series 01 03 “THE GHOSTS OF MERCURY”

by By Mark Michalowski

  Where could he go? Back to his own bungalow? To lie sleepless in the dark, fretting and worrying about how this whole trip seemed to have turned out?

  Damn it, no!

  With new resolve, Nathanial drew himself up. He knew where he needed to go.

  4.

  Heath walked her back to her bungalow in awkward silence. There seemed to be a lot of people around, she thought—couples, individuals and groups of people—heading away from the main square.

  “Sorry for getting a bit, you know, back there, miss,” Heath said eventually, clearly sensing the awkwardness as much as Annabelle. “It’s just…” His words dried up and he pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose noisily into it.

  “Don’t worry about it—you’ve had a terrible time over the last few weeks. Heaven only knows how I’d cope in your shoes.”

  He managed a crooked grin. “I must have sounded like a right loony, mustn’t I?”

  “Of course you didn’t.” She paused. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “What for?”

  “For not backing you up—back there with Reverend Lyden. I should have done.”

  Heath shook his head. “Don’t worry, miss, really. I reckon this is something I’ve got to sort out on my own.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what he meant, and he read her expression correctly.

  “I know you and Professor Stone—and the Frenchman—have your own views on that thing down there, and I respect ’em, I really do. But I was brought up proper, to know right from wrong. No offence meant, I’m sure you were too, miss. But my mum always told me that if you stand by and let summat evil happen, then you’re no better than the evil itself.”

  “I don’t…” said Annabelle, hesitantly. “What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t you worry yourself, miss. This is man’s work. You get off to bed, or go find that gentleman of yours. Everything’ll be fine. I’ll sort it all out.” And with a nod, Heath turned and vanished into the dark, leaving Annabelle with a very bad feeling.

  Chapter Ten

  “In Which Annabelle Discovers a Plot”

  1.

  He wasn’t normally a drinking man, but by God he needed a scotch. Shawbridge realised his hand was shaking as he poured a generous measure, the bottle clinking against the glass, and slumped into a chair in his quarters.

  Damn Stone! he thought. Damn him!

  What gave him the right to address everyone like that? What gave Stone the bloody right to humiliate him in from of his own staff? For a long, long moment he wished that he had the courage—or the cowardice—to go down to Esmeralda right now, get her fired up and just…go!

  His hand was still shaking as he downed the scotch and poured himself another.

  Everything had been fine until Annabelle had brought Stone here. Well, obviously not fine—but it was all in hand, it was all being managed. He still had the respect of everyone, and everything was going to turn out right. Of course it was. He hadn’t spent all those years in India and Africa without learning a thing or two, had he?

  The glass fell from his hand and shattered on the terracotta tiles as his ghost appeared suddenly at the far side of the room.

  “You!” he glared, pointing a shaking finger. “What the Hell are you, eh? You and the rest of them. You see what you’ve done?”

  The ghost just looked at him.

  “Nothing to say for yourself now? Ha! You weren’t shy earlier, were you?”

  Shawbridge kicked the broken glass aside with his boot and reached down into the cupboard to pull another one out and poured himself a double.

  “Still here?” he asked, turning round.

  “You seem distressed,” his ghost said, its tone annoyingly calm. “You don’t need to be, you know.”

  “And what would you know? You’re nothing—you’re…” Shawbridge waved dismissively with his glass, slopping scotch onto the floor.

  “I’m you,” replied the ghost. “Remember that. I know how you feel.”

  “And how do I feel, exactly? Eh?”

  “You feel like this whole situation is running out of control; you feel that you have lost the respect of your people here; you feel that your career is going to end in ignominy.”

  Shawbridge could only glare at the figure in front of him as something inside quietly began to crumble.

  “I can help,” the ghost said after a few seconds.

  “How? How the Hell can a ghost help me?”

  “Trust me. There’s something you should see.”

  2.

  “Arnaud! Arnaud! Wake up!”

  Nathanial pressed his ear to the Frenchman’s door and knocked again. “Come on, Arnaud,” he whispered under his breath.

  From inside there came the sound of something falling over, cursing in French, and then the sound of the door being unlocked. Arnaud stood there, bleary-eyed in only his pyjama bottoms.

  “What?” he muttered, and Nathanial could smell the cognac on his breath. He pushed past him without waiting to be invited in. “Come in,” Arnaud said. “Please.”

  The room was as messy as Nathanial had expected—plates and cups stacked along the top of the empty bookcase and dirty laundry strewn everywhere. Arnaud sagged back down onto the bed and tipped his head back, moaning.

  “What is the ti—?” he asked blearily, but Nathanial cut in.

  “Do you know what just happened out there? Do you?”

  With a sigh, Arnaud levered himself back up into a sitting position. “No, mon ami, but I imagine you are about to tell me, no?”

  “Ghosts, Arnaud. Dozens of them. Everywhere!”

  “What?”

  “And I’ve seen Shawbridge’s, too,” Nathanial added.

  Arnaud frowned and scratched his head. “Are you drunk?”

  “Shawbridge brought him to see me earlier, just after you’d gone.”

  “You are drunk.”

  “You’re not listening, Arnaud. Shawbridge brought his ghost to see me, and we chatted like it was the most normal thing in the world. And then Miss McConnon came to tell us that we were being invaded by ghosts, and then we went outside and—”

  Arnaud raised his hands. “Wait, wait, wait.” He gestured to the bookcase. “Get that bottle.” He leaned over the side of the bed and reappeared with two grimy glasses, blowing into them to clear the dust out.

  “Is that your answer to everything?” snapped Nathanial.

  “You have a better one?” Arnaud thrust the glasses towards Nathanial. “Pour!”

  Against his better judgment, Nathanial poured. And then drank. And then, at Arnaud’s insistence, poured again.

  “Right,” said Arnaud, pulling his legs up and sitting cross-legged on the bed, still shirtless. “Start from the beginning and tell me everything,” he said. “Possibly twice.”

  Fortunately, once was enough.

  “I think that was perhaps not a good move, you know, mon ami: the things you said to everyone in front of the colonel.”

  “I was trying to help, you idiot. Shawbridge was losing control.”

  “And now, thanks to you, he has recaptured it?” Arnaud raised an eyebrow.

  Nathanial slumped. “I suppose not, no,” he said quietly. “But that just means we have to work out what the dickens is going on.”

  “What the what?”

  Nathanial waved the question away. “Everyone else is running around terrified of these ghosts, or whatever they really are. We’re the only ones capable of getting to the bottom of this.”

  Arnaud gave a little drunken giggle at the word “bottom.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, man!” Nathanial snapped. This seemed to drag Arnaud round, and he sat up primly and pulled a sorry face that only made Nathanial laugh. “You,” he said, “are très fou!”

  Arnaud’s eyes widened. “See—you do speak French after all. But no,” he wagged a finger. “I am not mad. I am just a tiny bit of the drunk.”

  “Well,” said Nathanial firmly, heaving him
self out of the chair with not a little difficulty, “you’d better stop being a tiny bit of the drunk and sober yourself up. We’ve got work to do.”

  Arnaud gave a considered nod and got unsteadily to his feet. “Where are we going?” he asked, reaching for the door.

  Nathanial picked up a shirt from the back of a chair and threw it at Arnaud. “Until you’ve put some clothes on, we’re not going anywhere.”

  3.

  Annabelle let herself into her bungalow, freshened up, and decided that no matter how late it was, she had to see Nathanial. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. It felt like they had either been at loggerheads or in different places altogether for most of the time they’d been on Mercury, and she wanted to get the air cleared, to restore a little normality.

  But, once again, Nathanial wasn’t in his quarters. She tried Arnaud’s, but there was no answer. The only place she could imagine they might be was the laboratory.

  She’d almost reached the laboratory when she heard muttering and a crashing, splintering sound. Curious, she crept around the side of the building and saw three men forcing open the big wooden door to some sort of storage shed. She had no idea what it contained, but it was clear that they were up to no good. They looked around shiftily—and she recognised Corporal Heath.

  Her first thought was to go and find Uncle Ernest and tell him. But somehow that felt rather traitorous: she knew Heath had put a lot of trust in her, and if she reported him, she doubted that she’d ever win it back. No, she thought firmly. There’s only one thing to be done.

  Drawing herself up, she stepped out of the shadows and headed straight towards them.

  “What are you doing?” she asked imperiously.

  The poor soldier—who had been peering back inside the shed as she’d approached—almost jumped out of his skin. He clearly didn’t know what to do, so Annabelle just brushed him aside and entered the shed before he could muster the wits to stop her.

  By the light of a hand-held lamp, Corporal Heath and another man—a heavy-set fellow with arms the size of Annabelle’s torso—were levering open a wooden crate.

  “Corporal!” she barked, and both men started.

  “Miss Somerset!” said Heath, rushing over. “What you doing here?”

  “I heard you breaking in. What are you doing?”

  “I told you, miss, I’m going to sort it. Me and the lads. Have you heard?” He paused, his eyes both bright and dark at the same time. “There was ghosts everywhere this evening, all over the place. Me and you, we were with the chaplain, so we missed it. But at least twenty of the buggers, bold as brass.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Nothing much—just, y’know, appeared. Joe here says the colonel tried to calm everyone down but from what I heard it didn’t make much difference. His girl, Joan, saw her own ghost, too.”

  Annabelle couldn’t believe that she’d missed it all. She indicated the opened chests. “And what’s in there?”

  “Best you don’t know, miss.”

  “I’ll be the judge of what’s best for me to know,” she said. “Now tell me….”

  4.

  “No!” said Nathanial, snatching the bottle out of Arnaud’s hand and hiding it behind his back.

  “Pft!” Arnaud said sulkily. “You are no fun!”

  “We have work to do, remember—if you’re good, I might let you have a drink later.”

  Arnaud’s pout blossomed into a grin. “I am always good.”

  Nathanial raised a querulous eyebrow.

  They’d returned to the laboratory in the hope of going over all the rocks and bits and pieces of information they had, in the hope of putting them all together in some sort of “Eureka!” moment; but Nathanial’s head was pounding. He didn’t hold out much hope.

  “Right,” said Arnaud. “Where do we start?”

  Nathanial stood, hands on hips, and surveyed the room. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “What we must do is assemble everything that we know about everything. Lay the pieces of the puzzle on the table, so to speak, and see what picture appears, yes?”

  “It’s a plan,” conceded Nathanial. “So what do we have?”

  “First—Hermes.”

  “Hermes. Right. Hermes is some sort of entity that can project its thoughts, yes, and read ours to some degree? It’s been here for thousands of years and resides in these rocks—which we have already decided are like the brain cells of Hermes. And the ones around the professor must have grown in the weeks that she has been down there, so it must have some very usual properties.”

  “Like the time delay when light shines on it.”

  Nathanial nodded. And Hermes itself had said that it consisted of electronic and optical impulses. This was fitting together perfectly.

  Arnaud narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and rubbed his chin. “And if the professor’s ghost had never heard of Hermes, is it not madness to think that the crystal that grew around the professor is perhaps not connected to Hermes? Or under its control.”

  “Seems reasonable.” A thought occurred to Nathanial. “And you remember what Hermes said about copying Professor Fournier and what Annabelle said about the professor’s ghost and how she said something about ‘others are coming’? Well how’s this for an idea: the crystals aren’t just the means of copying: they are the copy. That’s why, when we broke up the stones to get at her body, she vanished from Annabelle’s room. And the ‘others’ she mentioned—I think she meant us. Me and you and the soldiers.”

  Arnaud nodded. “And the thing that the professor warned Annabelle about was Hermes, so there’s clearly some connection, even if it’s just a vague awareness of each other.”

  Nathanial slumped, realising that his next bit of the puzzle didn’t quite seem to fit the shape of the ones already down. “But what about the other ghosts? Colonel Shawbridge certainly wasn’t dead when I met his ghost. And he certainly wasn’t down in the cavern covered in crystals.”

  Arnaud’s mouth pursed up as he pondered. “Ah,” he said suddenly, a grin spreading across his face. “But who says the ghosts—the copies, yes?—have the need to be of the dead?”

  Nathanial wanted to hug Arnaud—all along, he’d been thinking that the ghosts had to be those of the deceased. Well, until he’d met Shawbridge’s, and then all the others out in the square.

  Arnaud was already thinking the same thing. “Shawbridge and the others you mentioned were not dead, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be copied.”

  “But how? None of them—as far as we know—have been near the cavern, much less embedded in crystal.”

  “Perhaps the actual, physical contact is not necessary. We have been assuming that because of the professor. But what if that was simply coincidence, eh? We know that Hermes can project its thoughts, yes? So is it not also likely that it can read thoughts at a distance, copy them into the crystal…?”

  “Like scribbling notes on someone in a notebook?” Nathanial suddenly remembered how Shawbridge’s ghost had described itself: like it was being sketched in. Nathanial told Arnaud.

  “C’est parfait,” he said.

  “But why are only some of the people here seeing ghosts? And why ghosts of themselves—apart from Annabelle, obviously?”

  “Because,” said Arnaud slowly, constructing his theory as he went, “the copies have some sort of connection to their living originals. Yes! That would make sense—if they are projecting their thoughts into the people’s heads to make them see and hear them, then obviously, they would find it easier with people whose minds were like theirs.”

  “Ah, but remember—I saw Shawbridge’s ghost, too—and all the others in the square.”

  “Perhaps they are simply getting stronger,” Arnaud suggested. “Getting the hang of—is that correct?—projecting themselves into the minds of others. You said yourself that the colonel’s ghost seemed much stronger while it was with you. And you said that this evening, everyone could see all the
ghosts.”

  “So you think that the copies—the ghosts—are stored in the rock seams that you saw, and that Hermes mentioned, along with itself. Remember—Shawbridge’s ghost hadn’t heard of Hermes, and Professor Fournier’s didn’t mention the name, even though she seemed to have a sense of something dangerous.”

  “Then Hermes must have some way of separating the minds stored inside him, so that they are not aware of him.”

  Nathanial wasn’t convinced—but he had to concede that they knew so little about the actual mechanism by which the copies were made, and how they were stored, that it was quite possible that Hermes had exactly that ability. “Hang on, though—the professor’s copy, we’ve established, was stored in the crystals around her. If she’d been stored somewhere inside Hermes itself, then she wouldn’t have vanished when we dug her out. And as far as I know, she hasn’t been seen since, has she?” Hot on the heels of that thought came another one. “How many ghosts have been seen? Twenty-something?”

  Arnaud nodded. “I think twenty five or so, yes.”

  Nathanial smiled and shook his head slowly. “Oh, Arnaud,” he said, mock patronisingly. “Dear, dear, Arnaud. What kind of a geologist are you, eh?”

  “At the moment, Nathanial, I am a very puzzled geologist.”

  Nathanial leaned over the table so that his face was just a few inches from Arnaud’s. “When we were down in the cavern, how many of those crystal spheres did you see? The ones sticking out of the walls like boils.”

  Arnaud could only shrug.

  “You mean you didn’t count them?”

  “Should I have done?”

  “There were twenty five of them—twenty six if you count Professor Fournier’s.”

  For a moment, Arnaud simply frowned. And then, before Nathanial could stop him, he grabbed his head and planted a kiss on Nathanial’s forehead.

  “I say!” said Nathanial, pulling back.

  Arnaud just waved him away, still grinning. “I know, I know—I am too French.” He shrugged. “Guilty as charged! So we are saying that each of the boils, as you put it, is one of the ghosts, one of the copies, yes?”