series 01 03 “THE GHOSTS OF MERCURY”

by By Mark Michalowski

  “Unless that’s just a coincidence, of course,” Nathanial cautioned, realising they were in danger of getting carried away with their theorising. “And that would perhaps explain how they do not seem to be aware of Hermes itself—because they are physically separate.”

  “So…” Arnaud drummed his index fingers on the edge of the table. “Hermes, for some reason, has made these copies of people—copies of their minds—and is storing them in, as you say, the boils. But why? Why is it doing this?”

  Nathanial didn’t have an answer to that question—not a definitive one, at any rate. “Perhaps it’s simply curious about us, about mankind. I know we didn’t speak to it for long, but I have to admit, I had no sense of deception or of it having an ulterior motive.”

  “This is true, yes—but you are also right that we did not speak to it for long. Do you remember its reaction when Heath lied to it about Colonel Shawbridge knowing we were down there?”

  Nathanial recalled that Hermes had been confused—not simply by the lie, but by the very concept of lying. “Yes, now you mention it, that was very strange, wasn’t it? It seemed to have no idea about what lies were at all, did it?”

  Arnaud, again, was already ahead of him. “But think, mon ami. Think of how it is to be Hermes. No other intelligent beings, no other minds, as it said. Not until humans arrived here. If you were the only person around, and you had never met another person, who would you lie to? And about what?” He paused. “But when there are no others, you would never learn to lie. And if it has been keeping the others, the ghosts, away from itself for some reason, then it might not have learned—even from them.”

  “You know, that does make sense, Arnaud, when you put it like that.” Nathanial beamed broadly at the Frenchman. “God, we’re good, aren’t we?”

  “Bien sûr—of course—how could we be anything else?”

  “But let’s not get too cocky,” Nathanial cautioned—trying not to grin at the same time. “Half of this is still supposition, remember.”

  “But informed supposition.”

  “Yes.” Nathanial stopped, suddenly struck by something so obvious and so profound that he wondered why it had not occurred to him earlier. “You know what this means, don’t you? It means that we might be looking at the end of death. Not physical death of course. Not the death of the body.” Nathanial tapped the side of his head. “But the death of the mind. Imagine how big this tiny planet is. Think of how much rock and crystal there is: how many minds do you think a whole planet could store, Arnaud?”

  “Millions, surely. Almost certainly many more. You do know that when knowledge of this reaches Earth, it will be a, um, bull in a china shop. Is that right?”

  Nathanial pulled a bit of a face. “Close. But yes, it will rather, won’t it?”

  “All the great scientists, philosophers, thinkers, poets—their minds, their genius—it need never die. Just imagine that!”

  Something Arnaud said jumped out at Nathanial. “Poets! Remember what Annabelle said about Professor Fournier? She said that Hermes—we assume—was scared of a poem.” He furrowed his brow. “Scared of a line in a poem? Why would a being like Hermes be scared of a line in a poem?”

  “Remember that Hermes said that the professor’s copy was incomplete. Perhaps she did not know what she was saying.”

  “Maybe, but it’s a curiously specific thing to actually remember and to tell Annabelle, isn’t it?” Nathanial looked around the room. “Poetry books! Did she have any poetry books here? Or in her quarters?”

  “No, look—here they are. Four, five—six of them” Arnaud took them off the shelf and spread them out on the table with a grin.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “A frightening poem. Well…” Arnaud added. “A frightening line in a poem.”

  “I have no idea where to start. And besides, you know her tastes in poetry better than me. Ah! And didn’t Annabelle say that it was her favourite poem. Surely you must know that one.”

  “She had so many favourites,” Arnaud sighed, and then jabbed his finger at one particular book. Nathanial read its title upside down: The Collected Works of John Donne. He knew the name, but little beyond that.

  Arnaud slid it across the desk towards him and began flipping through the pages. He stopped when he got to the index and let his eyes scan down it, slowly shaking his head. “No, nothing stares out at me….” He continued for another minute and then looked up at Nathanial. “Finally,” he said, pushing one of the other poetry books towards Nathanial. “I get to make a poetry-lover of you, Nathanial.”

  5.

  Ernest Shawbridge was struggling to work out which of the two competing emotions had the upper hand: confusion or excitement. He suspected the fact that he was following his own ghost through Princess Christiana Station, an unlit lantern in his hand, settled the matter. It was a clear mix of the two! “Where are we going?” he hissed, looking round to see if anyone was in earshot.

  “To glory,” said the other Shawbridge cryptically.

  “For God’s sake man, stop talking in riddles.”

  But his ghost would say nothing more on the matter. Shawbridge wondered if he was as cryptic and frustrating to the people around him, but couldn’t see it, somehow. Iris would have told him.

  They reached the edge of the station grounds, and Shawbridge realised that there was only one place they could be headed. “Why?” he asked the ghost, forgetting for a moment that he was just an apparition and trying to stop him by grabbing his arm. But his hand passed straight through him.

  “Because that is where you will find the answer you’re looking for.”

  And without another word, the ghost turned and began descending the stepped path to the beach. Shawbridge was too far into this now to turn back, and he had so little to lose. He grimaced, lit the lamp, and followed the ghost.

  Chapter Eleven

  “In Which Nathanial and Arnaud Take Action”

  1.

  “Explosives?”

  Annabelle stared aghast at the open crate, packed with sticks of dynamite, wrapped in red paper.

  Heath screwed up his eyes and clenched his teeth. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said with a regretful shake of his head. “You shouldn’t have seen this. You shouldn’t have got mixed up in it.”

  “Well now I am,” she said firmly, looking him in the eyes.

  He tried to look away, but something in Annabelle’s gaze held him. “So, what—you’re going to tell your uncle, or your friend now, are you?”

  She heard the tremor in his voice. “What, exactly, am I mixed up in then?” she said, ignoring his question.

  Heath looked awkwardly at his friend, Joe, for a few seconds before turning back to her. “We’re putting a stop to it.”

  “To what?”

  Heath waved his hand. “To everything—to that Devil in the cavern, to the ghosts. To everything that’s gone wrong since that French woman arrived.”

  “And how do you propose to do that, Corporal?” Annabelle looked down at the case of dynamite, realisation dawning. “You’re going to blow it up?”

  “What else are we supposed to do, miss? You saw what it was like, you’ve seen the ghosts. You can’t tell me that thing down there is good.”

  Annabelle remembered what Maria’s ghost had said: “Its thoughts are so deep and dark, my dear,” she’d said. “Be careful… It has such plans…” How could she trust the words of a damaged ghost?

  Clearly thinking similar thoughts to Annabelle, Heath said: “Professor Fournier’s ghost warned you about him. Said it had bad thoughts.”

  She didn’t correct his words—the meaning was, the more she thought about it, perhaps more accurate. What if the next stage of the ghosts would be to somehow possess their originals, taking control of them? Then she’d be almost powerless to stop it. They all would. For a moment, she wished Nathanial were here to advise her.

  No, damn it! Annabelle thought. I do not need him to make my decisions for me!
r />   She clenched her jaw, and although a part of her was shouting “No, this is madness!” its voice was becoming increasingly drowned out by the one that screamed “Yes, this thing is evil—it has to be destroyed!” At the very least, she thought, she ought to confront Hermes again. Going along with Heath’s plan would at least allow her the chance to do that.

  She grabbed Heath’s forearms and nodded. “Then count me in.”

  2.

  None of them noticed, as they made their plans, that just outside the door, a figure stood silently and listened….

  3.

  The ghost seemed to be in a hurry, and Shawbridge found himself slightly out of puff as they descended the sloping section of passageway that would take them down under the World River.

  “Hold on,” he said, leaning against the wall for a few moments to catch his breath.

  The ghost turned. “We can’t afford to wait,” he said. “I sense that there are forces that would seek to stop us.”

  “Forces? What forces? And what d’you mean, stop us?”

  “I’m not sure—I can sense them on the periphery, plotting and planning.” The ghost seemed distracted, less like he’d been when he appeared to Shawbridge.

  “This better not be some sort of game, you know,” he grumbled as he set off after the ghost. “After the day I’ve had, I’m in no mood for shenanigans.”

  “Shenanigans?”

  “Playing the fool. You know what I mean.”

  “I am not playing the fool. I am helping you achieve what you wanted to achieve. You fear that your career will end in ignominy, don’t you? It won’t—it will end in glory, for you and all humanity. Remember, I think what you think.”

  Shawbridge raised his eyebrows dubiously. He didn’t see how anything could rescue his career now. He really had nothing to lose, did he? “This had better be worth it,” he muttered as they set off again.

  4.

  “Annabelle!”

  Nathanial turned to follow the direction in which Arnaud was looking: standing in shadow by the door was, indeed, Annabelle. “Oh, I didn’t hear you…” Nathanial paused as Annabelle stepped forwards. “What’s wrong?” he asked, worried by the look on her face.

  “Nathanial,” she said, her voice low and worried, with a slightly odd tone to it. “You have to go down to the cavern.”

  Nathanial flashed a puzzled glance at Arnaud. “Why?”

  “Because Heath is going to destroy it.”

  “What?” he exclaimed. “Why?”

  “Because he believes that Hermes is the Devil.”

  “What nonsense. Where is he? I’ll have a word with him. You do realise what we’ve just worked out? We think that the crystals, these—” he held picked up one of the plates from the table “—are where Hermes and the ghosts are stored. The ghosts are copies of the originals, of living people—their minds and thoughts, at any rate—stored in those crystal boil things I told you about. Don’t ask us how it works, but we’re pretty sure. They’re rich in zinc and tin, like everything seems to be around here: the soil, the river. It’s everywhere. I believe it has some effect on the electrical conductivity of the crystals, somehow enabling—”

  Annabelle raised a hand. “There’s no time for a lecture, Nathanial. Heath is setting off soon.”

  “We have to stop him, Nathanial,” agreed Arnaud. “If Hermes can copy human minds, it means that no one need ever die. Just think about it, Annabelle—the greatest minds of our generation, and future generations, could live and think forever. And remember that poem that Maria mentioned—the one that she said frightened Hermes? Well we think we’ve found it.” He held the book out to her, open at Meditation XVII. She looked down at it, scanning the page. “We still have not worked out which line made it so scared, though.”

  Annabelle frowned as her eyes flicked up and down the page, and for a brief moment, Nathanial saw a flash of something pass across her face. Recognition? Realisation?

  “What is it?” he asked, but she shook her head as though it didn’t matter.

  “You have to act,” she insisted. “Go down to the cavern and stop Heath and his men, somehow. Their plan won’t work, trust me. They’ll only make things worse.”

  “Now you’re talking in riddles, Annabelle.” Nathanial looked at Arnaud who simply shrugged.

  “If you’ve ever trusted me before,” she said. “Then trust me now. Just go—please.”

  Nathanial took a deep breath: he’d trusted Annabelle on many occasions, and she’d always shown herself worthy of that trust. If Heath was planning to blow up the cavern, then an unparalleled gift to humanity could be about to be destroyed.

  “We must stop them,” Arnaud said. “At least until we’ve had chance to speak to Hermes again, to confirm our theories. If he succeeds…” His voice tailed off.

  Nathanial looked Arnaud in the eye as he said: “Very well, Annabelle. But you have to stay here. It’s too dangerous—”

  He turned back around, but Annabelle had gone.

  “Where did she go?”

  “I have no idea, mon ami.”

  Nathanial shook his head. Frustrating woman! But a persuasive frustrating woman.

  5.

  “How much further?” Shawbridge asked the ghost, noticing how it didn’t seem to cast a proper shadow from the light of his lamp. In all other respects, it seemed perfectly solid. He had no real idea how the ghosts worked, and shrugged it off as just another peculiarity.

  “Not far now,” the ghost said without turning its head.

  “This is to do with that Hermes chap that Stone and Fontaine mentioned, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. But don’t be afraid, Colonel. Hermes has great plans for you.”

  “Hmmm,” Shawbridge said, not quite sure whether that was a good thing. Annabelle had given the strong impression that Hermes was something ungodly, something dangerous. But, then, Stone had been full of fascination and intrigue for the creature. And he was a scientist, after all—if that counted for anything, especially considering his recent behaviour. Maybe he should have spoken to them before coming on this foolish trip.

  As if reading his thoughts, the ghost said: “Annabelle is wrong in her fears.”

  “Are you reading my mind now? Well don’t. A chap’s thoughts are his own.”

  “We are learning, Colonel. We are…improving, if you like.”

  “Not sure I like the sound of that. How does a bally ghost improve?”

  The ghost stopped suddenly. “We’ve arrived. Do not be afraid by what you see. It is simply a mental representation of Hermes. It does not physically exist.”

  Shawbridge wasn’t quite sure what this meant—presumably that what he was about to see was Hermes’ own ghost, or something like that.

  Having already turned on the generator as they passed, the tunnels were brightly lit, and as they turned the corner, Shawbridge could see the light from the cavern. His ghost stood aside to let him pass. Drawing himself up, he stepped forwards.

  6.

  “That’s it,” Joe said to Heath as he checked his watch. “She’s had enough time to get her jacket. If that’s where she’s gone. I knew it was a mistake to let her go. She’ll be here with Shawbridge, you see if she isn’t.”

  Heath scowled, gazing out across the World River, rushing mindlessly by, constantly circulating around the planet. Endless and eternal. “She wouldn’t.”

  Heath had almost forgotten that Joe was there.

  “You barely know her,” the man said, looking down at Heath. “She’s not one of us, Paul. She’s one of them.”

  Heath raised a hand to silence Joe. “I trust her,” he said. “She won’t let us down. She hates that thing as much as I do. Look!” A tiny patch of yellow light was weaving its way down the path from the station to the beach. “See!”

  Joe and the other men hoiked their backpacks, full of dynamite, up onto their shoulders. Heath himself was carrying the clockwork detonator mechanism.

  As the light reached the
foot of the cliff and headed towards them, Heath felt himself tense up: what if Joe was right, and this wasn’t Annabelle but Shawbridge himself? What would they do then? There was taking a stand—and then there was mutiny.

  A wave of relief rushed over him as he saw that it was Annabelle.

  “Joe thought you might have changed your mind,” he said as she drew close.

  “Why would I do that?” Annabelle said, a little crossly. “You think I’m that sort of person?” She glared at Joe.

  “Not me, miss,” Heath apologised. “But Joe doesn’t know you as well as I do. Don’t think nothing of it. Right, best be off.”

  Annabelle asked if there was anything she could carry, but they insisted that this was “men’s work”.

  “Besides,” Heath said, heading towards the riverbank and a ramshackle wooden jetty, “we won’t be carrying them most of the way.” He gestured ahead. “We take one of these boats across to the other side: there’s another tunnel that leads down. Joe and Saul here have checked it out. He knows a lot about blowing things up, Joe. And Saul, here, he knows a fair bit about potholing and caves. Knows exactly where to place the dynamite for maximum effect.”

  Saul was the wiry, swarthy man who’d been keeping watch over the shed door earlier. He had dark, cold eyes. He nodded respectfully at her but didn’t say anything.

  “So then,” she asked as they climbed up onto the jetty. “What’s the plan?”

  Joe looked at her suspiciously.

  “The plan,” Heath said, ignoring Joe, “is that we place these explosives at the far side of the cavern. There’s another entrance there where Saul says the rock has a lot of fractures. It’ll bring the whole cave down on itself.”

  Three little, white-painted boats bobbed gently on the swell of the river. Joe pulled one closer to the jetty with effortless ease and stepped in, causing the boat to rock worryingly. He held out his hand to help Annabelle aboard, and Heath and Saul joined them.

  “Joe’s going to be rowing,” Heath said with just a hint of a grin. “The current’s fairly fast and we need to get across as quickly as we can before we’re taken downstream too far.”