Nemo Rising

by C. Courtney Joyner

  Sara took the blue diamond from her shirt, held it up between her thumb and forefinger.

  * * *

  The security blades from the Vulcania cases were recessed, and Sara stood by the laboratory hatchway, breath held, quiet, as Nemo opened the case and removed a tray of specialty tools. He replaced the case under the examination table where the sea spider’s tank rested, alongside surgical and dental instruments.

  Nemo laid out the tools specially forged in Vulcania, saying, “It’s wise you didn’t speak, Miss Duncan.”

  “Remember, I’ve seen those hidden blades spring out of the sides and top. Very clever, Captain.”

  Nemo said, “A Moorish design, several hundred years old, but suited for our use. Your assistance, here.”

  She moved to the sea spider, approaching as if it were about to leap from its tank where it floated.

  Nemo lifted the thing from water with surgical tongs, laying it on the examination table, its claws held tightly closed with vein clamps. Cloudy water streamed from its piston legs and hinged jaws, but it remained still. Mechanically frozen on the long, wooden table, stained with blood and dividing the lab in two.

  Sara watched Nemo in his worlds, the Victorian and the futuristic, performing a bizarre autopsy on a mechanical animal: a sea insect that wasn’t real.

  He pried the mandibles with a curved blade, exposing tubing inside. “That mouth construction is a tube and nozzle works, spraying acids of some kind. Brass and porcelain, very well crafted.”

  Sara looked over Nemo’s shoulder. “God, but for what purpose?”

  Nemo took a scalpel. “Here’s a way to find out,” he said and slit the thing’s belly. Whale oil bled from the cavity, along with a corrupted, liquid jelly, revealing a series of gears and servos attached to hair-thin rods and balanced flywheels within flywheels.

  Nemo said, “That’s your machine.”

  “This could have been engineered by you.”

  “No, this work might be beyond even my abilities.”

  Nemo pressed a servo with the scalpel’s edge, fully rotating a robotic eye from the side of its body, searching the room, and a claw to struggle against its clamp. Another servo, and the mandibles locked open.

  “These constructions, they’re the most delicate mechanicals I’ve ever encountered, superior to anything on the Nautilus. Remarkable.”

  Sara was now conscious of the living eyes in all the tanks surrounding, watching them, rotating on muscles and not mechanics. She was looking about the lab, from creature to creature, when she said, “So, you admire it.”

  “Respect, and I’d be a fool not to. These eyes actually transmit visual information, and it reacts automatically.”

  Sara said, “So it can think.”

  “It reacts, and surely better than a God-made crab.”

  Nemo scraped the shell of the thing with a jeweler’s saw, rubbing the shred between his fingers. “The works and legs are steel or brass, but the body’s something else. Near flexible, but like living tissue.”

  Sara said, “This thing scares me.”

  “Turn it.”

  Sara flipped the crab over, revealing the diamond-shaped opening, saying, “Is that the power conduit?”

  Nemo said, “I see no other sources.”

  “Then, here’s the power.”

  She dropped the blue diamond shard on the table, next to the spider, peering into the chest cavity as Nemo held it up, inserting the blue piece into its back. She knew it was a machine, formed like a living thing, but seeing its works, the oil-slimed interior, made her look away as if watching an amputation.

  Sara said, “The last time I was here, you were resurrecting a man.”

  “One of your exaggerations, but marginally appreciated by someone who doesn’t have a license to practice medicine. That was sea doctoring, Miss Duncan. This is mechanics,” Nemo said, placing the diamond. “A secure fit.”

  Gears clicked, then moved, teeth meshing. Turning the rods. The spider sprung to life, snapping its clamps and spraying the last of its acid from its jaws. Nemo pulled Sara away from the jet, the acid soaking the sides of an aquarium, melting the seals around the glass.

  The spider leapt from the table, legs propelling it to the other side of the lab.

  The aquarium tank burst, sending its fighting squids tumbling to the floor. Tentacles latched onto Sara, her arms, the things crawling up her body to her throat.

  Nemo pinned the spider with his boot, prying the diamond from its back. It scuttled for the hatchway, all eight legs collapsed. Gears and rods, slowing. A watch winding down. Stopped, its acid dripping.

  “Close your eyes!”

  Nemo called out, then showered the fighting squids with salt, bubbling their flesh, burning the soft underside of the tentacles, loosening their fierce grip. Nemo peeled them back, the suction cups pulling her skin, then giving way.

  “Did it draw blood?”

  Sara brushed her arms clean, felt her throat. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “All right, that poison they carry is not to fool with,” Nemo said. “Now, how does this mechanical draw energy from a diamond? Our own metal converter takes up a quarter of this ship. The technology is truly beyond my approach.”

  Sara wiped her face of salt and ink, Nemo’s mind and attention having completely shifted. “So what to do, admire that thing for its workmanship?”

  “This thing,” Nemo spit the word, “is going to answer every question that’s been asked, and a thousand others besides.”

  “By dissection, I hope.”

  “On the contrary. We’re going to make sure it’s in perfect running order.”

  Sara patted down the sucker marks reddening along her arms. “Why? You could build a thousand of those in your sleep.”

  Nemo said, “Flattery doesn’t obscure that you’re missing the larger issues. There’s purpose to this, amazing sophistication, and that’s what we have to discover. Your watch begins in less than ten minutes. All engines steady, at night speed.”

  Sara was at the hatchway. “Yes, Captain.”

  Nemo said, “Miss Duncan, you’re very capable, but you should never struggle with a Humboldt squid.”

  The red marks on Sara’s arms were worse. “Oh, really?”

  Nemo kicked the broken glass of the squid tank out of the way before cradling the sea spider with the tongs. “Only newborns, but they have tendencies, and fighting only made things worse. Those specimens will have to be replaced.”

  She watched Nemo, the Victorian side of the laboratory wide behind him, gently lay the mechanical, taking great care, on the examination table. Then set to work, surgical instruments in hand.

  He looked up and said, “Understand the nature of the animal, and you’ll know how to respond.”

  * * *

  Sara descended through the Nautilus decks, following the circular stairs to the bottom passageway and its steady, glowing hum of the power generator. She paused on the bottom step, one of many she had repaired and rebolted, to let her eyes adjust to the faint yellow haze in the dark.

  She peered into the machine’s view port at the gold conversion generator, the switches and systems she’d rewired. All of the work done—bringing the Nautilus back from its grave, saving the iron corpse while Nemo was rotting in a jail cell—was hers. Following her father’s plans, she repaired, and nursed, and healed, with rivets and torch throughout, always respecting the creation, even while improving it.

  This Nautilus was now as much the Duncans’, as anyone’s, but could never claim any part of it.

  Sara opened the hatch to the engine room, the turbine works all performing. She checked the rotation speed of the propellers, and their cooling. All was well, as she suspected, because she’d done work here also. A needle in a temperature gauge hesitated. Sara flicked its glass. It jumped, responding, and was right.

  She settled on an iron seat that folded down from the wall, a relic of the old Nautilus that she’d never removed. And she listened, t
o the engines, and their power. Sara didn’t cry, and wasn’t going to. She just sat alone, her fingers absently turning General Sigel’s poisoned ring on her left hand.

  32

  RESURRECTED

  The first capture was Cincinnati, leaping a low fence, legs outstretched, and Efrem holding on. The second was Efrem standing by the horses as they took water. The third, Efrem checking a saddle cinch.

  It was after that capture that he looked up and saw Mr. Horace standing, suddenly, in front of him by the corral fence.

  “Getting along well, are we, boy?”

  Efrem tightened the cinch, but kept his chin down while speaking. “Yes, sir. Very well.”

  Horace said, “The President asked me to check, make sure your duties were to your liking, even though you’re no longer in the telegraph room.”

  Efrem said, “Mr. Grant’s a fine a man, and I’m liking my new situation quite well.”

  “Should I report that?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Horace.”

  Horace stepped to the fence, offering one of the horses an apple core, saying, “Efrem, you’re very smart, and I’m rather fond of you. You’re the youngest on staff, and you’ve done better than the rest. That says something.”

  After a lens adjustment, this was the fourth capture.

  Efrem looked to Horace. “Sir?”

  “You have a friend in one of the most powerful men in the world. That’s quite a responsibility, for all of us.”

  Efrem nodded his agreement, trying to end Horace’s conversation and get the horses bedded down.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Horace,” he said, opening the corral gate and forcing Horace to step aside. “Like I said, Mr. Grant has been terrible good to me and my family.”

  “Did he give you a letter?”

  Efrem led a paint pony from the corral. “Yes, sir.”

  Horace said, “And what did he say to do with it?”

  “Give it to my grandma.”

  “And you did this?”

  The pony snorted, and Efrem said, “Yes, sir. I did.”

  Horace managed a wrinkled smile, and patted Efrem’s shoulder without letting his fingers touch him, saying, “You did the right thing, then. That’s what I had to check on, make sure of that, while the President’s away.”

  Efrem said, “Yes, sir. I’ve got the horses out three times a day, regular. Cincinatti, whenever he wants to run.”

  “Ah, very good,” Horace said before buttoning his coat against the chill and walking back toward the White House’s old war room. His stride, shoulders forward, and back bent, was the fifth capture.

  “Five pictures, and not a one worth a glass of green beer.”

  Lime was walking around the side of the stables, checking the film in his camera. “It’s too bloody dark, and that last one, you can practically see through him already.”

  Efrem stood at the large, open stable doors, holding the lead to the pony, and said, “Sir, if you mean Mr. Horace, he went back to the telegraph, I think.”

  Lime regarded Efrem. “You don’t know me, do you, Efrem?”

  “I’ve seen you, sir.”

  He held up his camera. “Photographer, and the President asked me to take some special pictures, if anyone started to bother you.”

  Efrem said, “Mr. Horace wasn’t no bother. I worked for him.”

  “What did he want?”

  Efrem led the pony to one of the stalls, hooves echoing on the clean concrete. “Just asked if I was liking my new job, is all.”

  Lime said, “Efrem, look at my tie.”

  Efrem turned, puzzled, then heard the small click from Lime’s tie clasp. “That’s fine wardrobe.”

  Lime said, “And I always wear it, so you’ll always know me. If there’s a problem, look for the brogues and forest greens.”

  He held up his camera. “Also, I’ll be watching, from all around. The General’s eyes, if you like, while he sails the skies.”

  “I’ve never had my photograph made. Could I have one for my grandmother?”

  “Family portraits aren’t a specialty, but I’m sure we’ll find something to please Grandma,” Lime said, rolling his eyes at the twelve-year-old. “My bloody God, you’re taller than I am.”

  Efrem smiled. “And supposed to get taller.”

  * * *

  Sara leaned into the bunk, mopping Fulmer’s brow and face with a wet cloth before adjusting his intravenous feed. Jess had jury-rigged a rum bottle and a piece of rubber tube to drip milk into Fulmer’s mouth so he wouldn’t have to sit in crew quarters with “the ape in the corner what wants to chop my head.”

  The Whaler was still there, machete across his knees, as Sara wrapped Fulmer’s blistered neck and chest with clean linen, and tied it off.

  She wiped Fulmer’s eyes clean, looked to the Whaler with, “My feeling is, you can’t understand, but just keep watch, all right?”

  He stared back, and nodded his head so slightly, the movement was almost invisible.

  Sara said, “That machete, you wouldn’t use it on me, would you?”

  The Whaler nodded his head the other way. No.

  * * *

  Bach’s Toccata and Fugue was a whisper that grew into a chorus, traveling the Nautilus from the organ pipes, through the passageways to every deck, and into the ocean. The crew gave a nod, and Jess rolled back on his bunk, laughing, passing the rum and gin to salute hearing it again.

  But the Toccata was part of the ship: the music as important as the tons of brass, iron, and glass that were the Nautilus’ shell, the sounds of the organ were its soul, and part of the legend, giving reporters one more thing to write about, and of course, they got it wrong.

  Bach wasn’t an obsession, but an experiment in the traveling of sound through water. Nemo found at the right temperature and depth, the lower, bass notes retained vibrations longer and traveled farther in the water, to the attention of whales and dolphins, who called back with their own tones and sea sounds.

  He’d begun communicating with them with music, trying all types, played through a speaker attached to the prow, but it was Bach’s classical sadness that made the underwater journey.

  The organ he played was a rescue from a bombed church in Slovenia, and the last thing on the Nautilus to be refurbished. The bench was threadbare, the keys stubborn, but Nemo’s playing was as sure as his control at the helm, even compensating for a dead key by combining two other notes for one. Even damaged, the pipes responded with strength and volume, surrounding him with his music, creating an island.

  The refrain accompanied Sara from the crew deck to the bridge. The bridge was dark, the ship’s running lights washing back through the dome, showing the instruments locked off to their course, the wheel turning automatically.

  The Phono’s mirrors spun at high speed, throwing silver darts as an image came into view, and Duncan’s voice was static from the speaker horn. His words were dim, a distant sound, but everything he said could be heard, and the expressions on his face, in pieces on the screen, could be read.

  “Sara, my sweet, is that you? At last?”

  Sara was close to the speaker horn. “Yes, Father, and I’m fine.”

  “Oh, God…”

  Sara said, “I hear something—where are you? In your office?”

  On the dirigible, Duncan looked to Grant, who gave his permission with the flick of cigar, for him to say, “We’re flying, dear. My dirigible design. Things have changed quite a bit, the dynamics of the mission, I mean.”

  Grant said, “We’ve got to speak to Nemo on that thing.”

  Bach was everywhere around Sara, and she cupped her ears when she spoke, eyes on the broken image of her smiling father. “I’ll fetch him, soon. But you’ll be pleased. We actually captured one of the sea creatures described. The monsters that sank the British cargo ship. One of the crew is on board with us, and we’ll get a statement, as well.”

  “Be cautious,” Duncan said. “But that’s wonderful-sounding news, dear.”

&n
bsp; “Nemo’s doing as he said he would.”

  “The hell he is.”

  Duncan’s face changed, as he was nudged aside by Grant, speaking directly to Sara. “You’re not following the routes, making it impossible for us to track any progress. Reports not made. Do you know what happened in Norfolk after you sailed? Do you comprehend it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It’s war, Miss Duncan.”

  With Bach playing, Sara chose her words. “The mission will be completed to your satisfaction, General.”

  “Too late,” Grant said. “It’s already gone to hell.”

  * * *

  Nemo held onto a G chord for several beats, inserting a Nautilus key in the shape of a starfish under the organ keyboard. He stood, and Bach continued, floridly, the organ keys depressing on their own as if a ghost were playing: his ship doing exactly as he needed it to do.

  Each note accompanied Nemo, every step from the library, through the Nautilus arteries, to his bridge, stepping through an access door he’d kept secret. Nemo stayed at the door, draped in corner shadows, as Sara continued into the Phono, to Grant.

  “Sir, we have the evidence of the claims in the reports, but not the reasons why. These creatures, these monsters, are real. Not what was imagined, but something created.”

  Grant said, “That’s a hell of a claim, Sara.”

  “The explanation is here, sir. In the ocean.”

  There was static from the horn, then Grant’s voice, quiet, almost beneath the electronic noise. “You recall your mission? What you are to do if I order it?”

  Sara nodded, without speaking.

  Grant’s face on the spinning mirror screen was larger now, intimate and fierce. “When I speak to these leaders, I have to have evidence in hand to stop a full-scale conflict. That’s the point. Give up your location, so Nemo can turn over what you’ve found, and I can present it. But this can’t be someone’s word alone, it’s already gone too far.”

  Sara said, “He might refuse. We’re bound for the site of another sinking, to get more information.”