Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (18 page)

He waited.

After a while there came a knock at the door. ‘Alain?’ It was Ghatwala

‘Dilraj!’ cried Lebret, scrambling over to the door. ‘What is going on? Are we all about to die?’

‘Not today, my friend. Tomorrow – who knows?’

‘Did they empty the starboard tank?’ Lebret asked, in Punjabi. ‘I felt a great shock, and then the vessel settled into a more balanced yaw – though we’re obviously still pitched pretty steeply.’

Ghatwala replied in the same tongue. ‘The fish people tore the vent open – I saw it from the observation room. It was a horrible sight! The air hurt them, yet they clustered around it. Surely they are dumb animals?’

‘Perhaps, my friend, but have you never seen human beings acting in a mob-frenzy? Have you never seen a religious rite that tipped people over the edge? Did you not see footage of the rock-and-roll music concerts they have in America?’

‘At any rate,’ said Ghatwala. ‘We have left the underwater sun behind us. You can no longer see it from the observation portal – but if you climb into the con and look through the periscope it makes a fine sight.’

‘How does it work, do you think?’

‘The periscope?’

‘The sub oceanic sun, idiot!’ Lebret lapsed back into French.
‘Does it burn with radioactive fusion, as does the sun around which earth orbits? It cannot. It cannot – the surface of our sun is four thousand degrees centigrade! – such a temperature would surely have vaporised trillions of cubic kilometres of water in every direction.’

‘It would depend upon the length of time this sub oceanic sun has been shining,’ agreed Ghatwala. ‘But I doubt its surface temperature, though hot, was equivalent to our sun’s – it is much smaller, for one thing – no bigger than an asteroid. I tend to think it was a sphere shining at a few hundred degrees, creating a skin of superheated steam about it that in turn generated layers of boiling water, and hot water.’

‘But eventually it
will
heat up the whole ocean.’

‘If the ocean is genuinely infinite, as you suspect, that would take an infinite amount of time. But, yes; the fact that we have passed from cold to hot water in only a few days of descent – the fact that the water only a few thousands of kilometres away from this sub oceanic sun remains at 4°C – suggests that it is young. I need more concrete data to be able to estimate
how
young.’

‘Young enough to have been set here by – you know who?’

‘How could
he
do such a thing! Even he?’

‘I do not know, my friend. Yet this sun is evidently close, relatively speaking, to our point of entry. Is that coincidence?’

‘You are forgetting, Alain,’ Ghatwala countered, speaking again in Punjabi, ‘the population of cuttlefolk. There is a limited but functioning ecological system in place – algae photosynthesise and release oxygen which the cuttlefolk breathe – and presumably there are other fish and shrimp and so on feeding on the algae for the cuttlefolk to eat.’

‘Has it evolved, this ecological system?’ Lebret asked. ‘Or was it created to go along with the sun? Set up from scratch, as it were?’

‘My point is that whilst
he
might be able to manufacture an artificial sun – though with what raw materials or tools I can’t imagine – nevertheless it beggars belief that he could established all these creatures. He is not the God of the Book of Genesis, after all!’

‘Might they have migrated from elsewhere?’

‘Perhaps, my friend. Certainly the existence of elsewhere – of other sub oceanic suns, I mean – would explain the fact of one here. Would it not? Perhaps they are very numerous, and our running into one is not such a coincidence.’

‘Good points, comrade,’ said Lebret. ‘But something far stranger is going on here, I think. I watched the air escaping from the tanks – I saw it from the observation portal. The bubbles did not rise, my friend. They did nothing but bulge out – until the cuttlefolk thrashed into them, and cut the mass of air into myriad smaller bubbles and shapes. Even then they simply roiled about.’

‘If this is truly an infinite universe of water,’ replied the scientist, ‘then you would not expect anything different. Of course the environment would be weightless. Like outer space.’

‘You are missing my point,’ chided Lebret. ‘I am standing on a surface, and so are you. Something is exerting a downward force upon us. But if we are subject to gravity, then why are the bubbles not? And how
could
we be subject to gravity, if we have come to that place we both suspected? How can we be descending? There is no down in space!’

‘I do not know,’ said Ghatwala. ‘It does not appear to make sense. You are correct, of course. The bubbles’ actions confirms the pressure readings – if we were actually descending through a body of water under the influence of gravity, then the water pressure would rise in direct proportion to our depth. And we would long since have been crushed to death.’

‘Are we in a dream?’ Lebret asked. ‘Might we actually
be
dead and in some afterlife?’

‘How could we test either supposition?’ the scientist asked, with characteristic practical-mindedness. ‘What conceivable experiment could we design to falsify such a claim?’

‘Dilraj,’ said Lebret, shortly. ‘Can you let me out of here? Can you lay your hands on a key to this door?’

‘What would be the point, Alain? Boucher is still unconscious, and Billiard-Fanon nurses a furious hatred of you in his breast.
And he still has the captain’s old gun. If he saw you walking about the
Plongeur
, he’d likely shoot you on sight.’

‘Yes,’ conceded Lebret, sadly. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

After a short pause, Ghatwala asked, ‘Alain – what happened with Avocat?’

Lebret tutted loudly. ‘Poor Avocat! Most unfortunate. He broke his arm. It swelled to horrible proportions. I was trying to release the pressure, but I unfortunately cut an artery.’

‘Billiard-Fanon says you murdered him.’

‘Why would I do such a thing?’

‘And the captain?’

Lebret was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘I was going to tell you about that, my friend. Events crowded it out.’

‘Not an accident?’

‘He was implacable! He was going to take us back up, hoping to find a way to the Atlantic again. There was no reasoning with him. He couldn’t be made to understand that we
must
descend – and since he could not be made to understand …’ he stopped, half-shocked to hear himself talk so.

‘Still, Alain!’ Ghatwala said, in a shocked voice. ‘Murder!’

‘Too much at stake, Dilraj. Too much! You, at least, understand
that
. I don’t ask you to endorse what I have done. But we’ve come so far!’

‘I fear Billiard-Fanon intends to convene a short-order court-martial,’ said Ghatwala, in a low voice. ‘Though they think Cloche’s death an accident, they hold you directly responsible for Avocat’s. Ironic!’

‘Perhaps tempers will cool.’

‘Or perhaps,’ said Ghatwala, earnestly. ‘We should tell them
what’s really going on
.’

Lebret didn’t say anything for a while; then he said. ‘Have you spoken to Jhutti?’

‘Without consulting you first? Or course not!’

‘Listen. If it comes to a trial …’ Lebret began to say. But a sudden clatter outside, and raised French voices, interrupted him.
Something banged hard against the door, and a man – was it Ghatwala? – yelled in pain.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded Lebret.

Another brief series of bangs, and more voices. ‘Pannier?’ It was Billiard-Fanon’s voice. ‘Pannier, what are you doing?’

‘I overheard them,’ Pannier’s crowed. ‘This black man and the Vichy feller – through that door – they were
whispering treason
together.’

Lebret found it intensely frustrating that he couldn’t see what was happening. ‘What have you done to Ghatwala?’ he yelled, slapping his palm on the door. ‘You beast! What have you done?’

There was the jingly sound of keys being fumbled, and the door opened with a squeak. There was Billiard-Fanon, his long nose and his small eyes and his hoggishly bristling jowls. He had the captain’s pistol in his right hand. ‘Out of there,’ he announced. ‘Now! Justice awaits.’

Lebret stumbled into the corridor, catching sight of Ghatwala. The scientist was perched like a bird in the tipped-forward open door frame of the adjoining cabin. With his left hand he was holding onto the wall, with his right he was clutching his mouth. His beard was bloody. ‘What did you do?’

Pannier’s leer was not a pleasant sight. ‘I socked him in the jaw.’

‘Into the mess, everybody,’ announced Billiard-Fanon. ‘We need to sort this whole business out, once and for all! Traitors and murderers and worst of all – unbelievers!’

15

COURT MARTIAL

The bolted down benches and tables of the mess hall gave the remaining crew of the
Plongeur
copious handholds and vantages points; although the steep forward angle gave the gathering a surreal feeling. Billiard-Fanon, at gunpoint, made Lebret, Ghatwala and Jhutti – this latter blinking and looking about himself confusedly – sit in the angle of the room’s forward wall and floor. This had the effect of positioning the rest of the crew above them, looking severely down. ‘I’ve searched everywhere for handcuffs,’ growled Billiard Fanon. ‘Can’t find any.’

‘There’s no need for handcuffs,’ said Jhutti, nervously. ‘Surely!’

The ensign scowled.

Lebret looked about him – Castor wore his jacket over his shoulders. Visible beneath, on his naked torso, were several bandage patches, covering the burns on his skin. Capot looked half asleep. Water dribbled from the clothing of most of them.

Billiard-Fanon lit a cigarette, and breathed deeply in. ‘Let’s fill everybody in,’ announced. ‘The captain is dead, and since the lieutenant is, unfortunately, still unconscious, authority devolves to …’ he pointed at himself. ‘Me. I wasn’t expecting this, and can’t say I enjoy it. But someone needs to pull this bucket together, and get us home. And that means we all have to
haul the same line
, and to do so
at the same time
. You understand what I mean?’

‘How bad is the lieutenant?’ asked Castor, rubbing the end of his snout-nose so vigorously it looked as though he wanted to pull it off altogether.

‘We rolled him in a blanket and left him in the little valley made by wall and floor,’ said Castor. ‘Anyway. Let’s sum up. Good news first. We
were
falling into something hot and bright. An underwater volcano mouth, I was initially told.’

‘It was an underwater sun!’ Lebret called out. ‘Can’t you see? Can’t you understand what that
means
?’

To Billiard-Fanon’s right a number of steel mugs dangled in a sloping line from hooks on the wall. The ensign plucked one of these and threw it, hard and straight, at Lebret. He tried to duck his head away, but his motion came a fraction too late, and the cup cracked off the side of his forehead with a distinct
ping
noise. It clattered against the wall, and bounced once again off the floor before coming to rest. Lebret put a finger up to his head; it came away bloody.

‘Or
,’ Billiard-Fanon said, shifting the captain’s pistol from his left jacket pocket to his right, for no other reason than to show it off. ‘Or an underwater sun. Like it matters! At any rate, we have avoided collision with it.’

‘We did not move. It moved out of
our
way,’ said Jhutti. ‘It may have been … alive. I think the light was … a
thinking creature
.’

Billiard-Fanon reached for another tin mug, from the line of hooks, but Jhutti held up both hands. ‘I am merely speculating, sir! There’s no need to stone
me
to death, Ensign Billiard-Fanon.’

‘Whatever
it
was,’ said Billiard-Fanon, twirling the mug around his forefinger, ‘it is behind us now. Or above us. But here’s the thing: swimming about the light was a crowd of sea monsters – the cuttlefolk, somebody called them, can’t remember whom. They attacked us. Seems they craved our oxygen.
You
were saying, I believe Monsieur Je-ti, that you thought it was a mating ritual.’