Nathanial tried it on and found it surprisingly comfortable. On Earth, he suspected, the increased gravity would have made it tiresome, but here, it had as little weight as a bowler. Lieutenant Palfreyman—the young soldier that had been assigned to help them out when they’d arrived—appeared, and the casual, chatty soldiers stubbed out their cigarettes and stood to attention.
“Morning, Professor Stone,” said Palfreyman. “You coming with us then?” He indicated Nathanial’s helmet.
“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant. Doctor Fontaine will be coming too—he’s down on the beach waiting for us.”
Palfreyman nodded and turned to his men. “Right you lot—let’s get to work. And bring along a spare helmet for Fontaine.”
Leading the way, Palfreyman headed off, the others in a neat line behind him, like well-behaved school children. Nathanial brought up the rear, feeling very much like the new boy in class. Within a couple of minutes, they were at the edge of the compound, looking out onto the World River.
He estimated its width at about a tenth of a mile—perhaps two thirds of the width of the Thames. So it was by no means the widest river Nathanial had ever seen; but regardless of width, the fact that it was nine and a half thousand miles long and looped back on itself, like a snake eating its own tail, made it worthy of a few moments’ contemplation. It rushed by, its sound a gentle susurration. In the dim light, its surface was almost featureless—but occasional flashes of pinkish silver showed, reflected from the sky above. Palfreyman was leading them along the edge to where a narrow, rocky path zig-zagged down, about fifty yards, to what was obviously the bathing beach. Nathanial squinted and spotted the tiny figure of Arnaud, sitting on a little wooden jetty to which three small boats were tied. He waved cheerily up at them. It took nearly ten minutes to negotiate the rough path down, and the absence of any handrail made Nathanial a little queasy. He tried to avoid looking down at the precipitous drop, instead keeping his eyes fixed on the soldier in front of him. Not soon enough for Nathanial they were down and Lieutenant Palfreyman went to talk to Arnaud while the soldiers chatted and checked over their equipment.
“No disrespect, sir,” said the soldier who’d given him the helmet, suddenly at his side, “but you do know that this might not be pleasant?”
“Don’t worry, it can be no worse than seeing a giant ant sever the head off a Russian soldier.”
“Ah, right,” said the soldier awkwardly. “Very good, sir, just thought I’d mention it. From what Corporal Heath said, she’s likely to be pretty mangled up.”
Nathanial nodded and threw a glance at the stretcher as Arnaud and Palfreyman returned to the group.
“Remember lads,” said the lieutenant as Nathanial watched Arnaud trying on his own helmet at a variety of jaunty—and, frankly, silly—angles. “We have a couple of VIPs with us this morning. The safety of Professor Stone and Doctor Fontaine comes above all other considerations, right? Any sign of things getting dodgy in there, get these two out pronto.”
Again, he led the way, followed by the soldiers with Nathanial and Arnaud bringing up the rear.
“They’ve been reminding me that Professor Fournier’s body might not be a very pretty sight,” Nathanial whispered. “Have you seen many bodies before?”
“Not in the condition that the professor is likely to be in, no,” Arnaud answered, pulling a face. “My mother died peacefully in her sleep and my father, he still lives. I am hoping this will not be too awful.”
“Don’t worry,” Nathanial assured him as they headed down the beach and into the shelter of the rock wall where another narrow path took them along the bank of the river. “Better men than you have found these things a bit much to take. No one will blame you if…you know….”
“Thank you, mon ami. I am expecting it will not be as bad as that, but it is impossible to say until you are faced with it. You have seen much of this kind of thing?”
Nathanial sighed. “Too much, I’m afraid,” he said, reminded of the show O’Rourke had put on for them on Venus. “I fear that I am becoming somewhat inured to death.”
“Inured?”
“Accustomed—hardened you might even say.”
“But that is a good thing, is it not? Death is a part of life, a natural consequence of living. It comes to us all, I suppose, in the end. It is not hardening, surely—just a realisation that none of us can escape it. Unless,” Arnaud added mock-spookily, “you believe the ghosts are really the souls of the dead. In which case, none of us really dies, do we?”
“I take it from your tone that you don’t believe that, then?”
The Frenchman shrugged. “I am not a believer, no—but as a scientist, I like to keep my mind open. The last few years have shown us that there are things that we would previously have dismissed as fantasy and fiction. Who knows what more wonders lie ahead of us? Perhaps we shall discover that the soul itself has a rational explanation.”
“Careful now!” called Palfreyman suddenly. “This path’s a bit of a tricky bugger, and if you fall in the water, there’s more than a few beasties in there that might come to take a look at you. And even if they don’t, try not to get it in your mouth—it’s full of zinc and tin and lead and won’t do much for your digestion.”
“Never mind all that,” Nathanial whispered to Arnaud. “Are these beasties dangerous?”
“Not so much. If you fall in, just…” He waved his arms around madly, almost unbalancing in the process. Nathanial pulled him back by his collar. “They will leave you alone.”
“Well that’s something.”
“Unless they eat you. of course.”
“Now you’re just trying to scare me.”
“For a Britishman,” laughed Arnaud as they began to negotiate the path, keeping their backs to the cliff wall, “you scare very easily.”
“I didn’t say,” Nathanial said pointedly, “that you were succeeding in scaring me.”
“Touché!” laughed Arnaud, giving him a gentle prod in the side. “Now move—we’re getting left behind.”
6.
Annabelle suddenly realised that she wasn’t alone.
Sitting bolt upright in bed, her heart thumping madly, she looked to the foot of the bed where the silhouette of a figure showed black against the almost-black of the rest of the room. Automatically, she reached out to turn on the light.
“No,” said a woman’s voice. “Please, if you do not mind, not the light.”
There was an accent to the woman’s voice, and it only took Annabelle a few moments to place it: French.
“Why not?” she asked cautiously, withdrawing her hand.
“The sight of me may distress you somewhat, mademoiselle.”
Assuming that the station wasn’t staffed with that many Frenchmen, Annabelle hazarded a guess as to who this woman was. “You’re Professor Fournier, aren’t you?” she said.
The woman gave a little laugh. “You are a very perceptive young woman. Yes, I am Professor Fournier—although sometimes, I’m not completely sure. But please call me Maria.”
“Why…why are you here?” Annabelle paused and then, her mouth dry, she asked: “‘Do you know what happened to you?”
“I died, didn’t I?”
Annabelle thought that honesty was the best policy. “I’m sorry, yes, you did.”
“It comes to us all, does it not? Only I did not expect it to come to me so soon. And yet…here I am.” The ghost suddenly shimmered into near invisibility and then stabilised again. “I am not practised at this,” she said, as if by way of apology.
“At being a ghost?”
“If that is what I am, yes. And what else could I be?” Again she flickered—and vanished, to instantly reappear a few feet to the left of where she had been standing. “I feel…incomplete,” she stated flatly after a few seconds. “Does that make any sense?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t, really, no—none of this makes any sense. What do you know of the other ghosts?”
“The other
ghosts?” echoed the professor. “There are others?”
“There have been lots of sightings. I saw one myself, briefly, earlier on.”
“Another?” Fournier whispered, the previous monotone of her voice modulated by an edge of curiosity. “Like me?”
“It was hard to tell,” Annabelle admitted. “I only saw it for a few seconds and it was less clear than you are, less distinct. And it was a man.”
There was a gentle intake of breath from the ghost—and Annabelle wondered, briefly, how a ghost could breathe or why it would even need to.
“These other ghosts,” the Frenchwoman said. “They are like…like me?”
Annabelle realised that the poor woman was confused and desperately trying to make sense of what had happened to her, and wished with all her heart that she could reassure her or tell her something that might help. But she was as much in the dark as Fournier.
“I’m sorry, I honestly couldn’t say. But none of them have spoken like you are speaking to me—which is strange, don’t you think?”
The ghost didn’t answer—instead, she flickered into near invisibility again. “Something is wrong,” she said when at last she’d regained her previous opacity.
There was a pause and Annabelle feared that Professor Fournier was about to disappear, but she suddenly gave a little exclamation—perhaps of alarm, perhaps surprise. “Oh!”
Annabelle sat up in her bed. “What? What’s wrong?”
Professor Fournier pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh, mon Dieu! It has suddenly come to me!”
“What has?”
“So very strange…” Her voice dropped to a whisper that Annabelle could barely hear. “So very, very strange. It scares me you know. Its thoughts scare me. I remember now. It doesn’t think like we do, you know.” Annabelle wasn’t following this at all: one minute the ghost was talking about the other ghosts, and the next it seemed like she was talking about something completely different. Maria leaned forwards, lowering her voice again like she was afraid of being overheard. “Its thoughts are so deep and dark, my dear. Be careful, please. It has such plans…” She paused and then continued. “And, très étrange…there is a poem—a line in a poem that confuses it. My favourite. It has read it through me and I think it’s scared of it. Can you imagine that? Being scared of a line in a poem?” She shook her head as if in sorrow.
“Which poem?” asked Annabelle in a whisper.
But Professor Fourier just gave a little jolt, as if someone had prodded her. In the darkness, she glanced around. “There’s someone else here,” she said sharply. “I can feel them.”
Annabelle peered into the gloom, unable to make out anything other than the ghost of the professor. “Here? In my room?”
But the professor didn’t answer. Instead, she gasped, threw back her head and shimmered—and let out a little cry before she disappeared completely.
Annabelle sat, shivering, in bed, staring at the chair and almost willing the ghost to come back. For a full two minutes she stayed like that, afraid that if she took her eyes off the chair she might miss her return. But of the ghost herself and the “someone else” that she had mentioned, there was no further sign.
Annabelle glanced at the clock beside the bed, and was horrified to discover that it was almost a quarter after nine. Had it simply been a dream? Was she falling under the spell of Mercury? Or was she actually losing her mind?
Chapter Five
“In Which Nathanial and Arnaud Descend into the Planet”
1.
“Under the river?” said Nathanial with some alarm as they paused again and Palfreyman explained the route ahead to the two scientists. “Is it safe? I mean, after the rockfall, you’re sure it’s not all going to come down on our heads?”
“Perfectly safe, sir, don’t you worry. The lads have been in there and shored up any sections that look dodgy. It’s only when we get to the cavern that we might need to be careful. Getting there, though, is a bit of a trek—don’t worry, we’re not going all the way to the other side of the river. The caverns start about three quarters of the way across and continue until well on the Bright Side. Normally, it’s only a half hour trip. But because you two gentlemen are along, and because we want to be sure it’s not going to fall in on us, I’d reckon an hour or so.”
Palfreyman went to have words with his men—a final pep talk. Nathanial assumed that most of the soldiers would have encountered grisly deaths before, but a couple of them looked too young to have done much military service. He was constantly amazed at how adaptable mankind was—one minute fighting on the fields of Europe and Africa, and then next transported to an alien world and encountering creatures out of its worst nightmares. He felt a little flush of pride—and instantly became a bit emotional.
“You okay?” asked Arnaud, sensing that Nathanial wasn’t quite with him.
“I’m fine—just thinking about how we’ve managed to take all of this—Mars, Luna, Venus, everything—in our stride. You forget what a big thing it is for ordinary men and then you see them here, acting like it’s just another day for them.” He turned to Arnaud as a thought struck him. “Do you think that perhaps we should have invited Annabelle?”
He felt a little shameful for not having considered whether Annabelle would have wanted to accompany them. He answered his own question before Arnaud had chance to: “I’m sure she has much more interesting things to be doing than crawling through tunnels and dragging bodies out. But all the same, I expect she’ll be livid that we didn’t ask her. What time is it, by the way?”
“Almost eight. And if it is not an impertinent question,” Arnaud added awkwardly, “and you know how we French are for the impertinence, are you and she…” He wiggled his fingers vaguely. “Romantically attached?”
“Me and Annabelle?” Nathanial laughed. “Oh no—we’re just very good friends, travelling companions. Her uncle, her real uncle of course, Doctor Cyrus Grant tasked me with keeping her safe, although I’m not entirely sure I am doing a sterling job at that… But no, she’s my ward, that’s all. Not,” he added hastily lest Arnaud misunderstand, “that I consider that inadequate. Not at all. Friendship is the most wonderful thing.”
Arnaud raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“What?” sputtered Nathanial, feeling his face redden.
“Nothing, Nathanial. If that is what you say then that is what must be true.”
“Annabelle is a perfectly respectable woman.”
“And you are a perfectly respectable gentleman. But the heart takes no heed of respectability, does it? It wants what it wants and it goes where it goes. And we are powerless but to follow where it takes us.”
Nathanial shook his head in exasperation. “You may believe that, but some of us have more self-control than to let our hearts be dragged by the scruff of the neck hither and thither.” The soldiers were setting off again. “Come on—they’ll go without us!”
And, happy to have brought that little conversation to a conclusion, Nathanial turned around and headed briskly towards where the last of the soldiers had just vanished into the cliff face.
The ceiling was uncomfortably low, but the floor was relatively flat, although wet and slippery, but Nathanial’s boots seemed to do a good enough job of preventing him from falling on his behind—and for that, he gave silent thanks. After about twenty yards, he noticed a colossal generator, sputtering and puttering to itself, in a niche in the tunnel wall, jetting out clouds of oily blue smoke, powering the electric lights strung up, from then on. The tunnel turned to the left and became steeper. Fortunately, it also became higher. A sombre silence had descended on the party—perhaps, thought Nathanial, the realisation of what they were actually going down there to do was sinking in….
2.
“Look at this!” exclaimed Arnaud suddenly, making Nathanial—and the nearest soldier, a Sikh called Khan—jump. The geologist rushed over to the wall of the tunnel and traced a metallic vein with the tips of his fingers. “If I am not mist
aken, it looks like a very high quality vein of cassiterite. Tin oxide.”
“And that’s good, is it? But can’t they get all the pure tin they want from the Bright Side?”
“Mais oui, but I had no idea that there were such rich seams of it right beneath our feet. I wonder if Professor Fournier knew of this…” Arnaud gave a snort and a chuckle. “Of course she did—she was a geologist sans pareil…”
“Is that a great discovery, then?” Nathanial asked, indulging him in his excitement as they continued their passage.
“I have no idea,” Arnaud laughed. “Some small discoveries remain small until the day they are forgotten. And some small discoveries only become huge in hindsight.”
“But surely the effort of digging all the way down here and carting tons of rubble back up for processing wouldn’t be commercially viable, would it?”
“I am not so sure,” Arnaud said. “Getting it from the Bright Side is more difficult than people imagine—the temperatures there are formidable. Lead’s melting point,” Arnaud continued eagerly, clearly pleased to be on the firm ground of metals and melting points, “is a little over six hundred degrees; but tin is, I think, only about four hundred and fifty. I shall mention this to Colonel Shawbridge when we return. It may of no significance, but I will let him be the judge.”
They moved on, picking up pace a little until they reached the bottom of the sloping tunnel where it opened out a little into a small cavern.
“From here on, we’re going to be under the river, so you don’t be alarmed if you get a bit wet. Nothing to worry about but as you might imagine, a bit of water finds its way down here,” called Lieutenant Palfreyman, his voice echoing coldly from the rock walls.
The thought of not only being underneath the river, but being constantly reminded of the fact by the water dripping from the roof made Nathanial wonder why no one had thought of bringing umbrellas.
3.
The journey under the World River itself was, in reality, less unpleasant than Nathanial had feared; but Arnaud’s telling of a story about some potholers that he’d heard about—getting trapped in water-flooded caverns back on Earth—was a sorely misjudged attempt at levity. Nathanial had to tell him to shut up.
series 01 03 “THE GHOSTS OF MERCURY” Page 6