by Adam Roberts
‘Dilraj,’ said Lebret, shortly. ‘Can you let me out of here? Can you lay your hands on a key to this door?’
‘What would be the point, Alain? Boucher is still unconscious, and Billiard-Fanon nurses a furious hatred of you in his breast. And he still has the captain’s old gun. If he saw you walking about the Plongeur, he’d likely shoot you on sight.’
‘Yes,’ conceded Lebret, sadly. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
After a short pause, Ghatwala asked, ‘Alain – what happened with Avocat?’
Lebret tutted loudly. ‘Poor Avocat! Most unfortunate. He broke his arm. It swelled to horrible proportions. I was trying to release the pressure, but I unfortunately cut an artery.’
‘Billiard-Fanon says you murdered him.’
‘Why would I do such a thing?’
‘And the captain?’
Lebret was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘I was going to tell you about that, my friend. Events crowded it out.’
‘Not an accident?’
‘He was implacable! He was going to take us back up, hoping to find a way to the Atlantic again. There was no reasoning with him. He couldn’t be made to understand that we must descend – and since he could not be made to understand …’ he stopped, half-shocked to hear himself talk so.
‘Still, Alain!’ Ghatwala said, in a shocked voice. ‘Murder!’
‘Too much at stake, Dilraj. Too much! You, at least, understand that. I don’t ask you to endorse what I have done. But we’ve come so far!’
‘I fear Billiard-Fanon intends to convene a short-order court-martial,’ said Ghatwala, in a low voice. ‘Though they think Cloche’s death an accident, they hold you directly responsible for Avocat’s. Ironic!’
‘Perhaps tempers will cool.’
‘Or perhaps,’ said Ghatwala, earnestly. ‘We should tell them what’s really going on.’
Lebret didn’t say anything for a while; then he said. ‘Have you spoken to Jhutti?’
‘Without consulting you first? Or course not!’
‘Listen. If it comes to a trial …’ Lebret began to say. But a sudden clatter outside, and raised French voices, interrupted him. Something banged hard against the door, and a man – was it Ghatwala? – yelled in pain.
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Lebret.
Another brief series of bangs, and more voices. ‘Pannier?’ It was Billiard-Fanon’s voice. ‘Pannier, what are you doing?’
‘I overheard them,’ Pannier’s crowed. ‘This black man and the Vichy feller – through that door – they were whispering treason together.’
Lebret found it intensely frustrating that he couldn’t see what was happening. ‘What have you done to Ghatwala?’ he yelled, slapping his palm on the door. ‘You beast! What have you done?’
There was the jingly sound of keys being fumbled, and the door opened with a squeak. There was Billiard-Fanon, his long nose and his small eyes and his hoggishly bristling jowls. He had the captain’s pistol in his right hand. ‘Out of there,’ he announced. ‘Now! Justice awaits.’
Lebret stumbled into the corridor, catching sight of Ghatwala. The scientist was perched like a bird in the tipped-forward open door frame of the adjoining cabin. With his left hand he was holding onto the wall, with his right he was clutching his mouth. His beard was bloody. ‘What did you do?’
Pannier’s leer was not a pleasant sight. ‘I socked him in the jaw.’
‘Into the mess, everybody,’ announced Billiard-Fanon. ‘We need to sort this whole business out, once and for all! Traitors and murderers and worst of all – unbelievers!’
15
COURT MARTIAL
The bolted down benches and tables of the mess hall gave the remaining crew of the Plongeur copious handholds and vantages points; although the steep forward angle gave the gathering a surreal feeling. Billiard-Fanon, at gunpoint, made Lebret, Ghatwala and Jhutti – this latter blinking and looking about himself confusedly – sit in the angle of the room’s forward wall and floor. This had the effect of positioning the rest of the crew above them, looking severely down. ‘I’ve searched everywhere for handcuffs,’ growled Billiard Fanon. ‘Can’t find any.’
‘There’s no need for handcuffs,’ said Jhutti, nervously. ‘Surely!’
The ensign scowled.
Lebret looked about him – Castor wore his jacket over his shoulders. Visible beneath, on his naked torso, were several bandage patches, covering the burns on his skin. Capot looked half asleep. Water dribbled from the clothing of most of them.
Billiard-Fanon lit a cigarette, and breathed deeply in. ‘Let’s fill everybody in,’ announced. ‘The captain is dead, and since the lieutenant is, unfortunately, still unconscious, authority devolves to …’ he pointed at himself. ‘Me. I wasn’t expecting this, and can’t say I enjoy it. But someone needs to pull this bucket together, and get us home. And that means we all have to haul the same line, and to do so at the same time. You understand what I mean?’
‘How bad is the lieutenant?’ asked Castor, rubbing the end of his snout-nose so vigorously it looked as though he wanted to pull it off altogether.
‘We rolled him in a blanket and left him in the little valley made by wall and floor,’ said Castor. ‘Anyway. Let’s sum up. Good news first. We were falling into something hot and bright. An underwater volcano mouth, I was initially told.’
‘It was an underwater sun!’ Lebret called out. ‘Can’t you see? Can’t you understand what that means?’
To Billiard-Fanon’s right a number of steel mugs dangled in a sloping line from hooks on the wall. The ensign plucked one of these and threw it, hard and straight, at Lebret. He tried to duck his head away, but his motion came a fraction too late, and the cup cracked off the side of his forehead with a distinct ping noise. It clattered against the wall, and bounced once again off the floor before coming to rest. Lebret put a finger up to his head; it came away bloody.
‘Or,’ Billiard-Fanon said, shifting the captain’s pistol from his left jacket pocket to his right, for no other reason than to show it off. ‘Or an underwater sun. Like it matters! At any rate, we have avoided collision with it.’
‘We did not move. It moved out of our way,’ said Jhutti. ‘It may have been … alive. I think the light was … a thinking creature.’
Billiard-Fanon reached for another tin mug, from the line of hooks, but Jhutti held up both hands. ‘I am merely speculating, sir! There’s no need to stone me to death, Ensign Billiard-Fanon.’
‘Whatever it was,’ said Billiard-Fanon, twirling the mug around his forefinger, ‘it is behind us now. Or above us. But here’s the thing: swimming about the light was a crowd of sea monsters – the cuttlefolk, somebody called them, can’t remember whom. They attacked us. Seems they craved our oxygen. You were saying, I believe Monsieur Je-ti, that you thought it was a mating ritual.’
‘A hypothesis only,’ said Jhutti, looking cautiously upwards at Billiard-Fanon and the projectile he was still holding in his hand. ‘I speculated that in a relatively low-oxygen environment, the – cuttlefolk, if that is what we are calling them – the cuttlefolk would lead relatively torpid lives. Perhaps their breeding cycles are tuned to take advantage of, let us say, periodic algae blooms, that …’
Billiard-Fanon threw his second mug. His aim was not so good with this one, and it bounced noisily but harmlessly, between the floor and wall to Jhutti’s right. But it shut him up.
‘I don’t care!’ Billiard-Fanon barked. ‘I don’t care about your impious science and explanations and all that baggage! Those animals – they ripped the vanes off the Plongeur! They ripped open our main flotation tanks! They caused a dozen leaks in the vessel! Well, thanks to Monsieur Castor here, we’ve fixed the leaks. Although he got himself badly burned. He is a true hero!’
‘The tanks are useless, though,’ said Castor, in a sour voice. ‘Ruined. Hopeless.’
‘The one good thing is that we’ve sunk past the cuttlefolk. They’ve dropped away, like leeches
under the hot end of a cigarette. So, not all bad. Not enough oxygen, or something – I don’t care why. But here’s the not good part; we can’t go back up. That was the captain’s last order, and I wish we could follow it, but we can’t. So, let’s go down. We’ll see what turns up. Now!’ he said, with sudden force. ‘Monsieur Pannier. You have something to report?’
Pannier was holding an open bottle by its neck. Most of the wine inside had gone, but he did not sound drunk. ‘What? Yes, yes, yes. I happened to chance upon the Indian gentleman, whose name I can’t remember if I ever knew it …’
‘Ghatwala,’ said Ghatwala.
‘The Indian gentleman,’ Pannier said, pointedly. ‘And the Vichy feller, Monsieur Lebret. They were having a little secret conversation through the locked door of Lebret’s cell. Gabbling away in Indian, too; not in honest French. I’ve never seen a more suspicious scene, messieurs! Now, we already know Lebret is a treacherous collaborationist swine; the sort of man who’d promise to come back for a comrade and then leave him to die – leave him to drown in his cabin like a cat in a bag! As for the other gentleman, well, I don’t hold anything against him personally. I’m not the sort of man who thinks that a black skin stops a feller from being a proper Frenchman, or anything like that. Although the gentleman isn’t French, is he? And now I happen upon the two of them, together. Whispering treason, they were.’
‘You said we were speaking Punjabi!’ Lebret objected. ‘How do you know what we were saying? Or are you claiming you can speak Punjabi?’
Lebret grabbed a third steel mug from a hook, fumbled and dropped it. It bounced harmlessly down the wall. ‘Be quiet!’ he snapped. ‘Second item! As some of you know – Monsieur Lebret stabbed Matelot Avocat to death, a few hours ago.’
‘I did not!’ blurted Lebret.
‘Be quiet! You deny that you stabbed him?’
Lebret rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. ‘But …’
‘You deny that he died, and that this death occurred after you stabbed him?’
‘I was trying to relieve the pressure in his …’
‘Open and shut,’ crowed Pannier. ‘If only submarines came equipped with a guillotine!’
‘Let me state my case!’ Lebret demanded, growing angry. ‘The accused is permitted to state his case, in any court of law! You see, it was like this … poor Monsieur Avocat fell down and broke his arm. A very bad break. His arm swelled up, like a, like a … I thought only to relieve the pressure! By terrible misfortune I nicked an artery and …’
‘Bung him in the airlock,’ Pannier interrupted. ‘Fill it with water. See how he likes being left alone, in a cabin, or – er, airlock – waiting to drown. Like a cat in a bag! Like a cat!’
Lebret tried to make appeal to the other sailors. ‘This is absurd! You can’t possibly believe this!’
‘Believe it?’ snarled Billiard-Fanon. ‘This is a jury of your peers, Monsieur. We believe what the evidence tells us to believe.’
‘Put him in a torpedo tube and shoot him out!’ cried Pannier. A couple of sailors laughed. Billiard-Fanon, looking about him, seemed pleased at this notion. ‘Good idea! Set an example!’
‘Insanity!’ cried Lebret. ‘Why would I kill Monsieur Avocat?’
‘You tell us, M’sieur! You tell us!’ snapped Billiard-Fanon. ‘You’d better start explaining things, you Vichy monster.’
‘You have to concede it looks bad for you, Monsieur,’ said Le Petomain. ‘Why did you do what you did?’
‘I was trying to help!’ said Lebret. He glanced from face to face; but the mood of the group was shifting unpredictably. He could see that Billiard-Fanon was giving these men a point of certainty to grasp in amongst all the estrangement and fear. That this point of certainty enabled them to vent their anxiety as violence only made it more effective. His guilt or innocence was equally beside the point. A terrified and confused group of men; they were close to mob hysteria.
‘If he won’t talk,’ said Pannier. ‘Maybe his Indian friend will?’
‘All eyes turned to Ghatwala. His chin, crusted with dried blood, moved and he spoke, his words emerging stickily. ‘I do not understand,’ he said, ‘why you call Monsieur Lebret, Vichy. He was no collaborator – surely you see that? He was working under cover.’
‘Balls!’ cried Billiard-Fanon.
‘He was personally chosen for this present mission by de Gaulle, in the latter’s capacity as Minister of Defence. You think de Gaulle would choose a former collaborationist?’
‘Shut him up,’ Billiard-Fanon ordered. Pannier leaned down and slapped the scientist on the back of his head. ‘Skin for skin,’ the ensign said, holding the weighty pistol in his hands, as if contemplating what to do with it. ‘Skin for skin, all that a man hath he will give for his life. You can only expect them to lie – right?’
‘But we’re telling the truth,’ insisted Lebret.
With surprising gracefulness Billiard-Fanon jumped down from his eminence, to stand in the V made by the room’s tipped-up floor and wall, right next to Lebret. ‘I think Monsieur Pannier made a most interesting suggestion,’ he announced, aiming the captain’s pistol at Lebret’s chest. ‘I say we let him lie down – in the torpedo tube! Fire him out into the waters, to explain his crimes to the cuttlefolk!’
Pannier cheered, a solitary cry. But Lebret could see, looking about him, that the other crewmen were nodding.
‘This is no justice,’ said Ghatwala, in a thick voice. ‘This is no proper trial.’
‘Say another word,’ Billiard-Fanon told him, ‘and you will join your conspirator in the torpedo tube. I suppose a heathen will drown as quick as a Christian, out there – always assuming you are a Christian, Monsieur Lebret.’
Lebret felt a heady sense of incipient hysteria. He almost laughed. ‘I’m a dialectical materialist,’ he returned.
‘Some kind of Protestant, eh?’
‘Should we not,’ said Capot, tentatively, ‘should we not at least wait for the lieutenant to wake up, before … er, sentence is passed?’
‘What for?’ snarled Pannier.
‘And what if he doesn’t wake up?’ was Billiard-Fanon’s question. ‘A ship needs discipline. At the moment, I am that discipline. I’m in charge – anybody want to challenge my authority?’
Capot said nothing.
‘You’d better think,’ Billiard-Fanon said, turning to Lebret again, ‘of clearing your soul. Before you meet your God, you know.’
‘Alright, alright,’ said Lebret. He was sweating profusely. ‘There is more to this situation than I have admitted … than I have said. I’ve not shared this with you all before because … well – because I was ordered to keep it to myself, actually.’ He glanced up at Ghatwala, as if considering whether to include him in what he had to say. But he went on, ‘Several of you have speculated why I am here. In fact, I am working directly for the Secret Services of France. I received my commission directly from de Gaulle – as was said. I was no more a collaborationist during the last war than any of you.’
‘A pretty fiction,’ said Billiard-Fanon. ‘Carry on – your lies only make it clearer I’ve made the right decision in condemning you to death.’
‘These are not lies,’ said Lebret, fiercely. He brought a cigarette out of his case – his last, he thought grimly – but his hands were trembling visibly. He fumbled the little white tube, dropped it. Another of the vessel’s weird poltergeist-like breezes sprung up from nowhere and blew the cigarette away, away towards the far wall. Lebret watched it go forlornly, as if his last hope went with it.
‘So,’ Pannier prompted. ‘You are not a Vichy traitor, you’re a heroic undercover spy? Is that what you were saying?’
‘Remember when the Plongeur first sank?’ Lebret asked, putting his now empty cigarette case back into his jacket pocket. ‘And for a terrifying half-hour we all thought we would die at any moment? I recall that you confessed, Monsieur Pannier, to murdering a man.’
Pannier’s eyes narrowed. ‘A typically low and
treacherous move, Lebret,’ he returned, ‘to bring that up. A moment of crisis! What about poor Avocat, and his cousin drowning in milk? You want to taunt him about that, now that he’s dead?’
‘My point is this. We didn’t die,’ Lebret continued. ‘That’s so amazing a circumstance that perhaps we’ve forgotten it! We ought to be have been crushed by the pressure, or dashed against the seabed. Instead we have passed into a new realm – who can doubt it?’
Billiard-Fanon lowered the pistol. ‘You know more about this than you’ve said,’ he accused. ‘Spit it out! Have you known all along?’
‘We didn’t know! Which is to say, we didn’t know for certain,’ said Lebret. ‘But there was … shall we say reason to believe that some manner of passage was possible from our cosmos of vacuum and hydrogen into, well, into what we see. A cosmos of water. Nor are we the first to have travelled this way.’
‘Not the first?’ gasped Jhutti.
‘How likely is it that we would have been the first? If we could enter this realm, then others could have done so before us.’ Once again Lebret’s eyes met Ghatwala’s, but he snatched his glance away as if fearing to incriminate the other man. ‘But there were many imponderables. Anyway you must believe me when I say that – that neither I nor the powers for which I work – powers, I might add, dedicated to tapping this resource for the greater glory of France – that neither they nor I had any idea that we would detect an entrance to a portal upon the maiden voyage of …’
‘Stop,’ said Le Petomain. ‘Wait. You knew that we would pass into this terrible place?’
‘I didn’t know,’ said Lebret.
‘But the people you work for knew – or suspected. Why didn’t they tell us?’
‘It is … complicated,’ said Lebret, rubbing his eyes. Suddenly he felt terribly weary.
‘Did Captain Cloche know?’
‘He did not.’
‘Why would the Navy do such a thing? Send a ship out to explore an underwater tunnel to a new dimension, without telling the captain or crew that’s what they were doing?’