“Maybe you should have let them kill Harry, yes?” he said as he began to strip off the bulky pressure suit he still wore.
“Maybe. Just reflex, I guess. Military training.” She slumped down in a chair and stared vacantly at Stephane’s efforts to dislodge himself from his gauntlets.
“Yes, well, it did not hold up for very long,” he noted. He finally got a gauntlet off—and threw it to the floor. “Damn it, Shay. What the hell are you doing?”
She glared at him, her attention refocused. “What do you mean?”
Stephane ripped the other gauntlet off, cracking the seal in the process. “You go off on your own. You do not tell people what you are doing. Even I know there are rules here, and I am just an academic. You are an officer! And yet you trust no one.”
Shaila kept her gaze riveted, but felt her insides sink. “You’re the second person to say that to me today.”
“Then it must be true,” he said. “I do not know what happened to you, but they say you were on Atlantis, yes?”
Shaila’s eyes narrowed. “Who’s ‘they?’”
“People here, the miners and the JSC people. They say the mission went wrong. And I think to myself, ‘This could explain it.’ Because what JSC says happened and what you are doing here are two different things.”
Shaila didn’t respond, instead simply turning her head away to stare off into space again. Perturbed, the Frenchman continued.
“Fine, you do not want to tell me. And I do not care what really happened out there. The story everyone heard about Atlantis is fine for me, too. It was supposed to go to Jupiter, but it had an accident in Earth orbit and lost everyone on board except you.
“But you know what? I care that you made it back. And aside from rare moments when you actually smile, you are not happy. Anyone can see this.” He leaned in toward her. “So if I can help you—with Diaz or Harry or anything else—I want to do that. But you need to let go of your ‘tough guy’ act and let me.”
Shaila stared at him, hard, struggling to regain her mental balance. “You’re a good guy, Steve,” she finally said. “You really are. But you have no idea. You just don’t.”
“So tell me.” It was both a command and a plea.
Shaila shook her head sadly. She was about to speak again when a small chime from the containment unit interrupted. She lolled her head around to look at the readout. “Looks like the book’s gaining weight again.”
“The book is gaining weight?” Stephane asked.
“Yeah,” she said, sliding onto her feet. “Sorry. Didn’t tell you that, either. Fractions of a gram. I had the computer ping me the next time it detected a change.”
Shaila walked over and keyed the unit’s security. She left the book open the previous evening, and was certain that the right-hand page was two-thirds blank. Yet it was filled with writing, something about traveling to Callisto, of all places. She could’ve sworn Weatherby—she couldn’t help but think of the author by name—was being held on Ganymede.
She brought the manipulator arms to life and started slowly flipping pages. “Stephane, what’s the monitor say about weight?”
He was trying to pull the suit’s torso piece off, but gave up and leaned over the workstation next to the unit. “Two hundredths of a gram. No…wait. Three hundredths.”
“It just gained?”
“Yes, it seems so.”
Shaila kept flipping, until she finally came to a blank page, on the right hand side of the book. She looked to the left…
…and froze.
“Stephane,” she whispered.
He looked up, then peered over her shoulder into the unit.
Seemingly out of nowhere, words appeared.
“To Mr. Weatherby, senior,
I am Dr. Andrew Finch, a shipmate of your son aboard HMS Daedalus.In hopes that you may one day receive this journal as Thomas intended, I have taken upon myself the terrible duty of informing you of your son’s untimely passing. Know that he served bravely to the very end, giving his life to protect another’s. He was truly a credit to His Majesty’s Royal Navy and, more importantly, to his family.”
The words kept appearing, though in a different script than the careful, neat handwriting the rest of the book featured. Regardless, it was as if an invisible hand was taking pen to page.
“Am I crazy?” Shaila asked?
“If you are, so am I,” Stephane said quietly, almost reverently.
Shaking her head, Shaila quickly reached over and pressed a button to activate the unit’s holocorder, to capture video of the book as it wrote. A second later, she hit the comm switch.
“Jain to Diaz, over.”
A moment later, Diaz responded, shouting into her comm to be heard over what seemed to be an angry mob. “This had better be good, Jain. I’ve got half a mind to arrest your ass right about now.”
“Understood,” Shaila replied absently, not really caring about anything else anymore. “Please report to the containment lab soon as you can. Jain out.”
“What? You gotta be kidding me!” Diaz snapped.
Shaila thumbed off the comm and turned back to the book.
It kept writing.
CHAPTER 16
May 4, 1779
To Mr. Weatherby, senior,
I am Dr. Andrew Finch, a shipmate of your son aboard HMS Daedalus. In hopes that you may one day receive this journal as Thomas intended. I have taken upon myself the terrible duty of informing you of your son’s untimely passing. Know that he served bravely to the very end, giving his life to protect another’s. He was truly a credit to His Majesty’s Royal Navy and, more importantly, to his family.
Whilst I certainly was a great nuisance to him in my first days aboard ship, I grew to admire his many positive virtues, no doubt instilled by his upbringing. In many ways, I owe my life now, however short it may yet be, to your son’s sense of honor and his unerring ability to set me aright.
Finch poured his heart out onto the page before him, describing his time aboard Daedalus in great detail, hoping it would give Weatherby’s family some sense of comfort when faced with the loss of their son. To his very great surprise, he himself felt better writing it as well.
Finally, he set the pencil down on the table and looked over to where Weatherby’s body lay in repose. The lieutenant was pale, as to be expected, though Finch noted earlier, during a frantic examination, that rigor had not set in. Yet there was no pulse or heartbeat, and the pistol round had struck the young man squarely in the chest. Finch knew death when he saw it, and Weatherby was most certainly in God’s hands now.
The lack of rigor mortis was Finch’s only clue to the time that may have elapsed since the incident on Callisto’s shore. He played the scene repeatedly in his head: Anne Baker moved to cut down Cagliostro, one of the Italian fiend’s hirelings fired a pistol, and Weatherby shoved Anne away in order to save her life, taking the round intended for her. Weatherby collapsed, Finch ran to his aid.
Then there was a sharp slap of sound that reverberated across the beach. Finch thought he recalled a flash of yellow as well. And then all was dark and silent.
He awoke, most improbably, in an impeccably decorated bedroom that echoed the height of fashion in London when last he visited home. The furnishings were expertly crafted and polished to a brilliant shine, the walls were exquisitely papered and gilded along the edges, and the carpets appeared to be woven by the finest hands in Turkey or Persia. There was a fire already lit in the hearth, candles upon the desk at which he now sat, and the bed in the corner of the room was covered with some of the finest linens he had ever seen. And that is where he found Weatherby’s body, the dead man’s journal secure in his pocket.
Three hours. That was the reasonable expectation for the onset of rigor. So it had been less than three hours since the beach, but he hadn’t a more precise measure; his pocketwatch had stopped seemingly at the moment when he lost consciousness.
Aside from the late Lt. Weatherby, Finch was alone.
After his futile attempts to revive his shipmate, Finch had tested the single set of double-doors in the room. They were locked, of course, and would not give. Not even when he used the fireplace tools upon them. Not even when he tried to hurl the desk into them repeatedly.
There were no windows, either. Where one would expect them, there were mirrors instead—mirrors of uncanny craftsmanship, better than any he had ever seen, mirrors which reflected his sadness and anger perfectly upon him.
Where was Captain Morrow? Dr. Franklin? Anne? What of the Daedalus? And of Cagliostro, for that matter? Franklin had warned that the Italian could be most charming, and with his innate cunning and his alchemical skill, Finch thought it quite possible that Cagliostro may have simply waltzed past the Xan and off Callisto altogether to further whatever fell plotting he had in mind for the Known Worlds.
Was this, then, the fate of the French and Ganymedeans in Queen Anne’s War? Were they forever imprisoned in facsimiles of their Earth-bound comforts? Whatever the case, Finch was grateful to be alive, but knew that the hour could come when that would no longer be the case. To the Xan’s eyes, the emissaries from Daedalus were the aggressors. It was Anne who drew on Cagliostro first, who was more than willing to strike at that bilious wretch and set her life aright again—and in doing so, save the Known Worlds from his scheming.
Perhaps it was that act that sealed all their fates.
He did not blame her for her actions. Finch had been upon Elizabeth Mercuris for months, and it was a small and gossipy place. The fact that Roger McDonnell had taken up with a young streetwalker was, in that environment, a mild scandal at best. Finch had watched Weatherby grow fond of the young woman and did not wish to begrudge him of it. Weatherby might never have known of her past if not for Cagliostro’s cruel jab, and Finch had hoped that even if the lieutenant had heeded his advice and learned of it, he could look past her sin and embrace her as she was now. Of that, he harbored doubts, however. Weatherby could be—rather, was—very prudish at times. Or maybe he simply possessed a morality that all too often eluded Finch. Who could say?
Finch leaned back and slammed shut Weatherby’s journal. He had written enough for Weatherby’s father to know what became of his son. Perhaps if he were imprisoned longer, he would write again. Perhaps future scribblings would chronicle Finch’s own descent into madness as the hours stretched into days and the solitude and anxiety gnawed at his soul.
The damned Saturn-dwellers could have at least afforded him a hookah to dull his mind, Finch thought. But then he looked over at Weatherby and found himself ashamed for entertaining the very notion. It seemed to tarnish the young man’s legacy.
“Andrew Finch.”
Finch stood quickly at the sound of his name, sending his chair backward onto the floor in his haste. The voice—once again layered with harmonies unlike any he had heard—seemed to come from somewhere above him, yet gently filled the room. And it had nearly scared his ghost right out of him.
He paused a moment before responding, considering how best to address a disembodied voice. “I am he,” he said finally.
“You have not been able to heal your comrade.” It was not a question.
Finch thought this odd, somehow, since if the Xan—for this is whom he assumed was speaking—knew his name, they would likely know Weatherby was already dead, would they not? “He passed on before I could attend to him,” Finch said.
“And your skills could not revive him?”
“No, his heart was pierced. Death was quick.”
“Death is never so quick as that,” the voice said. “It has not been long.”
“So you say, but to my eyes, he is beyond reach,” Finch said.
The voice paused a moment before resuming. “We had thought you were capable.”
Finch looked up at the ceiling, fists clenched. “If you hadn’t bloody well rendered me unconscious and hauled me here, I might have had a chance!”
“And there would have been even more blood staining on our shores,” the voice said, the harmonics tinged with saddened minor chords. “That, we could not allow.”
“No, of course not,” Finch muttered.
The voice paused once again, this time for several seconds. When it returned, the cadence was slightly faster, more aggressive, and the minor chords seemed tinged with anger. “We requested solitude. You have ignored this request.”
“Our need was great,” Finch countered. “But surely you already know this.”
“And how would we know that?”
“Since I am still among the living, and that you expected I would be able to heal my lieutenant, it stands to reason my other shipmates are alive as well. And since you’re interrogating me, it also stands to reason that you have interrogated at least some of the others. I only hope you imprisoned Cagliostro as well.”
“Count Cagliostro was not the aggressor. He was allowed to leave as he came,” the voice said, this time laced with a quavering tenor that, to Finch’s ears, sounded of hesitancy.
“Then you’re damned fools, the lot of you!” Finch shouted.
“Where is the Sword of Xanthir?”
“The what?”
“The Sword of Xanthir.”
Finch threw up his hands. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
Another pause, then: “You will wait here.”
Perplexed, Finch bent down to pick his chair off the floor. “I shan’t be going anywhere, it seems,” he said, primarily to himself. He flopped down at the desk again, mulling over his first interaction with the enigmatic Xan. It did indeed stand to reason that his colleagues were in similar straits. Furthermore, it seemed that the Xan were not as all-powerful as they were assumed to be, as it was clear that Cagliostro had duped them somehow.
And then Finch threw his head back and laughed ruefully, the idea hitting him squarely in the brainpan. Whatever the Sword of Xanthir was—beyond a blade, obviously—Cagliostro’s men likely made off with it whilst the Italian sought to charm the Xan with whatever seemingly innocuous falsehoods he had created. Yes, it would’ve been difficult, but even Finch could contemplate a number of alchemical solutions that might be applied to the task of thievery.
And the arrival of Daedalus provided a perfect foil. Anne’s aggression—with Cagliostro goading her along—closed the circle neatly. Cagliostro was off, and now all aboard Daedalus would be made to take the blame.
The most learned men on Earth had little knowledge of the Xan’s melodic language, but “Xanthir” implied, at least to Finch’s mind, something of the Xan. They called themselves Xan, after all, and Saturn was named Xanath in their tongue. So the blade held not only some great import for them, but may have very well been from Saturn.
Thus, by visiting Callisto, Cagliostro might have managed to get a piece of Saturn itself for his plot. Now his foul working could very well include all the Known Worlds, and the results could alter the very nature of Creation.
“Oh, Weatherby,” Finch said sadly, looking at his friend’s body. “Perhaps ’tis best you won’t live to see this. We’ve botched things cleanly for sure.”
A click from the door drew Finch’s head around sharply. The knob was turning.
He stood quickly, casting about for something to use as a weapon, then mentally scolded himself. Whatever might happen, he doubted it would be anything close to what he might expect.
He was right.
The door swung open and Anne strode into the room, her simple dress swirling around her. “Where’s Tom?” she demanded, looking determined.
“What?” Finch stuttered. “How did you…?”
But she had already seen Weatherby’s body on the bed and wheeled out of the room as quickly as she had entered. “He’s in here!” he heard her call from beyond the doorway.
Finch peered out the doors and found his room was at the end of a long hallway, lined with perfectly smooth walls and lit by glowing orbs of light affixed to the ceiling at regular intervals. Anne had ducked into another r
oom along the hallway’s length, and was already returning to Finch’s room—with someone Finch didn’t recognize in tow.
“Over here,” she said as she entered and strode past Finch. With her was a very tall man, dressed in the very fine yet simply adorned clothes of a well-to-do gentleman. The man’s long dark hair was drawn back in a ponytail, and his eyes shone behind the sharp features of his face.
Those eyes….
“Bacon?” Finch asked. “Surely it isn’t you, is it?”
The man followed Anne to Weatherby’s side, but turned to spare Finch a small smile. “Well done, Dr. Finch,” he said. While “Bacon’s” crude accent was gone, replaced with one far more genteel, Finch knew the voice regardless.
“Can you save him?” Anne said, gripping Weatherby’s cold hand as she knelt beside the bed.
“I believe so,” the gentleman replied. He reached into a small purse at his side and withdrew an aquiline stone and a vial of liquid. “You drive a very hard bargain, girl.”
“Yes, I do,” Anne said simply. “Please hurry.”
Shaking himself out of his incredulity, Finch rushed over to the side of the bed, standing over “Bacon.” The stone and the liquid in the man’s hands looked utterly unfamiliar to him. “Rigor’s not set in, but that’s all I know,” Finch reported.
“Plenty of time,” the man muttered. “Girl, keep his mouth open.”
Anne reached over and pried open Weatherby’s mouth as the man held his stone over it. He flipped the vial’s stopper off with his thumb, then poured the liquid over the stone, allowing it to drip into Weatherby’s mouth. The liquid quickly eroded the stone into nothingness. “It is done. Close his mouth.”
“Now what?” Finch asked as Anne freed Weatherby’s jaws.
The man stood and regarded Finch carefully. “I assume you have simple tinctures of iron oxide among your stores, Doctor?”
“Yes,” Finch said, confused. “But—”
“Mix the tincture with Ionian sulfur powder and a touch of Venusian pre’lak extract, and administer it back aboard your ship,” the man said gruffly.
The Daedalus Incident Page 27
