The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions

by Robert Rankin

  And George smiled at Ada, who smiled back at George, and then both of them smiled at the professor.

  ‘Fiddle de, fiddle dum,’ said that fellow, dancing up and bowing low. ‘You are in good health, young George, the saints be thanked for it. I have been scouring the ship for you, in fear that you might have taken a spill. But you are well and in the company of a beautiful young woman and at Lord Brentford’s table. Good evening, Darwin.’

  Lord Brentford’s monkey butler gibbered in reply.

  ‘I am well,’ said George, ‘and very pleased to see that you are too and this is—’

  ‘Ada Fox,’ said Ada. ‘I am George’s sister.’

  ‘Sister?’ said Professor Coffin, falling back in surprise. ‘Sister, George? You never spoke to me of any sister. This is a great surprise to me.’

  ‘No more than it is to me,’ said George. ‘Which is to say, of course, that I did not know that my sister was on board. We are not a close family. My sister has come to America to seek work as a—’

  ‘Dancer,’ said Ada ‘Fox’.

  ‘Mathematician?’ said George.

  ‘Champagne, sir?’ said the wine waiter. ‘And will your sinister grandparent be joining you for dinner?’

  ‘What did you say?’ asked Professor Coffin of the wine waiter.

  ‘I asked whether the superior grandparent – to wit yourself, sir – would be joining His young Lordship here for dinner.’

  ‘I certainly will,’ said Professor Coffin, and, throwing back the tails of his coat, flung himself down onto a chair.

  Champagne was danced around. Grand food was ordered and consumed, conversation merried itself and at least on Lord George’s table everyone was having a good time.

  ‘Can we keep the monkey butler?’ George asked Professor Coffin. ‘He is an orphan now, it seems.’

  Professor Coffin made a jolly face. ‘Certainly,’ said he. ‘Did you and your sister have pets when you were children?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ada.

  ‘No,’ said George.

  But both spoke together.

  ‘Which is to say,’ said George, ‘that yes, Ada did, but no, I did not.’

  ‘And what pets did you have?’ asked the professor.

  ‘Dog,’ said George.

  And, ‘Cat,’ said Ada.

  Once more both together.

  ‘It was a cat,’ said George. ‘Although it looked a lot like a dog. I used to walk it on a lead, people used to think it was a dog.’

  ‘All becomes very clear,’ said the professor. Making a knowing smile.

  ‘George tells me that you are taking him on the Grand Tour,’ said Ada, smiling beautifully upon Professor Coffin. ‘He has told me so much about you. He holds you in very high esteem.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said George.

  ‘And I likewise do you,’ said the professor, offering a guarded look to Ada as he did so. ‘But I think I should leave you two young people to your conversation. You must have so many things to catch up upon. I spy Mr Charles Babbage at yonder table, not looking too much the worse for wear. I have certain questions that I wish to ask him. If you will pardon me.’ Professor Coffin rose from his chair, dabbed a napkin to his lips, saluted Ada, bowed stiffly, turned and departed.

  ‘He really is such a very nice fellow,’ said George, smiling after him.

  Ada Lovelace slowly shook her head. She turned her beautiful green eyes upon George Fox and looked at him long and hard.

  ‘I do not know,’ she said to George, ‘whether you might trust that unquantifiable something that is known as “female intuition”.’

  George Fox shrugged and sipped a little champagne. ‘Well, upon this occasion I would advise you to do so,’ said Ada Lovelace. ‘For your companion, George, is undoubtedly by far the most evil man that it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.’

  21

  ‘Oh no,’ cried George, most terribly shocked. ‘You are wrong about the professor.’

  Darwin the monkey butler refreshed George’s glass and George thanked him for doing so.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Ada Lovelace. ‘I know these things. I am a woman.’

  ‘Trust you?’ said George, and his face expressed some doubts.

  ‘George,’ said Ada, ‘I know I used you and I have apologised for that. You are an extremely nice young man and I consider us now to be friends.’

  ‘Friends,’ agreed George, with only tiny little grindings of his teeth.

  ‘Then trust me when I say to you that the professor is evil. As well as having inbuilt intuition, women also have this other thing, this rather unfortunate thing.’

  George almost said, ‘The menstrual cycle?’ But he did not, because he knew that had he done so, he would then have had to take recourse to ‘the gentleman’s way out’ and throw himself over the side.

  ‘An almost hypnotic fascination for and attraction to wicked men,’ said Ada. ‘Women find evil men, how shall I put this, well, sexually attractive.’

  Darwin the monkey butler hid his face.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Ada, ‘and I wish it were not so. But it is so and therefore I have to conclude that, as I find Professor Coffin to be almost a veritable Love God, yet consider the looks of him to be thoroughly repellent, he is an evil monster.’

  ‘No,’ said George, a-shaking of his head. ‘He looks after me. He cares about me. He treats me almost royally.’

  ‘Does he?’ said Ada. ‘Does he indeed?’

  ‘Yes he does.’ George quaffed champagne. ‘And he financed our trip out of his own pocket. I have paid for nothing.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ada. ‘Do you know the second time I heard your name?’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘But that is a strange question. The first time, I recall, was when I told it to you. On the night of the concert at the Crystal Palace.’

  ‘Quite so.’ Ada Lovelace sipped champagne, the liquid reflecting in her eyes. ‘The second time was when it was being shouted loudly by various tradesmen in various trade wagons that were rushing towards the Empress of Mars as it rose from the Royal London Spaceport.’

  ‘Ah,’ said George. ‘I do remember that.’

  ‘I had a very good view from my nest in the lifeboat. Those tradesmen looked upset.’

  ‘Ah,’ said George, once more. ‘Indeed they did.’

  ‘But it was definitely your name they were calling out and not that of the professor.’

  ‘He explained that to me,’ said George, gulping down further champagne. ‘He needed to use an aristocratic name to get credit with the tailors and makers of toiletry items and spat manufacturers and royally appointed cane merchants and—’

  ‘It never occurred to him to call himself Lord Coffin?’

  ‘Ah,’ said George, for a third time. ‘But he did sell everything that he owned to pay for our tickets.’

  ‘To take you on the Grand Tour? That was very generous of him. Almost altruistic, one might say.’

  ‘One might,’ agreed George.

  ‘Assuming it to be the truth,’ said Ada. ‘And that there was no ulterior motive. That the professor did not want something in return. Something that you could provide him with.’

  George groaned. ‘You are twisting it all about,’ said he. ‘He is a good man. He looks after me.’

  The wine waiter appeared once more at the table. ‘I do hope everything has been to your liking,’ he said, in a tone that George felt lacked for a certain sincerity. ‘Only it has been a rather rough day for some of us and I would like to creep away to the sorry wooden bunk that has been provided for me and get two hours of sleep before I am called back onto duty.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said George.

  ‘So there is the matter of the bill,’ said the wine waiter.

  ‘Perhaps Professor Coffin will be covering it,’ suggested Ada Lovelace.

  ‘No, madam, I fear not,’ said the wine waiter. ‘I just encountered that gentleman purchasing absinthe for Mr Charles Babbage. He said that you would be sig
ning for the meal, Lord George.’

  George ordered further champagne. And a pint of porter for Darwin.

  ‘So,’ said he to Ada. ‘An evil man, you think?’

  ‘I fear that I do, George. Sorry, but it is true.’

  ‘Things certainly have been a bit odd lately.’ George passed a drinking straw to Darwin, who was having problems with his porter. ‘The staff are turning somewhat surly – I almost fear for a mutiny, and then all this hideous violence and I have been experiencing periods of missing time. My memory is fragmented.’

  Ada Lovelace raised a beautiful eyebrow. ‘Why are you really on this voyage?’ she asked. ‘What does the professor really want from you?’

  George Fox sighed and glanced around. He did not know what he should say.

  ‘You can tell me the truth,’ said Ada. ‘What harm could it possibly do?’

  ‘I do not think that you tell me all of the truth,’ George said.

  ‘I am perhaps given to the occasional slight exaggeration, ’ said Ada, fluttering her eyelids at George. ‘Perhaps prone to storytelling, but it is a hereditary thing. Quite out of my control.’

  ‘As with your attraction to wicked men?’

  ‘Not unlike,’ Ada agreed. ‘It is a family thing. It would surprise you, indeed, were you to learn the name of my father.’

  ‘Strangely, I feel it would not,’ said George.

  ‘Lord Byron,’ said Ada Lovelace.

  Darwin the monkey butler hastened to dab at George with an oversized red gingham serviette. For George had spluttered champers down his front.

  ‘Lord Byron?’ said George. ‘I do think not.’

  Ada Lovelace dipped into her sequined evening purse and produced a folded newspaper cutting. This she handed to George, who unfolded same and read from it aloud.

  POET’S DAUGHTER VANISHES

  he read:The daughter of renowned poet and substance abuser George Gordon Byron was reported missing yesterday. Investigations led by Scotland Yard’s leading detective Inspector Lestrade have so far proved fruitless. It is thought that the family of Miss Ada may seek to employ the services of the renowned consulting detective Mr Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘And there is a photograph,’ said George. ‘And that photograph is of you.’

  Ada Lovelace smiled upon George and took back the newspaper cutting.

  ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes will find you,’ said George. ‘He is the best detective in the whole wide world.’

  ‘He is afeared of heights,’ said Ada Lovelace. ‘After that business at the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty – another evil professor, you will notice – he cannot stand heights. Thus I fled upon the very means of transportation that soars to the highest of heights.’

  ‘To find work as a mathematician in America?’ George asked.

  ‘To find adventure,’ said Ada, a green fire sparkling in her eyes. ‘I am a girl adventurer. An adventuress. These are exciting times, George Fox, and we are lucky to be young and living in them.’

  ‘There has not been too much luck about today,’ George observed. ‘Sorry to deaden the conversation, but nearly two hundred people have died to my knowledge and who knows how many more in New York.’

  ‘Not too many,’ said Ada. ‘Although I did overhear some people at that table over there saying that Barnum’s American Museum burned to the ground.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said George. ‘I would have liked to have visited that. But listen, this is all an awful affair. These people who have died were not just hoi polloi, they were titled folk.’

  ‘And that makes their lives more valuable?’ Ada asked.

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘I do not mean that. All life is equally valuable.’

  ‘Even alien life?’ asked Ada, turning her head towards a party of Venusians who had lately entered the great dining hall and were now elegantly seating themselves.

  George looked on as they did so.

  Tall and gorgeous they were, with their high plumed albino locks, their startling cheekbones and golden eyes. George recalled how Ada Lovelace had told him that she found Venusians fearful and George could understand how their very ‘otherness’ made Earth folk uncomfortable. To the extent that today Fundamentalist Christians had sought to murder those aboard the Empress of Mars.

  The Venusian sitters looked aloof, detached from the everyday. If the events earlier had affected them in any way there was no evidence of that here. They placed their perfumers before them on the table and engaged in prayers in their native tongue.

  ‘Cold,’ whispered Ada. ‘Cold as fish, they have no emotions at all.’

  ‘I worry for all of this,’ said George. ‘What if the Fundamentalist Christians had succeeded in murdering these Venusians today? It might have sparked off, how shall I put this, an interplanetary incident, as well as an international one. They travel under the protection of Queen Victoria, as do all aboard.’

  ‘And all men are equal, no matter what their race?’ said Ada.

  ‘Of course,’ said George. ‘How could it be otherwise? ’

  ‘And no matter the planet of their birth? I do not recall the Martians coming in peace for all Mankind.’

  ‘They were mad, those Martians,’ said George. ‘But they are all dead now, thank goodness.’

  ‘George,’ said Ada, ‘you are a lovely man. You care about everybody. But this world, and no doubt others also, are not peopled by lovely men like you. People are bigots, religious or racial or both. I do not like Venusians, I admit it. I do not wish to kill them, but in truth I wish they were not here. They make me uneasy. I know they are up to something.’

  ‘Well, I do not know,’ said George. ‘I think that what happened today was appalling. I think that this airship should return to London where the dead can be given proper burial. And—’

  ‘What of you, George Fox? What of you?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said George. ‘You have put certain doubts in my head. I do not know what to think any more.’

  ‘Perhaps a little more champagne might help.’

  George Fox stroked at his striking chin. ‘Perhaps it might,’ he agreed.

  The evening passed away most pleasantly. George tried quite successfully to turn a blind eye to the scorched diners and the aloof Venusians, whom he noticed did not dine, but only took glasses of water. Ada Lovelace was a skilled and witty conversationalist and as George looked into her entrancing green eyes he could only think of how lucky he was to be sitting right here, right now, at this table with such a beautiful woman.

  George did his best to put all thoughts from him for anything but Ada. And found this not altogether impossible.

  George finally signed a bill of prodigious price without any thought of adding a tip, dismissed Darwin the monkey butler for the night and escorted Ada Lovelace for a stroll on the promenade deck.

  It had been cleared now of the wounded and the dead and was once more a picture in the moonlight.

  ‘We will not walk too closely to the guardrail,’ said George. ‘A drunken fellow pitched over it last night.’

  ‘He did so after a struggle with someone,’ said Ada, ‘and bounced right off my lifeboat when he fell.’

  ‘Well,’ said George, ‘we had best be careful. It is a beautiful night.’

  The moon shone in the star-struck sky, the clouds below and all of heaven above. George and Ada strolled the deck, arm in arm and at peace.

  And when Ada turned up her face to be kissed, George kissed it tenderly.

  22

  Rude awakenings now held little surprise for George, so when a mighty rapping upon his cabin door jarred him into consciousness he did not complain too loudly. In fact, he hardly complained at all; he did not have it in him. George swung his legs gently over the edge of his dangling bunk, cradled his head in his hands and moaned softly. George had a terrible hangover.

  A sudden thought gripped him and he glanced back to the bunk, but the thought was a vain one and Ada Lovelace was not to be found sleeping there, her
lovely red head upon the pillow, those emerald eyes closed in peaceful sleep.

  George felt his way to the cabin door and eased it open a crack, and the bootboy’s grinning face displayed itself.

  ‘Lord bless my soul, guv’nor,’ said the mouth of this face. ‘You’ve a sorry look to yourself and no mistake.’