series 01 03 “THE GHOSTS OF MERCURY”

by By Mark Michalowski

  Very soon, the tunnel they were traversing opened out into a splendid cavern, approximately sixty feet in diameter. The electric lights strung around one side of it threw long, branch-like shadows up and across the ceiling from irregularities and jutting rocks. For a moment, Nathanial thought they’d reached the cavern where Professor Fournier had been killed, but there was no sign of anything that looked like a rockfall.

  “Look up there!” Arnaud said, pointing two thirds of the way up the wall directly ahead.

  Nathanial squinted in the general direction that Arnaud had indicated. “What am I looking at?” he asked eventually, and Arnaud tutted and pointed again

  “Oh,” Nathanial said after a few seconds, wondering if he was still missing the point. “That reddish seam or vein or whatever you call it? That?”

  “Yes. Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

  “Red rocks? Mars is, apparently, covered with them. But they are still just rocks, or are your geologist’s eyes seeing something I’m not?”

  Arnaud rushed over to Lieutenant Palfreyman who was about to move on into the next section of tunnels. “Lieutenant! I have a request to make, if you would humour me for a moment.”

  Palfreyman regarded the animated Frenchman with a little suspicion. Understandably, thought Nathanial—he imagined that, to the soldiers here, the French were not exactly flavour of the month.

  Arnaud quickly explained his idea and after Palfreyman had gotten the nod from Nathanial, he strode over to a junction in the lighting.

  “What’s this about, then?” Nathanial asked.

  “Everyone keep your eyes on the wall,” Arnaud said loudly, pointing. “Just up there.”

  A couple of second later they were plunged into the most utter darkness Nathanial could recall experiencing. He forgot that he was supposed to be looking at the wall until Arnaud poked him in the back.

  “Look!” he hissed.

  For a moment, Nathanial could see nothing—but then, as if someone had turned a light on inside it, the red vein that Arnaud had pointed out glowed. And not evenly: patches of it flared brighter red and then faded, like dying embers, whilst other parts of it—parts further round the cavern wall that Nathanial had not noticed while the lights had been on—took up the glow before fading themselves. Even more peculiar, there were other, isolated patches of the same glow scattered around the walls, disconnected from the main one. And as the lights came back on, Nathanial could see that parts of the seam were still brighter than they had been before. Five seconds later, the rocks had all faded back to nothing.

  “C’est incroyable!”whispered Arnaud, his eyes wide in wonder. “Did you see that?”

  “I think we all did,” Nathanial replied dryly. “Luminous red rock, yes?”

  Arnaud shook his head sadly, but his eyes were smiling. “Oh, mon ami, it is more than simply red luminous rock—did you not see how the light changed? How it grew and then faded?”

  Nathanial caught the hint of a chuckle from one or two of Palfreyman’s men, which annoyed him more than he might have anticipated. “Well, yes, but I think I must be missing the significance of it, I’m afraid, Arnaud.”

  Palfreyman started to move everyone on, clearly even less impressed with Arnaud’s little light show than Nathanial had been.

  “Tch!” Arnaud said with a shake of the head. “The significance you miss is that I have never heard of minerals that absorb light and then hold it for so long before they release it again. And did you see the way in which the light appeared to be moving within the rock?”

  Nathanial nodded, conceding Arnaud’s point. “You think that’s significant, then?”

  Arnaud shrugged. “Significant, I cannot say. But unusual, yes—and most certainly fascinating.”

  “Maybe they’d name it after you, then—‘Fontainite’. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Fame and fortune might yet be yours.”

  Arnaud made a dismissive noise behind him as they moved into the next section of tunnel, their feet splashing in the shallow pools of water. “Fame and fortune be damned,” he said. “I do not think I have the passion for them—just for science and for the discovery of new things.” He paused, furrowed his brow, and then winked at Nathanial. “Although you are right: Fontainite does have the good ring to it, does it not?”

  4.

  They reached their destination sooner than Nathanial had expected—he’d lost track of how long they’d already been underground and unlike Arnaud, who seemed to find something fascinating or noteworthy every few dozen yards, the allure of rock for him had vanished long, long ago.

  The cavern was even bigger than the previous one—Nathanial estimated it at over two hundred feet in diameter, making it twice the size of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. It was, indeed, an impressive natural phenomenon. Although not perfectly hemispherical, it came close, and for a moment, Nathanial felt quite awed. The symmetry of it was only spoiled by what, indeed, looked like “boils”—inward eruptions of sparkling crystalline deposits, blooming from the walls. At a quick estimate, there were about twenty five of them, some larger than others, some poking out into the cavern, others barely intruding into the vast space at all.

  Unlike the remarkable uniformity of the cavern itself—the boils notwithstanding—the ground beneath his feet was simply a chaotic mess. Piles of rock and rubble were everywhere, making it hard to distinguish where the floor ended and the walls began. At the far side of the cavern, Palfreyman’s men were assembling around a particularly large pile of debris. Above it in the wall there was a shallow, fractured concavity, glittering fragments protruding from the edges. This was clearly the outcropping that had killed Professor Fournier—or, at least, its remains.

  At his side, Arnaud gave a little sigh. “Of all the places that Professor Fournier could have died,” he whispered, as if reading Nathanial’s mind, “I think she would have been pleased that it was here. Although obviously,” he added, “I am sure she would have preferred not to have died at all.”

  “It comes to us all,” Nathanial said quietly, watching the soldiers scampering around the rocks under which the professor’s body lay, like insects or rats. “What do we do?” he asked Arnaud. “I feel a little superfluous here, but I’m not sure that we wouldn’t simply be getting in their way. And it would seem a little disrespectful to, well…to do anything.”

  They stood in awkward silence for a few moments as Palfreyman directed his men. But it quickly became clear that something unexpected had been discovered. There was much gesticulating and scratching of heads, and eventually the lieutenant beckoned them over.

  “Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”

  “You might say that, sir, yes. Doctor Fontaine—you’re the expert on rocks and all that business, aren’t you?”

  “Yes—why?”

  “Come and have a look at this.”

  Arnaud followed him back to the rest of the men, Nathanial bringing up the rear. The crowd of men parted as they arrived and Palfreyman indicated for Arnaud to take a look.

  “I am afraid I do not understand,” he said, kneeling down. It was only when he tried to move a piece of rock that Nathanial realised the problem. “It is stuck,” Arnaud said simply, tugging at the fist-sized stone. He tried another. And another.

  “It’s like they’ve been cemented into place,” Palfreyman said to Nathanial. “We managed to shift a lot of the outer stuff, but…” He shook his head.

  Arnaud asked for a lamp and held it close to Professor Fournier’s burial mound. He poked and prodded for a few seconds as everyone stood in silent expectation, before asking for a small hammer.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Nathanial asked.

  If Arnaud even heard him, he gave no sign of it, and began to delicately chip away at the rock until it came free in his hand. He held it out for them to see. “As the lieutenant says, it is as though they’ve been cemented together. But not with any cement I have ever seen before.” He turned the rock over i
n his hands, its surface scabbily encrusted with glittering, glassy shards.

  “You know,” said Nathanial, “I might be wrong, but doesn’t that remind you of—”

  “The crystal plates!” Arnaud finished triumphantly. “Yes, yes! Of course!”

  “The what, sir?” asked Palfreyman

  “The crystal plates that Professor Fournier had been investigating.” Arnaud gestured up at the domed ceiling of the cavern, pointing out the boils that Nathanial had noticed before. “Those.”

  “That’s hardly surprising though, sir, if you don’t mind my saying. The professor was hacking at one of them when it came down on her head.”

  “Of course, of course—but in that case, surely this should simply be a pile of loose rocks and crystals.”

  Nathanial was ahead of Palfreyman. “You’re saying that the crystals have somehow become glued together?”

  Arnaud reached out with the tip of his boot and poked at the mound. “One might expect metamorphic rocks to do such a thing, yes, but only with immense pressures and temperatures, and over periods of time much longer than the few weeks that we are seeing here.”

  Palfreyman took a breath. “Well, that’s as maybe, sir. But the professor’s body is still under all of that, and Colonel Shawbridge will have my liver on a plate if we don’t take it back above ground.” He gestured to his men. “Looks like we’re going to need the hammers and picks after all, lads.”

  Arnaud and Nathanial stood back as the soldiers set about chipping away at the rocky cocoon in which Professor Fournier’s body lay.

  “Sorry about this,” Palfreyman said to the two scientists. “Hope you didn’t have any plans for lunch. Looks like we might be here longer than we expected.”

  5.

  Despite the apparently gargantuan task, the soldiers worked surprisingly quickly to chip away the matrix of rock and crystal. Nathanial began to feel hungry, and wished he’d had breakfast. “What time is it?” he asked Arnaud as he picked up and dusted off a few samples of rock—no doubt to take back with him.

  “A quarter before nine.”

  Nathanial’s heart sank a little: he felt sure it was closer to lunchtime than that. Perhaps the light—or lack of it—was somehow confusing his body about what time it actually was. His mind was taken off the grumbling of his stomach by the slightly macabre discovery of the toe of a stout walking boot, protruding from the rubble.

  “We’ve found her, sir,” a soldier said to Palfreyman.

  “Good man—now remember, no one expects this to be pretty. But if the old girl’s as cemented in as I reckon she’s going to be…be as careful as you can, but we’re taking her back, whatever state she’s in.”

  Nathanial and Arnaud watched in silence as the men chipped away at the rock and crystal that encased her, revealing first of all the leg to which the boot belonged.

  Not quite sure what he’d been expecting, Nathanial was fascinated to see that not only had the crystals grown around her body, but also, it seemed to him, into it. Fortunately for the men charged with excavating her body, what Nathanial thought of as intrusions were fairly delicate and brittle, and broke away cleanly. He hated to imagine the outcome if they hadn’t done.

  “Does she have family?” Nathanial asked Arnaud.

  “I believe she has a sister, somewhere in the south of France. She didn’t speak much of her. She was my lecturer for two years,” Arnaud said, turning away from watching her body being chiselled out. “We became friends. She would throw dinner parties…” He smiled somewhat sadly at the memory. “Such dinner parties! She knew a most remarkable range of people—most of them were totally crazy, wild people. What is the word you English have? Bohemian?”

  Nathanial nodded.

  “She loved poetry and was always finding some new poem to read out to us. We sat around on the floor of her apartment, drinking and smoking and listening.” Arnaud gave a sigh. “We lost touch a little when I left, but she used to send me copies of her research papers and cards at Christmas. I had no idea she was here until I received a telegram asking me to go to the British Consulate in Paris.”

  “And that’s when they invited you to come to Mercury?”

  Arnaud nodded. “And of course, I could not turn down such an opportunity, could I? To explore the geology of a whole new world!”

  “And what about your employers? I can’t imagine they took kindly to you having to break off whatever studies you were engaged in.”

  “Oh, they were fine,” Arnaud said dismissively. “Waiters are easy to find.”

  “Waiters? You were a waiter?”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing, Nathanial. I loved being a waiter—you meet the most interesting people, you know. And the free drinks, of course.”

  “But I thought you were a geologist.”

  “And so I am, but after the war, there were not so much in the funds for the research, you know. Oh, things are getting better, yes—and with this under my trousers, as you say, I think I may be more in demand when I return than when I left.”

  “I should say!” agreed Nathanial, finding Arnaud’s mistake funny enough to let it go uncorrected. “There aren’t a lot of people that have explored the bowels of alien worlds—and even fewer that had explored this particular one. You’ll be turning down offers left, right and centre when you get back, you know. Perhaps they’ll keep you on here for a while. I’m sure there’s a lot more to be examined and discovered—Fontainite, for starters.”

  Arnaud lifted a hefty chunk of rock from the floor in which were embedded several hexagonal crystals, smaller versions of the plates that Professor Fournier had been collecting. “Indeed,” he agreed. “The more we discover about them, the stranger they become. As with everything.”

  “Surely you have that the wrong way around,” Nathanial said. “The more we discover about things, the less strange they become.”

  “But the more we discover,” said Arnaud with a cryptically raised eyebrow, “the more we learn how little we truly know, non?”

  “You really have missed your calling, you know,” laughed Nathanial. “If you don’t make it as a geologist, I’m sure you’d make an excellent philosopher!”

  Arnaud shrugged. “I am French. It is in the blood.” He nodded towards where the soldiers were removing the last fragments of rock and crystal from Professor Fournier’s body. “She would have understood.”

  There was a tremor in his voice that, unaccountably, made Nathanial want to comfort him; but he didn’t have the words. Annabelle would have known what to say, what to do. He just stood there feeling inadequate and awkward—before reaching out and squeezing Arnaud’s shoulder. The Frenchman placed his hand on the top of Nathanial’s.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  6.

  Professor Fournier’s body was in better condition than Nathanial had expected. Most of her right hand side had been crushed almost beyond recognition, and her thorax bore the indentations of the rocks that had killed her. The stretcher was unfurled and the corpse gently placed on it and covered with a blanket.

  “Sorry that took so long,” said Lieutenant Palfreyman, wiping his sweaty face with a handkerchief.

  “Not at all,” Nathanial insisted. “I just wish we could have been of more practical assistance.”

  “Don’t you worry about it, sir. That’s what we’re paid for. We’ll be getting back now, if that’s all right.”

  In subdued silence, they began the journey back up to the surface.

  Chapter Six

  “In Which the Body Is Examined”

  1.

  When Annabelle finally dragged herself out of bed and went in search of Nathanial to tell him about her visitation, she was somewhat annoyed to discover, from one of the soldiers, that Nathanial and Arnaud had gone underground with the men charged with recovering Professor Fournier’s body. Whilst a trek through tunnels in search of a corpse might not have been quite how she would have chosen to spend her morning, it would have been ni
ce to have been asked. And there was something vaguely disturbing about the fact that she’d just been talking with the professor’s ghost.

  Since she and Nathanial had arrived, it felt like they’d barely spent any time together. And it felt much longer than a single day, to boot. She could hardly complain, though—she had been the one who’d wanted to pay Uncle Ernest a visit, and Mercury was hardly the most exciting planet they’d visited. It was understandable, she thought as she went in search of breakfast, that Nathanial would want to find something to entertain himself. But still…there was something more than a little gruesome about where he was now.

  Uncle Ernest was nowhere to be found, and Iris was initially less than helpful on the matter, suggesting that he had a lot of important duties to which he must attend, and that she’d pass on a message to him upon his return.

  “I wonder if you could tell me where I might find some breakfast, then?” Annabelle asked. “Ridiculous though it sounds, I haven’t eaten since I’ve arrived. And yet, I’m not particularly hungry. How strange, don’t you think?”

  Iris seemed to soften at this. “Not at all, Miss Somerset—I’ve said as much to the colonel, but he just dismisses it. There’s something queer about this place, you know. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I used to eat like a horse before I came here. And now…” She shook her head. “I pick at my meals like a sparrow. The soldiers are the same.”

  Annabelle looked Iris up and down, hoping her face was painted with disbelief. “But you have a gorgeous figure, Iris—I can’t believe you ever ate like a horse, as you put it.”

  “That’s very kind of you to say so, but I’ve lost nearly twenty pounds since I came here.”

  “A rather drastic way to diet, isn’t it?”

  For the first time, Annabelle saw Iris smile, and remembered that behind the forbidding mask, she was human after all.

  “You know,” said Annabelle, “when we arrived yesterday, this place seemed almost enchanting: the balmy weather, the sky…” She gave a little sigh. “But now I’m not so sure. There’s something a little oppressive about it. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m beginning to wonder whether it isn’t some sort of malaise…something about the place.”