Young Captain Nemo: The Door into the Deep

by Jason Henderson

  Gabriel nodded.

  Peter took off his glasses and furiously polished them with his shirt. “Have you suffered some kind of brain damage from the breath-holding trick on Friday? Gabriel, it’s October and we’re in school.”

  “Well, we are now,” Gabriel mumbled.

  “Thousands of miles from home.” Misty shook her head and pushed back from the table a little. “I mean, you can do anything, but we have parents.”

  “These things will die. And I need…”

  Peter leaned in. “Hmm? What?”

  Gabriel shrugged. His sister was completely wrong. He knew his ship, and he knew what it—what he—needed. “I need a crew.”

  “You’re crazy. Forget it.” Peter shook his head. Then he looked at Misty and laughed. “Nah, I’m just kiddin’. Of course I’m in.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Misty laughed. “I was winking at Peter, like, two minutes ago. Nah. We’ll do it.”

  Gabriel felt his face flush with relief.

  “See, there’s the blush. I love the blush.” Peter pointed.

  Misty snickered and then peered at Gabriel. “But how?”

  Peter snorted. “I mean, we lie.”

  Misty rolled her eyes. “Get over yourself. You think you’re such a great liar. What are we going to do, each say we’re staying at someone else’s house, and oh, by the way, we can’t be reached? That’ll work for twelve hours. Tops.”

  Gabriel got up, pacing. “A week gone. On a sea vessel. With limited ability to call home. That’s not completely true—we could email.”

  “It’s still a lot of time on a ship away from our parents,” Misty pointed out. “I can’t see how you just make something up. Even us.”

  Gabriel thought, looking across the library at the posters lining the glass wall. All kinds of club notices, bulletins. “What if it’s not made-up?”

  “What?” Peter asked.

  Gabriel looked around at the library. “What if we … This is educational, right? We’re in a STEM school, a science school. Peter, that volcano thing you did, how long was that?”

  Peter thought for a second. “Six days. In Hawaii. But there were…”

  “Who organized it?”

  “I don’t know, some foundation thing?”

  “Right.” Gabriel slapped the table again. “We don’t lie. We make it real.”

  7

  GABRIEL DIDN’T MAKE it to geometry, his first-period class. He sent a text and paced the upstairs bathroom for fifteen minutes with his backpack over his shoulder, dodging teachers and hiding in a bathroom stall when a pair of students came in. Then he snuck out. He took the back stairs, headed across the gymnasium, and exited through a door by a steep driveway blocked by concrete roadblocks that could be removed whenever the school decided to open that entrance up to delivery trucks.

  He patted his bike where it rested on the bike rack next to the door, but left it there and headed up the sidewalk on foot. Less than thirty seconds later, a black Lincoln rolled by. The rear passenger door swung open, and he got in.

  The car accelerated as Gabriel shut the door and looked across the seat at a tall, thin man with scant hair over his ears and around the back of his head.

  “Gabriel.” The man smiled, but Gabriel could tell he wasn’t sure why he was here.

  “Hi, Mr. Zinoman.”

  Mr. Zinoman was the Nemos’ lawyer. That was something else Gabriel had never needed to use before he’d surfaced. A man you could tell your secrets to. A man who took care of things for you. He had been chosen by Gabriel’s parents, and Gabriel had learned to trust him. But he wasn’t a parent, and part of Gabriel was kind of hurt that his own parents thought go live on land by yourself and here’s a guy who can sign stuff for you was a winning plan.

  “So … I’m here,” Zinoman moaned. He always seemed pained to talk to Gabriel, but Gabriel had learned it was just his way. He sounded busy. Gabriel wondered if Zinoman ever sounded anything but busy. “You asked me to be here, so I’m here.”

  Gabriel let his enthusiasm for the new mission take over. “I have some stuff I need to do. I took notes.” Gabriel pulled his tablet out of his backpack and opened up a document into which he’d whispered the basics while he was waiting in the bathroom.

  Zinoman looked at the tablet. “You’re being squirrelly. Are you committing a crime?”

  “What?”

  “I just want to warn you that I can’t be part of a crime.”

  “Come on,” Gabriel scoffed. He cleared his throat as he looked over the list. “Here.”

  Zinoman took the tablet and read aloud, “‘Oceanography and Stewardship Conference—Middle Grade Track.’ I don’t understand. You wouldn’t get anything out of that; you’re an oceanography expert. Is this something you want to support?”

  “Oh, no, it’s something I want to attend.”

  Zinoman shrugged and looked up. “Okay. Uh, sure. But wouldn’t something like that be a little elementary for you?”

  “Actually it’s a little more complicated than just attending.”

  Zinoman grimaced. “I feel a headache coming on. Complicated how?”

  “We need to create it.”

  “Create what?”

  “The conference.” Gabriel pointed at the tablet. “Keep reading.”

  “But—”

  “Just read for a second.”

  Zinoman read the tablet again. “Tomorrow? That’s—”

  “Keep reading.”

  “‘Peter Kosydar and Misty Jensen.’ Who are they?”

  Gabriel said, “They’re two middle school students who I need to attend with me.”

  “‘Sponsored by the Oceanographic Knowledge Consortium.’ What’s that?”

  “That’s a thing that somehow you’ve got to make happen in, like, twenty hours.” Gabriel gestured at the tablet. “Take a look at the rest.”

  Zinoman read down for another minute and then looked up. “So let me see if I can summarize. You want to take yourself and your friends out of school for a week, and you want me to set it up so that you can say you’re all going on a special field trip. On scholarship, I guess. All of it funded by your family.”

  “Yes.”

  Zinoman set down the tablet. “Gabriel … why?”

  “Because.” Gabriel understood. That reason wasn’t in the notes. “My sister asked me.”

  “And if I send a message to Nemolab, what will your parents say?”

  “You should do that.” Gabriel nodded. “I haven’t yet because I know them, and I know they wouldn’t want me to come to them until I’d tried to work my way through it. But this isn’t a secret from Mom and Dad. You should call them.”

  “I will.”

  “Okay.” Gabriel meant it. “But we need to be out tomorrow. You’ll need to have this figured out and call Harrison STEM by the end of school today. That’s four o’clock. Peter and Misty and me need to get out and go straight to my house tomorrow, as soon as we can. So can you do it? Is it, like, impossible?”

  “No, I can do it,” the lawyer moaned. “This is … a challenge, but it’s not impossible. I have a feeling you’ll get to impossible eventually.”

  “Good.” Gabriel looked out the window at the busy street. “Can you drop me off a block from where you picked me up? I need to sneak back in.”

  Zinoman relayed the request to the driver, and soon they were pulling up down the block from Harrison.

  “Whatever you need. Call my parents.” Gabriel got out and spoke as he held the door open. “If they object, then none of this happens. But if they trust me—and I think they will…” Because it’s for Nerissa, he added silently. “I’ll wait for your call.”

  Ocean Highway hummed with midmorning traffic as Gabriel walked along the sidewalk. How big was the biggest Lodger? How many of them were there? The photos his sister had shown him were tantalizing, but he ached to get underway.

  “Gabriel!”

  He looked up and saw Peter
coming out the side door, glancing around before running out to walk back with him.

  “What are you doing?” Peter asked.

  “Seeing if we can make it official. I missed geometry.”

  “Not for the first time. Anyway, I wanted to catch you before you went back in.” Peter pulled out his cell phone and swiped the screen on. “The Lodgers are in the news.”

  8

  IT WAS TRUE. The Lodgers weren’t being covered wall-to-wall on cable or anything—they were too weird to distract the country from its latest obsession, which was mainly about a war of insults on social media that Gabriel didn’t bother to understand. But Peter had found references to strange creatures of metal in a handful of seafaring and navy-obsessed blogs. The theory seemed to be that people were seeing some kind of reflecting-light illusion. The US Navy had issued a predictable response to the science blog of one of the major papers: No comment.

  All of that was good as far as Gabriel was concerned. The last thing he wanted was for the Lodgers to become big news, waking up the public and causing them to demand fast action from the government. People who lived on land didn’t think about the sea very much in the day-to-day, and for once he was glad of it.

  Gabriel walked his bike home, exchanging texts with Misty and Peter, telling them to wait and be ready. He felt the time gnawing at him as he waited for Zinoman to do his magic.

  And then the moment of truth arrived.

  They met in the library again the next day, and Gabriel did his best to hide his own worries about the plan. Misty and Peter arrived at the same time, both carrying duffel bags. That was a good sign.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to text much.” Misty dropped her duffel under the back table. She ran her fingers through her hair and secured it all with a navy-blue scrunchie. “My parents wanted a lot of answers, and it wasn’t a good time.”

  Peter put his own duffel on the table and leaned back, balancing on the back legs of his chair as he polished his glasses. “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “What kind of questions did they ask?” Gabriel gestured for her to go on. In fact Misty had texted him once, Looks okay going to bed, at about 9:30 P.M.

  “Well, like, who was the sponsor, and I showed them the permission slip emailed to me from you, I mean your Mr.…?”

  Peter remembered. “Zinoman.”

  “And you didn’t get any emails from me and him—just him,” Gabriel reminded her. “I didn’t send anything at all.”

  “Well, you were right. That guy’s amazing. He even answered some emails they sent him.”

  Gabriel tapped the table. “Did they … seem suspicious?”

  She shrugged. “After some basic answers from Mr. Zinoman, they were fine.”

  “Did he say he was going on the trip?”

  She laughed. “He did not. I can’t tell you how he maneuvered around that, but he was pretty slick. Wait, let’s see.” She pulled out her phone, opened an email, and read, “‘They will be accompanied by and receive lectures from a selection of expert lecturers in marine biology and marine issues.’”

  “Okay, that’s the part I love.” Peter looked at Gabriel. “A selection. I assume that selection of esteemed lecturers is you.”

  Gabriel laughed out loud. “You never know who else we might meet along the way.”

  “You really are a piece of work. But if it gets me out of school, it’s solid in my book.”

  “Your mom didn’t have a problem?” Gabriel asked.

  “Nope.” He shook his head in satisfaction. “I mean, I go on stuff all the time.”

  “That’s the beauty of it,” Misty agreed.

  Gabriel looked at the time on his wristband. Five minutes to first period. He could have just stayed out and waited aboard the Obscure, but he’d wanted to make sure Misty and Peter could get away. And now the golden hour had come. “Okay. When the bell rings, we go to class. If everything went right with the school, then we’ll be called out almost immediately.”

  “In other words, he had to do the same song and dance with the office that he did with our parents,” Misty said.

  Gabriel nodded.

  Peter grew serious. “I gotta admit, that sounds tough.”

  “He has tricks.” Gabriel had no idea what those tricks were, but there was a reason his parents trusted Zinoman to make things go smoothly.

  Misty squinted. “Yeah, in your head you just said I hope, right?”

  “Don’t think about it. Peter, as soon as we’re aboard…”

  “Coordinates entered and we hightail it for the last known sighting spot.” Peter nodded.

  The bell rang and they all looked at one another. Gabriel breathed. “Okay.”

  Misty stood up. “Either we’ll see you in a few minutes, or we won’t.”

  Gabriel and Peter went to geometry and Misty went off to whatever she had—accelerated math, he thought.

  Down the hall, amid the shouting of other students, Peter and Gabriel were silent. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. Into class. They had a pair of desks in the back, and Peter dropped his duffel between them.

  As the next bell rang and Mr. Terrill, the geometry teacher, stood up from his desk at the front, Peter leaned toward Gabriel. “Did we have homework?”

  Gabriel laughed.

  Mr. Terrill cleared his throat as he looked at a black leather notebook he had on the front desk. “Mr. Kosydar?”

  Was this it?

  “Sir?” Peter asked.

  “If you look at question number one of the homework assignment…”

  Peter went pale. Then a voice came on the intercom. “Would Peter Kosydar, Gabriel Nemo, and Misty Jensen please report to the front office?”

  Mr. Terrill smirked. “Boy, are you lucky.” He gestured for them to move on, and they hustled out.

  Mr. Zinoman was waiting at the front office. And that was that.

  * * *

  Less than an hour later, the Obscure was underway.

  On the bridge, Gabriel watched the screen as it displayed the rear cameras, water flowing with reflected glints of dust and tiny sea creatures over the glowing tail of the sub. He saw the metal structure where the Obscure rested at home shrink into the dimness as a tornadolike wake churned behind them. He switched to the foreground view, the vast ocean opening up before them.

  Peter tapped away at his console. “Course is entered for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Time estimate just like I figured: thirty hours.”

  Misty whistled. “All the way to the middle of the ocean.” She let it hang there. They had never gone that far out. “So what now?”

  “I guess…” Gabriel closed the image and looked out at the sea. “Now we gotta figure out how to kill a day and a half.”

  9

  GABRIEL LAY AWAKE on his bunk in the captain’s quarters. He wasn’t trying to sleep, although he should have been—instead, for now he was watching the water flow by outside the dark porthole to his left. A thought kept dogging him, and he didn’t know how to put it away. Just how long did they really have? They were going out to investigate, to locate the creatures for themselves and learn what they could—but what if the creatures had destroyed a passenger ship by then? Would they be able to help at all? The truth was, there was no guarantee the navy would stick to its own Saturday deadline.

  His room was curved, all wood and shining brass and mother-of-pearl, his clothes swaying in an open closet with the slight rock of the ship. A glint of light off the shoulder of one of his jackets caught his eye, and he smiled. Gabriel rose and went to the closet, pulling out a blue coat with gold piping at the collar and shoulders and the Nemo N at the throat clasp. This was a replica of the coat worn by his ancestor. It was too small for him now. It had been sewn by Mr. Chaudhari, the quartermaster at Nemobase, the island where the Obscure had been constructed. Gabriel had spent months living on the island, overseeing—well, consulting on at least—the construction of this sub. Mr. Chaudhari’s father had been a tailor, and when the tim
e to christen the ship had come, Mr. Chaudhari had presented Gabriel with the coat. Gabriel pulled back the collar and read the tiny script sewn inside: REMEMBER AND GROW.

  Every Nemo had a motto, and this was his. He would apply it to everything. He would remember the past and learn from it. He would make the name of Nemo one of heroism and change.

  Now that he thought about it, he had no idea what his sister’s motto was.

  A tablet on a small writing desk chirped, and sound waves beeped across the screen. “Captain?” Peter’s voice. Peter was on watch until early morning, when Gabriel would take over for him. And next Misty, but since it was Gabriel’s turn to sleep, she was free to either sleep or entertain herself somehow or another.

  Gabriel tapped the screen. “What’s up?”

  “Just wondering if you were awake.”

  “Well, I am now, either way.”

  “Good. You want to see some whales?”

  * * *

  On the bridge, Misty had already arrived, and she and Peter were standing at the front screen. The moment Gabriel entered he froze, momentarily caught up in sheer awe.

  A shape nearly the size of the Obscure came into view from above, its tapered nose flowing past the front camera and on, and on, and on. To the right and left, a tail appeared, slowly whipping the water. The whole of the ship bobbed slightly.

  “Oscillators?” Gabriel felt the floorboards vibrate a little faster.

  “Working overtime to keep us steady.”

  “Good. We don’t want to upset them.”

  They were in the middle of a pod of gray whales. The ship was doing forty knots, almost forty-six miles an hour, and great blue-gray forms swam over, under, and around them.

  “Look at that.” Misty steepled her fingers in front of her mouth as the smooth tail of the one traveling over them came into view and whipped around. “It’s as big as we are.”

  “Almost.” Gabriel couldn’t help smiling. He looked at a sonar reading in the corner of the main screen and saw a mass of them over the green dot that represented the Obscure.