stave off that day when science reaches its natural limits?”

“Indeed, he will, I am certain. And may I say that you have a fine way with words, Mr Wheatstone. I’m certain you will do justice to the exclusive interview we intend to grant you with our new saviour.”

Exclusive interview? Wheatstone began to feel for the first time in hours that he might yet emerge from this deadly affair with both his hide and reputation intact, even enhanced.

“Would you care to meet him now?”

“Why, yes, if the hour is not too late.”

“Not at all. Our new comrade is almost superhuman in his endurance and vital spirits.”

Wheatstone used an ordinator to issue his summons. Within a few minutes, a man strode boldly into the library. And what a figure of a man! Of middle height and geometric breadth, his figure was a regular trapezium with the greatest of its parallel sides formed by the line of his shoulders. On this line attached by a robust neck there rose an enormous spheroidal head — the head of a bull; but a bull with an intelligent face. Eyes which, at the least opposition, would glow like coals of fire; and above them a permanent contraction of the superciliary muscle, an invariable sign of extreme energy. Short hair, slightly woolly, with metallic reflections; large chest rising and falling like a smith’s bellow; arm, hands, legs and feet, all worthy of the trunk. No moustaches, no whiskers, but a large American goatee.

Even Cyrus Smith seemed to shrink a little in the presence of this newcomer, who remained forebodingly silent. But Smith soon recovered himself and said, “Mr Wheatstone, may I present our new friend, Robur. With his aid, I believe we can conquer all such problems as our aerial delays at last. With Robur at our side, progress need never end.”

Wheatstone shook Robur’s hand and felt a galvanic charge.

The young reporter suspected that things were really going to get interesting now .

OLD LIGHT by Tim Lebbon

From 1886, Verne entered a long period of depression. It was probably started when Verne’s nephew, Gaston, in a moment of madness, shot Verne, wounding him in the leg. The injury left Verne with a limp that severely reduced his mobility and though he was still only fifty-eight, he began to feel “geriatric”. It was not helped by the deaths of several friends and relatives, including Hetzel, who died in 1886, and Verne’s mother who died early in 1887. This depression was apparent in a series of lacklustre and rather negative novels, including
North against South
(1887),
The Flight to France
(1887),
Two Years’ Vacation
(1888, better known as
Adrift in the Pacific)
and
A Family Without a Name
(1889).

In the midst of this he completed, but then put aside, a very personal novel about loss and love.
Le Château des Carpathes (The Castle of the Carpathians)
is usually dismissed as an over sentimental gothic romance. Set in Translyvania (and written several years before Bram Stoker completed
Dracula),
it tells of strange events happening at the eponymous castle once owned by the Barons de Gortz but long believed to have been abandoned. The villagers suspect that the manifestations are supernatural but two more pragmatic locals set out for the castle to discover the truth. We eventually learn that the Baron de Gortz had fallen in love with the voice of a great singer, La Stilla, who had died.

The scientist, Orfanik, had invented a recording device that captured La Stilla’s voice and, using her portrait, de Gortz arranges for Orfanik, to project the vision and sound of La Stilla throughout the castle, where de Gortz retreats to be alone with his memories. Biographers believe that the novel is a projection of Verne’s own views at this time as his friends and loved ones died. In the following story Tim Lebbon captures that mood admirably as he explores the further work of Orfanik.

In the beginning, I turned away.

I’m not sure why. I’m normally a helpful person, compassionate, and the sight of a man in such a state would usually urge me to aid him as much as I could. He was injured, though still alive; the twitch of an eyelid, a foot moving in circles as if dreaming a dance. Before I realized what I was doing I was back on the pavement, seven steps and a lifetime of guilt separating me from the prone figure.

Perhaps it was the shock of what I had seen. Walking along the canal the last thing I expected to come across was someone lying across the towpath, apparently bleeding to death. Maybe it was the sight of flies buzzing around him. Or perhaps subconsciously I had already realized the danger. He exuded strangeness like the warmth of a dying breath. I must have picked up on that long before my morals kicked in.

Even then I did not return straight away. I looked around for help, but there was none to be had. The countryside was quiet, its solitude broken only by the bleating of new-born lambs and the mournful cries of a single buzzard circling high overhead. I wondered where its mate had gone, and whether it regarded this man as a possible source of carrion.

Standing at the top of the steps leading to the towpath, I was suddenly certain that the man would be gone. When I skirted the wild undergrowth and reached the level of the canal once more there would be nothing there; no body, no blood, no promise of pain. I would be left with the fact of my hallucination, but I would rather live with that than be marked by this stranger’s blood and problems. And then there was that guilt again, flicking at my memories with its stale breath. I would much rather be without the guilt.

If he
had
been an hallucination, should I still feel remorseful for turning away? The thought troubled me, as if someone else were thinking it.

I went back down to the towpath. The man was very old. His forehead was badly gashed and bruised, and I saw the splash of blood on the rock he must have hit when he fell. But it was the weirdness of this fallen man that shuffled my thoughts, and fear was yet another consequence of my shock.

He was foreign, perhaps Eastern European, and his clothing set him aside. I had never seen clothing like that beyond a movie screen. His trousers were of sackcloth, rough and snagged, held up by a belt of rough animal skin. His shirt was colourful and bright, even though it was obviously aged and weathered. Cuts here, rips there, all of them added to the garment’s mystique. I could see no bottle, but I was already certain that he was not a drunk. Nearby on the towpath a long, heavy coat lay like a slaughtered shadow, arms askew, the material so strange that I could not place it. Not cotton, not wool, it reminded me most of rough elbow skin.

The man coughed. His eyes sprang open and fixed right on me, as if he already knew I was there. He smiled.

I stepped back. There was so much blood on his face, and his smile looked fearsome. Something scurried in the bushes beside the towpath and I turned, ready to face whatever came out. Perhaps it was a wild animal drawn by the smell of blood; a rat, a fox. But it was only a bird startled by my movement.

The man was still smiling at me. Ridiculously I smiled back, having no idea what else to do. He was bleeding copiously from the head. It can’t have been more than a few minutes since he had fallen.

“Here,” he said, “take this.” He sat up awkwardly, swaying. He looked so
old. I
thought of broken ribs or crushed hips, but there was little I could do about that right now. He held up a long object wrapped in an oily cloth, and beckoned me over with a tilt of his head.

I obeyed. It was that or turn and run, and I could not allow that a second time.

“Lie still,” I said, “don’t move, I’ll go and get help.”

“Hmph!” He tried to laugh, but it descended into more coughing. He looked up at the trees and down at the canal. “I’ll be fine. My time’s not just yet.” His voice was heavily accented and distorted by pain, but still I understood every word.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I fell. I’m tired. I’ve been looking for weeks.”

“I don’t understand. Looking for what?”

“For you, Alex Norfan. Take it. You’ll understand.”

“I . . . I don’t think I can.”

“You must!” His vehemence brought on more coughing, and blood dropped from his nose on to the ground between his knees. “This is no simple trinket,” he whispered, trying to remain calm.

“It’s not mine,” I said, unable to ask what I was really thinking:
Why was he looking for me?

“It is, it is.” Still he proffered the object.

“What is it?”

“The future,” he said. “It’s been mine for so long, and now you’re the last of the line, so it’s yours. It’s from the old castle in the Carpathians ... haunted, haunted by miracles from the past . . .” He closed his eyes. He looked so pale, so ready to die, and suddenly so familiar. The shape of his brow, the curve of his cheek, the hook nose. I put my hand to my own face, and wondered.

“But —”

“Alex Norfan? Orfanik?” the man said, and he must have seen the reaction that name inspired in me. “There are more things than you know,” he continued. “You’re a man open to mystery, yes? To exploration? And I came here for you, because this is yours by birthright.”

I shook my head to dislodge the strangeness, but it only tangled it more. “I need to get you to a hospital.”

“I’ve never been to one all my life, and I will not start now. It can do me no good. Now take this, curse you!”

I held out my hand and touched the thing he was offering. It was cold, even through the rag.

“I don’t want it —”

“Don’t you want to know . . . about when . . . you will die . . . ?”

“What?”

The man seemed to sink back into himself, as if shrivelling by the second. The flow of blood lessened and he lay back down as if to sleep.

“The future . . .” the man whispered, and I had to lean in close. “I saw the future in a beam of light. That tree! That bird! That smell and sound! Now . .”

He died. One second he was there, the next he was nothing but a ruined heap of flesh, blood, bone. I stepped away. The canal fell silent but for the calling of the buzzard high in the sky. It had drifted away above the fields, as if the man’s death had ended the bird’s interest.

The corpse’s arm was still raised. The weight of his offering should have dragged it to the ground. There was so much wrong here that I expected him to rise up at any moment, confound me some more. But he remained motionless, the arm raised, forbidding me to leave without at least looking at the object he held.

I snatched it away, and his arm sank slowly to the ground.

I should report this,
I thought,
I should tell someone.
But there was more to this than normality could bear; the canal and the woods surrounding it were painted with a bizarre hue, as if the man’s final exhalation had landed everywhere.

I had always known the presence of mystery. And now I would find it for sure.

Inside the oily rag lay a torch.

I fled the scene of death and ran into the woods, clutching the torch to my chest with one hand. I had yet to switch it on.

Birds called out, ruffled by my crashing through the woods. I made no attempt to keep quiet.

I’ve been looking for weeks . . . for you,
the dead man had said. I must have misheard him. I had only decided to walk here this morning, and even then I had almost changed my mind.

I dodged between trees, keeping to rough paths which dog-walkers had trodden into the woods over the years. I met no one. If I had, perhaps I would have said something about the body on the canal path. Or perhaps not. There was something so otherworldly about what had happened that I had already set it aside from earthly concerns.

I tripped and fell, gasping as the wind was knocked from me. Kneeling up, assessing my bruises and scrapes, I realized that I had dropped the torch. It had rolled, shedding the oily rag like a snake’s skin, and fetched up beneath a bank of brambles. The thick carpet of pine needles pricked at my hands and knees as I forced my way beneath the bushes. I winced as thorns pricked my shoulders and scalp. The torch lay tantalisingly close, yet however hard I stretched I could not quite reach it. I had a choice: leave it for a while and try to find something with which to haul it out; or force my way into the thorny bush, and accept the pain that would entail.

I thought of the dead man, his bleeding head, his comments that I was open to mystery.

I pushed into the bush.

The torch was cool in my hands, heavy, a weight in the world that should surely not exist. As I sat beneath the tree in my back garden, turning the item back and forth in my hands, I realized that the dead old man was right. There were more things . . .
always
more things, more than anyone could ever know.

Either the torch was a brilliant forgery, or it had been made hundreds of years ago. Its shell was beautifully wrought in iron, patterned with swirls of flowers and strange sigils which could have been letters, or pictures representing letters.

Running my fingers over these designs I could almost feel time inlaid in them, cast into their patterns like air bubbles trapped in metal. They spoke of ages passed, and though there were no revelations here, the weight of the torch’s age was obvious.