The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (65 page)

“Ingenious, Miss
Scrobot! What can I say?”

“You could ask me to marry you, Mr Fuller,”

She looked down, shocked
at her own daring. Max’s smile slowly widened.

“I would not dare do
otherwise, Miss Scrobot. Or should I say, Janet? When a woman makes her mind up
in these matters, what man can stand in her way?”

Janet Scrobot gave a mechanical smile.

“And in matters of
Mathematics, Mr Fuller. Will you now admit to female proficiency in that field?”

Max smiled warmly at his metal companion.

“Not proficiency, Janet. Rather I would say, what man could
compete with a woman’s wiles!”

“Oh, Mr Fuller!”

In the last fifteen
years of his life Verne continued to maintain a remarkable output of fiction,
unfortunately all too much of it of minimal interest. Who today reads or even
remembers
César Cascabel
(1890),
Mistress Branican
(1891),
Claudius
Bombarnac
(1892),
P’tit-Bonhomme
(1893),
Captain Antifer
(1895),
Clovis Dardentor
(1896) or
The Will of an Eccentric
(1899)?
Thankfully there were more exciting novels that captured some of that old
adventurous spark, such
as L’île a hake
(1895) — also known as
Floating
Island
or
Propeller Island —
about the creation of a massive
artificial island that unfortunately meets with inevitable destruction because
of man’s folly. Verne also wrote
Le Sphinx des glaces
(1897), or
An
Antarctic Mystery,
his sequel to Poe’s
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym.
Other works of interest include
La Grande Forêt
(1901), or
The
Village in the Treetops,
and the second Robur novel
Maître du monde
(1904).

Verne was so prolific
that there were sufficient novels stockpiled to appear posthumously, and not
all have been translated into English. One of these lesser known works,
L’Invasion de la Mer,
was being serialized in
Magasin d’éducation
et de récréation
at the time of Verne’s death in March 1905. It used an idea
Verne had touched upon
in Hector Servadac
and that was the possibility
of irrigating the Sahara desert. In
L’Invasion de la Mer,
engineers are
constructing a canal from the Gulf of Gabè in Tunisia into the Sahara but an
earthquake disrupts the work and causes the Mediterranean to break through and
create a huge inland sea. This novel was translated and serialized in America
in a much edited version as
Captain Hardizan
in the
American Weekly
during
August 1905, a fact long unknown to Verne devotees until discovered recently by
researcher Victor Berch. The first full translation appeared as
The
Invasion of the Sea
in 2001 and that version inspired the following story.

Although the Great Hall
of the Republic could of course have been commandeered for the meeting, His
Excellency the Governor General of the Province of Tunisie F
rançaise
had chosen to entertain his distinguished guests in a smaller,
private dining room. Such was a proper decision, for these more intimate
surroundings were designed to encourage an open discussion of issues and
exchange of views than would the more formal, even ceremonial, atmosphere of
the flag-draped and sculpted Hall.

Here in the Governor
General’s private dining room, a sparkling table had been set and the Personal
Representative of the President of the French Republic had entertained his
guests in lavish manner. The meal had consisted of a local endive and olive
salad, baked Saharan langouste stuffed with salt-water crab, lamb shish kebab,
chick-peas and tabouli washed down with Algerian wine, followed by baclava,
thick Turkish coffee, and a sweet Hungarian Tokay.

Empty dishes, silver,
and other detritus had been cleared away by silent and well-trained servants.
Out of respect for their sole female member, the Italian Dortore Speranza
Verde, a native of Tuscany, the men of the party had refrained briefly from
lighting cheroots. The red-haired and green-eyed Tuscan physician had startled
them by requesting a cheroot from her neighbour, the English historian, Mr
Black, and drawing upon it with obvious pleasure.

Now as the Governor
General, M. Sebastiane LeMonde, rose, the buzz of conversation which had
followed the meal ceased and a hush descended upon the room.

“Madame,” the Governor
General bowed toward the female physician, “and Messieurs, in the name of the
President of the Republic I welcome you to French Africa and to our beautiful
city of Serkout.”

A murmur of approval
rippled through the assemblage, following which the Governor General resumed.

“I am authorized by the
President of the Republic to offer special felicitations to Colonel Dwight
David White.”

The Governor General
nodded toward a tall, distinguished gentleman clothed in the grey uniform of
the Army of the Confederate States of America. This officer’s skin was black;
his hair, its tight curls cropped close to his skull, shared the colouration of
his military garb. The uniform bore the gold frogging and glittering
decorations earned in his distinguished career.

The Colonel nodded his
acknowledgment of the Governor General’s felicitation.

“Sir, this year marks
the one hundredth anniversary of a date in the history of your nation, the
Declaration of Emancipation issued by your President, Mr Jefferson Davis. As a
student of North American history since my first days at the
École
de Paris,
I have long felt that President
Davis’s action was not only a matter of high morality, but a political move of
the wisest. By declaring the enslaved persons of his nation free and equal
citizens of that Republic and offering them fair compensation for the suffering
and deprivation of their lives, he won for the Confederacy a new and most
highly motivated Army, which led to the vanquishment of the Union forces and
recognition of a new and shining ornament among the family of Nations.”

The Confederate rose to
his feet and responded, briefly and modestly, to the Governor General’s words
before resuming his seat.

M. LeMonde spoke once
more. “You have assembled here, Madame and Messieurs, in regard to a situation unprecedented
in human history. As you are aware, the greatest engineering feat of the past
century, greater even than the Grand Canals de Lesseps which connect the Red
Sea with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific at the
Isthmus of Panama, was the creation of the Sahara Sea by the engineers of the
Republic of France under the leadership of the great M. Roudaire, of happy
memory.”

A murmur of agreement
was heard, accompanied by the nodding of distinguished heads.

“The world has known and
applauded this great feat of engineering,” LeMonde continued, “but at this
moment we face a new puzzle of which only a handful of individuals are aware.
The details will be revealed to you shortly. By your own consent, all contact
with the general public and the outside world has been interdicted, and will
remain so until you return from the mission which you have agreed to assay.”

A grumble made its way
around the table. The bearded, heavy-set archaeologist, Herr Siegfried
Schwartz, ground his Cuban maduro cigar into an ash-tray. “From Berlin I
receive my instructions, Monsieur LeMonde.”

The Frenchman expressed
his concern. “All was agreed to beforehand, Mein Herr, was it not? I hope we
are not to dissolve into disagreement at this point.”

“Yes, I believe that was
the agreement. Otherwise I should have to consult Whitehall at every turn. It
just wouldn’t do, sir.” The blond moustache of the historian, Sir Shepley
Sidwell-Blue, twitched as if with a life of its own.

“Very well,” Herr
Schwartz growled, “continue, Monsieur.”

“At this point, if I may
be excused,” the Governor General stated, “I will turn the proceedings over to
the Chairman of your Committee, Monsieur Jemond Jules Rouge.” The Governor
General bowed and took his leave. He was replaced at the podium by his goateed
countryman.

Monsieur Rouge looked
around the room, his eyes flashing. “Madame and Messieurs, you represent not
merely the great nations of the civilized world but the flower of your chosen
professions. Throughout this day and evening we have socialized and exchanged
credentials. In this room are assembled the world’s most famed archaeologist,
the author of many volumes which I may say cumulatively comprise nothing less
than the history of civilization, the military officer whose brilliant
campaigns have extended his nation’s borders from the Mason-Dixon Line to the
de Lesseps Inter-Oceanic Canal, and, may I offer my compliments to the lovely
Dottore Verde, our most accomplished — pardon my crude pronunciation
s’il
vous plait
— hydrologist.”

Each participant in the
conference — and the meal — nodded acknowledgment as his or her name was
spoken.

The Italian hydrologist,
Dottore Verde, had prepared for this moment. She rose to her feet and strode to
the rostrum, relieving the Frenchman who resumed his place at the now cleared
dinner table.

“Signori, when our
colleagues the French opened the northerly dunes of the Sahara desert and let
in the waters of the Mediterranean to create the Sahara Sea, they created a new
avenue for the ships of commerce and a new home for the fish of nourishment. We
agree — yes? — that the people of the Africa North are blessed by this new sea.
But also they created, perhaps unthinkingly, the so-they-say Fleuve Triste, the
river which flows between Isola di Crainte and Isola di Doute. This fleuve,
this so-they-say flume, is not really a river, but a tidal phenomenon that
flows first to the north, then to the south, again to the north, again to the
south.”

A sulphur match flared
as Herr Schwartz lighted another maduro. He sucked loudly at the cigar, then
exhaled a cloud of heavy, odorous smoke.

“I should think,
perhaps, that Signor Schwartz most of all, would take an interest in this
phenomenon,” the red-haired Tuscan continued. “For the action of scouring of
the rushing water, back and forth, back and forth, has begun to carry away the
sand accumulated between these two islands over a many thousands of years span.
The French, by creating this new sea, have changed the — what we call the
idrodinamica
—
the hydrodynamics — of the entire Mediterranean region as well.”

“So?” Herr Schwartz
growled, “to what result, Doktor?”

“Herr Schwartz,” the
Tuscan smiled, “you of all persons are familiar with the great and ancient
civilizations to the east of our present location.”

“Ah, of course. The
Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Hebrews, the Hittites. But here in the Sahara
— nothing but sand and palm trees, my dear Doktor. My time I could spend far
better in my museum in Berlin. A channel perhaps deeper is made, larger ships
it will permit to travel to this city of Serkout. Of interest to me this is
not. Only because my government instructed, am I here.”

“I see.” Dottore Verde
gave no indication that she was hurt by the German archaeologist’s words. “But
your knowledge of the archaeology may yet prove useful. You see, good sir, all
is not sand beneath the Sahara seabed.”

“Of course not,”
Schwartz frowned. “Bedrock we will find. Sooner or later, it this inevitable
is.”

“Not only bedrock, good
sir. When the Sahara was a desert, the dunes they rose and fell with the action
of mighty winds. But beneath the dunes, the ancient rocks had their own,” she
smiled, displaying white, even teeth, “their own
topografia,
you
understand? The islands between which we cruise, Crainte and Doute, are of the
ancient bedrock. But —”

“This lesson in
geography, dear Madame — any point at all, has it?”

The Tuscan hydrologist’s
monologue had turned into a dialogue with the archaeologist, then a debate,
very nearly a quarrel.