Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (19 page)

‘A hypothesis only,’ said Jhutti, looking cautiously upwards at Billiard-Fanon and the projectile he was still holding in his hand. ‘I speculated that in a relatively low-oxygen environment, the –
cuttlefolk
, if that is what we are calling them – the cuttlefolk would lead relatively torpid lives. Perhaps their breeding cycles are tuned to take advantage of, let us say, periodic algae blooms, that …’

Billiard-Fanon threw his second mug. His aim was not so good
with this one, and it bounced noisily but harmlessly, between the floor and wall to Jhutti’s right. But it shut him up.

‘I don’t care!’ Billiard-Fanon barked. ‘I don’t care about your impious science and explanations and all that baggage! Those animals – they ripped the vanes off the
Plongeur
! They ripped open our main flotation tanks! They caused a dozen leaks in the vessel! Well, thanks to Monsieur Castor here, we’ve fixed the leaks. Although he got himself badly burned. He is a true hero!’

‘The tanks are useless, though,’ said Castor, in a sour voice. ‘Ruined. Hopeless.’

‘The one good thing is that we’ve sunk past the cuttlefolk. They’ve dropped away, like leeches under the hot end of a cigarette. So, not all bad. Not enough oxygen, or something – I don’t care why. But here’s the
not
good part; we can’t go back up. That was the captain’s last order, and I wish we could follow it, but we can’t. So, let’s go down. We’ll see what turns up. Now!’ he said, with sudden force. ‘Monsieur Pannier.
You
have something to report?’

Pannier was holding an open bottle by its neck. Most of the wine inside had gone, but he did not sound drunk. ‘What? Yes, yes, yes. I happened to chance upon the Indian gentleman, whose name I can’t remember if I ever knew it …’

‘Ghatwala,’ said Ghatwala.

‘The
Indian gentleman
,’ Pannier said, pointedly. ‘
And
the Vichy feller, Monsieur Lebret. They were having a little secret conversation through the locked door of Lebret’s cell. Gabbling away in Indian, too; not in honest French. I’ve never seen a more suspicious scene, messieurs! Now, we already know Lebret is a treacherous collaborationist swine; the sort of man who’d promise to come back for a comrade and then leave him to die – leave him to drown in his cabin like a cat in a bag! As for the other gentleman, well, I don’t hold anything against him
personally
. I’m not the sort of man who thinks that a black skin stops a feller from being a proper Frenchman, or anything like that. Although the gentleman
isn’t
French, is he? And now I happen upon the two of them, together. Whispering treason, they were.’

‘You said we were speaking Punjabi!’ Lebret objected. ‘How
do you know
what
we were saying? Or are you claiming you can speak Punjabi?’

Lebret grabbed a third steel mug from a hook, fumbled and dropped it. It bounced harmlessly down the wall. ‘Be quiet!’ he snapped. ‘Second item! As some of you know – Monsieur Lebret stabbed Matelot Avocat to death, a few hours ago.’

‘I did not!’ blurted Lebret.

‘Be quiet! You deny that you stabbed him?’

Lebret rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. ‘But …’

‘You deny that he
died
, and that this death occurred
after
you stabbed him?’

‘I was trying to relieve the pressure in his …’

‘Open
and
shut,’ crowed Pannier. ‘If only submarines came equipped with a guillotine!’

‘Let me state my case!’ Lebret demanded, growing angry. ‘The accused is permitted to state his case, in any court of law! You see, it was like this … poor Monsieur Avocat fell down and broke his arm. A very bad break. His arm swelled up, like a, like a … I thought only to relieve the pressure! By terrible misfortune I nicked an artery and …’

‘Bung him in the airlock,’ Pannier interrupted. ‘Fill it with water. See how
he
likes being left alone, in a cabin, or – er, airlock – waiting to drown. Like a cat in a bag! Like a
cat
!’

Lebret tried to make appeal to the other sailors. ‘This is absurd! You can’t possibly believe this!’

‘Believe it?’ snarled Billiard-Fanon. ‘This is a jury of your peers, Monsieur. We believe what the
evidence
tells us to believe.’

‘Put him in a torpedo tube and shoot him out!’ cried Pannier. A couple of sailors laughed. Billiard-Fanon, looking about him, seemed pleased at this notion. ‘Good idea! Set an example!’

‘Insanity!’ cried Lebret. ‘
Why
would I kill Monsieur Avocat?’

‘You tell us, M’sieur! You tell us!’ snapped Billiard-Fanon. ‘You’d better start explaining things, you Vichy monster.’

‘You have to concede it looks bad for you, Monsieur,’ said Le Petomain. ‘Why
did
you do what you did?’

‘I was trying to help!’ said Lebret. He glanced from face to face;
but the mood of the group was shifting unpredictably. He could see that Billiard-Fanon was giving these men a point of certainty to grasp in amongst all the estrangement and fear. That this point of certainty enabled them to vent their anxiety as violence only made it more effective. His guilt or innocence was equally beside the point. A terrified and confused group of men; they were close to mob hysteria.

‘If
he
won’t talk,’ said Pannier. ‘Maybe his Indian friend will?’

‘All eyes turned to Ghatwala. His chin, crusted with dried blood, moved and he spoke, his words emerging stickily. ‘I do not understand,’ he said, ‘why you call Monsieur Lebret, Vichy. He was no collaborator – surely you see that? He was working under cover.’

‘Balls!’ cried Billiard-Fanon.

‘He was personally chosen for this present mission by de Gaulle, in the latter’s capacity as Minister of Defence. You think de Gaulle would choose a former collaborationist?’

‘Shut him up,’ Billiard-Fanon ordered. Pannier leaned down and slapped the scientist on the back of his head. ‘Skin for skin,’ the ensign said, holding the weighty pistol in his hands, as if contemplating what to do with it. ‘Skin for skin, all that a man hath he will give for his life. You can only expect them to lie – right?’

‘But we’re telling the truth,’ insisted Lebret.

With surprising gracefulness Billiard-Fanon jumped down from his eminence, to stand in the V made by the room’s tipped-up floor and wall, right next to Lebret. ‘I think Monsieur Pannier made a most interesting suggestion,’ he announced, aiming the captain’s pistol at Lebret’s chest. ‘I say we let him lie down – in the torpedo tube! Fire him out into the waters, to explain his crimes to the cuttlefolk!’

Pannier cheered, a solitary cry. But Lebret could see, looking about him, that the other crewmen were nodding.

‘This is no justice,’ said Ghatwala, in a thick voice. ‘This is no proper
trial
.’

‘Say another word,’ Billiard-Fanon told him, ‘and you will join
your conspirator in the torpedo tube. I suppose a heathen will drown as quick as a Christian, out there – always assuming you
are
a Christian, Monsieur Lebret.’

Lebret felt a heady sense of incipient hysteria. He almost laughed. ‘I’m a dialectical materialist,’ he returned.

‘Some kind of Protestant, eh?’

‘Should we not,’ said Capot, tentatively, ‘should we not at least wait for the lieutenant to wake up, before … er, sentence is passed?’

‘What for?’ snarled Pannier.

‘And what if he
doesn’t
wake up?’ was Billiard-Fanon’s question. ‘A ship needs discipline. At the moment, I
am
that discipline. I’m in charge – anybody want to challenge my authority?’

Capot said nothing.

‘You’d better think,’ Billiard-Fanon said, turning to Lebret again, ‘of clearing your soul. Before you meet your God, you know.’

‘Alright, alright,’ said Lebret. He was sweating profusely. ‘There is more to this situation than I have admitted … than I have said. I’ve not shared this with you all before because … well – because I was
ordered
to keep it to myself, actually.’ He glanced up at Ghatwala, as if considering whether to include him in what he had to say. But he went on, ‘Several of you have speculated why I am here. In fact, I am working directly for the Secret Services of France. I received my commission directly from de Gaulle – as was said. I was no more a collaborationist during the last war than any of you.’

‘A pretty fiction,’ said Billiard-Fanon. ‘Carry on – your lies only make it clearer I’ve made the right decision in condemning you to death.’

‘These are not lies,’ said Lebret, fiercely. He brought a cigarette out of his case – his last, he thought grimly – but his hands were trembling visibly. He fumbled the little white tube, dropped it. Another of the vessel’s weird poltergeist-like breezes sprung up from nowhere and blew the cigarette away, away towards the far wall. Lebret watched it go forlornly, as if his last hope went with it.

‘So,’ Pannier prompted. ‘You are not a Vichy traitor, you’re a heroic undercover spy? Is that what you were saying?’

‘Remember when the
Plongeur
first sank?’ Lebret asked, putting his now empty cigarette case back into his jacket pocket. ‘And for a terrifying half-hour we all thought we would die at any moment? I recall that
you
confessed, Monsieur Pannier, to murdering a man.’

Pannier’s eyes narrowed. ‘A typically low and treacherous move, Lebret,’ he returned, ‘to bring that up. A moment of crisis! What about poor Avocat, and his cousin drowning in milk? You want to taunt
him
about that, now that he’s dead?’

‘My point is this. We
didn’t
die,’ Lebret continued. ‘That’s so amazing a circumstance that perhaps we’ve forgotten it! We ought to be have been crushed by the pressure, or dashed against the seabed. Instead we have passed into a new realm – who can doubt it?’

Billiard-Fanon lowered the pistol. ‘You know more about this than you’ve said,’ he accused. ‘Spit it out! Have you known all along?’

‘We didn’t know! Which is to say, we didn’t know
for certain
,’ said Lebret. ‘But there was … shall we say
reason to believe
that some manner of passage was possible from our cosmos of vacuum and hydrogen into, well, into what we see. A cosmos of water. Nor are we the first to have travelled this way.’

‘Not the first?’ gasped Jhutti.

‘How likely is it that we would have been the first? If we could enter this realm, then others could have done so before us.’ Once again Lebret’s eyes met Ghatwala’s, but he snatched his glance away as if fearing to incriminate the other man. ‘But there were many imponderables. Anyway you must believe me when I say that – that neither I nor the powers for which I work – powers, I might add, dedicated to tapping this resource for the greater glory of France – that neither they nor I had any idea that we would detect an entrance to a portal upon the
maiden
voyage of …’

‘Stop,’ said Le Petomain. ‘Wait. You knew that we would pass into this terrible place?’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Lebret.

‘But the people you work for knew – or suspected. Why didn’t they tell us?’

‘It is … complicated,’ said Lebret, rubbing his eyes. Suddenly he felt terribly weary.

‘Did Captain Cloche know?’

‘He did not.’

‘Why would the Navy do such a thing? Send a ship out to explore an underwater tunnel to a new dimension, without telling the captain or crew that’s what they were doing?’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ agreed Billiard-Fanon, scowling.

‘You misunderstand the nature of our … knowledge,’ said Lebret. ‘And do I need to remind you how volatile French politics has been over the last few years? To say nothing of the … extraordinary and … well, intrinsically questionable nature of the information we had received.’ Once more Lebret was unable to prevent his glance searching out Ghatwala.

‘Is this what you’ve been conspiring about, you and he?’ Billiard-Fanon demanded, pointing the pistol at Ghatwala. Pannier, sitting next to the scientist, flinched away, and – a little sheepishly – Billiard-Fanon brought the aim of the gun back round to Lebret.

‘The little I know about this new realm …’ Lebret began to say.

‘
This
is why,’ Billiard-Fanon interrupted him. ‘This is why you were so insistent we keep diving down – when the captain wanted to refloat the tanks and go back up, towards home. You tricked us into diving deeper! And here we are … descending through watery hell.’

‘As I say,’ Lebret repeated, trying to assert a degree of control over the exchange, ‘I don’t know everything about this place. But I am certain that going back
up
would be a wild goose chase. I know we have to keep going
down
.’

‘What choice do we have?’ yelled Pannier. ‘You’ve doomed us all!’

There was general, vocal agreement to this proposition.

‘We’re not doomed—’ Lebret began to say. But Billiard-Fanon cut him off.

‘You still haven’t said why you killed Avocat. Not content to wait for us all to die, you’ve decided to go about the vessel killing us one at a time?’

‘No—no—’

‘Are you murdering to a purpose?’ Billiard-Fanon demanded. ‘Or are you simply insane – a maniac?’

‘I’ll say it again, I don’t know why you won’t believe me. Monsieur Avocat hurt his arm, and I was trying to help! It’s the truth!’

Billiard-Fanon took a step towards Lebret. ‘You’re innocent, you say?’

‘Yes!’

‘Look me in the eye, Monsieur Lebret,’ demanded Billiard-Fanon. ‘Look me right in the eye, and say “I am innocent of murder”. Say it, and I’ll know whether you’re telling the truth.’

The walls of the
Plongeur
shuddered and groaned, and the boat rolled a little. Everyone in the mess twitched, and gripped more tightly onto whatever they were holding. Lebret looked about him. A bank of hostile faces. His eye snagged on a number of oddities – there was his cigarette, stuck somehow to the ceiling. There, too, were various pieces of detritus and rubbish, discarded food, papers, littered about the ceiling. He wondered, idly, what was sticking them up there. Presumably they were wet, and the water was acting as some kind of glue. He listened – there were roiling, watery sounds distantly visible – and he heard, in his imagination, the sound of the ocean speaking to him as it had done before:
the water loves you utterly, yearns to embrace you with all its limbs and press its mouth to your mouth
. He tried to focus. Billiard-Fanon was leaning in towards him.