The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (48 page)

They all smiled at his
discomfort and puzzlement as a machine servant provided him with iced tea, but
Nemo handed him back his Abacand, so he didn’t mind it. He was too carried away
with the itch to start collecting stories and the amazement that such a thing
as the League existed, unknown to the Original and Unevolved humans.

“That’s all great, Mr
Verne,” Riba said after a drink of tea, “but what about that agent who pushed
me out of the
Byzantium?
I
call
that unfriendly. And why was it
necessary to bring me here?”

“Do you mean this agent,
Mr Riba?” Verne asked, and he gestured outside the circle to a door in the far
wall of the room where a tall, blond man had just entered. Although he now wore
much less clothing — only a pair of shorts — which revealed his true skin to be
the silver, blue and black of a fish, his blond hair was unbound and he was
clearly the same individual. He carried his shades in one hand.

“This is the Pelagic
Triton Mephisto, another member of the League,” Verne told him. “Don’t be alarmed
by his name if you know it. He does not aspire to seize your soul.”

Riba at least did
understand this reference to Faust’s demon. “Only my arm from its socket,” he
said, standing up.

Mephisto held out his
own hand. His eyes were unusually large and dark and in the dry air of the
house they teared rapidly so that he appeared to cry. “I regret the
circumstances of our . . .”

“Yeah, whatever,” Riba
said. He glanced at the man’s silver and blue shining skin — warm and human
around his hands, face and feet, but as miraculously metallic and decorated as
a mackerel elsewhere. The luxuriant blond mane moved of its own accord now it
was unbound. It was Tek. “But what’s this all about?”

“We have been trawling
the same conversations on the underground newsnets,” Captain Nemo said as
Mephisto sat beside Silene on her wet bench. He put his feet in her footbath
and slid the special eyeglasses on to his face where Riba saw they acted like
reverse goggles, covering his eyes with salt water.

Nemo continued, “We have
drawn similar conclusions to yours, Mr Riba, concerning the nature of Voyager
Lonestar Isol’s return. We also have access to the Forged Uluru network, which
you and the Unevolved human world do not. Your contact is known to us through
the dream net of Uluru and it was she who decided that you should meet us here.
I hope you will forgive her.”

“That depends on what’s
going on,” Riba said, amused to think of his Chinese pipe-smoker as a girl. “Mind
if I record?” He held out his Abacand.

“We wouldn’t have given
it to you otherwise,” Silene said with a roll of her pretty blue eyes. “You’re
here to write.”

“I don’t write for . . .”

“Please,” Verne held up
his hand. “Let us be civilized. Nobody seeks to pocket you, Mr Riba. If you
will permit me to explain?”

Riba shrugged and set
the Abacand down between them on the polished surface of a marble-topped table,
picking up his tea glass. They’d played hard and they’d played nice, he was
stuck here, he might as well see what they’d got. And besides, it was so hard
not to like them and their aspirations to nobility, in spite of everything.

“We know that Isol has
returned with alien technology,” Verne said quietly into the silence that
followed Riba’s assent. The only other sounds apart from his voice were the
soft, distant wash of the ocean and the occasional snap from the fire. He had
Riba’s full attention now “We do not understand its nature or what it promises,
but it must be responsible for her faster-than-light journey home. You were
hoping to discover this and reveal it to be the cause of Solargov’s silence on
the matter, but of course, had you discovered this story, you would not have
lived to tell it to any kind of conclusion. In sending you to us your contact
has saved you from an untimely end at the hands of Machen’s agents. Isol has
promised the Forged freedom from the bonds of Earth, you see, and it is too
soon to reveal this to the Unevolved masses. On that the League and its allies
are in agreement with General Machen. Unfortunately most of the Forged are
aware of it and it is likely that the Forged Independence Movement will soon
trumpet it from the rooftops, so it’s only a matter of days before it becomes
common knowledge.”

“So why deny me the
story?”

“We would like you to
write
the story,” Nemo said. “But we thought that if you were going to do so, you
should have the benefit of a fuller picture, and not have to try to piece it
together from little parts. There should be no misunderstandings here of the
kind that led so many to war in the past. Civil war and insurrection must not
take place within the system, nor on Earth itself. Not between the Forged and
the Unevolved, which is what we fear will happen if this is handled badly.
There are too many uneasy people on all sides with too little understanding.”

“And what kind of
understanding would this be?”

“Your paper is noted for
its anti-Forged sympathies,” the Triton said. “And you have written extensively
yourself of how alien we seem to most Unevolved human beings; that we have
created ghettos and cultures of our own which seek to exclude the Old Monkeys.
You accuse us of racism, Mr Riba, although you do not use the word. It is
implied by all your writings that that you see yourself distinguished from us
in fundamental ways which deny our humanity. In recent editorials, not written
by you, your media group have been advocating segregation as a solution to the
tensions on Earth between Forged and Unevolved.”

“I prefer the term
Original,” Riba said, although he was rankled.

“As you wish,” Mephisto
shrugged — a simple gesture that provided all the Gallic inferences of contempt
that Riba had ever seen made. “It was our decision to invite you to spend some
time with us in the hope that you might review your Original position.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Please do not become
bullish,” Verne said gently, but with great firmness, to both of them. “You are
free to leave, Mr Riba,” he leant forward and picked up the Abacand, “with or
without your story.”

Riba didn’t like the
direction things had taken much but he could see the sense of staying. “It isn’t
racism,” he said, feeling a kind of devilish urge. “Racism is history. You and
I are very different. That’s all. People need their own kind around them. Why
else do you even have this club?”

“Well that’s the point!”
Silene said irritably. “We aren’t the same kind at all. Each one of us has as
much in common with one another physically as we do with you, Mr Riba.”

“I thought you and he .
. .” Riba pointed from her to the Triton.

“It is a gulf of a mere
two hundred or so genes and a handful of proteins. More than separates you from
a chimpanzee,” the Triton said and added with a dryness that could have turned
the Atlantic to a desert, “We do not breed in the wild.”

“Mr Riba is playing with
you,” Nemo said. “He is no racist, are you?”

“No,” Riba said, trying
not to be sullen about it. “The differences are just an angle, that’s all. And
the coin flips both ways. Until the Forged came along there was no such thing
as a real sense of generic human identity in the Originals, not one that could
unite them over and above their religious and cultural differences. Now that’s
changed. We’ve got you. And you’ve got us, babe.”

“And the MekTeks are out
in the cold,” Mephisto said, although he switched off his frosty demeanour. “But
that’s for another day. Today it is essential that Isol’s radicalism and her
determination to separate the Forged from the Sol government does not
precipitate war, not least because most of the big guns these days are all
Forged citizens and many of them are sympathetic to Independence. This
prevention cannot come down to a single story of course, but much can be
changed by a timely story — witness Mr Verne’s effect on the world. More
immediately, Isol’s discovery of an alien presence so close to home could be
exactly the generic constraint we have been needing to create a union between
the Forged and the Originals.”

As Riba thought it over
Nemo revealed the details, “Tupac, the great Mother/Father of us all, says that
the alien material is a substance against which Sol has no defences. Though it
appears benign it is extremely powerful — changing shape at the user’s will —
and its true purpose cannot be fathomed. To our knowledge Isol is in voluntary
quarantine at the Idlewild station out close to LA. But we suspect that the
material is not confined to her possession. If the extremists in the
Independence movement were to come into contact with it the effects could be
devastating. Quite final in fact. They are single-minded.”

“Can you get me an
interview with Isol? With Tupac?” Riba asked.

“We speak for Tupac
here,” Silene said and touched the side of her head gently to indicate that she
shared a digital link into the Uluru net where all the Forged communed. Riba
saw that her long dark fingers were webbed although her thumbs were free. What
he had taken for nicely painted nails were mother-of-pearl claws which expanded
and retracted to enhance her gestures.

Riba sat and considered.
Now here was a story for the ultimate conspiracy and paranoia theorist to feast
on! A kidnapped journalist is given secret details of a potential weapon . . .
He was already planning ways of presenting it, so that it would seem like
matters were under control and so no one would panic, but at the same time he
wondered how much Verne and the League were controlling him. With information
and vested interests, one could never be sure.

“No doubt you suspect
our agenda,” Ahab said as they watched Riba thinking. It was the first time
this wiry old sea-dog had spoken and Riba was surprised by the growl of his
voice. “We have nothing with which to convince you of our information’s
pedigree and of our honest intent but one thing. Would you care to take a tour?”

Riba assented, got up
and followed Verne, first to a room where he was provided with fresh, clean
clothing and then outside on to the verandah at the back of the building. Nemo
came with them, leaving the others inside. As they walked on to a long gangway
that led off through the trees Riba heard calypso music begin to play behind
them and wondered if they really meant the part about dancing.

The gangway took them
down gradually to ground level in the dark of the forest but the way was lit by
electric lights here, set like torches at the sides of the path. Soon they
reached a door in a low stone archway which opened as they approached. Riba
slapped a mosquito as they began to descend a staircase down and down into a
well of rippling, water-cast light. After twenty metres the narrow stone came
to a flat floor and they walked out under the sea beneath a protective shield
of polycarbonate. They were under the lagoon, Riba guessed, as small fish
darted in and out of the
range of the light whose reach
gave the illusion that they were captured within a greater cavern of water,
forested with weed.

“This lagoon, along with
my other specialised habitats, collects and protects the most endangered marine
life,” Verne said as they passed along the way. Frequently he stopped to point
out an individual fish, animal or plant and relate its physiology to Riba, its
habitat, its behaviours. It seemed there was nothing about them he didn’t know.

As they left the lagoon
proper and changed direction Riba saw a silvery flash in the corner of his eye
and looked up and to his right. There he saw the Triton and the Mermaid wave
lazily to him — that single flourish of their arms the only remotely true human
gesture, for in their natural element they were transformed. Their legs, though
still disjoined, fit together as smoothly and with as much fluid grace as a
true tail. From their calves and backs elegant spines lifted and fanned fins.
Between them swam the largest shark that Riba had ever seen.

The huge fish glided
along with a relaxed, half-asleep momentum and passed barely inches over Riba’s
head.

“This is one of only
fifteen Great Whites left on Earth,” Nemo said as they watched the three pass
into the dark again, the trailing fins of the Triton last to vanish as he
shepherded the huge creature back into the deeper waters. Softly, softly, sweet
calypso tunes filtered through the water as Riba listened to the sound of his
heart and put his hand to the clear dome, to try and feel what might be out
there, still unknown and almost lost.

They did not only show
him sharks in the lagoon, but crocodiles at home in the small mangroves,
saltwater ones with beady eyes and skins like pebbly beaches. They showed him a
reef off the coast, of rainbow corals and the floating arms of sea urchins, the
prickly spines of starfish and the darting fizzes of colour that were the
billion fish, all facing into the gentle currents of the Island’s smooth
passage through the deep ocean. Silene swam to the viewing ports with a fish or
a sea cucumber in her hands now and again, and Mephisto persuaded deeper-water
beasts to show themselves in the light for a time; hammerhead sharks and the
diamond shapes of rays with their aerial-like tails; huge conger eels with
savage grins; bass and groupers. He brought in a shoal of mackerel and became
almost invisible among them as they turned and darted in a single cloud.