by Mike Ashley
“We appear as old men. Although we are nothing of the sort we think of ourselves as Jules Verne and Captain Nemo because the conceit has improved us and connects us by heart and mind to both the past and the future, history and dream. But here,” Verne continued, taking Riba’s arm and sweeping him onwards to the waiting circle. “Here are our other friends also glad to make your acquaintance. Allow me to introduce to you the illustrious Sinbad, Hand of the Wind-Drifter Velella of the same name – he was always named after the hero of the seas.”
Riba shook hands with a young man dressed in flamboyant pirate colours, his hair beaded and a rapier-thin moustache on his top lip matched by a dagger of beard on his chin. He had no idea what manner of creature a Wind-Drifter might be but as the young man’s green eyes sparkled he grinned and whispered to Riba, “I am the sailor and the boat, the crew and captain all in one. Look me up when you get home.”
He sat down then and with a splash the lady of the group stood up from her rest, legs immersed to the knee in a porcelain tub of salt water. She was taller and more willowy than Riba, and looked like someone who has really gone to town on fancy dress for a party themed around fish.
“This lady is WaveRider Mermaid Silene, and she is here herself.” Verne said.
Silene inclined her head regally, “Look, no hands!” she joked and then gave Riba her long, cool hand to clasp. Against his palm he felt the slight roughness of scales. The soft feather lines of gills on her neck lay demurely closed, like lines of paint. Only her hair gave it away – it was not human hair at all but fleshy and fibrous and deep crimson, like a kind of kelp. Then she sat and Riba moved along.
“Here is Ahab, Hand of MekTek Orca Moebius, fish-marshal.”
Riba was sure that there was another joke in this, but he would have to look that up too. Ahab was a rough-looking individual whose clothing wouldn’t have passed muster anywhere Riba knew. He looked as though he spent his life beachcombing and living on what he could find. He clapped Riba on the shoulder and gave him a stiff nod, without getting up.
“And last but by no means least the pioneering scientific documentary-maker and populist, Sir David Attenborough, Hand of ArchaeoTek Legion Ketier. Ketier is like a kind of Hive, Mr Riba – in the oceans, he is everywhere.”
Riba shook hands with an ordinary looking kind of man in clothes much like his own. Then he was allowed to sit in his own seat, at Verne’s right hand, and Verne sat also, completing the circle. Riba felt strangely moved, without understanding why. His throat was taut as Verne said, “Welcome, Journalist Arnau Riba, to the Adventurers’ League and Dance Club of the Ocean. We are of the sea and pledged to defend her wealth and nurture her children. We adventure in body and spirit within her. We dance to her music.”
They all smiled at his discomfort and puzzlement as a machine servant provided him with iced tea, but Nemo handed him back his Abacand, so he didn’t mind it. He was too carried away with the itch to start collecting stories and the amazement that such a thing as the League existed, unknown to the Original and Unevolved humans.
“That’s all great, Mr Verne,” Riba said after a drink of tea, “but what about that agent who pushed me out of the Byzantium? I call that unfriendly. And why was it necessary to bring me here?”
“Do you mean this agent, Mr Riba?” Verne asked, and he gestured outside the circle to a door in the far wall of the room where a tall, blond man had just entered. Although he now wore much less clothing – only a pair of shorts – which revealed his true skin to be the silver, blue and black of a fish, his blond hair was unbound and he was clearly the same individual. He carried his shades in one hand.
“This is the Pelagic Triton Mephisto, another member of the League,” Verne told him. “Don’t be alarmed by his name if you know it. He does not aspire to seize your soul.”
Riba at least did understand this reference to Faust’s demon. “Only my arm from its socket,” he said, standing up.
Mephisto held out his own hand. His eyes were unusually large and dark and in the dry air of the house they teared rapidly so that he appeared to cry. “I regret the circumstances of our . . .”
“Yeah, whatever,” Riba said. He glanced at the man’s silver and blue shining skin – warm and human around his hands, face and feet, but as miraculously metallic and decorated as a mackerel elsewhere. The luxuriant blond mane moved of its own accord now it was unbound. It was Tek. “But what’s this all about?”
“We have been trawling the same conversations on the underground newsnets,” Captain Nemo said as Mephisto sat beside Silene on her wet bench. He put his feet in her footbath and slid the special eyeglasses on to his face where Riba saw they acted like reverse goggles, covering his eyes with salt water.
Nemo continued, “We have drawn similar conclusions to yours, Mr Riba, concerning the nature of Voyager Lonestar Isol’s return. We also have access to the Forged Uluru network, which you and the Unevolved human world do not. Your contact is known to us through the dream net of Uluru and it was she who decided that you should meet us here. I hope you will forgive her.”
“That depends on what’s going on,” Riba said, amused to think of his Chinese pipe-smoker as a girl. “Mind if I record?” He held out his Abacand.
“We wouldn’t have given it to you otherwise,” Silene said with a roll of her pretty blue eyes. “You’re here to write.”
“I don’t write for . . .”
“Please,” Verne held up his hand. “Let us be civilized. Nobody seeks to pocket you, Mr Riba. If you will permit me to explain?”
Riba shrugged and set the Abacand down between them on the polished surface of a marble-topped table, picking up his tea glass. They’d played hard and they’d played nice, he was stuck here, he might as well see what they’d got. And besides, it was so hard not to like them and their aspirations to nobility, in spite of everything.
“We know that Isol has returned with alien technology,” Verne said quietly into the silence that followed Riba’s assent. The only other sounds apart from his voice were the soft, distant wash of the ocean and the occasional snap from the fire. He had Riba’s full attention now.
“We do not understand its nature or what it promises, but it must be responsible for her faster-than-light journey home. You were hoping to discover this and reveal it to be the cause of Solargov’s silence on the matter, but of course, had you discovered this story, you would not have lived to tell it to any kind of conclusion. In sending you to us your contact has saved you from an untimely end at the hands of Machen’s agents. Isol has promised the Forged freedom from the bonds of Earth, you see, and it is too soon to reveal this to the Unevolved masses. On that the League and its allies are in agreement with General Machen. Unfortunately most of the Forged are aware of it and it is likely that the Forged Independence Movement will soon trumpet it from the rooftops, so it’s only a matter of days before it becomes common knowledge.”
“So why deny me the story?”
“We would like you to write the story,” Nemo said. “But we thought that if you were going to do so, you should have the benefit of a fuller picture, and not have to try to piece it together from little parts. There should be no misunderstandings here of the kind that led so many to war in the past. Civil war and insurrection must not take place within the system, nor on Earth itself. Not between the Forged and the Unevolved, which is what we fear will happen if this is handled badly. There are too many uneasy people on all sides with too little understanding.”
“And what kind of understanding would this be?”
“Your paper is noted for its anti-Forged sympathies,” the Triton said. “And you have written extensively yourself of how alien we seem to most Unevolved human beings; that we have created ghettos and cultures of our own which seek to exclude the Old Monkeys. You accuse us of racism, Mr Riba, although you do not use the word. It is implied by all your writings that that you see yourself distinguished from us in fundamental ways which deny our humanity. In recent editor
ials, not written by you, your media group have been advocating segregation as a solution to the tensions on Earth between Forged and Unevolved.”
“I prefer the term Original,” Riba said, although he was rankled.
“As you wish,” Mephisto shrugged – a simple gesture that provided all the Gallic inferences of contempt that Riba had ever seen made. “It was our decision to invite you to spend some time with us in the hope that you might review your Original position.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Please do not become bullish,” Verne said gently, but with great firmness, to both of them. “You are free to leave, Mr Riba,” he leant forward and picked up the Abacand, “with or without your story.”
Riba didn’t like the direction things had taken much but he could see the sense of staying. “It isn’t racism,” he said, feeling a kind of devilish urge. “Racism is history. You and I are very different. That’s all. People need their own kind around them. Why else do you even have this club?”
“Well that’s the point!” Silene said irritably. “We aren’t the same kind at all. Each one of us has as much in common with one another physically as we do with you, Mr Riba.”
“I thought you and he . . .” Riba pointed from her to the Triton.
“It is a gulf of a mere two hundred or so genes and a handful of proteins. More than separates you from a chimpanzee,” the Triton said and added with a dryness that could have turned the Atlantic to a desert, “We do not breed in the wild.”
“Mr Riba is playing with you,” Nemo said. “He is no racist, are you?”
“No,” Riba said, trying not to be sullen about it. “The differences are just an angle, that’s all. And the coin flips both ways. Until the Forged came along there was no such thing as a real sense of generic human identity in the Originals, not one that could unite them over and above their religious and cultural differences. Now that’s changed. We’ve got you. And you’ve got us, babe.”
“And the MekTeks are out in the cold,” Mephisto said, although he switched off his frosty demeanour. “But that’s for another day. Today it is essential that Isol’s radicalism and her determination to separate the Forged from the Sol government does not precipitate war, not least because most of the big guns these days are all Forged citizens and many of them are sympathetic to Independence. This prevention cannot come down to a single story of course, but much can be changed by a timely story – witness Mr Verne’s effect on the world. More immediately, Isol’s discovery of an alien presence so close to home could be exactly the generic constraint we have been needing to create a union between the Forged and the Originals.”
As Riba thought it over Nemo revealed the details,“Tupac, the great Mother/Father of us all, says that the alien material is a substance against which Sol has no defences. Though it appears benign it is extremely powerful – changing shape at the user’s will – and its true purpose cannot be fathomed. To our knowledge Isol is in voluntary quarantine at the Idlewild station out close to L4. But we suspect that the material is not confined to her possession. If the extremists in the Independence movement were to come into contact with it the effects could be devastating. Quite final in fact. They are single-minded.”
“Can you get me an interview with Isol? With Tupac?” Riba asked.
“We speak for Tupac here,” Silene said and touched the side of her head gently to indicate that she shared a digital link into the Uluru net where all the Forged communed. Riba saw that her long dark fingers were webbed although her thumbs were free. What he had taken for nicely painted nails were mother-of-pearl claws which expanded and retracted to enhance her gestures.
Riba sat and considered. Now here was a story for the ultimate conspiracy and paranoia theorist to feast on! A kidnapped journalist is given secret details of a potential weapon . . . He was already planning ways of presenting it, so that it would seem like matters were under control and so no one would panic, but at the same time he wondered how much Verne and the League were controlling him. With information and vested interests, one could never be sure.
“No doubt you suspect our agenda,” Ahab said as they watched Riba thinking. It was the first time this wiry old sea-dog had spoken and Riba was surprised by the growl of his voice. “We have nothing with which to convince you of our information’s pedigree and of our honest intent but one thing. Would you care to take a tour?”
Riba assented, got up and followed Verne, first to a room where he was provided with fresh, clean clothing and then outside on to the verandah at the back of the building. Nemo came with them, leaving the others inside. As they walked on to a long gangway that led off through the trees Riba heard calypso music begin to play behind them and wondered if they really meant the part about dancing.
The gangway took them down gradually to ground level in the dark of the forest but the way was lit by electric lights here, set like torches at the sides of the path. Soon they reached a door in a low stone archway which opened as they approached. Riba slapped a mosquito as they began to descend a staircase down and down into a well of rippling, water-cast light. After twenty metres the narrow stone came to a flat floor and they walked out under the sea beneath a protective shield of polycarbonate. They were under the lagoon, Riba guessed, as small fish darted in and out of the range of the light whose reach gave the illusion that they were captured within a greater cavern of water, forested with weed.
“This lagoon, along with my other specialised habitats, collects and protects the most endangered marine life,” Verne said as they passed along the way. Frequently he stopped to point out an individual fish, animal or plant and relate its physiology to Riba, its habitat, its behaviours. It seemed there was nothing about them he didn’t know.
As they left the lagoon proper and changed direction Riba saw a silvery flash in the corner of his eye and looked up and to his right. There he saw the Triton and the Mermaid wave lazily to him – that single flourish of their arms the only remotely true human gesture, for in their natural element they were transformed. Their legs, though still disjoined, fit together as smoothly and with as much fluid grace as a true tail. From their calves and backs elegant spines lifted and fanned fins. Between them swam the largest shark that Riba had ever seen.
The huge fish glided along with a relaxed, half-asleep momentum and passed barely inches over Riba’s head.
“This is one of only fifteen Great Whites left on Earth,” Nemo said as they watched the three pass into the dark again, the trailing fins of the Triton last to vanish as he shepherded the huge creature back into the deeper waters. Softly, softly, sweet calypso tunes filtered through the water as Riba listened to the sound of his heart and put his hand to the clear dome, to try and feel what might be out there, still unknown and almost lost.
They did not only show him sharks in the lagoon, but crocodiles at home in the small mangroves, saltwater ones with beady eyes and skins like pebbly beaches. They showed him a reef off the coast, of rainbow corals and the floating arms of sea urchins, the prickly spines of starfish and the darting fizzes of colour that were the billion fish, all facing into the gentle currents of the Island’s smooth passage through the deep ocean. Silene swam to the viewing ports with a fish or a sea cucumber in her hands now and again, and Mephisto persuaded deeper-water beasts to show themselves in the light for a time; hammerhead sharks and the diamond shapes of rays with their aerial-like tails; huge conger eels with savage grins; bass and groupers. He brought in a shoal of mackerel and became almost invisible among them as they turned and darted in a single cloud.
“Even the fish that were most common are now much reduced, although the conservation measures mean that mackerel and tuna and the great so-called product fish, anchovies and sardines, are much more successful these days,” Verne told him. “They’re welcome passengers when the seas are rough, but we don’t trouble them much unless our sharks are hungry.”
“The true deep ocean is something I cannot show you personally,” Nemo the Nau
tilus said as they walked out of the reef area and back towards the surface. “But my work there is bent on discovering the life and history of the oceans and the geology of the Earth beneath.”
“Each of you are one of a kind,” Riba said. “Why aren’t there more?”
“An Island and a Nautilus are not easily made,” Verne said. “The cost of Forging is always high. But we are worth the taxes, I hope you find. Together we form the marine conservation and research unit of the Earth. From the deepest to the most shallow, wherever the water is salt and creatures live off the sea we are there. And it is our intention that the oceans here, the only saltwater oceans in this system, possibly in existence, survive this encounter of Isol’s. For that we cannot have a war. In war our energies would have to dissipate and we must choose a side – the Forged or Earth. We are bound to the Earth, how could we fight against it? Maybe some would, and so you see it would never be a simple matter of the Earth Forged leaving for new worlds, as Isol wants to promise and your media wishes to say. We will never leave the ocean. And we are not your enemy.”
They had come outside again on the surface and took Verne’s smart car. It drove them to the far side of the Island and Riba saw the colonies of seabirds that girt the Island’s windward side, vast cliffs of them clustered against the protecting shield of the mountainside.
Riba could stand on this island, and speak to it. This, above all, he could not get over. The Island was a habitat and a researcher, a scientist and a human being, a creature of the ocean who was land and sanctuary, a dreamer – so many things at once. He looked at Verne and then at Nemo as they returned to the car, the Island and the Monster of the Deep, walking together. He looked up through clear skies to the stars and the quick sweep of gleaming satellites. Out here there was no light except the small ones marking the car and the galaxy was visible, milky and rich across the roof of his world. How small was this ocean, and how large, he thought, with only the Forged themselves to shepherd us out there into the vastness of the true sea.