“So, I don’t know if Father told you how exciting, an honor, it’s been for me, this work on the Nautilus. She’s a wonder, and immodestly, we’ve made excellent repairs.”
“Have you, indeed?”
“Trying to meet your standards, what I imagine they are, is an impossibility,” Sara said, drying her arms, long bare legs, and brown mane. “But I just patched a huge hole in her side, by the starboard view port, and I hope you’ll approve.”
“Airtight?”
“The others have been, and this was the last major breach.”
Sara fastened the towel around her waist. “You know how much artillery fire she took, but the lady’s got strength. Every time I work on her, I find something new to admire.”
“And now you claim she’s seaworthy, thanks to your efforts? You and your daughter share some traits, Duncan.”
Sara’s face tightened. “No, Captain. My efforts kept her from a burial, but you’ll have to bring her back from the dead.”
They moved to the submarine, Duncan holding out a robe for his daughter that she didn’t take. Nemo spied the small, boxed air compressor by the water’s edge, the breathing apparatus, and multiple tubes leading from it. “One central air intake is more efficient. Interesting attempt, though.”
A dock ladder led them to the Nautilus’ outer deck, and what was left of the antennae on the conning tower, now bent in half, melted to the hull. Nemo picked up a piece of the scrap, favoring his wounded shoulder. “I was proud of the advancements I’d made in our communication devices.”
“We saved what we could,” Duncan said.
“After she was dissected and left to rot?”
Sara headed it off, “My father saw that a great deal was saved, Captain.” She opened the primary hatch. “If you’d care to come aboard?”
“I’ve never been invited to board my own ship before.”
Duncan said, “Want to know where you could be? Check your watch.”
“One of your talents, Duncan. I thought I just heard General Grant’s voice,” Nemo said, looking into the pitch darkness of the hatchway. “I haven’t lost sight of my circumstances, or the commitment.”
Sara held out a miner’s helmet with a kettle lamp attached to the brim. “For you.”
* * *
The water made no sound.
No purr of liquid folding in on itself, no movement. Stagnant, as the lamp on his miner’s helmet showed Nemo the algae-slick surface, and the smears of rotting salt that marked the ocean’s highest point in the Nautilus’ flooded interior.
He dropped from the mid-rung of the crew ladder into the waist-high murk, causing ripples to slop against the sides of the access corridor. Nemo could see fragments of damage as the light beam skidded about: hatchways ripped apart, fire-scarred walls, a steel support wrenched apart by an ammo blast, marked by crewman blood spatter.
He waded through the near-pitch, following the light to what was his formal dining room. More bits and pieces. Fine table, chairs, and china stacked, broken and molding. He picked up a bent fork, solid gold, and topped with the N insignia. Held it a moment.
Nemo tossed the gold aside, then pushed through the dark to the double doors at the opposite end of the dining room. Two Roanoke bass swam around his legs as he reached the doors, grabbed the edges, forced them open. Breaking the rust, Nemo disappeared inside, with Sara and Duncan splashing their way in.
The library was the bow of the Nautilus; its far wall the submarine’s largest observation port. The deeper room had taken on the most water, and Nemo was surrounded by piles of books, folios, and maps, some dry, others sea-rotten, loose pages floating.
His pride, the Brazilian rosewood bookcases, were just kindling, shreds of the library’s elaborately woven seaweed drapery still framing them. On the bottom shelf, a stone crab waved his claws, defending the destroyed works of Shakespeare from Nemo’s helmet light.
He grabbed a handful of sea charts from the water, hundreds of years old, on parchment, that were now sloppy mush. “You claimed to have rescued a great deal.”
Duncan said, “And so we did, beginning with this ship.”
“I’m standing knee-deep in your efforts.” Nemo let the mush slide through his fingers. “Arronax stated this library, my years of work, would honor any palace, and he saw barely half of it. I’m not an easy man with compliments, but that had meaning.”
Nemo splashed his way to the centerpiece of the chamber: the pipe organ, covered in white fabric protection. A specter rising from the mire. He pulled back the white, revealing the keyboard. “What did you use here?”
“Heated Caoutchouc spread on lengths of silk. My own formula, absolutely waterproof,” Sara said. “I lined every repair on the hull with it, tried to protect what was in here with the leftovers.”
Duncan made it a point: “Indian rubber.”
Nemo said, “I’m aware of the substance, and the irony, but I’d gladly have sacrificed the music for my research volumes.”
Sara said, “You haven’t seen all we’ve done, Captain.”
“What are you going to do about this mess, now that you claim she’s airtight? Why haven’t you emptied the ballast tanks?”
Duncan said, “Large pumps from the Navy should be here the day after tomorrow.”
“There are internal pumps on board. We can rid her of this infernal swamp in an hour.”
Sara said, “But there’s no power.”
Nemo turned, the miner’s light stinging Duncan and his daughter. “I know you examined all controls, the engine room. Duncan, you must have had a field day.”
“The most impressive configuration I’ve ever seen.”
“Captain, we’ve repaired every bit of this submarine that we were allowed to,” Sara said, shielding her eyes.
“Who stopped you?”
“The Nautilus, she holds many secrets.” Sara rapped her knuckles against the closed steel iris of a large view port. “Locked, like everything else. She’s your ship, and she’ll only obey you.”
Nemo said, “My creations all include special provisions to prevent military use, should they be captured by government forces.”
“And yet, here we are.” Duncan smiled through a neatly trimmed beard. “What are your orders, Captain?”
Floating pieces of his possessions slopping around him, Nemo said, “In spite of this careless desecration, the Nautlius is still an electric creature, with batteries stored. Stand fast, and learn.”
Sara smiled, the light from her helmet following Nemo as he took a spiral staircase up to the bridge.
The Hindu god Varuna held the submarine’s wall compass aloft in his four arms, mythic water animals crawling around him. Nemo fitted the golden sea horse from his boot into an opening beside the compass’ casing, next to Varuna’s head.
The spiny tail of the hippocampus recessed into the wall, becoming a small, curved switch. The sea horse’s eyes fluttered dimly, grew brighter, then signal-flashed as stored power hummed from the lower decks.
Nemo stepped to the bridge’s primary control podium, taking his rightful place in the Captain’s chair, adorned MOBILIS IN MOBILE.
Settling into the bridge of his ship, Nemo checked the podium for damage. The sides were power panels embracing the station like the wings of a clergyman’s desk, signal lights and blade switches crisscrossing them. Nemo set the switches.
In the library, Sara and her father took off their miner helmets, dousing the oil lamps as tubes in the ceiling and frosted globes along the walls fought to light. Coils heated. Some blew out, while power reached others, making them glow.
Illuminating the Nautilus.
The bridge’s panels came to life in sections: lights first, and switches, sparking. Smoke. Then, lit, with indicators half-functioning.
Nemo engaged the flood pumps. The sound of the old water rushing from the Nautilus filled the submarine as the ports exhaled gallons of swamp back into the ocean.
Sara and her father moved from the li
brary to the dining room, the swamp quickly receding around them. Swollen furniture, the slop of rotted books, all paste and pages settled in the corners as the water swirled into drains along the base panels.
Crabs skittered.
Nemo came down the circular stairs that connected the first deck with the bridge. “I see Nautilus has been made home to a catalog of sea creatures. They’re to be gathered and set free. Mr. Duncan, I believe there’s a Carcharhinus limbatus by your ankle.”
Sara said, “Blacktip shark.”
Duncan startled, Sara grabbing his arm, as he looked down to find the baby shark, rolling in the last inches of ocean trapped on the deck. He picked the blackfin up by its tail, holding it away as it tried to snap.
Nemo said, “He’s greeting you, Duncan. Now that you’ve met one species of shark, you only have three hundred and fifty to go. Until I discover another, of course.” He stepped around Sara. “Get a bucket, assist your father.” He made his way to a small alcove off the library, a door set back in the observation dome.
Framed in gold, smeared with muddy salt, the metal door was arched and decorated with a minutely detailed inlay of Poseidon breaking the waves. There was no handle, only a series of jewels set in a small circle.
Nemo pressed them in private sequence, ordering Sara, “Go below, check the pumps, clear any that are fouled, then prepare engines for inspection. I’ll expect a complete list of repairs you’ve initiated, so I can isolate your mistakes.”
The Poseidon door opened pneumatically, sliding into the wall. It hissed instantly shut, Nemo now behind it, before Sara could get out a word.
* * *
Duncan was at the far side of the submarine pen, tossing the baby blackfin, a scrape of oysters, and a tangle of silver eels into the water.
Sara hauled up from the Nautilus’ primary hatch as Duncan made a choice about the twisting fish in the leather bucket. “These were in a lake by the crew quarters. More convenient than you catching them in the surf.” He looked up. “So, what do you think of the genius?”
Sara climbed on deck. “He’s a genius. That’s all.”
“His manner disappoints?”
“Let’s say this has been a very unusual day, and he behaves accordingly.”
“An understatement. You’ve already done a spectacular job, daughter.”
“Not that he recognizes it.” Sara climbed the ladder from the submarine’s surface deck. “I despise the way he speaks to you.”
Duncan saw a flash of Sara’s mother, evident in his daughter. “Ease your temper. He’s contrary, but I don’t think the reality of all this has made itself clear, but it will.”
Sara said, “I think you’re asking a blind man to see.”
“It’s not that dire.” Duncan regarded his daughter. “I’ve not been the father I should have been these last twenty years, so I’m not too sure I deserve your defense.”
“You saw to my education, and that I got this chance.”
“You’ve gone far beyond anything you heard in a classroom, and this ‘chance’ is no gift. You earned it.” Duncan smiled, held up the bucket. “So, dear, Nautilus bass for dinner?”
Sara took her father’s hand. “Father, it’s not seemly, but take me somewhere with a great deal of whiskey.”
13
THE VIOLENCE OF NIGHT
“I know you ain’t got no dead kid there, not the way you’re struggling that coffin into the wagon.”
Warden Kramer kept his hands raised, fixed on the double-barreled Greener that was leveled at his middle. He glanced quickly up at the plaid-kerchief-masked face of the man standing just feet away from Libby’s old loading docks, who was keeping the shotgun steady from a moon-shadowed corner, snapping out orders to Gunny:
“Down off that perch.”
Gunny was leaning on the wagon’s brake from his place on the driver’s seat, trying to reach the pistol he’d tucked into the top of his boot. A swath of bandage covered his mouth and split tongue, gagging his protests into muffled nothing as he reached out with his left hand as if climbing down, while grabbing the gun with his right.
He wasn’t quick enough for the man with the shotgun.
The blast tore through Gunny’s shoulder, propelling him off the wagon, and spinning across the backs of the horse team, then, hard to the ground.
The shotgun went to Kramer, saying, “He’s stupid, but you ain’t stupid, are you, Warden?”
“I like to think not,” Kramer said.
“Not with all that money you stole; that takes smart figuring. And it’s all gold, too. You should be proud as hell.”
Kramer pointed to Gunny with his umbrella. “How did you know about this? About our getaway? Was it him?”
“He can’t say nothing no way.” The man in the kerchief stepped wide over Gunny, who was still twitching.
“All you got to know is, you were found out,” he said, taking his place on the driver’s seat, the shotgun never leaving its aim on Kramer. “I’m thinking it’s time you traded that umbrella for a cane.”
He let the second barrel loose, knocking Kramer back against a whitewashed wall, with LIBBY FOODS screaming in giant letters across it.
The wagon team bolted at the blast, and the man tossed the shotgun in the back, alongside the child’s coffin, as he steered the running horses away from the prison and down a small lane, toward the reflected lights of old Richmond.
Kramer rolled onto his bloody side, crying out to Gunny, “You damned fool.” Trying to raise himself to his feet, leaning on his umbrella, he snapped it in two.
* * *
In New York, the fireball lit Mulberry Street.
It was a silent flash, flames and balled heat, followed by the roaring blast of ten dynamite sticks as Bishop Falcone’s buggy exploded.
The Bishop had settled inside for only a moment, with the young Priest asking, “Qual è la prima cosa che dirai a Signor Grant?” when they heard the ticking.
The young Priest grabbed hold of the Bishop’s hand.
The fireball made them ashes.
The explosion hurled the coach’s burning wheels into vendor carts and fruit stands, and propelled the horse, body twisting sideways, screaming through a store window, tail and mane in flames.
The cloth-covered rest of the buggy, instantly incinerated, drenched the New York block in a rain, filling the sky with debris and bits of flame that came back down to a smoking crater in the center of the street.
* * *
Grant pushed aside a stack of files on his desk, making room for Julia to set out the yellow-striped coffeepot and two cups with the Presidential seal. The sun had been up for less than half an hour, and the White House was quiet, their voices the only sound.
Julia poured and Grant splashed his face from a water bowl, saying, “Feels like I’m living on coffee these days.”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
Grant moved the bourbon decanter. “Depends on your point of view, dear.” He filled his coffee cup. “And the time of day. Don’t read that.”
Julia Grant had taken a newspaper from the desk, neatly folded to the second page, and started reading.
“The morning edition,” Grant said. “A thousand people will be coming through that office door, and they’ll all have seen it.”
“What do you think?”
“I think my assassination’s going to happen one article at a time.” Grant drained the last of his coffee. “The man’s a braying jackass, but he’s not wrong.”
FROM: THE NEW YORK WORLD TELEGRAM
THE MONSTERS OF THE SEA ARE LOOSE ON OUR STREETS
Opinion by Gideon Spilett
We have seen the dispatches; of the ships destroyed mere miles from our own ports, with crews slaughtered by mysterious creatures. This reporter devoted years following the travails of Captain Nemo, sinking ship after ship in his pursuit of peace at any cost, often using a sea monster as his guise. But now the blood has overflowed from our surfs and harbors, into ou
r streets, with the killing of a representative of Italy, His Holiness Bishop Falcone.
No matter who lit the fuse to the bomb, if this violence happens within our borders, our waterfronts, our oceans, then we are the ones who must bear the brunt of the world as it prepares to take revenging action for their loss.
Defiance of the urge to battle is the lesson we never learned from Captain Nemo. We sentenced him to hang, without hearing his words: that man’s nature will always lead him back to war, unless he denies the instinct, and lays down the sword and gun.
Now those words have taken root in the very cities that were recently battlefields, and will be so again under President Grant, unless something is done to convince the world that we have less blood on our hands than we do.
And no matter what the outcome, I will be on the front lines to report it.
14
LOYALTIES
The Lieutenant threw the first punch. Sigel ducked it, then countered, with easy body blows.
Sigel punched twice, rocked back on his feet. “Your attack was too obvious; I saw it in your body before you moved.”
The Lieutenant hard-countered, “I’ll be more discreet next time, sir.”
Sigel’s hands were fast, hitting the young man’s ribs, with more speed than viciousness, driving him into a roped corner against the buckles. Punches were the only sound in the empty gymnasium, bouncing against the walls, and back again, the Lieutenant taking the hits.
Sigel said, “Good exercise, though.” He put up his hands. “Marquess of Queensberry. I have to give you time to recover yourself.”
Lieutenant wiped his face with his padded gloves. “Thank you, sir. I imagine this is easier on the hands than doing it bare knuckle.”
Sigel threw harder, knocking the younger man a few feet, then catching him before he fell, asking, “Just how old do you think I am, Lieutenant?”
“I meant no offense, General.”
Sigel said, “I think a few minutes on the bag will be it for me.”
Nemo Rising Page 7
