The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (60 page)

“As your garden will
also be forgotten .. . by your husband, I mean,” added Hermione.

“A project?” Evangelina
said. “What kind of project?” Prunella Benton rose to her feet. “Wasn’t your
husband involved in that expedition to the moon some years back?” “That’s it!”
a voice at the back of the room exclaimed.

“That’s your project, a return to the moon!”

“There is no point in
returning to the moon,” Mr Impey Barbicane stated categorically, the beads of
sweat on his upper lip betraying his discomfort at being confronted by a
delegation of middle-aged women. “The moon is uninhabitable.”

“Baltimore was
uninhabitable a hundred years ago,” Prunella Benton said, dismissing Barbicane’s
argument with a wave of her hand. “No society to speak of, at any rate.”

“My house was
uninhabitable until I replaced those awful curtains,” Hermione Larkin added,
rolling her eyes.

Barbicane, exasperated,
turned to his compatriot, Captain Nicholl. Though it was only a few months
since Evangelina had last seen them, both men looked older than she remembered.
The face below Barbicane’s trademark stovepipe hat seemed thinner and more
haggard, while Captain Nicholl seemed pale and tired.

Even the room seemed
different from how she remembered it. The formerly gleaming clusters of
muskets, blunderbusses, and carbines that adorned the walls now seemed dingy
and uncared-for, the glass display cases of ammunition were covered in a layer
of dust, and the exuberant atmosphere she recalled from her previous visits had
been replaced by an air of gloom.

It felt as if everything
in the place had somehow become smaller. Even the men seemed smaller.

“It’s not the same thing
at all,” Captain Nicholl stepped in. “There is no air or water on the moon.”

“And there are no
sandwiches in a forest,” Hermione responded. “If you wish to have a picnic in
the woods, you bring the sandwiches with you!”

“Sandwiches?” said
Barbicane.

“What Mrs Larkin means
is: if a place is not inhabitable, you find a way to make it so,” Evangelina
explained.

“May I remind you,” said
Captain Nicholl, “Mr Barbicane and I have actually orbited the moon, and in our
close observations of its surface, we saw no sign of life, and no sign of
anything that might sustain life.”

Fiona Wicke spoke up at
this point. “If, as you say, there is no air on the moon, it is worth bearing
in mind that vegetation produces oxygen.”

“But there is no
vegetation on the moon,” Mr Barbicane responded, a trace of irritation creeping
into his voice.

“And there was precious
little vegetation in my garden until I planted it,” said Hermione.

“Ladies,” said Captain
Nicholl. “From what I have seen with my own eyes, I am forced to conclude that
the lunar soil is incapable of supporting vegetation. You must believe me when
I tell you that nothing can survive there. Nothing.”

Hermione seemed about to
speak again, but Fiona silenced her with a discreet shake of the head. “Just
one last question,” Fiona said. “Why did you send a projectile to the moon in
the first place?”

“To prove it could be
done,” said Barbicane.

“They were laughing at
us,” Fiona said as the women emerged into the sunlight. “Not aloud, but
inwardly; you could see it in their faces. And they had every right to do so.
We were not prepared, we had not thought it through.”

A sudden gust of wind
sent several sheets of discarded newspaper flapping about the square. Hermione
grimaced in disgust as one of the dusty sheets plastered itself across the
front of her carefully draped and bustled skirt. “When is someone going to do
something about the garbage problem in this city?” she demanded, shaking her
skirt free.

Fiona watched the paper
blow away down the street, her face creased in thought.

“Is Mrs Wicke at home?”
Evangelina asked, handing the maid her card.

Evangelina was left to
wait in the front parlour while the maid went to see if her mistress was at
home. She was admiring a cloisonné vase when she heard Fiona’s voice coming
from behind her: “I’ve never really liked that vase, it was a gift from my
first husband’s mother.”

Evangelina’s first
reaction on turning around was to ask Fiona if she was all right. Though it was
half past two in the afternoon, her hair was down and she was still in her
dressing gown.

“Yes, yes, of course. I’m
fine.”

“Are you sure you’re all
right?” Evangelina persisted, trying not to stare at Fiona’s state of undress.

“Yes, yes! I’m glad you
came, actually; I want to show you something.”

She led Evangelina out
into the garden. “What is that?” she asked, pointing at a mound of grass
cuttings and kitchen scraps.

“It’s a compost heap,”
Evangelina said. “Are you quite sure you’re all right?”

“Take a look at it,”
Fiona insisted. “What does it consist of?”

“Fiona, I don’t need to
examine your compost heap to ascertain its contents. I know what’s in a compost
heap, I have one myself.”

“Potato peelings,
eggshells, coffee grounds,” Fiona began, counting each item off on her fingers.
“Apple cores, hedge trimmings —”

“Fiona, what are you
getting at?”

“Garbage! It’s all
garbage! And what is the biggest problem in Baltimore today? The garbage
problem.”

“So?”

“So we send our garbage
to the moon!”

“But that’s what I came
here to tell you about. Immediately after we left the gun club the other day,
Mr Barbicane contacted my husband to tell him about our proposal — which they
both found rather amusing — with the end result that Mr Maston has since been
reinstated as club secretary and returned to the pursuit of mathematics, while
I have this morning hired two men to repair the damage to my garden. So
everything has turned out as planned and we can forget about the moon.”

“No, no, you don’t
understand,” Fiona insisted. “This isn’t about your husband’s rift with
Barbicane. This is about making the moon a place where human beings can
survive, and it can work! What was Barbicane and Nicholl’s main objection to
the possibility of making the moon habitable? The lack of an atmosphere. But
what I am proposing will create that atmosphere.”

“How?”

“Of what does our own
atmosphere consist?” Fiona asked her.

Evangelina shrugged. “Oxygen,
I suppose.”

“I think you’ll find
some seventy-eight per cent of the air we breathe is nitrogen. And what gas
does a compost heap produce in abundance?”

“Nitrogen?”

“Exactly! So . . . we
send our garbage to the moon where it decays into compost, producing nitrogen
to enrich the soil, thus enabling the growth of vegetation. The vegetation
produces oxygen. Then we throw in some worms, insects, and small animals to
produce carbon dioxide, and voila! We have an atmosphere.”

Evangelina’s mouth
dropped open. “Where do you get such ideas?”

“Come upstairs and I
will show you.”

Evangelina followed her
back into the house and up the stairs to a large study lined with overflowing
bookcases.

Fiona walked over to a
desk piled high with open books and several stacks of handwritten notes. “My
second husband, though he made his living in textile sales, had a great
interest in science, especially chemistry. I’ve still got all his books, and
have been conducting further research of my own at the public library.”

Evangelina picked up one
of the handwritten sheets and began reading its contents out loud: “Corncobs,
cotton, paper, sawdust, wood chips, straw, hops, restaurant scraps, market
scraps, hair, feathers, hooves, horns, peanut shells, seashells, seaweed . . .
What is this?”

“Just a partial list of
things that can be composted, all of which are thrown out every day. When I was
at the library yesterday, I found a survey predicting that over the next
twenty-five years, the average American city will produce an average of eight
hundred and sixty pounds of garbage per capita. With the current population of
Baltimore standing at approximately five hundred thousand souls, that makes a
total of . . .” She paused to riffle through her notes. “Ah, here we are: 430
million pounds of garbage. Keep in mind this figure is for Baltimore alone, and
assumes no further growth in population, which strikes me as unlikely. Now,
consider the population of New York, currently standing at over three and a
quarter millions —”

Evangelina didn’t need
to hear any more figures to grasp what Fiona was telling her. “In just twenty-five
years, we could turn the moon into a gigantic compost heap!”

“And that is just the
beginning,” Fiona said, concluding her address to an extraordinary meeting of
the New Park Ladies’

Gardening Society,
called at less than forty-eight hours notice. “Upon his return to Earth, the
third passenger in Barbicane and Nicholl’s projectile, the Frenchman Michel
Ardan . . .”

More than two decades
after the Frenchman’s only visit to America, the mere mention of the name “Ardan”
was still enough to prompt a wave of wistful sighs. “

 . . . remarked that the
greatest disappointment of his life was to learn there were no Selenites, but I
tell you now that the Frenchman was wrong. Ladies, we are the Selenites!”

The entire membership of
the society — all seventeen of them — rose to their feet to give Fiona a
standing ovation.

“Whatever became of
Monsieur Ardan?” Hermione whispered to Evangelina.

“He returned to France
some years ago,” Evangelina whispered back, “and the last I heard, was growing
cabbages.”

“Cabbages? How perfect!
We could invite him to judge our best vegetable competition!”

Evangelina took a slow,
deep breath. “Hermione, he lives in France.”

“Over the same period,
Boston, with a population of approximately five hundred and sixty thousand,
will produce well over four hundred and eighty-one million pounds of garbage,”
Fiona informed the trio of gentlemen seated on the opposite side of the table.

“Four hundred eighty-one
million and six hundred thousand, to be precise,” said J. T. Maston.

Evangelina sat quietly
at Fiona’s side. The only reason for her presence today was her role in
arranging this second meeting. Until the occasion two weeks previously, when
she had burst in uninvited with three other women, Evangelina had been the only
non-member — and the only female — ever allowed into the Gun Club premises.
This special status had only been granted to her on account of her generous
financial contribution to the scheme to shift the Earth’s axis. Getting Mr
Barbicane to agree to a second audience with Fiona had not been easy, but once
Evangelina became determined upon something, she usually got her way.

Now there was little for
her to do except allow the others to talk while she reflected on her
surroundings, and she couldn’t help being pleased by what she saw.

The firearms on display
had been restored to their shining former glory, the glass cases sparkled, and
the air of gloom had lifted. And it was all due to the return of J. T. Maston,
once again at his usual place, his good hand scribbling furiously as he
recorded every word spoken at the table into his notebook.

“While New York, with a
population of approximately three and a quarter million is predicted to produce
—”

“Two billion, seven
hundred and ninety five million pounds of garbage,” said J. T Maston, entering
the numbers in his book with a flourish.

“Correct,” said Fiona. “And
not only will this raw material cost us nothing, city governments will pay us
to take it. The only initial expenses involved would be those of setting up a
company and hiring local men to work as our collectors. Once we acquire the
garbage, we simply pack it into missiles designed to break open upon impact,
and send it crashing into the moon.”

J. T. Maston began
sketching a design for the garbage missile. “The opening mechanism, here, will
require a small explosives charge . . .”

“Or perhaps just a
spring?” Fiona suggested tactfully. “That would work, too,” Maston agreed,
modifying his drawing.

“And you plan to follow
this garbage with seeds,” said Barbicane. “What kind of seeds?”

“Whatever is readily to
hand, I should imagine,” Captain Nicholl interjected before Fiona could answer.
“Surely any plant will do as long it produces oxygen.”

“Acorns,” said J. T.
Maston. “If people are going to live on the moon, they will require wood for
building houses.”

“Yes, trees must be a
priority,” Barbicane agreed, “because they take the longest to grow.”

J. T. Maston drew a
large circle to represent the moon. “We could fit an oak forest in here,” he
said, marking out a section of the northern hemisphere.