Nemo Rising

by C. Courtney Joyner

  “As you wish, sir.”

  They climbed from the ring, Sigel pulling off his gloves, handing them to the Lieutenant as they moved to a hanging bag in the corner. Sigel threw his first, much harder than his punches before.

  The young officer took his place behind the bag, holding it steady, a distorted shadow of the two of them cast by the gymnasium’s gas lights.

  The General’s shadow was enormous compared to the Lieutenant, who was actually noting the placement of the lamps. Sigel, head down, beat into the bag. Brawling an enemy, the Lieutenant absorbing the hits.

  “Sir, you haven’t commented on your meeting with President Grant.”

  Sigel said, “I’m aware of that,” then threw another punch.

  “I just hope it was successful.”

  Sigel laid quick blows. “It went well. It always does between us, as old friends.”

  “For now.”

  Sigel stopped. “What did you say?”

  The Lieutenant peered around the bag’s edge. “With all that’s going on with the sinking ships, they say you might have to make some choices, sir.”

  Sigel said, “You’re seriously forgetting your place, Lieutenant.”

  “Sea monsters? What kind of idiotic alibi is that?”

  He stepped from behind the bag, noting a popped seam leaking sand, saying, “You have a lot of strength, General. Look here, what you’ve done. A lot of strength, but little sense.”

  The gun was in the Lieutenant’s hand instantly. Sigel didn’t react, but his eyes locked. The first slug hit his upper chest as he sprang on the boy, pounding him to the gym floor. The Lieutenant kept the pistol pressed into Sigel’s stomach, even as his nose was being shattered by the General’s fist. He fired again. Sigel rolled off, holding his stomach, red slicking the wooden floor, then, a final shot into the back of the General’s head.

  The Lieutenant grabbed a towel and pressed it to his nose before taking bottles of Fine Old Jamaica rum from a canvas bag and soaking the General’s body. He tossed the black-glass bottles aside, letting them shatter the silence, then dropped lit matches on chest and legs. Instant ignition.

  He stood back, arms folded, pleased with the burning, before using two more bottles to pour a trail from the corpse to the edge of the boxing ring and soaking the General’s uniform tunic, hanging on the coat rack.

  The Fine Old Jamaica was molasses-thick, its fumes biting the Lieutenant’s nose as he tossed a burning handkerchief, spreading the fire along the rum, lighting ropes and canvas. The flames jumped across the gymnasium floor, the blue and yellow, racing.

  The Lieutenant stepped casually to the wall sconces, blowing out each lamp, then opening the gas valves completely.

  His moves were sure and calm, even as the flames from the ring climbed upward, becoming a pillar of fire behind him, reaching the ceiling. The gas filled the air, choking it, as he took the Prussian sword from the corner, and gave the General a last snap of his heels, saluting him with the blade.

  He felt the gesture of respect necessary, before walking out the heavy, swinging doors, the poison filling the room with a snake-like hiss, the fire spreading across the walls, eating, windows splitting with the heat.

  The Lieutenant’s new orders were a folded sheet in his inside pocket that he read as he calmly walked. The sun was setting, and he was blocks away when the gymnasium explosion rumbled under the sidewalks, the gas lamp globes up and down the street blowing out as if they’d been shot.

  He noted that final destruction had taken a bit longer than he’d expected, then lit a cigarillo and drew on it, while enjoying the fading echo of the blast. He kept walking, snapping open the orders, and reading Grant’s name as target, a time, and a place.

  * * *

  Grant hard-ran Cincinnati to the end of the cobblestoned block, reining the horse in alongside a team pulling a steam-pump fire engine. The team pulled up, the crew scrambled with hoses, sand pails, and axes, to attack the burning remains of the gymnasium.

  The heat was a cannon blast that slammed Grant, with Cincinatti rearing back, as the firemen and Bucket Brigade pounded down the last of the flames, the building’s steel frame bending in front of them, then collapsing in on itself. The dying metal screamed, along with a last burst of fire, sparks, and heavy ash. Men dove out of the way, then soaked the ruins.

  Grant controlled the horse, called out, “What about General Sigel?”

  The Fire Chief ran over, hacking soot from his throat. “We’ve only one body so far, Mr. President. I don’t know if that’s the General or not, sir.”

  Two White House Security Guards charged their horses through the gathered crowd, followed by a cadre of troopers. Police maintained the line, the rubbernecks reacting to the rocking collapse of another wall. Security got to Grant as he dropped from his horse, pushing his way toward the body that was laid out on the flooded sidewalk.

  The Guards kept their rifles up, creating a perimeter. Grant took no notice of them as he crouched next to the body. The hanging smoke, the smell of scorched metal and flesh were sickening battle memories to him but he couldn’t react, show anything less than complete strength, while the crowd of onlookers choked into handkerchiefs. A young Fireman pulled away the rain slick that shrouded the face; what there was of it.

  “Sir, there’s another,” the Fireman said, “but he seems to be a poor sod who was just walking by when the place blew.”

  Grant threw back another corner of the slick, revealing a seared right hand with a half-melted ring that represented the Union Army XI Corps.

  He took the ring from Sigel’s gnarled hand, the crowd around him growing, calling out, one woman slipping a flower into his lapel, as he made his way back to his horse, Guards trotting alongside. Grant’s eyes were dead-focused straight ahead, the voices around him distant echoes. All senses lost to the heat, the stench, the thought of a fallen comrade.

  A Guard called out, “Mr. President, we’re to ride point, and alongside, sir!”

  Grant swung onto Cincinnati. “Then do your damn job!” He broke into a sudden run with the Security Command scrambling to bring their horses around, and then, racing to catch up.

  * * *

  The clicking of the brass keys in the White House telegraph room was constant, and reminded Grant of locusts. He hated being there, with Operators bent forward, sending and receiving messages from a dozen stations, furiously decoding, but not saying a word to each other. Grant remembered when it was the old War Room library, preferring it that way.

  Efrem, ready to grab the next telegram, jumped from the corner stool where he was perched. “Mr. President!”

  The Operators turned, some bolting to their feet, as Grant stepped in scribbling on a tablet. “This goes out immediately, in Code Destrier. All operators are on active duty until I issue different orders.”

  Horace Prudent, scarecrow of an operations manager, took Grant’s message with a stumbling, “Sir, am I understanding you, this situation, correctly?” and, lowering his voice, “Code ‘Destrier,’ meaning ‘Great War Horse’ preparations?”

  Grant spoke to the room. “I will be available here for the next forty-eight hours. Any communications,” he pointed to Efrem, “I want this man to deliver to me personally.”

  Then, the President was gone.

  15

  DEAD TREASURE

  The belowdecks passageway was the main artery of the Nautilus, running its entire length, chambers on both sides, and ending at a fortified bunker that housed the ship’s power supply.

  All plated iron walls, its top curving up into the submarine’s bow structure, the powerhouse had bundled pipes extending from its base, the legs of a brass spider, to carry pressurized steam to the engine turbines.

  Its only ports were an envelope-sized window cut into its center, and a hatch recessed into the floor directly in front of it.

  Nemo was turning the hatch’s locking wheel, telling Sara, “Other side of the stairs, closer to the ballast tanks.”

&
nbsp; Sara got around the lower-deck access, held herself next to the curved railing. “Expecting an explosion?”

  “You’re to stay because I’ve ordered it.” He opened the hatch, a radiant glow spilling out. She heard a motor as he stepped in and descended, carried by a small, mechanical lift, before the hatch sealed itself tight.

  Sara charged the window, wiped it with her palm, and looked down into the bunker as the Nautilus’ engines churned. Stalled. Churned again.

  Nemo was at a freestanding control station, walled on all sides by the clear-fronted cells of the power generator. His back to her, she could only see him throwing a series of polished steel contact switches.

  A flash of blue heat.

  An arc of electricity blinded Sara’s view, scorching the window from inside. She pulled a boat hook from the wall, jammed the handle into the hatch locking-wheel, strained it loose.

  The hermetic seal broke, rushing air with the sting of burning ozone, as Sara lowered herself into the bunker, hanging for a moment by a brass fitting, then dropping to the thick linen mat that covered the floor.

  Before Nemo could speak, Sara was cutting wires to the circuit board. Containment cells lost their pulsing color, their power, as one after another dimmed around the chamber walls, then went dark, the last fragments of energy drained off.

  Nemo said, “My orders are to be obeyed!”

  “You were shocked, about to collapse!”

  “Shot, not shocked, and still carrying most of the bullet, courtesy of your government, which causes me great pain. What you saw was a spasm.” He pulled an electrical mechanism, its glass conductors shattered and wiring melted together, from under the controller, and slapped it into Sara’s palm.

  “I was timing the melting point against the power surge.”

  “I only saw the flash.”

  “Which you wouldn’t, if you’d stayed where I ordered. There was no danger. Except to my work, if someone interfered.”

  Sara said, “It seems I’m always apologizing for some gaffe, but, as you’re raging anyway…” She took hold of a brakeman’s switch handle, mounted next to a power cell, and pulled it back, as if she were stopping a locomotive.

  An iron section of the wall swung outward, revealing a chute-trap littered with melted pieces of royal goblets, scepters, a princess’ neck shield, and a battered, golden crown, its jewels popped.

  Sara said, “The ship’s fuel supply, or what’s left of it?”

  “Looting, Miss Duncan?”

  “Captain, even you should appreciate how much has been done to make the Nautilus functional, while you were waiting—”

  “For the hangman?” Nemo took the heat-twisted neck shield.

  “Actually, this is another of your locked-away secrets, until just this moment.” Sara picked the scepter from the rest. “The submersible that runs on treasure? Pirate booty, melted for fuel?”

  “To the narrow-minded, it seems like fantasy,” Nemo tossed the shield back into the treasure locker. “These are nothing, the leavings after the purities were extracted.”

  Sara said, “Then how, how does it work?”

  “You haven’t gone that far with your speculations?”

  “When you were—captured—the newspapers were filled with them. Father made sure to read me every word.”

  “Before tucking you in, no doubt.”

  “Yes, I’ve dreamed about the Nautilus since I was a little girl.”

  “So now, you imagine she’s yours.”

  “Just that I’d do anything to get her sailing again.”

  Nemo looked at her, holding the scepter as if she were about to give a royal decree, or cast a spell. “You put me in mind of the Captain of a pirate galleon, sunk off the Carolina coast. We were gathering fuel from the wreck, on the bottom about a year, crew eaten to the bones, and he was at the wheel, still clutching that idiotic bauble. Long-dead, but he wouldn’t let go, so his hands came with it.”

  “You put the gold to better use than he would.”

  Nemo picked up the ruined crown. “One of the few interviews I ever gave, a reporter from Guinea who seemed sympathetic to my goals, wrote a story about my desecrating underwater graves. ‘The ghoul of the deep.’ Did your father send you to sleep with that one?”

  “No, sir,” Sara said.

  “It’s always been easier to show me a monster, rather than look at any underlying reasons for my actions. Cleansing the oceans of man-made trash, putting it to practical use.”

  “They used the word ‘genius’ in descriptions.”

  “Usually with ‘insane,’ when they weren’t trying to convince the world I didn’t exist at all.”

  He tapped the front of a power cell with the crown’s edge. “Those who saw our inner works were impressed with the stream of molten gold, instead of the energy being drawn through my own fission process. Arronax, at least, attempted a balanced view.”

  A point from the crown broke in Nemo’s fingers as crumbling clay. “The pure metals extracted, the rest, harmless and back to the sand.”

  “A thousand dollars’ of gold, and run underwater for two years?”

  “Longer. Much.”

  Sara shook her head. “That’s world-changing.”

  “No steam or smoke, because of containment. No toxins at all. The true reason I was imprisoned.”

  “Captain, it’s the lives lost…”

  Nemo added to the gold trash, recessed the vault back in place. “You’re too naïve to see, it was my thinking that was the threat, not my ability to sink their warships.”

  “Your ideas, needed now.”

  He said, “The Nautilus is. I inspected your amateur efforts, some are decently effective, but I’m the only one who can rebuild her heart, and we’ve nothing but crude scraps. It won’t do.”

  Sara half-smiled. “Captain, like you, my father doesn’t allow failure.”

  Nemo said, “My ship took years to perfect, and a resurrection will not be instantaneous, despite your father or President Grant’s panicked demands.”

  He kicked the melted circuit plate across the floor. “For your purposes, the Nautilus is useless. At rest is one thing, taking the sea, another. She can’t withstand a voyage.”

  Sara pulled a strip of silverized gold from the scepter’s handle and twisted it into wire before threading around the melted panel’s contacts.

  She threw a toggle, descending the hatch elevator, and said, “She’s not going to keep you prisoner, or stop you from doing what you need to do. The wire’s melting, and the Nautilus needs you up top, Captain.”

  * * *

  The spines were jointed needles, with the edges of razors, and mounted on a spring mechanism that darted them out from the spheres at all angles. Sara stood by the objects lined up on the dock, as Nemo climbed from the Nautilus, then approached.

  Sara nodded. “The parts you fashioned for her, from your own workshop on Vulcania, and still in their very unusual containers.”

  There were six spheres, each two feet in diameter, with the spines protruding from a spongy surface, and tags hanging from them, labeled CASE #3579.

  Nemo stepped onto the dock. “All of these, confiscated, and used as evidence against me.”

  “How? None can be opened. When I found them, the spines jutted out, almost took my hand off.”

  Nemo was close to one of the spheres. “My special design, from the Japanese Roku fish. Were you speaking?”

  “My father and I were discussing transport, and it was like those things attacked.”

  “Speaking was your mistake; the audio port is built into the surface.” He leaned into the object, saying flatly, “Retract now.”

  The spines adjusted, pulling into the sphere’s surface, then lying flat, creating a solid, outer shell. The others retracted, shells snapping into place, one after the other. Tin windups marching in line.

  Nemo held his hand up to Sara, stopping her words. “They’re equipped with a tuning fork that reacts only to my voice’s vibrat
ions. Another voice triggers their enemy defense, the spines of the Roku.”

  She whispered, “You don’t know the trouble of getting these things here.”

  One sphere quivered, but the spines didn’t eject, and Nemo said, “I did my job well, so the trouble was considerable. As I planned.”

  He stopped, taken aback at the sight of a painting in a gilt frame leaning against a crate, its subject masked with rubberized fabric.

  Sara said, “I found it washing in one of the access corridors by the library, when I first came aboard.”

  “How much was damaged?”

  “It wasn’t,” Sara said, “but I covered it, because I thought the unveiling should be yours. Alone.”

  Nemo’s expression clouded as he picked up the painting with one hand. “This cloying gesture changes nothing about my assessment of your efforts.” He picked up a sphere with the other.

  “There’s little hope these components weren’t destroyed by Naval clumsiness, but I’ll allow you to put up notices for crew.”

  He started back down the access ladder, careful with the painting and sphere, and said, “Men I can rely on, for each position I designate. My decision, not your father’s.”

  The hatch closed above him, with Sara on the dock, her hands balled fists, whispering, “Arrogant—”

  She never got to add “bastard” before the razored spheres on the dock reacted to her voice, and sprung open.

  16

  HEARTS OF MACHINES AND MEN

  Nemo grasped the sphere by its sides, where the razors would slice to the bone, and applied exact pressure, his shoulder burning, splitting it open as a hinged egg.

  Inside, the specialty fuses and micro-gears for the navigation mechanisms were complete, the wiring undamaged. They were his most complex and minute work for the Nautilus, the electrics smaller than the wings of a fly.

  Nemo’s pride surged as he laid out the components in specific order, keeping his back to the painting between the arms of his Captain’s chair, avoiding it, until finishing all preparations.