20 Million Leagues Over the Sea

by K. T. Hunter

  "What the bloody hell is going on?" Caroline shouted.

  "I don't know, ladies," said Nigel behind her, "but if you are determined to go, I won't let you move through that mess alone. Caroline, take her other side."

  The Booleans formed a protective guard around her, and they moved through the crowd, which was so hysterical by now that the trio might as well have been invisible. Alfieri stood on a bed at one end, shouting for order and calm; but he, too, was unseen. As they reached the corridor, Nigel tugged them to the left.

  "We daren't use the lifts now," he said as they rolled down the hallway. "Even if they were working, we might get trapped on our way. Best take the ladders, if you can manage, Gemma."

  "Whatever it takes," she replied through clenched teeth.

  Without her blankets, Gemma felt the cold keenly in the long corridor. Here and there the gravity plates were taking a tea break, as they bounced every few steps until they made it to the ladder shaft.

  Nigel helped her lean into the shaft and wrap her shaking hands around the first rung. She might as well have been palming ice. She leaned back, almost into him, and pulled the loose sleeves of the linen shirt down over her palms. She leaned in again, and he came with her, taking the rung above hers.

  "Pardon my being forward, but I'd rather you not fall. You might slip your grip, in this condition."

  She nodded, and they placed their feet on the ladder together, his one rung below hers. They began their climb down, like a turtle with a Boolean shell. Caroline followed them a moment later.

  Gemma was grateful for the awkward arrangement when she missed a step a few yards down. Nigel braced and caught her, giving her a moment to breathe and set her feet aright. Her heart hammered against her screaming ribs as she prayed to Alfieri's God that they weren't too late.

  Their progress was slow. The lights flickered like strobes of continuous lightning as they descended. More than once, they went out completely. They were sinking into a cave deep into the ship, and during those frightful moments it was darker than space itself in that cramped vertical corridor. At least outside the ship they would have had the stars to navigate by. In here, they had to see with their feet. The moments drug by, heartbeat by heartbeat and step by step on that long ladder. Despite the blossoming chill, drops of sweat poured off her brow with every movement she forced her throbbing muscles to take. Just a few hours ago the ship had seemed too small; how could it have grown so large again?

  She could not hear any voices in her mind now, and that inner silence was worse than any scream. That silence shoved her down through the agony of the climb. All three of them were breathing hard out of a mixture of effort and fear, and she could feel the knocking of Nigel's heart against her back. The air in the tube was stale and tasted of oil and metal.

  She stumbled once, twice, and each time Nigel caught her, preventing a wild plunge down into the unseen depths below them. She had not guessed that he was so strong, but he held on for both of them. The normal roar of the engines had died out hours ago, but as they neared the Oberth deck, they could hear another sort of roar: that of a howling mob.

  Breathless, they dismounted the ladder and nearly collapsed onto the deck. Gemma drove herself towards the yawning cavern of the engine room with the panting Booleans close behind.

  Maggie was not on the floor, and Pugh was nowhere in sight. Gemma's eyes followed the target of the mob's rage up, up, up the pipes that climbed the far side of the chamber. High in the shadows near the ceiling, tentacles fluttered in and out of the light. Shrill whirrs and shrieks pierced the air and ricocheted off the walls, and mist poured out of Maggie's beak as it clicked in the chilly air.

  Gemma knew what the crewmen saw: a hideous alien, a snarling Martian, an intruder. They saw the tentacled beast that stalked the dark crannies of their minds, the one that had murdered their families and altered their world forever. She knew they heard Maggie's howls as threats and feared for their lives. She knew they craved revenge against the one Martian within reach.

  Fully extended, tentacles grasping, beak clicking, skin glistening, Maggie was truly terrifying. In fact, Gemma had forgotten in a short time how fearsome the alien's appearance could be. In her own eyes, all she could see was Maggie: her rescuer, the scientist, Christophe's mother, the loyal Terran. That was something she could not unsee. Gemma could hear her now. She heard in her heart the terrified screams of a hurt and hunted friend, one who screamed in Jennie's voice; she could not unhear them. Gemma pressed forward into the fray.

  "Stop!" she cried, fighting to be heard above the din. "Leave her alone! She's one of us!"

  "Have you gone barmy?" Caroline shrieked as she picked up a crowbar someone had dropped and shook it in Maggie's direction. "Bloody hell, we've been boarded!"

  Gemma pushed the Boolean's arm down. "How? From where? We haven't met any cylinders! Think, Caroline! Use your brain! She is with us!"

  "With us?" Nigel cut in, snatching up a massive wrench in his white-hot fist. "Did Rathbone damage your noggin?"

  "Listen to me! Listen!" Gemma screeched as she pulled them both away from the throng. She could barely hear herself above the roar of the crewmen and Maggie screaming in her mind in terror for help. The crowd grew of its own accord, like a thing alive, like an amoeba dividing itself beyond control. People poured in as word got around the ship. Where was Christophe?

  Clipboards and tools sailed through the air, but they all fell short of Maggie's perch. They took their time falling back to the deck, almost fluttering like metallic feathers in the diminished gravity. Some shouted for a Leyden pistol, others for a pitchfork from the stable deck. Gemma shuddered; she had lived in danger and violence all her life, but it had all been singular, one on one, nothing at all like this howling whirlwind of madness and hate.

  She returned her gaze to Maggie, and for the first time she saw a limp Dr. Pugh cradled in her tentacles. He was safe from the trampling of this wild herd, but Gemma still feared the flying missiles. One would eventually find its mark.

  "I am afraid," she heard Maggie's voice say in her head. "Why do they fear me? I mean them no harm. Where is my bud? I don't want to hurt them! Where is Christophe?"

  Gemma's ribs berated her as she projected her voice again into the furor. "Listen! Stop! Don't!"

  But she might as well have screamed at the stars, for all she was heard. Slapping makeshift weapons from angry hands, Gemma hurled herself into the fray. She shoved and elbowed her way through a sea of navy blue coats and howling faces to the wall that Maggie clung to, with Caroline and Nigel in her wake. One sailor began to scale the web of pipes towards Maggie. Gemma scrambled to reach his ankles and bellowed for him to come down.

  "Stop!"

  A thunderclap of a voice boomed over the speakers. The uproar paused, as if a needle had been scraped away from a gramophone record of the sounds of war. The single word echoed off the walls of the vast Oberth chamber.

  "This is your Captain. Put your weapons down and come to attention," the voice commanded. Hands released hammers and wrenches, which took their time falling to the floor, as if they were sinking in molasses. The crew faced the speaking tube by the engine control panel, where a glowering Captain fixed them with his eyes.

  "Better," he said.

  He marched toward the mass, but as he neared them he bounced. Gemma found her own stance on the deck was rather tenuous, and the darkness grew around them, shade by shade.

  In the sudden silence, one sound hovered over them: the echo of a wrench turning a bolt to the tune of Pritchard's swearing in the distance.

  "Y'all pipe down, now," Mr. Pritchard muttered. "Man's tryin' to work over here."

  Christophe gazed up into the darkness and said, "You can come down now, Maggie."

  Cries of "Maggie?" and "It has a name?" rang through the chamber until Christophe called the crew back to attention. Some of them struggled to stand still as Maggie made her way down the network of pipes. Gemma watched her as she deftly navigated the s
teel web whilst keeping the unconscious Dr. Pugh steady and safe in a nest of rubbery limbs. Gemma felt someone's gaze upon her, but Caroline and Nigel were staring straight ahead. It was the captain who was studying her. She nodded at him, sharing what she knew was his relief that Maggie was unhurt -- and that Gemma herself was not more injured than she already was.

  Maggie crossed the cold deck using two free tentacles as makeshift legs, holding both her body and Dr. Pugh up as she moved. She stopped next to Christophe in full view of the barely restrained mob.

  Gemma could almost hear their thoughts: had the Captain repeated the failure of the maiden lunar voyage? Had they been boarded? Or worse, had they been betrayed by the captain? A tear of frustration escaped down Caroline's cheek; seeing her beloved Captain Moreau defending one of those creatures was almost too much for the Boolean to bear. But, to her credit, she held her ground and neither buckled nor ran.

  Christophe cleared his throat. "As you can see, we are in no danger. We have not been boarded. You have not met the Enemy. You have, rather, just met the ship's ghost."

  A murmur rolled through the assembly.

  "Silence!" Christophe bellowed. "Maggie is as much a member of this crew as Dr. Pugh or Miss Llewellyn. She even designed parts of the ship! I promise you all, I will give you more details when the present crisis is -- I said, stand at attention!"

  But the command was impossible to obey, as their feet had just left the deck entirely. They all floated -- even Maggie -- like newly-deceased spirits as the gravity plates finally gave out. The lights dimmed a little more, and it was fully night on the Oberth deck. The few active flywheels, one by one, wound down like exhausted watches.

  The crew's terror was tangible, a living thing on its own. Many of them cried out in shock, knowing they could not simply open a hatch to let in the light and warmth of the sun. Gemma reached out for Nigel and Caroline, gripping her friends' hands as if she would never let go.

  "Hold on to something," she called out.

  Maggie stirred again, moving gracefully with her great bulk, almost swimming in the frigid air. Christophe held on to the end of one waggling limb. Without a word spoken between them, Maggie passed Dr. Pugh to his free hand. She reached for another floating crewman, who squealed at her nearness and beat at the air between them.

  Christophe barked at the man. "Yeoman, take her tentacle!"

  A frisson rippled down Gemma's spine at the steel in his voice.

  This is it, she thought.

  This was when Captain Moreau would be made or broken. It did not matter if they made it to Mars; it only mattered that his crew finally, fully, trusted him in this awful moment. It only mattered that they had the blind faith Nemo's crew had had in their commander. It was the only kind of faith one could have out here in the deep black. Would they trust him, or would they run wild in their terror? Would the sailor obey, or would he give in to madness?

  "Not touchin' a bloody Martian!" the man shrieked. "Never!"

  "There are no Martians on this ship!" Gemma cried, loud enough that Pritchard poked his head up over the power station door to gawk at them. "Just us Terrans! She was born on Earth, like the rest of us!"

  Christophe said, "Take Maggie's limb, Yeoman. That's a direct order."

  The man cringed. He swallowed. Hard. Twice. He reached out, hesitating and shaking, as one would when reaching through fire to flip a switch that would extinguish the flames. Finally, he took the end of the tentacle with both hands, eyes closed, waiting for the attack that Gemma knew would never come.

  "Free one hand, Yeoman," Christophe said, gently this time. "Get ready to pick up the next one."

  The man peeled open one wary eye and gazed down at his body, then up at Maggie. Seeing that he was still in possession of all his limbs, he obeyed and reached out for the next floater. They continued in that fashion for some minutes, adding sailors one hand at a time. The only sounds were Pritchard's accelerated cursing over at the power station. The great chain of people, with Gemma and her friends at the bottom, made its way to Maggie's former haven on the pipes.

  "Everyone grab one," Christophe ordered. "Hold on! When the power comes back on, we don't want anyone falling!"

  "Won't be on at this rate." Pritchard's grumble rambled across the deck.

  "What's that, Pritchard?"

  "Begging your pardon, Cap'n," he replied, "but I could really use a hand or three over here. My tools are all over, I can't see worth a damn, and I can't get any torque 'cause I can't stand up. And, dagnabbit, I'm a hair's breadth of bein' done with the fool thing!"

  "Mind if Maggie helps?"

  "Hell, I don't care if she's from Mars, Jupiter, or the Rational Dress Society. Long as she can hold me still! If Miss Gemma says she's okay, then she's okay. Send her on over!"

  With a joyous trill, Maggie made her way across the deck at a speed that astonished Gemma. Maggie had never moved with such grace and swiftness in the short time she had known her. She was like a penguin that waddled on land but soared like an eagle beneath the waves. The scientist in Gemma asked: why would such beings even need gravity plates in their ship designs?

  The question rang in her head like the peals of a bell as Maggie wrangled Pritchard's wayward tools for him. She grasped the power station with two tentacles and wrapped another around the tall man's waist. In her remaining limbs, she held his tools, including an electric torch to give him the light he so desperately needed. She handed him each tool as he called for it, like a nurse assisting a very exhausted surgeon.

  "Now that's what I'm talkin' about," Pritchard said. "Good help is so hard to find, y'know."

  "The captain's got some explaining to do," Nigel said, his voice tinged with the same steel as Christophe's. She could barely see the Boolean in the darkness. Shadows veiled his face. "And if you knew about this, so do you."

  Caroline grasped Gemma's hand and squeezed her fingers. "Oh, it's one of them top science secrets, ain't it? She's nice, ain't she, Gemma? She won't hurt Ron? You promise?"

  Gemma squeezed back with some warmth, remembering her own initial meeting with Maggie. "'Twill be all right, Caroline. I promise."

  "I think it would be best if we all came clean," said Dr. Pugh.

  Gemma watched the elderly scientist as he rested his gnarled hand against his chest. Dr. Hansard had just departed the cabin after leaving many admonishments for those that Pugh now addressed: Christophe, Maggie, and Gemma. Christophe perched on a stool next to the bed. Maggie rested on the floor beside him with one tentacle draped over the captain's shoulder and another one holding Dr. Pugh's other hand. Yet another one trailed through the air and waved in Gemma's direction. Every few minutes it would reach over and caress her knuckles.

  Gemma shed the last blanket from her shoulders. They all blinked in the bright lights that had finally popped back on; Christophe was already sweating from the rekindled heat. After the power had been restored, they had lost no time in getting the unconscious scientist to sick bay, where he was treated along with others that had suffered minor injuries with the sudden reappearance of gravity.

  While Gemma and Maggie hovered over the ailing scientist, Christophe had seen to the organization of the rest of the crew, giving orders and delegating tasks to damage control teams. Still without rest, he had reconvened with them in Pugh's cabin to check on his condition. Gemma wondered if the young man ever slept.

  "It wasn't just Brightman that got you onto this ship," Dr. Pugh said. "I had a hand in it, too. I am rather sorry for putting you in harm's way, Gemma, but in all honesty, even with all that's happened, I think you are far safer here than anywhere on Earth as long as Petunia is creeping about."

  "You got me on board? Why? How? And how did you even know I existed?" Gemma asked.

  Pugh released Maggie's tentacle and retrieved his pocket watch from the night table. He clasped it between his hands, as if warming it. He finally popped it open and placed it in Gemma's hands.

  "Because of them," he replied.

>   She looked down at the image inside the watch and found a woman and child staring back at her.

  Dr. Pugh continued, "My wife and daughter. Before the Invasion. Elizabeth died during the initial attack on Woking, but my daughter--"

  He halted, choking for a moment, never uttering the girl's name.

  Gemma picked up the dangling thread of his thoughts. "You thought Brightman had taken her."

  "Once I discovered what my mentor's former assistant was up to, yes. It took years to even discover that much, that Brightman had abducted so many survivors."

  Christophe added, "I didn't know of any connection between you two until we were under way."

  "But you knew later," Gemma said in as neutral tone as she could manage.

  "Yes," he said, "but--"

  "I asked him to say nothing," said Pugh. "I wanted to know for certain before I troubled you with the knowledge. I wanted to be the one to tell you, and I wanted to make sure that you were ready to hear it."

  "And if you turned out to be wrong, and I was just another Brightman Girl, what would you have done with me?"

  He stared down at his hands. "I don't know," he said gently. "I didn't know you then. I only had hope, a desperate hope, that I had found my girl at last. At the very least, I would have known you were still a victim of Brightman's schemes. Still somebody's lost child. I hope I would have done what I have already done: accepted you as part of my family."

  "Even if I were not your child? Or Aronnax's child?"

  "That is my hope."

  She turned to Christophe. "So, that is why you tested my hair?"

  "Yes," he said. "I know I should have allowed Elias to test you in his own time, as he had intended. But things were getting a bit dodgy--"

  "Dodgy enough to shoot me," she growled.