The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "No, not really."

  Quatermain fired again, another perfect shot, another target destroyed. He didn't bother to show any satisfaction at his prowess.

  Sawyer was extremely impressed, though, and ventured closer. "Well, I guess I was just wondering why you signed up for all of this."

  Quatermain didn't look at him. The turbaned crewman positioned another target in the launcher.

  The young American pressed. "Cap'n Nemo told me that you hate the British Empire. So it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, you joining in."

  "They called. I answered." Quatermain cracked the gun and reloaded.

  Sawyer thrust his hands in his pockets. "Well, that isn't all of it, though. Is it?"

  "Pull!" Quatermain said, and another target soared. Clearly there was to be no more conversation. He sighted it, following the target as if he was tracking a flight of geese. This time, he wanted to shoot the object out of the sky instead of waiting for it to strike the waves.

  "I'm sorry for asking," Sawyer said, turning away.

  Quatermain lowered his gun without firing and looked at the young American. He wrestled with words, dredging up memories he no longer wanted to think about. "Years ago… the British approached me with a mission for Queen and Country. They appealed to my patriotism. They promised thrills, adventure…" He let out a long, lonely sigh.

  "That's like the morning ride to work for you, I'd imagine." Sawyer looked at the old hunter with hopeful eyes.

  Quatermains' gaze was distant, though — seeing farther than the hazy coastline of Italy. "I signed up without hesitation. I even took my son along, promised to watch him. I led, and my son followed."

  He sighed. The Nautilus continued, surging past the floating target out on the waves. Quatermain leaned on his elephant gun, making no attempt to take the shot.

  He didn't look at Sawyer as he continued. "The boy died in my arms. After that, I washed my hands of England, the Empire… and the legend of Allan bloody Quatermain."

  The young American chose to see the other mans strength instead of his misery. "So if you succeed this time, then your son's memory will be honored."

  "No. It doesn't work that way." Quatermain eyed the American agent who was so full of optimism and guileless honesty. He changed the subject abruptly, as if out of self-defense. "Now, would you like to learn how to shoot, lad?"

  "I can already," said Sawyer, propping one hand on his hip.

  "Yes, I saw you in Grays library. Very American. Just fire enough bullets and hope that some of them will hit the target. No finesse. No skill."

  The young agent frowned as if suspecting that he'd just been insulted. "I reckon a good many of the Fantom's marksmen would beg to differ."

  The old adventurer wrinkled his brow. "Sawyer, I'm talking about pipping the ace at nine hundred yards." He offered the gun to the American. "Try."

  Sawyer was surprised, but took the big weapon with eager hands. Holding it by the stock and barrel, hefting its weight, he let out a low, appreciative whistle. He squinted one eye and looked down the long barrel of the elephant gun.

  "Steady on," Quatermain said. To the turbaned crewman, he called out, "Pull!"

  The launcher flapped, and a fresh target soared high. The old hunter leaned in so they sighted the gun together, man and boy, as the colorful object tumbled and then splashed down.

  "Now… aim," Quatermain said, focusing on the shot with all his concentration.

  "Aww, that's easy."

  "Allow for wind and target movement."

  "That's easy, too," Sawyer said.

  "Its the next part that's not. You've got to feel the shot."

  Sawyer concentrated, aimed, tried to do exactly as Quatermain said. But the submarine vessel picked up speed, and a rooster tail of spray kicked up from the bow. The bobbing target was racing past.

  "Take your time with it."

  Sawyer swallowed. "It's moving pretty fast."

  "Take your time. You have all the time you need. Anybody can hit it with ten shots. But take only one. Hit it the first time."

  The target was getting closer. Sawyer was itching to fire. The elephant gun twitched in his hands.

  "All… the time… in the world," said Quatermain.

  The target passed, almost out of range. "Take… your…"

  Sawyer fired — and missed the target by a fraction of an inch. The large-caliber bullet made a splash like a leaping fish.

  "— time."

  "Darn it!" Sawyer shaded his eyes and looked forlornly at the floating target as it drifted away.

  But Quatermain was impressed. "Too soon, but that was bloody close, and at five hundred yards, too. Try again."

  Sawyer shouldered the gun once more, grinning. "Pull!"

  Though Sawyer didn't speak Hindi, the Nautilus crewman understood. The target soared.

  With his confidence brimming, Sawyer said, "Did you teach your son to shoot like this?"

  At that, Quatermain gently pushed the muzzle down and took the gun back. The moment between them was suddenly gone. "Lesson's over."

  The old adventurer walked away, leaving Sawyer standing there alone on the deck, uncomfortably aware that he had said too much.

  NINETEEN

  The Nautilus

  Mina Harker worked at her intricate chemistry setup, tinkering with vials and retorts. She removed a test tube from an atomizer and examined it with sharp green eyes.

  Her cabin door was ajar, and Dorian Gray pushed it farther open. "Brewing tea, Mina? Or something stronger?"

  She looked up at him, but showed no pleasure at his arrival. "I'm identifying a powder that Nemo found in the control room. Residue of magnesium phosphorus." From his bored expression, she saw that the chemical meant nothing to him. She explained. "Photographers use it to create a flash."

  "A camera?" Gray said. "Why would someone carry a clunky old camera aboard a submarine, much less use it?"

  "It appears that someone wishes to capture this vessels secrets." Mina went back to her work.

  Gray hovered close to her—too close. He drew a deep breath to inhale her scent. "I thought you should know. I told those who've asked that I'm an old friend of your family."

  "To spare me embarrassment? I'm above what others think. We were lovers once upon a time. Our love died. Many things die."

  "Many things don't."

  Mina finally looked up from her chemistry work to meet his gaze. "I was surprised that you ultimately agreed to join the League, Dorian. You are a selfish man. This task requires heroes… not vain hedonists."

  "Perhaps I mean to undo the flaws in my character through selfless action. Maybe I want to face my demons."

  Mina scoffed, turning away. Foul odors bubbled from a flask over a Bunsen burner. "What do you know of demons?"

  "Maybe more than you know." He remained maddeningly close to her, even as she tried to work. "Do you recall the space on the wall of my home, Mina? Where a picture was missing?"

  "Yes. It was glaringly obvious. What of it?"

  Gray drew a long breath. "Its time — long past time, actually — that I tell you a story."

  Outside in the corridor, Henry Jekyll paced back and forth, looking and listening to the sounds of the ship and the secret tales told between passengers. Mina's door was open, and chemical smells and soft voices wafted out into the passageway. He came close enough that his shadow barely fell on the edge of the door, then he cringed and backed away.

  Yes, Henry — look, but don't touch. Dont risk anything. Don't get your fingers dirty. That's your way.

  He hated the mocking voice. Jekyll hurried away shame-faced, but in the mirror-bright shine of the Nautilus corridor fittings the brutish taunting reflection of Edward Hyde followed him.

  "Shut your mouth," Jekyll said, just loud enough to answer the voice in his head.

  Did I just hear a mouse squeak? Or was it just a worm stirring? Certainly nothing of any consequence.

  "I won't be tricked again."

&
nbsp; Tricked? You've known what I was about each time you drank the formula. I know about it, Henry. I know you. Hyde's deep voice ended in a gruff chuckle. You like it.

  "Liar! I'm a good man." Jekyll whimpered. "I am a good man."

  Who's lying now? Repeat it to yourself, keep saying the same thing… but it still won't be true.

  "I make my own decisions."

  So make your decision. You know which one I mean. You want it, Henry. Even more than you want… her.

  Jekyll quailed, stumbled into the curved metal wall. Hyde chuckled again with a note that sounded like triumph. You cant shut me out forever. Drink the elixir.

  "No."

  She barely even looks at you, Hyde taunted. She wants a big, strong, decisive man. Not a little weakling.

  "Be quiet!" Jekyll said.

  She'd look at me!

  Hyde appeared large in front of the doctor's eyes, rising up like a nightmarish simian demon. He loomed into reality, and with a powerful, blunt-fingered hand he grabbed Jekyll's throat, ready to wring it like a chicken. Drool trickled between crooked, broken teeth; his yellow eyes were bloodshot with thin scarlet lava flows.

  In voice as hard and firm as an iron anvil, Captain Nemo said from behind him, "Contain your evil, Doctor."

  Jekyll spun with a yelp, his knees weak. The feverish apparition of Hyde vanished like smoke in a cold wind.

  Nemo stepped forward, and Jekyll seemed to fear the Nautilus captain as much as he trembled from his inner demons. "I'll not have that brute free upon my ship. Must I take drastic steps and keep you confined?"

  "I'm… in control." Jekyll's teeth chattered together. He wiped a clammy hand through the perspiration on his forehead and smeared back his lank hair.

  "In control, sir? I doubt that very much," Nemo said. "Even the strongest of men know evils allure."

  Flustered and reddening, Jekyll gathered his courage. "Your talk is all well and good, sir — but your own past is far from laudable!" He immediately regretted his outburst. "I–I'm sorry, Captain." He started to slink away, shamed and tortured.

  "Has Hyde ever killed?" Nemo asked, crossing his arms over his blue-uniformed chest. "Has he actually broken a neck or torn out a throat with his bare hands?"

  Jekyll looked back wearily and nodded. "He's done all the evils a man could do. And it is my terrible curse that I… recall every one of his actions, even though I could not stop them." He let out a low moan of misery.

  "I sympathize. It is my curse that I recall my own."

  Jekyll scampered away without looking back. Nemo watched him go. A shadow larger than normal followed him as he retreated down the Nautilus corridor…

  Before Nemo could return to the control bridge, he heard low voices through the partially open door of Mina's cabin. He hesitated, normally a man who respected privacy and a persons right to keep their dark secrets… but Mina Harker had also spied on him while he'd made his prayers to Kali in his own cabin.

  Intent on the woman in front of him, Dorian Gray continued his explanation. "So although the picture is my portrait, I doubt you'd recognize the face upon it."

  "How so? I'm quite familiar with your features — and they haven't changed a bit in all the time I've known you."

  His thin smile seemed self-satisfied. "For each year that passes, my portrait ages instead of me. I'm sure that my every dark, selfish, shameful act is there, too, in the way that men wear their pasts about them. And I have committed plenty of such acts…"

  "When did you last see the portrait?" Mina asked.

  "I dare not look upon it myself, or the magic of the painting will be undone," Gray said. "I have taken it from my wall, leaving an empty space. I have hidden it, kept it safe…"

  Nemo turned silendy on his heel, not wishing to hear any more. He understood science and invention, and he had studied Eastern philosophies, trained his body to become a machine that he controlled. He had cruised the seas in his armored submarine boat — but those things were comprehensible, explained by a strict set of laws and rules.

  The sorcery and superstition of which Dorian Gray spoke — that was not part of Nemo's universe.

  He marched back to the bridge to see if Ishmael had learned anything more about whoever had tampered with the controls.

  In Jekyll's cabin, the thin and fidgety doctor sat on the edge of his bunk, wringing his hands.

  Let me play, Henry. Come on, let me play. Hyde's noxious, whining voice whispered in his head. I'll win. I always win.

  Jekyll rubbed his eyes, tempted.

  Why fight it? Enjoy me, Henry. Enjoy me…

  He glanced over at the small medical case on his desk. Just one dose, a gulp of the elixir that would change him, free him, give him the strength to follow Hyde's — and his — every desire.

  Let me out, Hyde urged.

  But Jekyll stared at the case, shocked. The clasp had been undone while he was away.

  "If I didn't know better, I'd swear I already had," Jekyll said, shaking his head. He looked at his fretful hands, expecting to see his nails blacken and coarse hair sprout from his knuckles. But they remained his pale, damp, weak hands and fingers…

  He looked inside the case, afraid it might snap shut and bite his wrist. He stared in surprise, then rooted around among the small glass bottles and cylinders.

  Jekyll looked sharply at his cabin door, expecting to see someone there. The door was closed, and he was safe. But someone had been here.

  One of the vials of his elixir was missing.

  TWENTY

  The Nautilus

  In Minas cabin at night, Gray produced a flask and a pair of delicate glass cups. He poured a shot of the rich, tan liquid for Mina, then one for himself. "Nightcap? It's the finest Spanish amontillado, very old. I found it inside a walled-up cellar in an old villa."

  "I'm not much of a drinker," Mina said. She licked the corner of her lips. Unless its hot and fresh and red…

  She remembered strolling with Dorian Gray after dusk through the streets of London, long, long ago. Her husband Jonathan had been dead for five years already, slain while defeating the evil Dracula. Her own life had been filled with shadows since then, her days of dazzling sunshine and carefree laughter gone—

  Dorian had seemed so suave, so self-assured… so full of himself. They had walked through the gardens, playfully hiding and seeking in a convoluted shrubbery maze, but Mina had had an unfair advantage over him, an animal instinct that always allowed her to track her

  prey. Dorian had quickly lost interest in the activity, and next they had gone to the zoo after dark. Very few other visitors walked the paths, and the animals themselves dozed, either overfed or simply resigned to their fates. But as he and Mina strolled along, the caged beasts grew restless. Tigers growled and paced, gorillas snorted and hooted, an ibex and a wildebeest withdrew skittishly to the far corners of their pens.

  At the time Mina had thought it was her scent, the cloying air of death around her, the dark aura of vampirism… but perhaps the animals had been just as nervous about Dorian Gray.

  The two of them had gone to the opera very late, dressed in their finest clothes. Dorian had a private box, one of the plushest and most expensive in the opera house. Mina had felt everyone staring at them, then turning away. She knew of Mr. Gray's numerous dalliances with exotic women of all kinds, from dark Abyssinian princesses, to beauties from China or Sumatra, to veiled Arabic women who exuded tantalizing perfumes. By comparison, Mina Harker must have looked terribly plain and mundane.

  If she had shown her fangs, though, she supposed she might have been sufficiently exotic.

  Dorian had sensed the intriguing, special quality within her. Mina doubted he knew the truth about her; but even if he had, she didn't think he would have shown fear or loathing — only amused fascination.

  They had eaten a large dinner at a very late hour, the darkest and most comfortable time before dawn. Two thick steaks, rare and dripping — exactly the way Mina liked them, since her change.
/>
  Afterward, Dorian had poured them each a glass from an ancient squat bottle coated with dust from the deepest alcove of his cellar. The port wine was deep crimson, thick and sweet. Like the blood of a nobleman…

  Now, in her cabin aboard the Nautilus, he offfered her another drink. "Just a small one, then." He passed the glass to Mina, and she took it, absently clenching her powerful, alabaster hand. The fine glass broke, spilling the amontillado and cutting open her palm.

  "How clumsy of me." Her green eyes flashed as she looked at the open wound.

  Gray took her soft hand and dabbed it with his handkerchief. "We don't want blood everywhere." He pressed the cloth hard against the cut.

  "No," Mina said, her voice growing hoarse. "Not blood." She pulled away the reddened handkerchief and looked at her own bloody hand, which quickly healed itself. Her pulse began to race, her cold skin flushed, as if from some inner fever. Her mouth was very dry.

  Then! Mina looked up at Gray with clear intent. Their eyes met.

  She let the red-stained handkerchief fall to the floor, her wound already gone. They kissed passionately as they bumped the table, rattling but not breaking her chemistry paraphernalia.

  Seeking a safer place, they fell together to the narrow cabin bed.

  TWENTY ONE

  The Nautilus

  While the engines hummed and an enclosed clock ticked on the curved metal wall, Quatermain and Sawyer worked in the Nautilus library, digging through the extensive reference material Captain Nemo had compiled in his many voyages.

  Sawyer scratched his head and tried to concentrate on the files, open books, and hand-drawn maps he had retrieved from the submarines shelves and cabinets. He had laid out everything that seemed remotely relevant to the Fantom, to Venice, and to the secret meeting of the world leaders. In spite of staring at it all for the better part of an hour, however, he still hadn't figured out how everything connected.