Captain Nemo

by Kevin J. Anderson

Nemo and the other survivors trembled with exhaustion. Covered with slime and blood, they stared at the black murk dissipating in the waters. Though the cold Atlantic mist made the vessel’s hull slippery and treacherous, at least the moisture rinsed away the oozing ichor.

  Nemo shuddered as he looked around himself, grieving for the loss of the crewman. He looked as if he wanted to collapse and weep. After a long, uncertain moment, they staggered back down the ladder into the sub-marine.

  On the deck below, a helpless Verne sat holding the bloodied man. He had fashioned makeshift bandages, but it was no use. Before Nemo could reach his man, the Sardinian also died.

  The Nautilus crew wrapped the victim’s body in a pale shroud. During a somber ceremony, the crewmen said their farewells, each in his own language, both to the dead Sardinian and to the lost Englishman. They had all been together for years, laboring in Rurapente under the worst of circumstances. . . .

  Maintaining a wounded silence, the Nautilus cruised aimlessly until Nemo found a private reef studded with waving seaweeds and beautiful shells. He and several of his men suited up in underwater garments and cycled through the airlock. Verne declined to accompany them, feeling that it wasn’t his place. Instead, he went to the salon and watched through the broad windows. The funeral procession plodded in slow motion through the waters, carrying their wrapped burden. Verne’s heart grew heavy watching the poignant march as the Nautilus crew—men without a country—laid their slain comrade to rest.

  Moving like a machine, Nemo helped pile undersea rocks in a cairn over the body, leaving a watery grave that no other man could ever visit. They built a second mound in honor of the lost Englishman. . . .

  When they returned to the vessel, Cyrus Harding piloted the Nautilus, while Nemo isolated himself in his private cabin to mourn. He didn’t emerge for an entire day. Finally he came out to speak with Verne.

  “I must take you back now, Jules,” he said, his expression dark and his voice grim. “It was a mistake to bring you here. This is no picaresque journey, no amusing adventure for a starry-eyed dreamer. I have no time for sightseers.”

  The Nautilus dropped Verne off late at night on the coast of France, north of Paimboeuf. Afire with enthusiasm, his journal full of ideas from Nemo’s stories, he watched the armored sub-marine sink beneath the water, cutting a wake out into the ocean. “Thank you for an unforgettable adventure!”

  Verne waved farewell, and headed back toward home, thoroughly inspired to write further books.

  IV

  For most of his life, whenever Jules Verne had an opportunity to see Caroline Hatteras, he leaped at the chance . . . and dreaded it at the same time. She still made him tongue-tied and light-headed, and he still imagined a life with her, though that fantasy was even more unrealistic than his strangest extraordinary voyages.

  Caroline and he always had much to discuss, old-time reminiscences and shared experiences. Though Verne had already been married for eleven years now (and Caroline, ostensibly, for twenty-one) the thought of being alone in a room with her, face to face, still gave him chills.

  Before leaving his flat on a blustery day, Verne told Honorine that he had a “business luncheon,” such as he often scheduled with his publisher Hetzel. In spite of the many years that had passed, he’d never talked about Caroline with his wife, had never confessed how the fiery-blond woman still haunted his dreams with lost opportunities.

  A similar reticence kept Verne from telling Caroline about Nemo and his sub-marine vessel. Nemo had strongly hinted that he preferred for her to continue believing him dead, now that he could never come back to her. He wanted Caroline to make her own life, without him—but Verne knew she never would.

  Now, the prospect of explaining that her long-lost love was still alive, against all odds (as usual), raised a morass of unresolved emotions in him. Five years had passed since his voyage aboard the Nautilus. Caroline divided her time between Paris and Nantes, yet Verne had not gone out of his way to see her. He had stewed over the secret long and hard, and had decided that she must know.

  Though Verne had kept his distance from her over the years, not trusting himself, he had also kept track of Caroline’s successes. Mme. Hatteras’s rivals resented the fact that a powerful, outspoken woman managed such an important business concern, but customers who admired her verve and ingenuity trusted her to take risks that more conservative merchants would not consider.

  The sleek ships of Aronnax, Merchant often brought commodities to port weeks sooner than those of her competitors. Caroline was willing to consider new designs for faster clippers, and she investigated alternate sea routes. Her childhood fascination with geography had served her well, though long ago her mother had scolded her for “unseemly pursuits.” The captains of her fleet—many of whom had worked for her father, or had been loyal to the famous Captain Hatteras—were now devoted to Caroline.

  To gain further business, she had also capitalized on her notoriety from the balloon journey across Africa. With delight she had read Verne’s fictionalized and melodramatic account in Five Weeks, and had written him a congratulatory letter. He still kept the handwritten note in a locked drawer in his study, treasuring it. . . .

  In the end, it had been Caroline who’d invited him to her offices and, despite his better judgment, Verne didn’t have the heart to refuse.

  Now, striding brightly down the river walkway, past left-bank brasseries and bookshops, Verne smelled the fresh air. A brief rainstorm had passed during the previous evening, infusing the morning with a brisk dampness that made his nostrils tingle. Gulls flew above like kites. Whistling with the anticipation of seeing Caroline again, Verne could think of no more admirable place to live than Paris. The City of Light had become so beautiful since Emperor Napoleon III had rebuilt it after so much civil unrest.

  When he arrived on the tulip-surrounded doorstep of Aronnax, Merchant, he gave his name to the clerk. “Monsieur Jules Verne?” The clerk squinted at him through gold-framed spectacles. “The author? Esteemed storyteller of the Extraordinary Voyages?”

  Both pleased and embarrassed, Verne nodded. His full beard, long nose, and penetrating eyes had become a trademark in Hetzel’s magazine. People often recognized him on the streets, and he still didn’t know how to respond.

  In the years since Five Weeks in a Balloon, readers had come to anticipate each new Jules Verne novel. He had followed his balloon adventure with a massive epic called Captain Hatteras —named for Caroline’s husband—about a man’s quest to find the North Pole.

  Of course, Verne had no special knowledge of what had happened to the real Hatteras, who had disappeared two decades earlier. Using an author’s license, he had made up a story about bleak and unexplored lands. In the novel, the obsessed but admirable hero had succeeded in his magnificent quest, though his incredible ordeals had driven him mad in the end.

  Even believing Nemo dead, Caroline clung to her own reasons for not remarrying, preferring a life alone to a dreary marriage. By day, she ran an important business and made her decisions, while she kept evenings free for painting or sketching or composing music.

  How would she react to the news he brought today? He cursed himself for having waited so long, but he had always made excuses, both intimidated by Caroline and longing to see her. Every month, he kept expecting Nemo to change his mind and come back to civilization, but now he knew that would never happen.

  The enthusiastic clerk startled him by reaching out to shake his hand. “Monsieur, I have read A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Simply amazing. My congratulations on your remarkable imagination.”

  Pierre-Jules Hetzel couldn’t have been more pleased at the public reaction to these stories. Each holiday season, Verne’s novels were bound in illustrated gift editions, after being serialized in Hetzel’s Magasin d’Education et de Récréation. The number of readers grew with every volume.

  Verne and Honorine now lived in a larger flat with a separate vacation residence on the damp seacoast he l
oved so well, though his wife and her daughters found it dreary and cold. Feisty Michel just seemed fussy. Even at seven years old, the boy seemed to complain about everything. . . .

  Verne’s imagination went farther afield for his fourth novel, From the Earth to the Moon, in which he accepted Caliph Robur’s idea of a gigantic cannon that could fire a projectile with sufficient force to escape Earth’s gravity. Intrepid explorers—super-confident Americans, in this case—rode inside the capsule to reach the Moon. Because he’d been in a good mood, delighted to have secured a writing career at last, Verne added much humor to the Moon book, poking gentle fun at overly ambitious Americans.

  In his most complex novel to date, The Children of Captain Grant, he took details from the Coralie and added Nemo’s reminiscences of the great and honorable Captain Grant, the pirate attacks, and being marooned on an island. Nemo again . . . always inspired by Nemo. What is it about the man?

  “I . . . I have come to see Madame Hatteras,” Verne told the clerk. “I believe she is expecting me for lunch?” Bright and eager, the bespectacled man bustled off to fetch Caroline. . . .

  With such a string of novelistic successes, Jules Verne could now stand next to the great Alexandre Dumas as a colleague, rather than a mere sycophant. However, as he continued writing furiously and researching adventure after adventure, Verne grew uneasy because he owed practically everything to the experiences of Nemo.

  There are two types of men in this world, Jules: those who do things, and those who wish they did.

  His friend’s words kept haunting him. Verne had never been one to experience things first-hand. At least he had sailed with Nemo on his Nautilus and shared a terrifying undersea adventure. Someday, he hoped to travel and see a far-off land or two, but with a wife and young son and a contract for three books every year, he had no time. He could make do, as he always had, with research alone.

  He knew, though, that Nemo was out there, still having adventures . . . and Jules Verne would tell the world about them. Readers would remember his name as a visionary, because Nemo shied away from public attention.

  After the battle with the giant squid and traveling so many leagues beneath the sea, Verne had not seen Nemo again. France had changed greatly in the fourteen years since his companion had gone off to the Crimean War. Verne wondered if, after living so long apart from civilization, his boyhood friend could ever again become a man of society. Not that Nemo wanted to . . . Caroline came down from her upstairs offices, her face flushed with delight. Verne wrung his hat in his hands as she handed a stack of papers to the clerk. “Jules, it is lovely to see you.” She embraced him, brushing her lips across his cheek.

  He clasped her hand. She wore no gloves, no distinctive perfume. Her nails were trimmed short, and he noticed inkspots on her fingertips, like the stains on his own fingers when writing at a furious pace. Her hair, which he’d once described as “honey caught on fire,” still retained its vibrant color, but now it was pulled back in a no-nonsense twist, tucked out of her way at the nape of her neck. She wore comfortable clothes unhindered by lace or frills, and had not cinched her corset. The outfit was formal yet serviceable, without drawing overt attention to her beauty. Caroline’s natural prettiness shone through, though, in a way that no roses or Chantille lace could adequately emphasize. Her blue eyes remained bright, like a ray of dawn crossing his face when she looked at him.

  “Jules, I do not understand why we fail to see each other, since we both live in Paris. It has been . . . five years?”

  “Too many obligations, I believe,” he said. “I have my writing, and you have your”—he waved his hands around the offices—“your business.”

  She laughed. “I can always find time for old friends. You are my only reminder that I was a child once. Come, I’ve had chocolat chaud sent in, for old time’s sake, along with those gooseberry pastries you enjoyed so much.”

  Verne’s eyes brightened, and he followed her up the stairs and into the back room from which she ran her business.

  A tray on her broad mahogany desk held one silver pot of chocolat chaud, and the other contained coffee. Both smelled delicious. Verne selected one of the tarts arranged on fine doilies. “You remembered my favorites!”

  Despite his rehearsed words, the conversation began to go wrong as soon as Caroline spoke up. “Tell me about your mysterious wife, Jules. You’ve never brought her to meet me. And what about your son, Michel? You must be so proud of him.”

  Verne covered his surprise by taking a bite of the pastry. “Honorine is well. She . . . she’s rather quiet and withdrawn, not much for meeting people. I apologize that you haven’t made her acquaintance yet. On the other hand, Michel is . . .” He heaved a sigh. “Well, they tell me he’s just like any boy, but still I find much of his behavior . . . distressing.”

  Caroline chuckled and leaned back in her chair. “Or at the very least, distracting, no doubt.”

  Verne countered before he could take his words back. “And what about your husband, Caroline? Is the good Captain Hatteras still lost?”

  Her face turned stony. “I still have not heard from him.”

  Verne shook his head. “I don’t understand why you so steadfastly refuse to remarry. You’re a . . .” He swallowed. “A beautiful woman, still young. You have no children, no man to run your personal affairs.” He knew the words were wrong even as he spoke them, but years of longing for a woman out of his reach had built up behind a dam of bitterness that now began to break. “It can’t be that you loved Hatteras—you barely knew him. What are you waiting for?”

  He pretended that he didn’t already know the answer. Caroline faced him as she poured a cup of chocolat chaud for herself. “No. It is not that, Jules.” She lifted her cup to take a sip.

  Verne leaned his elbows on the mahogany surface. “It’s because you miss Nemo so much, isn’t it?” When she didn’t answer, he gave her a knowing smile. “You can’t fool me. Well, I have a secret to tell you, Caroline. I’ve kept it for years, because I wasn’t entirely sure anyone would believe me.”

  Caroline gave him a wry smile, suspecting nothing. “What could be so preposterous that even I would not believe you, Jules?”

  Verne took two bites of the pastry, finishing it. He had opened his mouth and let the truth spill out; now he had no choice but to tell her all of it. He hoped she would consider it a kindness. “Everyone thinks I simply concoct my novels—but I’ve used experiences. You, more than anyone, saw how much I took from your balloon trip across Africa, how much I extrapolated about your Captain Hatteras at the North Pole, and . . . Nemo’s experiences underground for A Journey to the Centre of the Earth.”

  “I have read every one of your books, and of course I recognized the inspiration.” She gestured to the wall, and he was surprised to see the bound illustrated editions on her shelf. “I am very proud of your success and whatever small hand I may have had in encouraging you when we were younger.”

  “I have something to tell you,” he repeated. And her cornflower-blue eyes widened, as if she already guessed. “Nemo isn’t dead, after all, Caroline. His death was falsified in the Crimea.”

  Caroline clutched his hand, then sat back to listen. While consuming two more pastries and two more cups of chocolat chaud, Verne explained how Nemo had been taken captive by a Turkish caliph and forced to build a sub-marine vessel. Her eyes widened to hear of his journey for days beneath the sea. Stunned and thrilled, she was rapt with a sense of wonder. “You are right, Jules. But I know you, and I know André. If anyone could do such things, he could.”

  Verne looked at her, his face grim as he told her the most important part. It would change everything. “Nemo also has a young son—and a wife. He married her in Turkey, and he told me he loves her very much.” He watched as Caroline struggled to compose her expression; his heart went out to her, but she needed to know this.

  “In fact, when Nemo dropped me off on the French coast, he said he was going back to get them.” He brushed
crumbs from his beard, avoiding her gaze, not wanting to see if tears sparkled in her eyes. “I haven’t heard from him again, not in five years. He knows you’ve thought him dead all this time, and he was sure that by now you would have made your own life, married someone else. He said he doesn’t want to torment you by coming back to visit you, when he is already bound to another woman.”

  Caroline managed to cover the flicker of dismay that crossed her beautiful face with a stoic expression. “Thank you for telling me, Jules. I hope they are very happy together. After all he’s been through, André deserves to be happy.”

  “We all deserve to be happy, Caroline.” Verne regretted snuffing her dreams. Long ago, he’d had to give up his own dreams of a life with her. “It just doesn’t always work out that way.”

  V

  The Nautilus traveled secretly beneath the waters, circling the oceans of the Earth. All aboard remained isolated from the world . . . and at peace. Following their years-long ordeal, Nemo and his crew reveled in freedom. Finally, after staying away for as long as Auda had asked, the submarine boat passed again through the Straits of Gibraltar. With growing anticipation, Nemo headed east toward the Turkish coast. He felt cold and uneasy about returning to Rurapente, which bore so many violent memories for him. Isolated on the Nautilus, they had learned little about world news, but he’d had enough of war and bloodshed. He hoped the political turmoils had settled down in the Ottoman Empire, as Auda had promised.

  He longed to see his wife and son again, and the rest of his crew missed their families as well. On the Nautilus they would take their wives and children and be free to make their lives wherever they wished. They clung to that hope.

  In his gruff British accent, Cyrus Harding proposed that they search for Nemo’s mysterious island, which presumably remained uninhabited. There, they could establish a wonderful new colony, a utopia based on principles of cooperation and support. With the extensive engineering and technical knowledge the sophisticated crew possessed, they could build anything they wished. The Swiss Family Robinson would be mere amateurs by comparison. Nemo set a course through the sparkling blue waters, threading a maze of scattered Greek islands until they reached the isolated cove where they had been imprisoned for so many years.