The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (20 page)

Startled by her question, Jekyll turned away from the porthole, blinking. "My
ears hurt. It goes through my whole skull." He tapped at his ears like a swimmer
with water in them. "It's nothing," Jekyll said.

On the recording, the evil mastermind continued, "If you fail to save Venice,
then I will get my war. And if you succeed—well, it's a small price to pay for
giving Mr. Gray the luxury to go about his main task. War will come sooner or
later, as inevitably as summer turns into autumn."

"M' süre likes the sound of his own voice, doesn't he?" Sawyer said.

He continued, like a stern schoolteacher lecturing a group of disappointing
students. "Now some of you— perhaps Quatermain, if he isn't dead, or maybe
Skinner, who by all accounts is a sneaky, despicable chap—will pause to ask why
I'm letting you know all this. What fool reveals his gambit before the game is
over?"

His voice paused, as if giving them a chance to answer the gramophone disc.
"Because, you see, it
is
over. For you. The alarm tone that revealed
this recordings existence to you has automatically sounded when certain sensors
determined that the
Nautilus
is now deep under the ocean."

"Under a great deal of pressure." Grays voice broke in. "Which is why I'll
take the nautiloid, so that you'll follow and get yourselves into deep water.
Perfectly predictable, perfectly boring."

Nemo and the others listened with dawning horror as M continued to relish his
explanation.

"I'm sure you're aware, Nemo, how sound can affect certain crystals?
Resonance frequencies? The pitch of this particular sound is higher than humans
can hear. You wont even notice it. And all the while it continues to grow
louder, out of range. More powerful… and more destructive."

Jekyll cringed from the reflection of an agonized Hyde in the porthole glass,
can't bear it, Henry!Please
!

"Dogs and lower animals can hear it with their base instincts. But not men.
Hence, while I've rambled on and you all have given me your rapt attention, a
secondary layer of inaudible sound is pounding against a sequence of delicate
crystal sensors dotted about your vessel."

Gray's voice came again, sounding thoroughly entertained now. "Sensors that
are attached to bombs.
Bomb
voyage!" The crude pun seemed incongruous
from the erudite man.

Sawyer hurled the gramophone to the floor and stomped on the wax disk. But it
was too late.

In the complex maze of ducts, conduits, pipes, and cabinets aboard the
Nautilus
, Dorian Gray had secreted three compact explosives, rigged to
shimmering crystalline detectors. Without a complete overhaul, not even Ishmael
would have found the bombs deep in the submarine's workings.

Now, although Sawyer had destroyed the player and the recording, the crystal
sensors trembled, clicked—and activated the destructive devices.

A huge thunderclap of force, noise, and fire erupted from the rear midhull.
The fireball split through the armored side of the
Nautilus
, punching
out into the ocean and then imploding under massive water pressure. Metal and
ceramic shattered and spewed from a huge hole in the curved wall.

A column of water hammered inward like liquid cannon fire, instantly filling
the corridor. The shock wave wenched the underwater vessel back and forth like a
piggy bank being shaken by a child. Glass shattered. Sparks flew.

Inside Nemo's stateroom, the members of the League were thrown off balance,
careening into each other. The contour map that tracked the fleeing nautiloid
was wrecked.

And then the second and third bombs exploded.

Although the lower chamber was on fire, cold sea water rolled into the rear
engine room like a wall. Smoke gushed from the site of the first explosion and
poured through ruined turbines. Sparks flew, crackling in the pools and
spray.

The metal-walled room filled rapidly with the pounding water. Engineers died
screaming, some trying to flee, some giving their lives in attempts to save the
undersea vessel.

Two crewmen dashed for the aft bulkhead door. They leaped through the door
and tried to swing the heavy hatch shut, but the force of inrushing water swept
the door open and smashed the men backward.

Responding together, the League members rushed onto the bridge, where crewmen
struggled with the controls. More than ever, Nemo wished Ishmael were here.

"Midhull sealed, Captain. But the doors aren't holding!" a redheaded crewman
shouted. "The water keeps rushing into the breach."

The
Nautilus
shuddered and began to sink. The deck; tilted at a
steep backward angle. Charts and tools clattered off of shelves and tables,
pitched aside as the wounded, tail-heavy submarine vessel sank.

"Nemo, we have to surface!" Quatermain stumbled, fetched up against a
bulkhead, and then grimaced at the renewed pain in his shoulder wound. "Get back
up to the air."

"We've taken in too much water. The controls are no longer responding."
Despite his own words, Nemo worked with the vessel's control panels, but the
systems remained dark and inoperative.

The
Nautilus
sank through the water, like a shot pheasant tumbling
out of the sky. Three jagged holes had been blown out though its stem. Oil
trails and fire spilled out; fragments of ceramic armor flaked off like broken
bits of eggshell.

Drenched and battered, Crewman Patel—the provisional replacement for the
murdered Ishmael—rushed to the bridge, looking about for Nemo. "Primary engine
room almost full, sir, and the aft bulkhead is still open! Pump valves are
jammed."

"Seal it off," Nemo said. "That is the only way we can stabilize our
descent."

"But there are crewmen inside there, Captain!" the acting first mate said.
Patel's eyes were sunken, his face frantic. "We never let a man—"

"For the greater good, you must seal it! The pressure will crush us within
minutes, if we don't all drown first."

Squaring his shoulders, Patel rushed out, past a shaken Jekyll who huddled in
the corridor.

On the bridge, sparks sprayed, panels groaned, water spurted. Quatermain,
Sawyer, and Mina hung on as the vessel pitched even further. The room was
already thick with smoke, and the pressure outside squeezed the walls harder,
like a giant crushing them in his fist.

"It'll be fine, Mina," Sawyer said, sidling closer, as if he could comfort
her.

Mina Harker, though, was not interested in such reassurance. "I'm a
scientist, young man—that makes me a realist." She turned to Nemo. "Can nothing
save us?"

"Only a miracle," Nemo said.

The haggard Jekyll wrestled with his fears. He had already proved completely
useless in Venice, and now he damned himself for not understanding the problem
swiftly enough; Hyde's bestial senses had heard the deadly high-pitched tone,
but his rational mind had not understood the treacherous sabotage in time. He
could have prevented this disaster.

And now he meant to do something about it.

Inside him, the snarling presence of Hyde agreed.
We can do it, Henry!
Just let me! Let me
!

In the corridor outside the control bridge, Jekyll whirled, saw Hyde's
reflection in polished metal on the wall. "What are you on about?"

You know, Henry. We can do it. Together.

Shaking with inner turmoil, Jekyll raced from the bridge. Inside his mind,
Edward Hyde roared with impatient glee.

When he finally reached the hatch of the primary engine room, Jekyll fought
his way through spraying water and desperate crewmen. The corridor was almost
vertical as he reached acting First Mate Patel, who was struggling to close the
hatch.

"I'm going inside there." Jekyll's voice was a mere squeak amid the chaotic
noise.

"But I've orders to close it!" said Patel. "You won't get back out!"

"Then do it! Don't worry about me." With surprising energy, the skinny doctor
sprang into the waist-deep water filling the engine room. Three mangled crewmen
were already dead inside, floating up against the walls. Sparks showered from
the controls. Oily black smoke clung to the large pumping pistons.

"You'll never survive!"

"Maybe not." Jekyll still sloshed forward. "Or maybe we all will."

Patel realized that there was no time to evacuate anyone else. He cursed,
then used all his strength to shoulder the hatch closed after the doctor had
entered. He knew that the
Nautilus
itself had only a few more minutes
before it imploded in the depths. He didn't suppose Jekyll would die much sooner
than the rest of them…

Inside the engine room, only a hellish air-pocket of steam and fire remained
above the water. Drowning crewmen splashed and struggled for last gasps. Only
one man still worked at trying to restart the unsalvageable machinery.

Jekyll dragged himself along the riveted wall. With his free hand, he reached
into his shirt pocket to remove a glass vial and yanked out the stopper with his
teeth. For a split second he hesitated, wondering if this was worse than a
simple death of drowning. His hand trembled. If he dropped the vial into the
water, everything would be over…

Come on, Henry
! Hyde was like a caged animal throwing himself
against the bars.
They need me
. You
need me
!

Jekyll faltered a moment more, but the men kept screaming, the water
continued to pour inside, and the
Nautilus
sank ever deeper. More
people would die if he didn't do his part. Many more. He gulped the bitter
potion.

Without waiting for the elixir to work, he took a deep breath, swelling his
narrow chest. He dove under the murky water and swam down through floating
debris, grabbing handholds on machinery to drag himself against the rush of
water. His muscles were weak. His arms started to shake.

Then his body began to change: Bones lengthened and thickened, muscles
swelled and bulged. His hair coarsened and sprouted black from his hands,
knuckles, and neck. His head grew larger, more apelike. He convulsed and
spasmed, clamping his lips shut to hold in the air. Each time he suffered
through this, the transformation brought him more and more agony.

Finally, Jekyll could not help himself. He screamed underwater, but let out
only a mouthful of bubbles as his back arched and limbs thrashed. His eyes began
to bleed.

When his form bulked up to twice its normal size, his prim clothes tore apart
and floated in rags from his body. Yet all the while, his determination held. He
kept going downward, handhold to handhold, until at last he reached the bottom
of the flooded engine room. The submarine vessel tilted at an ever steeper
angle, sinking fast.

He had to reorient himself, looking through the watery gloom to find his
destination.

Deep under the swelling cold water, when he reached the wide-open aft
bulkhead door, it was Edward Hyde who grabbed hold. With a silent, slow-motion
stroke, he swiped aside two drowning crewmen who were still struggling to seal
the bulkhead with their last breaths.

Driven by instinct now, Hyde would have preferred to rip things apart, bend
pipes and girders, smash open windows. But he knew that he had to close the
breach and seal off the flood.

The hatch was heavy, forced aside by the continuing rush of water from the
explosions gaping hole. The beast-man's gnarled and hairy hand gripped the edge
of the metal door, and he strained to swing it shut, groaning and spitting
bubbles from between his cracked and uneven teeth. Hyde strained to push the
hatch, and finally slammed it shut like a man closing a door against a brisk
wind. He twisted the wheel to seal the sturdy hatch in place. Safe.

But he could not go back to the surface yet. Dimly, he realized the
Nautilus
would continue sinking as long as its tail section was full of
water.

Hyde found the jammed pump valves, tried to turn them so the pistons and
gears could work again. The valves remained stuck, as if welded shut. That
didn't stop him.

He roared, and the last trickles of air escaped from his mouth in a cloud of
bubbles. His muscles bulged as he tried again. He hammered with his fist to
loosen the valve, but the thick, cold sea water stole much of his strength.
Hyde's vision grew dark, his anger increased, and he forced himself to think of
the pump valve as an enemy to be defeated.

Then slowly, inch by inch, the valve wheel started to move, cranking
clockwise. Snarling silently, dizzy from lack of oxygen, Hyde gave the lever
another shove.

Suddenly the valve came free, spinning loose, as the undersea vessels huge
vents opened, hurling the massive man away. Screaming turbines began to evacuate
water from the chamber. He hooked his hands around a sturdy pipe and clung to it
with all his remaining strength to keep from being sucked out.

Hyde worked his way upward as the water level inside the sealed chamber
dropped. High above, he could see the silhouettes of struggling crewmen
splashing about on the surface.
He needed air
.

Higher and higher he climbed, until finally his shaggy, misshapen head burst
out into the air above the water. He spat spray and heaved a huge breath to fill
his starved lungs.

Heard only inside his head, Jekyll's thin voice yelled over the sound of the
rushing water. "Bravo, Edward! Bravo!"

The wounded
Nautilus
rose under a dawn sky, breaking the surface of
the choppy ocean with a clumsy gasp and a groan. Air hissed out, water sprayed,
and the scarred and damaged submarine vessel sprawled on the sea as if
exhausted. The slow chug of propellers moved the ship drunkenly forward, and the
engines coughed.