20 Million Leagues Over the Sea (48 page)

Christophe chuckled. "Well, I know exactly
who to assign to that. I'm sure Rathbone and Wallace would love to
get out of their cells for a while. Under guard, of course." He
stroked one of Maggie's outstretched limbs. "What is the crew
saying about their new member?"

"Well, sir, I've not heard anything out of
line, but I do have to say that they all know better than to
disrespect Miss Maggie 'round Hieronymus Pritchard. She saved the
ship, and that's good enough for me. Though I do admit to some
curiosity as to how she got onto the roster."

Christophe rubbed his knees. "I'm sure you
are not the only curious one. Perhaps I should address the crew,
now that things are calming down a bit. We have several matters to
attend to." He stood and straightened his jacket, a futile
operation considering how rumpled and soiled it was. "You have my
gratitude, Mr. Pritchard. Your steadiness, perseverance, and good
sense saved us. And you deserve some sleep, for heaven's sake! Your
next post is your pillow, my good fellow!"

"Yes, sir," he said with a deep thunderous
laugh. "But I think Frau Knopf has a plate of bacon with my name on
it, first."

"Far be it from me to stand between a man and
his bacon," Christophe chuckled.

As the door closed behind the departing first
mate, Pugh tugged at his blanket. "I would suggest addressing the
crew sooner rather than later, son. I am sure that Maggie's sudden
appearance was quite a nasty shock for some of them."

"They frightened the dickens out of me,"
Maggie said. "I am not very fond of crowds."

The captain rubbed his chin again, grimacing
as he re-discovered the rough scrub lurking there. "Well, without a
bath and a shave, I don't believe the crowd will fancy me, either.
Let's get everyone fed and down for a nap before we read them in.
Perhaps 'twill be easier to take on a full stomach."

"Especially if Frau Knopf has anything to say
about it," replied Gemma. The interruption had given her some time
to pull herself together. She felt shaken, still, but she could
breathe again. Maggie steadied her as she rose from her seat. "My
ribs remind me that I could use some rest as well." She bowed her
head at the scientist. "Good night, Dr. Pugh."

He took her hand in his and kissed it
lightly. "Elias, please, my dear Gemma Aronnax."

"I will stay with him," Maggie said. "Rest
well, my children."

Christophe followed Gemma across the room and
out of the cabin. He closed the door behind them.

"Where are you headed?" he asked. "I mean,
really? You seem too overwrought for sleep."

"Back to Dr. Hansard's office. I still have a
code to crack. There's another ship out there, remember? Or so
Wallace claims."

He winced, as if just then recalling the next
crisis on the list. "Well, I'm certainly glad you're on the job. I
can barely remember my own name at this point. Wallace is safely
ensconced in the brig for the moment, so don't worry about him just
now."

A tense silence drew out between them as they
waited by the lifts, which had finally ground their way back to
life. They entered an empty one and directed it to the deck for
sick bay.

"Gemma," he said now that they were assured
of privacy, "I believe it's best if we keep my, shall we say,
rather special relationship with Maggie private. At least for
now."

Gemma nodded. "As you are fond of saying,
'one crisis at a time'. I believe I can keep a secret."

With a ghost of a smile, he said in a quiet
voice, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For trying to save Maggie. For... for
befriending her."

"I failed to stop them."

"But you did stall things a bit. You gave me
time to get there. The poor blokes. They were all so afraid! It
could have taken a very bad turn without you. And they did calm
down when you showed them your support for her. No order of mine
could have done that. I think they will accept her more readily
when they see you two are thick as thieves! They respect you."

They exited the lift and entered an empty
corridor. He stopped mid-stride and regarded her with the same
inscrutable look that he had used at Cervantes' memorial
service.

"And so do I." He reached for her hand. "With
your kind permission."

She inclined her head at him, as she had at
Dr. Pugh. He brushed his lips against her knuckles with the same
tenderness his father had used. It was in that moment that she saw
Elias Pugh in his face. No matter what other Code had been used in
creating him, he was his father's son.

He straightened up, still holding her hand
loosely by the fingers. "Awfully sorry about the shooting bit, old
girl. I solemnly swear not to do it again, if you promise not to
use Wallace as a punching bag. Or Rathbone, for that matter.
Pax?"

"Pax," she replied. She grasped the hand that
held hers firmly and pulled it down into a firm handshake. "Now,
get us to Mars, Captain!"

He brayed with laughter. Without releasing
her hand, he leaned in and said with a conspirator's whisper, "And
after that, we'll figure out what we'll do once we get back to
Earth. I believe we've all been sacked."

She tilted her head at him and said, "Well,
you could always turn pirate. You certainly have the wardrobe for
it. Instead of a
Flying Dutchman
, we'd have a
Queen
Anne's Revenge
." She plucked at the wide flounces of his linen
shirt that she still wore. "Then you might actually be
interesting."

He seemed so very young in that moment. The
glint she had seen in his eyes when she had first met him -- the
one that had faded with the death of Cervantes -- had returned.
They all seemed so young, too young, to venture so far from home.
Even ancient Dr. Pugh seemed too much of a fledgling for the
unknown wilds of space. But they would have to make do.

He squeezed her fingers warmly and released
her. He re-entered the lift alone. As the door closed, he said,
"Miss Aronnax, you slay me with hope."

She turned away from the doors and trudged to
sick bay. Somehow even her toes knew that in Hansard's office,
Caroline was already at work sorting the last of the punchcards.
Nigel was nowhere to be seen.

Caroline embraced her with care and greeted
her in sleepy tones. "Oh, what a day! What a day! I'm too tired to
sleep!"

Caroline had already re-sorted the punchcards
(shuffled out of order by the gravity failure) and stacked them on
the table. She plucked the first one off the top and fed it into
the portable reader. The keys on the adapted typewriter moved of
their own accord, like some phantom secretary composing a cryptic
message from the Beyond.

The two women watched the information flow
from the carriage onto the paper. First was the header information,
which was plain enough if one knew how to read it. Then, as
expected, sets of numbers appeared, still concealing the true
message within them.

"It's a book cipher, I'll wager," Gemma
observed.

"How can you tell?"

"See the pattern of numbers here? The
triplets? That pattern is used in a book cipher. See, this first
number is a page number of a specific book. The second is a line
number on that page, and the third is the letter on that line.
Record each letter as you go, and you have your message. Assuming,
of course, you have the corresponding book."

"Sounds tedious," replied Caroline. "And you
do this by hand when you get your messages from your
institute?"

"Yes."

"Didn't know geology was so top-secret! It
would be faster with an engine, though. If you had the right book
set up on punchcards, that is." She paused and studied the many
titles on Dr. Hansard's shelves. "Question is, which book did they
use?"

"That is the real trick. The person who sent
the message could have used any book. To read the message, you'd
have to have the same book, down to the same edition, to make sure
everything matched up. One bit of good news, though, is that it
might be easier to locate that book on an isolated ship than it
would be back home. We're limited to what is actually on hand."

Caroline frowned. "There's plenty of books on
this ship, though. Why, there are scores between the parlour and
the science lab alone!"

Gemma chewed her lip. "It might be amongst
Wallace's things, in his cabin. He would need privacy for this. And
he'd have to get rid of his decrypted messages, if he wrote them
down."

"Wouldn't be easy, unless he fed them to the
goats or something," Caroline observed. "Rathbone would need to
have the same book. He said he'd broken Wallace's code. He'd have
to have another copy, most likely, or Wallace might've figured out
what he was up to."

Gemma grabbed the Boolean's hand in her
excitement. "Yes, you have it! How can we enter their cabins?"

"Well, they're both in Gent's Country. I
don't feel right going there without--"

"I just left Pugh's cabin there, and no one
objected."

"But you were with the Cap'n." Caroline shook
her head. "We shouldn't bother him with this. He has a lot to do!
This is our job, and Nigel should be helping. I'll get him--"

"Where is he? I can tell him what to look
for."

Caroline shuffled her feet. "I think I'd best
talk to him, just now."

"Whatever for?"

"He's still getting used to the idea of, um,
Maggie. I understand why you science lot may have wanted to keep it
hush-hush, but Nigel? He's not one for secrets."

"And I kept a huge one from him."

"Something like that, yeah."

"All right. I trust your judgment, Caroline.
You've known him far longer than I have." She snatched a pencil and
a blank sheet of paper from the many stacks on the table and
scribbled down a few words. She handed it to Caroline. "He should
compare the books they both have, but look for this one
especially."

Caroline skimmed over the note. "I thought
this might be the one you wanted," she said as she tapped the side
of her nose with her finger. "I'll be a while. Why don't you try to
catch a few winks while I'm gone?"

Alone again, Gemma slumped into a chair. Her
ribs whined as she leaned towards the reader, still cranking away
at the first message. The numbers blurred together, and she felt
weariness wash over her once more.

Codes. Codes for messages. Codes for engines.
Codes for Life. Even bloody codes for bloody knitting patterns.
They were everywhere.

Even with all of her experience in and around
science, Gemma found it extraordinary that one could connect two
people by just comparing sequences of their Code, Code taken from
strands of hair. Her fingers strayed to her locket. She stroked it
and lost herself in memories of the owner of the hair hidden there.
So much had happened in the past few days, and she ached to tell
her lost friend everything that had transpired. Gemma wished that
Jennie had been able to join Nigel on the ship. A mist formed over
her eyes as she imagined it. What a joyous reunion it would have
been!

The office felt emptier without Nigel there.
Would he ever forgive their secrecy? Would she ever meet her
namesake, her dearest friend's daughter? Would she ever tell Nigel
an even darker secret, tell him that his wife had been a thief,
like her? What did he already know? By now he surely suspected
something. It would be difficult to rest easy with this new spectre
hovering over her.

"Dr. Pugh said we should come clean," she
mused aloud. "Perhaps I should--"

Her train of thought froze in its tracks as
the rest of that conversation clacked through her memory as
precisely as the reader consumed the holes in the punchcards. She
gripped the locket tightly in her fist.

Pugh had said that there had been no way to
check the Code of the last Brightman Girl, the one Chapman could
not find because she rested in an unknown grave.

Gemma opened the locket and touched the hair
within. Perhaps the grave was not unknown; perhaps that daughter
was not lost. There was one last test to perform; there was one
last Code to crack.

She reached out to the now-familiar mental
connection with her newest friend.

"Maggie, can you do me a favour?"

~~~~

Christophe

Christophe, standing tall on the front table
of the mess hall, stared out across the sea of sailors as they
settled into their seats. He was unsure if there was enough sleep
in the world to let him catch up on his rest. He had, however,
taken great pains to make sure that the crew had, especially Mr.
Pritchard.

He clenched his fist behind his back, forcing
the nervousness into his knuckles. This felt so very different from
his brave speech at the beginning of their voyage. He hoped the
right words would come. He could sense ripples of sentiment flowing
through the people arrayed before him: bewilderment, anxiety,
anger, frustration, exhaustion, and a teasing hint of curiosity. He
could order an end to violence, but not an end to fear. It was
there, slithering through the waves of his brave people and
caressing them with its scales. He could see the dread in their
eyes as he used to foresee a storm in streaks of grey and jagged
flashes of light on the horizon. There was a squall ahead, on a
different horizon, and there was nothing for it but to reef the
sails and push through it.

Despite himself, he searched for those
familiar faces that he knew were no longer there. Cervantes had
always been there, close by, and Christophe could sense the hole
that he left behind. His eyes then settled on a face that was new
to the crowd.

Maggie, in an attempt to appear less
menacing, had piled herself into the floor next to Gemma's seat on
the front row. The young lady held the end of one of Maggie's limbs
in one hand upon her lap as she sipped a steaming cup of tea. The
knot in his middle relaxed as he rested his gaze on the two ladies.
Several of Maggie's other limbs twitched the way they did when she
had the itch to knit but couldn't get to her needles. Expressions
in miniature crossed Gemma's face, from a half-smile to a rise of
the eyebrows. Christophe fought to suppress a grin of his own as he
recognized the hallmarks of an internal conversation with
Maggie.