Nemo Rising

by C. Courtney Joyner

  Jess leaned in to Sara. “You’ve just been piped aboard, sis.”

  The barracuda broke ahead of the Nautilus’ prow, its body turning, angling through deep water as a hawk whip-dives for its prey. Nemo, back at the helm, commanded the engines to full.

  * * *

  The images attacked Fulmer’s exhausted sleep.

  Eyes first. Huge. Glowing yellow. Fierce, and skimming just below the water. Hunting. The wake of a speared-snout breaking behind it. The sea animal moved faster, emitting a piercing cry before attacking, spines ripping through the frigate’s hull, exploding a boiler. Tearing men in half. Screams and fire. In moments.

  Red said it was “Nemo’s beast.”

  Fulmer screamed from his dream, slashing wildly at the night. Heart racing, looking around the lifeboat for Red; maybe he crawled off? But he was alone. Dreaming. He shook himself awake, trying to clear his head, the freezing ocean air slicing him through his rags.

  He thought he’d felt something that woke him.

  The lifeboat heaved. Something smashing from below, tipping its edge. Waves slopped in, filling the bottom. Fulmer rolled to one side, grabbed the Remington, and pushed his feet off the middle seat, getting to the side of the impact. Another hit. Fulmer stumbled, with the boat tilting. Nearly capsizing.

  Holding on, turning the rifle around, to beat the water with the stock, all ammo spent.

  He saw it in the fractures of moonlight. Just glints from water beading: the hammerhead’s sharp tail slashed the waves before its head turned and rammed the lifeboat from the side, against the flat of its head.

  Fulmer swung at it with the rifle, catching some fin, bouncing off its hide. The eyes clocked up at him, one side of the skull, then the other, before circling the boat. Declaring its prey.

  It hit. Again. Starting a split in the hull, water spurting. Fulmer jabbed, pounding with the rifle barrel, the tail snapping, cutting hands, sending the Remington into the ocean.

  Another hit from the shark, popping nails in the hull. More water spurting through, the lifeboat giving way. Fulmer watched the tail and fin circle, diving, and swimming back.

  Fulmer grabbed the burlap sack, pulling out the mechanical crab. The legs moved in jerking motion, the sensors not registering as the retractable jaws hinged open and the acid began to spew.

  He aimed the stream at the hammerhead, burning its eyes, sending the shark thrashing. It threw itself against the lifeboat, twisting in pain. Fulmer held the mechanical in front of him as a weapon, still spraying. Burning more skin. Muscles melting from bone, and the hammer sinking away, fading under the water.

  Fulmer collapsed against the bench, still holding the mechanical, gears and servos winding down. He flipped it over, popped out the small, cut diamond in its belly, and pocketed it.

  Extending his arm, he looked at the tattoo as if he hadn’t seen it in years: “Mobilis in Mobile.”

  The mechanical lying beside him, robotic insect-face staring with artificial eyes, Fulmer laid his head back and gave a hoarse war-whoop to a moon that was fading with dawn. And started to laugh.

  22

  LEPRECHAUN

  The door to the net-weaver’s shed shattered under Maston’s heel, hinges popping. He stepped around, grabbing a baling hook jammed into the frame, looking for more green movement.

  He’d seen it as he pulled his rescue skiff to the shore: someone behind the shed’s one window, looking out at the harbor. A glimpse of a man sporting a green bowler, who ducked away.

  Maston squinted through dusty shadows, at the spools of rope, some waist tall, lining the tar-paper walls. Iron pikes for net-stringing took up the center of the shed; jagged fangs emerging from the floor leaving little room for anything else.

  The green moved.

  Darting from behind a stack of cork floaters.

  Maston snagged Mr. Lime’s collar with the baling hook, jerking him off his feet as he tried for the window.

  Lime twisted, squealing, with wild kicks into Maston’s stomach, punching into his throat. Maston fell back choking, just missing the iron pikes. He hooked Lime again, yanked him down, then pressed his thumb and forefinger against the nerve below his jaw, crumpling Lime to the floor, the hook ripping his velvet-piped green jacket to the tails.

  A notebook marked NEMO fell from the shredded lining of the jacket, and Maston pocketed it before dragging Mr. Lime out to the waterfront, and onto his horse.

  * * *

  Opium.

  The House of Delights was heavy with a sweet haze that Maston shook off while following the beautiful Mandarin, an erupting volcano tattooed across her back. She cast a smile with her eyes and slid open the false wall, not even acknowledging the small, unconscious man slung about Maston’s shoulders.

  * * *

  “Father, I’ll remain.”

  Sara’s voice scratched from the Phono-horn, then bounced off the stone walls, as Maston came down the steps into the bunker and sack-tumbled Mr. Lime onto a scrolled desktop, scattering a folder of Sea Battle Strategies. Lime didn’t stir.

  A few glanced, but everyone was about their business as Maston grabbed Lime’s celluloid collar and pulled him forward, his head still drooping.

  Duncan put his hand up to hide the sounds of Maston slapping Lime awake, while saying into the horn, “You’re sure about this, dear? Truly?”

  The Phono powered down, Sara’s face mouthing good-bye, then dimming out. Duncan touched the blank screen. Beside him, Maston delivered palm, then backhanded hits to Lime’s jowls. Sharp stings.

  Lime bolted up, fists swinging. Maston dodged, instantly flattening him to the desk by the shoulders. Pinned down.

  “Call off your damned beast!” Lime squealed, as Maston wrenched his tiny arm, elbow-to-jaw.

  “He’s twisting out my bloody socket!”

  Grant said, “Stand down.”

  The words unlocked Maston, who propped Lime up like a souvenir teddy bear from a shooting gallery, making a show of dusting off his shoulders and adjusting his tie.

  Lime squirmed from reach. “I expected better from you, General. We have a bit of history, yes?”

  “You’re almost costing us the Overland Campaigns?”

  Lime was now sitting on the desk, legs not reaching the floor, shaking feeling back to his fingers. “I risked my life for those pictures, hiding in the back of that God-awful medical cart.”

  “Where you were discovered, photographing our troop positions,” Grant said, while Maston pulled a spy camera, disguised as a jeweled tie clasp, from Lime’s green-striped shirt.

  “A simple record of innocent young men preparing for battle.”

  Grant said, “That you’d have gladly sold to the Confederacy.”

  “You’ll recall, sir, I gave up my beauties before your siege of the Rebel stronghold. Before.”

  “You feared I’d have you executed as a spy if you didn’t. Now,” Grant lit his first cigar of the day, “this morning. Explain.”

  “Merely following a stink,” Lime said.

  Maston handed the President Lime’s NEMO notebook. He thumbed the pages, eyes narrowing, and said, “Elaborate, Mr. Lime, or the beast comes off his chain.”

  “It’s you lot. Paying the shopkeeps to stay away from their waterfront. Sailors, got-up as fishermen, standing by, while the Nautilus, captained by a dead man, headed out to sea.”

  Lime threw a look around the bunker, at the chattering telegraphs, the stored arsenal. “I couldn’t begin to decipher the meaning of all these odd events myself, but I’d wager editors at the National Press Building would drool from their purses for my record of them.”

  “Any conclusions?”

  “You’re on the eve of war.”

  Grant said, “Wrong.”

  Lime’s voice picked up, declaring the headlines: “Foreign lines and freighters sunk! Hundreds killed! Mystery fires and bombs, and now, a hostage journalist, surrounded by secret battle plans and assassins!”

  Grant said, “That horse pie�
��s sold papers before. The cuff links.”

  Lime straightened his arms, eyes rolling with sarcastic bother. “Tell me, please, Mr. President, do you believe your States would be victorious in a worldwide war? Especially with that magnificent submariner at your beck and call? I promise to quote you exactly.”

  Maston popped a small-lensed camera mounted on a silver link from the right cuff. Then ripped, taking hair and skin, a cabled shutter release taped across Lime’s back through to his other sleeve, and left hand.

  Lime winced. “Funniest thing, I’d read a dispatch that Nemo had been killed in a riot at the Devil’s Warehouse. Quite a gruesome end, so it claimed.”

  Maston dropped the camera’s mechanics, cables splayed, onto the desk, along with a Derringer from Lime’s waistband holster. He split the pistol, emptying it.

  “See, I could’ve shot your beast, but restrained meself,” Lime said. “Not like the anarchists who decorated Mulberry Street with his Excellency, the Bishop. Or, is he coming back from the dead, too, like the good Captain Nemo?”

  Grant said, “No, his Excellency won’t be coming back.”

  “At least we have the truth of that, colored by Mr. Spilett’s editorials. And your would-be assassin at the White House? There’s been nothing but speculation.”

  Duncan said, “Still unknown, unless you have some clues.”

  Lime said, “I wouldn’t be so foolish as to hold back information that important, not under these crisis circumstances. Do I get a taste of your legendary bourbon before facing a firing squad, or whatever torture you have planned?”

  “Actually, I was considering you being of some damn use for once. Where’s the film for all these devices?”

  Lime said, “Hidden. Well. Before I was brutally attacked and kidnapped. Gun to my temple, you’ll never reach my price for those beautiful pictures.”

  “Your price is what you extort,” Grant said, exhaling smoke through his nose. “Keep your images, hold back your publishing. You said ‘eve of war.’ Wrong. We’re in it. Now.”

  Lime pondered, “And the Nautilus’ devilishly secret mission is our chance at victory?”

  He was now standing on the desk, at his full four foot three, examining his destroyed green jacket and saying, “That sounds like a superb reason for me to go to press as soon as possible.”

  Duncan said, “With a great deal of blood on your hands.”

  Lime, seeing Maston towering over him, said, “That would not make me rare in this room.”

  “When the timing’s appropriate, you’ll get complete details directly from my office,” Grant said.

  “As in the Nemo ‘death reports’?”

  “I said complete.”

  “Me exclusively, no other scribes?”

  Grant said, “You’ll write a story for the entire world, spin the yarn as much as you dare.”

  “Oh, hellfire propaganda for your enemies to read? And just who are we fighting, Mr. President?”

  For Lime, all sound then stopped. Everything shut out except the threat-edge of Grant’s voice: “No speculations beforehand, but I’d say this situation’s too damned important to sell off for a banner headline. Don’t you agree?”

  “Imagine.” Lime clapped his hands as if breaking a trance. “The President of these United States trying to strike a bargain with me.”

  Grant’s response was nothing.

  Lime dropped his grin. “You’ve always been the warrior with a conscience, but I’ve a sour feeling if I don’t bend to your proposal, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  Grant flicked away his cigar’s hot ash.

  “And then some.”

  23

  HARPIES

  The sea laboratory was at the end of the Nautilus’ lower deck, and graveyard-quiet. Exotic species circled their tanks, as Sara, now in a Nautilus uniform and with the poisoned ring in her pocket, worked a safe lock to a chamber door that was hidden behind a row of marine cages.

  Nemo had given her the combination in Hindi, not allowing it to be written down since it was one of his personal secrets. Sara felt a twinge of pride. He also gave a time limit, that if she failed, “You’ll be cast off in a raft with a day’s provisions, and forgotten.”

  Sara bit her lip. Figured her translation. Spun the dials.

  An Anglerfish tapped aquarium glass with its antenna as the pneumatic seal around the door split apart. Sara stepped through the casket-shaped opening, choking dead-stale air, eyes cutting the dim of the chamber, to see the Device against the back wall.

  It was as Captain Nemo described: a mutated music box, three feet across, with a glassed front and six green tentacles framing oval sides. The demonic head of a Kraken erupted from the top, fanged mouth hanging open, and what looked to be the roll-cylinder for a player piano attached to the base by a series of awkward gears.

  Shelved around it were all manner of battle sabers and rifles, with combat medals hanging from barrels or blades. Military tunics of every continent, some bloodstained, lay alongside the weapons, name tags on each.

  Sara shoved crates of letters and family photographs aside to get to the device before unfolding the pressed tin from the billfold, the hinged pieces dangling as a strip that fit perfectly around the cylinder.

  She wound a key, tightening springs. Rod-and-gear works clicked over the tin strip as the cylinder turned, each ridge and indentation on the map sections triggering a mechanism, just as punch-holes in a player piano’s music roll brought a note.

  In the box, a mariner’s chart of the Atlantic Ocean popped up behind the glass, with paper harpies swooping in front of it on thin wires like a puppeteer’s strings, and tearing apart a miniature freighter sailing the box’s bottom edge. The intricate, animated spectacle fascinated Sara, the tiniest details of the attacks all described and noted.

  The harpies froze, wings paralyzed, as the Kraken’s mouth dropped open, a paper tongue lolling out across the top of the Device, the exact latitude and longitude of each “Monster Ship Sinking” printed across it. And the death tolls.

  Sara ripped the tongue away.

  * * *

  The waves rolling from the Humpback whale crashed against the Nautilus, the motion of its tons of animal weight churning the water into a tempest as it propelled itself easily with large pectoral fins. The whale cried out its high-pitched music before chopping the ocean, playfully diving, then coming back.

  Making fifteen knots, the Nautilus cruised the surface of the Atlantic, splitting the calm, the Humpback alongside, its length a match for the ship, its tail wider than the submarine’s stern. Turning onto its speckled belly scarred by failed harpoons, the whale dove again, swam under the hull, then powered to the surface on the other side of the bow, creating waves taller than the submarine, and spout-blasting water from two blowholes across the observation dome.

  Nemo was at command in the dome, the highest point on the bridge, making notes in a dog-eared journal on the whale’s movement and size, all beneath his own detailed sketches of a Baleen Humpback birthing a calf.

  He’d brought the Nautilus to this place, following his internal compass, to find the herd, and this calf that had grown into a cow. His admiring smile nearly split his face as the beast stayed with the submarine, emitting a cry like teasing laughter.

  “I dunno what you’re playing at, Cap,” Jess said, standing on the catwalk parallel to the engine control panels. “That thing’d crush us like a rotten egg.”

  “If that was its intention, but this species wants nothing more than to exist in harmony with the ocean,” Nemo said. “The lesson for us all, if only man were smart enough to learn.”

  “You have little faith,” Sara said.

  “My faith is that man will always do the wrong thing,” Nemo said, glancing at her and the Kraken’s paper tongue in her hand. “There was a whaler who could look at that creature and know instantly how much oil could be drawn from its head. What could be boiled down, and what the bones would bring. He’d have it to the last doll
ar, but could never see it as a perfect example of how to live on this earth. To be one with the sea.”

  Jess allowed, “Sounds like a man what knew his business.”

  Sara said, “A fool, without insight.”

  “Both. A typical example of corrupted priorities,” Nemo said, refining the sketch. “We will take a different tack, Miss Duncan. Something new to you, I’m sure. You entered the chamber?”

  “Instructions in Hindi didn’t help.”

  “I understood you to have a background in languages.”

  “I managed,” Sara said, unfolding the numbers and positions. “That ‘Flying Monster Box’ gave precise coordinates, every single attack on a foreign ship. A perfect record. It’s fantastic.”

  Nemo studied the Humpback. “Fantastical, you mean. Built by an illusionist who shared my feelings about war, joined my crew as a navigator. A citizen of Paris who became a citizen of the Nautilus, forever proud of his wild contraption. And you’re correct about its accuracy, but we’re not following those coordinates.”

  Sara said, “These are the attacks.”

  “According to a device fed information from a map fashioned by a government official. Those markings have nothing to do with the oceans, of how this world truly works. Look out there.”

  Sara watched the whale leaping ahead of the Nautilus, a graceful giant.

  Nemo said, “Tagged as a calf by Professor Arronax and myself more than five years ago, to track its migration. Arronax died, I was entombed, but the Humpback became a perfect creature. What we all wish we were.”

  He stepped to the helm. “They have amazing memories: recognizing the vibration of the Nautilus’ engines as our voice, our cry, and not the voice of an enemy. It’s no accident I brought us to these waters. This is the Humpback’s habitat. It’s returning home, and that’s where we need to be.”

  Sara said, “But the mission—”

  “Will be accomplished. My way. In concert with the ocean. The Humpback will be our guide, despite your expression of disbelief. I have belief in that beast.”

  Jess said, “Good God at the bar, I need a drink.”