20 Million Leagues Over the Sea

by K. T. Hunter

  Sympathy did not come easily to her. She could not afford to become emotionally involved in any job. It was more emulation than genuine concern. She reckoned that in the next few months she would have lots of practice. But there was something compelling about his earnestness. "It would take a great deal of fortitude to venture out again, I think."

  "I owe it to them," he replied. "I owe it to them to complete what they started and make sure that they are not forgotten." He looked down at his wedding ring. "My wife is carrying our firstborn. I have to make sure they are safe. I want to ensure that my child does not live in fear that these monsters will come and take his mother away at any moment." He glanced at the rest of the Booleans, who were watching the captain through the window. "I will tell you more later. Such talk makes the rookies uneasy."

  Gemma's chest tightened as he spoke. This was one of her few tender spots -- encountering a fellow Orphan. He was not much older than she was, but he was most likely old enough to remember his parents.

  All the Brightman Girls were Invasion Orphans. It was forbidden to discuss that fact amongst themselves, for Mrs. Brightman was their mistress and mother now. Even whispers in the dark were discouraged by the night monitors. When she was older and shared a room with just Philippa, that lesson had remained with them. Brightman had tolerated the stories of spirits and monsters (Philippa had told Gemma a deliciously wicked tall tale about a mad vivisectionist that had attempted to turn animals into people, though she could not remember his name). Her teacher had always assured her students that they were safe from such things inside the School. However, discussions of their might-have-beens were deemed fruitless and therefore forbidden. Gemma was startled to hear the Boolean speak of such a thing so openly. He said no more, and she let him be.

  "Status, Mr. Cervantes?" the captain asked.

  The first mate gazed at the row of brass-rimmed controls and the black needles dancing over pools of white.

  "All systems running normally, sir."

  "Very well, then. Let go and haul!"

  There were no bumps or shakes. The chamber remained steady. Everyone in Informatics let out their breath at last and smiled at each other. Some shook hands.

  "That's it?" asked Gemma.

  "Yes, that's that," Mr. Davies replied. "We're on our way. It's debugging and solar flare drills until Braking Day."

  "Braking Day?" Gemma asked.

  "We're slowly accelerating our way towards the Red Planet. Midway through, we decelerate. As Mr. Humboldt so aptly put it, we have to start braking at the right time or we'll pass it right up. Precise timing is a must."

  "It'll be a bit of a holiday, actually," said Mr. Humboldt. "We've got to get that bit right. I don't think we brought enough tea to make it to Jupiter."

  The Booleans that were not on duty shuffled out. Gemma heard them moving behind her as she continued studying the bridge. At one point, the captain turned in her direction. He winked at her with the smallest of movements, then turned his attention to the bridge once more. She had watched him, as she had been ordered, but so far she had only seen a popinjay in a military jacket. She still was not sure why she was here or what exactly she was supposed to watch for; usually her missions were more specific. But she was here all the same, and she would do her job. Still, it was a little embarrassing to her that she had captured his attention with almost no effort on her part.

  Caroline made her way over to stand next to Gemma and Mr. Davies as the chamber emptied.

  "Do you think we'll make it past the moon this time, Nigel?" she whispered through a frown. She bit her lower lip like a lost child.

  "Hush, Caroline," he replied in the same soft tone. He patted the yeoman's shoulder. "It will be all right. We've done this before. And we're better, this time."

  And with that, Gemma Llewellyn, Invasion Orphan, departed for War.

  ~~~~

  Christophe

  "Now that we're underway, what's on tap for the rest of the day?"

  As he asked the question, Christophe swung his lanky limbs onto the conference table and crossed his ankles. Miguel sighed, as he always did when they were alone. He sat up a little straighter in the adjacent chair and jogged the stack of papers in front of him.

  "This afternoon, we have a meeting with Gun Control to discuss the final heat ray tests." He looked up from the schedule. "I'd like to be involved in those, if possible. I spent a lot of time with them on the maiden voyage, if you recall. I'd like to see that through."

  "I have no objections. What else?"

  "Let me see. Ah, the launch tea party is scheduled for the first dog watch--"

  Christophe groaned. "Another official tea? So we can all see Wallace's shining face again?"

  "Yes, and you will see plenty of him on this voyage, so I suggest you get used to it. But before that, the Cohort will tour the Oberth Deck."

  "Really?" Christophe withdrew his legs from the table and sat up. "All of them?"

  He sighed again. "Yes, all of them. And tomorrow we resume the classes for the midshipmen. I suggest--"

  "Miguel, old sport, my old amigo, I think it is time to add something to the schedule."

  "What?" It was Miguel's turn to groan. "Now? We just left the station. At least let the crew settle in first. You know how nervous they are about flares."

  "All the more reason to go ahead and get a drill over with. You never know when one will pop up. I want to be sure that we're ready. Especially on the Oberth Deck. We have to keep our scientists safe."

  "Christophe," Miguel said as he winced and pinched the bridge of his nose, "do I have to remind you of the trouble you had in Gibraltar last year? With the governor's daughter?"

  "Miss Llewellyn looks nothing like the governor's daughter."

  "The barmaid in Saint Vincent? The minister's daughter in Tortola? As your first mate, it is my duty to tell you when you act like this." As Christophe flashed a satisfied grin back at him, he continued, "I know why you named me after the creator of the Man of La Mancha. I just don't know whether I'm Don Quixote or Sancho. Some days it is both, I think."

  Christophe leapt from his chair and headed for the door. "Set it up. I will pipephone you from the Oberth Deck when I'm ready to go."

  Cervantes cupped his hand across his forehead. "And this is why you'll never make Admiral."

  ~~~~

  Gemma

  "Would you like to see the orrery?" Nigel asked.

  Gemma was startled out of her reverie by the sudden question. She had lingered with the Booleans after the captain and his first mate had left the bridge. After the initial excitement of the launch, everyone had quickly settled down. Humboldt had turned the pneumatic tube system back on, and Caroline and the others had resumed their posts at the keypunch machines.

  "I would," she replied.

  She had seen such things before, and she wondered how in the world a miniature of the solar system could be so important as to need its own Boolean. At the same time, it would be good to cultivate allies on the ship. It was going to be a long voyage, and an even longer one without them.

  "However," she continued, "that may need to wait for later. I have a Cohort meeting to attend, and I need to send a message back to my academy to inform them that we have set sail."

  "I can show you how. Follow me, please." He turned to address the room. "Yeoman McLure, you're in charge for the moment. Contact me if you need me, or if Humboldt gets out of hand. Don't worry, Roger," he said, looking at Humboldt. "You'll get that algorithm right. I have every bit of faith in you."

  He led Gemma out of the Informatics chamber and back into the corridor. After the door closed, he gently touched her elbow and then withdrew it.

  "Pray, don't fret for Caroline's sake," he said. He walked slowly and spoke softly. "She will be fine. She has survived much worse than a case of the nerves. The hair bob isn't even new. She's worn it that way since we were children together at the old Wickham Textile Factory. That's where we were apprenticed, you know. The Jacqua
rd looms there were a good proving ground for Engine development, once the Neo-Luddite riots stopped. 'Twas loads better than life on the factory floor, let me tell you."

  Gemma shuddered as they passed through the guarded door. Mrs. Brightman constantly reminded her Girls of the Factory Orphans: the lost fingers and limbs, the filth and starvation, and the acres upon acres of tiny graves. So many little ones had died during the brief anti-technology insurrection of 1912, just one hundred years after Ned Ludd had led a similar rebellion against machines. Many more had died just keeping the looms in operation until the machines had taken over completely, and many were homeless adults now that the textile factories were fully automated. Just how many Invasion Orphans had those monsters devoured over the years? How many times had she thanked her mistress for saving her from such horrors?

  She looked up as they arrived at the wireless window.

  "Here we are," Mr. Davies said. A stack of glass slates sat to one side, each with a grease pencil attached to it by a string. They resembled the glass panels that she had seen on the bridge. "Just write the recipient's name here at the top, your name, and your message below it. Then put it with the others over here. They'll send it when they review the stack, and the Admiralty will route it to the proper person. Don't worry, the A.E. keeps a record of everything we send and receive, so you can always ask us to pull it up later via punch card if you need to review it. You can also send messages up from the labs via the pneumatics." He glanced at the clock on the wall. "I must be off. See you at tea, Miss Llewellyn."

  He bowed to her and strode off in the direction of the lift. Gemma picked up one of the blank slates. She appreciated his help; here at last was someone who strove for efficiency as much as she did. He would be a worthy ally.

  As she wrote out her message, her eyes flickered over the box containing the stack of waiting panels. She read over the message on top in a flash, out of habit. It was nonsensical; at least, it was to the untrained eye.

  There were more abbreviations in it than actual words, but that was a common enough practice. She reread the message and allowed one eyebrow to arch slightly. Ah! She wasn't the only one of her kind aboard! It did not surprise her all that much. Mrs. Brightman was certainly not alone in her particular field of endeavour. She felt a prickle in her scalp at the possibility and wondered if she had worked for the mystery sender in the past. That would prove an awkward reunion. She searched for the name of the sender or the recipient, but both were smudged and nearly unreadable. One of the operators chose that moment to collect the stack, and she lost her chance.

  To cover her disappointment, she finished scribbling out her own message: "Departed Safely. Clear Sailing." Or, as someone reading it would see, "DPRT SAFE STOP CLR SLNG STOP" The "clear" keyword was an indicator that the message meant exactly what it said; nothing was hidden or encoded.

  "I'll take that for you, Miss," said a man on the other side of the window. Gemma looked up into the eyes of a tall, gaunt man. His smile was gentle, and there was a twinkle in his hazel eyes. He studied her over horn-rimmed spectacles and touched his fingers to his banker's visor.

  "Warrant Officer Edmund Rathbone, at your service," he said. He pointed to the badge on his arm. "Signal Corps. Don't worry, I'm new on this voyage, too. I'll be happy to send that message for you, love."

  She responded, using her perfectly schooled smile. By his accent, he was definitely of Guildford stock, but she did not recognize his face.

  "Would you prefer to pick up your messages here, or would you like for me to send them down the tube?" He pointed to the pneumatic tube behind him with his thumb.

  "Here, please," she replied. "I could use the exercise." Even though any of her messages would be in code and therefore unreadable by most, she preferred to have them handled by as few people as possible. If he sent them by the tube, someone else might open the cylinder before she did.

  She thanked him and then left to find the laboratory deck. On her way, she mulled over the enigmatic message. It was protocol to be aware of any other Brightman sorts in the vicinity.

  Especially if that "other" was a Watcher.

  Every Brightman Girl on a mission had a Watcher. That was also protocol. Everyone had someone that reported on their movements, requested aid if needed, or took steps to make sure that the job was completed. She had heard second-hand that sometimes those steps were less than civil. The Watchers were silent and unseen, especially where the Girls were concerned.

  Gemma had rarely worried about her Watchers. She prided herself on her ability to complete a job smoothly and cleanly without intervention. She often made it a game to guess her Watcher's identity, but the missions were so short that she often had a limited time to puzzle it out.

  The message she had seen had been in code. Was it from her Watcher? They were by nature unobtrusive. It would be unusual for them to leave something so obviously encoded just lying about. Of course, they may have wanted to remind her of their unseen presence; they did that sometimes. It was true that she had not given her potential Watcher much thought until now. There had been such a rush to get her to the launch point, and then the nerve-wracking process of the rail-gun launch, that this was the first time she'd had a moment to consider a Watcher. A shiver danced down her spine.

  She stuffed the question into her mental steamer trunk. Now she had to prepare for her first meeting with the entire Scientific Cohort. She hoped that she had met none of them under other circumstances ... one that had found particular items missing from his workbench, learnt that some of his reference tables were badly skewed, or discovered his chalkboard equations altered right after she had disappeared from his life.

  She arrived at the lift. A silver-haired Asian man, who was also wearing the brown jacket and badge of the Cohort, waited there. An emerging smile carved even deeper wrinkles in his face as she approached.

  "Ah, you must be Miss… Miss…"

  She recognized the accent from her time in Shanghai. She nodded and smiled gently in return. He struggled once more to say her name.

  "Please, call me Gemma," she replied.

  "Ah, Miss Gemma, then." He bowed slightly in her direction. Another smile, this one of relief, broke across his face. "I am Professor Hui Yutai, lead physicist. Dr. Pugh told us to help you if we saw you. Have you been to the Research Deck yet? No? I will show you the way."

  When the lift doors opened, he gestured for her to precede him into the car. "I am sorry I did not get to meet you yesterday when you arrived," he continued, "but I was playing with a pet project of mine and lost track of time. If you wish, later, I will show it to you. I am sure you will be busy with your own experiments, though."

  Experiments, Gemma thought. Oh, bother.

  The lift swept them away to another deck; and when they exited, she followed Hui to the right.

  "The conference room for the meeting is that way," he said, pointing towards the corridor to their left. "But the laboratories are this way. Oh! And the loo is across the hall from them. Very important to know."

  They entered a chamber bound in metal, wood, and glass. The scientists had stuffed every inch to the gills with all manner of contraptions for dissection and examination. The lab reminded her of so many others that she had seen (and nicked from) before, but never had she seen one this large. She did recognize a few of the tools: scalpels, microscopes, and racks of tubes filled with a rainbow of fluids. From the wall between a lab bench and a keypunch machine there emerged another pneumatic tube. A cylinder awaited retrieval in its receptacle. She saw more of the glass panels like the ones on the bridge; the rectangles bore grease-penciled equations, sketches, and words that she could not pronounce despite all her lab experience. One was covered in a tangle of C's and G's, A's and T's in impossible combinations that formed a cipher text that she could not break.

  And books! So very many books! Textbooks, bound journals, handwritten notebooks, and volumes of mathematical tables smothered the lab. They towered in stacks on the shel
ves, lurked on the corners of tables, loitered about the floor, and generally occupied any flat surface available (real or imagined). It was a treasure-trove of secrets, low-hanging fruit ripe for the taking. They had not yet been defined as part of her job. The books could wait.

  She scrutinized the men in the lab, already hard at work, as if they had been on the ship for weeks, toiling away at their glass panels. Some of them were European, but others appeared to be from India and Arabia. And naturally, she was the only female amongst them.

  He guided her farther into the laboratory. "Here is the space set aside for you, Miss Gemma. I am afraid they haven't brought your equipment in from the cargo bay just yet."

  Here was the only empty spot in the entire room; it was as bare as the others were full to bursting. While the other glass panels bore smudged equations and fingerprints, her own pane gleamed in the bright overhead lights. She hoped that her feeling of panic did not show on her face.

  Hui continued, "Do you remember where in the cargo bay they stored your equipment? Perhaps I could put in a request for you to have it moved here."

  Gemma froze as she stared at the vacant shelves. They yawned before her in a bookless abyss. Mrs. Brightman had mentioned nothing about equipment in her hurried briefing. Perhaps she had thought that the Cohort would provide it all. Even though she had been excited by the prospect of the job, Gemma was used to being the assistant or the computer, not the actual scientist. Her situation was getting more precarious by the moment, and she wasn't past the moon yet. She had to say something, perhaps even the truth.

  "I am not sure. They sent me to replace someone else who could not make the trip, at the very last moment. I do not know where their equipment might be. Perhaps there has been some mistake?"

  Hui closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. "Oh, my, what a tragedy! Perhaps you should have visited the laboratory before we launched, so you might have requested that they send it up. But perhaps it would have made us miss the launch window. Very well. Can you tell me what experiments you had planned? Perhaps someone can loan you something?"