The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (66 page)

“What we have found,”
Dottore Verde went on calmly, “is nothing less than dressed rock of a
workmanship most assuredly artificial.”

The historian let out a
gasp. “Surely, Doktor, surely you do not realize the implications of what you
say!”

Dottore Verde shook her
head. A strand of her russet hair, until this moment held in place by an
elaborate array of clips and long pins, broke loose from its moorings. With an
annoyed gesture she swept it away from her face. She leaned forward, pressing
the knuckles of a slim hand against white linen.

“I realize quite well
the implications of what I say. We are about to discover the greatest mystery
since the discovery of the ancient world. We are about to discover it, yes, but
will we solve this mystery? That may be the work of many years and require the
efforts of many scholars, but we will be the first to behold these great
objects. My friends —”

She looked around.

“Miei amid, meine
Freunde, mes amis,
did the great Egyptians move to
the west, did they leave traces of their art in the Sahara land once fertile,
only to retreat before the advancing sands? Or did another race, perhaps even a
greater race, once call this region their home? Could they have taught their
arts and science to the Egyptians, only to disappear, themselves, beneath those
sands? This mystery will be solved, and we are the first so honoured to begin
its unravelment.”

An hour later Colonel
Black and Dottore Verde sat in the lounge of the hotel where the members of the
party had been inconspicuously housed. Every other customer had departed the
room. A pair of Arab musicians played softly upon aoud and tabla, the voice of
one rising in tones as soft and as mournful as the long, sad history of his
people.

A bottle and two small
glasses stood upon the table between the man and woman. A candle flickered
beside the bottle, casting shadows on the faces of the two. Only an ornately
tooled portfolio stood against one leg of the Tuscan hydrologist’s chair to
remind a viewer — had there been one — of the session earlier completed with
their colleagues from France, Germany, and England.

Colonel White reached to
fill both glasses, not for the first time. The two raised their glasses, let
them touch rim to rim, then sipped at the delicious beverage. “I didn’t like that
German,” Colonel White whispered. “If he doesn’t believe in this mission he
shouldn’t be here.”

Dottore Verde shook her
head. “Scepticism is healthy, Colonel. Perhaps it is different for a military
man like yourself, but a scientist must treat each claim as a mere possibility,
a suggestion perhaps, until it is supported by solid proof.”

The Confederate looked
into his companion’s eyes, his usually serious countenance brightened by what
might have been the merest suggestion of a smile. He did not reply, not yet,
but instead waited for the Tuscan to resume.

“If we believed every
report,” Dottore Verde said at last, “we would live in a world of chimera and
of hobgoblins, every wood full of werewolves and ogres, every castle populated
by a bevy of ghosts, every tomb the abode of a vampire or a ghoul, the sea
filled with mermen and naiads, and the sky at night filled with visitors from
the circling planets and the twinkling stars.”

Now White did smile. “You
don’t believe in any of those things?”

“No.” Dottore Verde
shook her head. The pins and clips had been removed now, and her russet locks
fell in graceful waves about her oval face. “I do not say that none of those
exist, the world is full of wonders and of mysteries. That is why we must
investigate what lies beneath the Fleuve Triste. But until there is evidence,
dear friend — I may call you that, I hope? For of all the members of our party,
you seem the one to whom I am most attuned . . . .”

“I am honoured, Dottore.”

“Until there is
evidence, we must reserve judgement As for me, should I meet a merman or naiad,
I should be delighted. But, alas, I do not expect ever to have that pleasure.”

She smiled wistfully and
lifted her glass. She peered through the smoky liquid it contained, or appeared
to Colonel White to be doing so. She tilted her glass to her lips, then lowered
it to the table and reached for her portfolio.

“Do you know the work of
Herr Schwartz’s countryman, Herr Doktor Professor Roentgen, Colonel White?”

“Indeed. We use his
wonderful invention in military medicine. Thanks to the good professor I am
here tonight, Dottore.”

“And how is that?”

The Confederate held a
hand to his side. “I don’t like to talk about it much.”

“As you will, then.”

“Very well. It was at
the First Battle of Belize. I took a piece of shrapnel between my third and
fourth rib. A bomb had exploded and sent our position sky-high. I was just a
lieutenant then.” He smiled at the recollection.

“They say that I kept
fighting, that I led my platoon through the rest of the battle before I
collapsed. They say that I killed an entire squad of enemy troops with a
bayonet held in one hand while I held myself together with the other. I wouldn’t
know about that, I don’t remember it.”

“Yet you received a
medal for it, did you not?”

“The Order of Stonewall
Jackson, yes.”

“Well, then.”There was a
look of concern on the Tuscan’s face. She reached for White’s hand and steadied
its trembling.

“You have not recovered
in fullness, have you, Colonel?” The Afro-Confederate shook his head. “I’m
sorry, Doktor.”

She held his hand in
both of hers until the trembling subsided. “Please,” she smiled at him, “I
would appreciate if you might call me Speranza.”

He nodded silently,
tightening his grip on the hand he held in his own.

“And I may call you
Dwight?”

This brought a small
smile to the Confederate’s features. He relaxed his grip on the Tuscan’s hand,
and she on his. “I prefer David. My parents must not have been thinking when
they named me Dwight White.” He managed a hint of a laugh. “It didn’t take me
long to realize that it was better to use my middle name.”

“Sensible indeed.”
Speranza Verde held her glass between them and the Confederate poured. A waiter
appeared, placed a small brass platter of sweetmeats on the table and withdrew
without speaking.

“You mentioned Professor
Roentgen,” the Confederate said.

“Yes. And you said his
work had saved you, did you not?”

“At Belize, yes.” A
faraway look came into White’s eyes. He lifted his glass and drained its
contents. “When I regained consciousness in the field hospital the doctors told
me that I’d actually had a piece of shrapnel in my heart. They couldn’t see
what they were doing so they used a Roentgen apparatus to guide their
instruments when they took it out. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have
lived a day.”

Speranza Verde nodded.
She laid her portfolio on the table between them and took from it a heavy
envelope. From this she extracted several heavy celluloid sheets. Lying flat
upon the envelope from which they had been removed, the celluloid sheets
appeared solidly black. The woman lifted the top sheet from the stack and
handed it to Colonel White.

He held it between
himself and the flickering candle that stood on the table. After studying it
for the better part of a minute he whistled softly and then extended it toward
Speranza Verde. She took the sheet from him and handed him another. The
procedure was repeated until White had examined all the sheets.

He said, “Do you want to
tell me what I’ve just looked at?”

Before responding she
replaced the sheets in their envelope and the envelope in the portfolio. She
placed this in her lap. “These are imagistic plates. They were made by
combining the technology of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen with that of my countryman
Louis-Jacques-Mandé
Daguerre. The Roentgen mechanism can look through solid material.
The Daguerre camera records that which the Roentgen machinery sees. What you
have seen, David, is that which lies beneath the dressed rocks of the Marée de
Fureur, the tidal bed that lies between the Isole de Crainte and Doute.”

“Impossible.”

“Not impossible.”

“But Dottore—”

“Per piacere,
Speranza.”

“Speranza.”

She smiled.

“I saw living things. At
least, I think they were living things. But things not like any I have ever
seen before. Were they alive?”

“No.” The russet waves
moved as if with a will of their own as she shook her head. “They have not
moved. They show no signs of life. But I believe they were once alive, David.”

“Creatures like that —
mixtures of human and beast. They look like the product of the imagination of a
madman.”

She shrugged.

“I saw things in the
jungle of Belize that I would never have imagined at home in Creston, South
Carolina. I spent half my childhood in the water of Lake Marion along with
other children. We came to know every creature in that little aquatic world,
from the smallest water-bugs to tortoises with the wisdom of eternity in their
eyes to eels that could eat a dog in two bites if that dog was foolish enough
to swim too close. But in Belize I saw spiders that eat careless birds and
plants that eat baby pigs. But still, the eels were eels, the spiders were
spiders.”

“I did not make these
up.” Speranza tapped a graceful fingernail on the portfolio containing the
Roentgen—Daguerre plates. “The machine has no imagination, even if a madman
might.”

Colonel White pondered
in silence, then shook his head. “Those things,” he tapped a powerful finger
against the Tuscan’s portfolio, “those great star-headed, conical things, and
that other, that incredible beast with tentacles like ropes, with legs like a
giant beetle and with the mockery of a human face on its carapace — do they
really exist?”

A rectangle of light
broke the mood. Speranza Verde had reached toward the portfolio, perhaps to
open it and remove the envelope of celluloid image plates once again, perhaps to
touch Dwight David White’s hand with her own, but instead she grabbed the
portfolio and placed it protectively on her lap. The Tuscan hydrologist and the
Confederate soldier turned to see a trio of silhouettes in the illuminated
doorway of the lounge.

As Dottore Verde and
Colonel White watched, the three newcomers advanced toward them. The latter
trio halted beside the table from which Colonel White rose, his military
bearing giving him the appearance of a man taller than his actual stature.

“Herr Schwartz, Monsieur
Rouge.” The Colonel raised his hand in suggestion of a military salute. The
German archaeologist clicked his heels and bowed; the Frenchman bent over the
white linen covered table, took the reluctantly offered hand of Speranza Verde
in his own and brushed his lips over it.

“We have a pleasant chat
been enjoying, Monsieur Rouge and I,” Schwartz stated. “We had thought to share
a — what I believe you call in your Confederacy a night hat, Colonel White? —
before retiring for a few hours sleep.”

“A nightcap, Herr
Schwartz. Won’t you join us?”

Monsieur Rouge bowed
once again. “May I present Captain Alexandre, of the
Rosny.”

The third newcomer
advanced to the table. She was as tall as a man, like Colonel White she was
attired in a uniform, its midnight blue colour contrasting with the Colonel’s
Confederate grey. Her features were strong but not masculine. Her hair was so
dark that it appeared almost to blend with the blue of her jacket, flashes of
candlelight seeming to be caught and thrown back from her coiffure. The door
through which the trio had entered was closed now, the sole illumination coming
from the candle on the table. The Arab musicians had packed their instruments
and retired.

Brass buttons on the
woman’s tunic gave back the flickering light of the candle. The cuffs of the
tunic were wrapped in wreaths of gold braid and on her chest the orders and
decorations gave testimony of a distinguished naval career. A dark, pleated
skirt fell to below her knees.

Herr Schwartz and
Monsieur Rouge drew chairs from a nearby, unoccupied table. Rouge held one for
Captain Alexandre before seating himself. A waiter brought a bottle of schnapps
and placed it before Herr Schwartz and one of cognac which the French explorer
and the naval officer would share; glasses were provided for all.

Shortly the quintet were
engaged in conversation. Colonel White waited for Speranza Verde to place her
portfolio on the table again and share its contents with Schwartz and Rouge,
but she gave no indication of doing so. In fact, at one point Jemond Jules
Rouge asked if there was something she wished to share, but Speranza Verde
brushed aside the obvious suggestion.

“Just a few minor items,
Monsieur, nothing of importance.”

“We are all together,”
Colonel White said, “except for our English colleague. Does anyone know where
Sir Shepley Sidwell-Blue has disappeared to?”