Nemo Rising

by C. Courtney Joyner

  Grant said, “That, I believe.”

  Sara dropped into a corner, putting pieces together out loud, so she could comprehend them. “We’re actually prisoners. My father actually did all this, built all this.”

  Grant moved to the wide expanse of glass, the enormity of the sky just beyond it, saying, “The shutters, they opened just before I called out to you. Like a magician’s trick. Do you know why?”

  Sara said, “The window they gave me isn’t real.”

  “During the war, we’d release prisoners for rides outside the walls, show them the world they were losing, then threw them back into dark cells. The longing, it broke some of them, made them give up secrets, which was the damn point. Show us the world, then take it away. Can you imagine what never touching the earth again would do to you? It’s brilliant strategy.”

  Grant crossed a Chinese rug, just as he had in his White House bedroom, to stand next to Sara. “When he pushed me so hard about Nemo, I read the Arronax diary. He couldn’t believe what he saw on the Nautilus; what the hell would Arronax say about all this?”

  “All the delusions, all the sailors’ claims, and every one, the truth.” Sara blinked at the intense sun spreading across the glass, wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “This will make a hell of a report, sir.”

  Grant offered his handkerchief. “One that nobody’ll ever read.”

  “You trusted me to do something about Captain Nemo, and I didn’t.”

  “And why didn’t you?”

  “I became one of the crew,” she said.

  Grant’s eyes overwhelmed Sara, but she stayed with him, meeting his look. “Are you going to kill him, and my father?”

  “There’s no question about your father,” Grant said. “He was my friend, but traitors are to be executed.”

  * * *

  Ocean-surface-level, and the Nautilus moved through far Atlantic waves, but listed to one side, the water pounding up against the observation dome as it dipped, the bow exposed above the waterline. The hum of the engines faded, and the submarine slowed, and finally stopped, its wake washing back as if it were swamped.

  On the bridge, all lights were dimming out, sputtering, as Top Knot struggled with a frozen helm, yelling, “Check fuel! Maybe the wiring’s been cut, but find out why the engines aren’t responding.”

  Rongo said, “Because, she’s not ours.”

  “You don’t believe, but the sand dollar said you’d die on the iron boat. Well, you’re making it happen.”

  Rongo grabbed hold of Top Knot’s hand, smothering it with his own, and thrust it onto the small hidden port for the Nautilus’ master key.

  “Not ours. That’s the difficulty.”

  In the crew quarters, blood washed over Fulmer’s ears and down his back, streaks of red as he doused himself with a pitcher of water, the cold soothing the open wounds. He comforted his head with a towel, then felt for something. Around his neck. A small chain with a golden key shaped like a seahorse, hanging from it.

  Just as Nemo had given to him.

  Fulmer hauled himself to his feet, head still throbbing, and braced against the iron bunk before smashing the small side table with his heel, splintering the top away from the legs.

  * * *

  A long passageway, curving as an artery through the sky’s center structure, displayed the entire floating city as a thing of beauty to Nemo, with one side glassed from beginning to end. Like the finer points of the Nautilus, the passage was protected by gods, but of air and sky, not the sea.

  Jupiter stretched across the rounded ceiling, power ripping from his fingers, touching the windows as flakes of gold. Surrounded by the Egyptian god Horus, and the Mayan creator of the sky Tzacol: spiritual forces of sun, wind, and flight are montaged across the walls of all that Robur has built.

  “How does one man do all this?”

  Robur said, “As you did, in your Vulcania.”

  Nemo said, “But I didn’t launch anything to the heavens, and make it stay. You’ve built flying machines, when we haven’t begun to conquer flight. I built a submarine, improving on what we’ve already learned. And this city, is this to be your outpost, or do you want to rule a new society?”

  “You spoke of a city under the sea.”

  “The last dream of a condemned man,” Nemo said. “Talking to a reporter from a jail cell isn’t the start of anything. What you’ve done here is part of a new world.”

  Robur said, “It is, and can make your city true, also.”

  “How?”

  “In pieces. I launched in balloons, put it together like a puzzle. We could do the same, sinking each structure. Everything here was from a different factory, with government contracts. With my office, I hid the costs inside other projects. Reconstruction paid for most of this.”

  Nemo examined the walls with Chinese air gods casting winged spells around him. “Surely not wood or steel, you couldn’t stay aloft.”

  “Paper, treated in special presses I designed,” Robur said. “Even the windows, made of a liquid fructose, so a quarter of the weight of normal glass. You might use whale urine?”

  “Too dark.”

  “No matter, with you, it would certainly come from the sea.” Robur laughed. “The clouds shielding my city are steam from the power generators keeping us aloft. All the technology you’ll see, you inspired it, Captain.”

  “You’re giving me far too much credit.”

  “Never. This place is yours, too,” Robur said.

  * * *

  Grant and Sara sat against the side of the room that jutted toward the sky, but the shutters for the expansive window were now closed, darkening the room with slashes of shadows like the bars of a prison cell. The diary from Sara’s room was on the floor between them, open to the first page.

  Grant said, “Everything.”

  “I don’t know—I—my mother died when I was young, and I’ve spent my life in boarding schools. My father is a scientist and advisor, that’s what I thought.”

  Grant held up his hand to stop her from speaking, and wrote in the diary: Choose your words. Fortifications?

  “I don’t know.”

  He wrote: Troops, or guards?

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  Grant spoke admiringly. “Your father disclosed nothing to you, about his incredible creation?”

  “Not about this place. This is all a bizarre secret.”

  Grant said, “Your mother left your father a fortune.”

  “From silver mining, yes. And I went to great schools to study engineering on my trust. The first woman in most of my classes. You know that. You know all of it—”

  Grant stopped Sara speaking again, and this time she wrote: To when you asked me to kill Nemo.

  Grant wrote: I am trying to find out everything about my enemy.

  Sara said, “That’s not how I knew him.”

  Grant wrote: He has betrayed millions, not only us. This is a chance to right a wrong, and then said, “Not many get that.”

  Sara rubbed her finger, where the poisoned ring used to be, and said, “I understand.”

  “Do you really think they listened to everything we say?”

  Grant said, “This is a new world, no secrets anymore.”

  Sara made a last entry in her diary that Grant couldn’t read, and closed and locked it.

  * * *

  The Lieutenant held the box, and knocked on Sara’s door with a light touch. When she answered from the other side, he had to unlock it and slide it open. She was standing directly before him, not allowing him over the threshold.

  His manner remained as delicate as his eyes and accent. “Miss Duncan, my apologies, but this is for you. Hand delivery.”

  He handed Sara the box, and she read the card, another salutation from her father. Her expression didn’t change.

  She said, “What is this?”

  “A gift.”

  “Of what?”

  The Lieutenant half-bowed, and smiled, looking u
p at her. “Something beautiful, I’m sure.”

  Sara pushed the door, but the Lieutenant’s polished boot held it open. “I’m the officer charged with your security. So any concerns you have, please feel free to speak to me about them.”

  “Will you leave me, with this door unlocked?”

  There was only more of a smile. “Our meeting was a pleasure.”

  Sara shoved the door closed, heard the locks tumble before she pried open the box to see the dress inside. She looked at the card again: The first of many gifts, your loving father.

  * * *

  Beneath the city was the enormous man-made cavern housing the heart and nerves of Robur’s creation: a space as large as the city itself. A sub-structured basement for all the machine and energy works, encompassing the city’s whole length and width. And beneath this, nothing but free-falling sky.

  Robur and Nemo moved through it on a motorized wheeled platform running on a narrow, miner’s rail track. Circling among the generators and the rod works turning the giant propellers to keep the city aloft, Robur was a king surveying his kingdom.

  “Between Heaven and Earth,” Robur said.

  They passed a generator, in its own domed container, with its energy source affixed to it, a small, glowing dome. A technician handed Robur a message, that he approved and handed back, their transport not stopping.

  Nemo asked, “That spider device drew its power from a diamond sliver?”

  Robur said, “We can draw power from any substance that’s been pressurized, peeling away the energy onion, if you will. Diamonds work well, but any natural gem will do. Studying your power supply and engines was essential to me. The Nautilus uses the atomic structure of metals, a marked improvement over its storage batteries.”

  “I thought so,” Nemo said. “That gold ingot will keep us underway for two years, at least.”

  “One gem in this system will double that time, perhaps more, and with no waste.”

  “You should have let me modify the Nautilus.”

  Robur said, “I thought about it, Captain.”

  Nemo said, “But then you would have revealed yourself.”

  The transport went onto a length of straight track, with the balloon works on either side as they were being repaired by uniformed crewmen, and inflated through gas jets, before attachment to the support chains for each of the city’s corners.

  Robur said, “Holding back on my knowledge has been the most difficult thing. What I did at the White House was like a Neanderthal with rock and flint, and they applauded me for it. Grant could be effusive in his way, but I always felt it was like applauding a cheetah for running.”

  “Or a cobra for striking?”

  Robur said, “I don’t mind the comparison, because you’ve been labeled far worse; we’re natural conquerors. Like your Nautilus, my accomplishment here was inevitable. It is who we are.”

  “Your crew, they follow you, and never leave?”

  “Rarely. Like the crew of the Nautilus, citizens of the world. You might even see a few of your old prison mates. We even house a few young ladies, so it’s not all work. This year saw our first marriage, and birth. It’s a city. My city.”

  They were now on a section suspended by wires over an open area to service the pontoons and steam system under the city’s foundation. On either side of the car, a straight fall for miles.

  Nemo said, “You’ve done more for flight than any man who’s ever lived, so I need to know what this is all about, beyond the hundreds you killed, for no reason.”

  Robur said, “Also inevitable.”

  The vehicle cleared the opening, stopping on its track before two large, gilded doors set against polished black stone. Robur stepped out, saying, “You and the Nautilus turned the Atlantic into a cemetery.”

  “For warships only, and always giving fair warning.”

  “Don’t ever forget my knowledge of your record, Captain.”

  Nemo said, “I didn’t push the world to the edge of war, I pulled it back. Stopping war is what brought me here.”

  “What brought you was insatiable curiosity, and my will. Nothing since we met has been by accident.”

  “The underwater structure?”

  Robur said, “The Nautilus’ new docking pen, built to its specifications, and for its total security. That was an invitation, and you accepted, sir.”

  Nemo said, “I was shanghaied.”

  “My God, that word’s from the waterfront. You’ve always been a man of the sea,” Robur said. “But now you can be a leader. I know you have a thousand questions, but you were brought here for a purpose. To join me as a master of the world.”

  Robur opened the golden doors with a brush of his hand, and Nemo stepped through them.

  * * *

  A pistol barrel poked into the crew quarters hatchway before Top Knot. Fulmer looked over from his bunk.

  “You’re holding back, and we need it. Now.”

  Fulmer said, “You’re gonna have to speak plain, mate. I’ve had my head bashed in.”

  Top Knot stepped around the smashed side table, legs, and busted pieces. He put a foot on the edge of the bunk to balance the pistol across his knee. “You’ll get worse than that. Nemo’s key, if it’s not in the controls, the ship shuts down. He’s got one, so does the first.”

  Top Knot held out his hand.

  Fulmer said, “Who told you all that?”

  Fulmer looked over to Rongo, filling all of the hatchway. Fulmer shifted his body, but stayed lying down.

  “We dock, you do anything you want, but we ain’t being around as a picnic for one of these sea monsters, whatever they are,” Top Knot said.

  Fulmer sat up slowly. “They write songs about them; you don’t want to be in the verse about Nemo and his monsters?”

  Rongo said, “You’re being a fool.”

  Top Knot angled the pistol upward, directly between Fulmer’s eyes. “Give it. Now. Or your brains feed the turtles.”

  Fulmer put a thumb under the key around his neck. “Only thing keeping me alive, because I can run this submarine better than you. But, that pistol’s made me think. See—”

  Fulmer wrestled a piece of the tabletop from under his shirt, dropped it beside the bunk. “I thought that’d stop a bullet. I must’ve been stinkin’ to think that up.”

  It was enough for Top Knot to laugh. Fulmer whipped the table leg from the sheets, swinging, smashing Top Knot’s jaw, knocking the pistol from his hands, sending him backward to the floor. Fulmer grabbed the gun, leaping from the bunk and bashing Top Knot’s temple with the ball of his foot. Blood fountained from his mouth as if he was coughing in his sleep, but he was breathing.

  Fulmer turned quickly, aiming at Rongo’s massive chest. “It’ll probably take six to bring you down, so, if you want, I’ll start shooting, and we’ll see.”

  Rongo didn’t move, didn’t raise his hands. “I don’t like getting shot. I have been, before.”

  “You want to keep standing? Because unless we get on the bridge, she’s gonna heave over, and we’ll be upside down, trapped on the ocean floor.”

  Fulmer reached under the mattress and tossed Rongo a bone-and-brass breathing device, saying, “I crewed the Nautilus out of Vulcania, and I can smell mutiny a month before it happens. So can Nemo. We knew what you were going to do before you did. Put that on.”

  Fulmer kicked open a crate by the bed and took three amber bottles of milky fluid from a bed of straw.

  “Nemo uses this stuff to operate with. Toss ’em like grenades, put everybody to sleep.”

  “And then what?”

  “Right the ship, finish our mission, and you go home.”

  Fulmer still had the pistol in one hand and the bottles in the other, but couldn’t read Rongo’s expression. He read his tattoos: the three slashes for his brothers; the marks of killing a man in battle, with honor; and a marriage tattoo.

  Rongo nodded, putting the breather in his mouth, taking two bottles.

  The Nautil
us was turning, the passageway tilting. More and more. Fulmer and Rongo stepped from the crew quarters as a mutineer charged a corner with a throwing ax, screaming for Rongo to get out of the way.

  Slamming against the walls, trying to keep his balance, he threw the blade. The bottle was tossed. Shattered. The white-thick vapor burst into the air, choking the mutineer to the deck before falling him into unconsciousness, the ax having barely missed Fulmer’s skull.

  Fulmer and Rongo went for the stairs. Grabbing for a hold as the ship moved again. Lurching. A bullet ricocheted. Sparking off iron. Fulmer hurled the bottle at the mutineer who’d taken a sniping position on the second deck, hiding behind the hatch. He fired. Blasting the bottle. Soaking himself in fluid as it rained back on him. Instantly out, the rifle fell from his hands, and Fulmer caught it.

  Up the spiral stairs, and breathing through their devices, Fulmer and Rongo were swimming through the thick vapor, wafting its tide away with their hands, and ascending to the bridge.

  The crewman had the rifle butt poised, ready to crack the skull of anyone who came up the stairs. The vapor was first. Swirling white. He stumbled, taking a deep breath as Rongo’s huge hands grabbed his ankles, yanking him hard to the floor.

  Fulmer and Rongo were out of the hatch, had sealed it, before the crewman tried to stand.

  Fulmer said, “You’re stuck up the whale’s ass, mate!” and shoved him over with a push on his chest. Rongo grabbed the gun, and spit out the breather.

  Fulmer nodded to the observation dome and the waves crashing against it as the bow started tilting, up-ending the horizon, like a drunk who finally loses his balance.

  “We’ve got to empty that ballast, mate.”

  Rongo went to the levers, and Fulmer inserted the power key into the control panel. Resurrection. Panel after panel lights, the submarine humming with renewed energy. The ballast tanks were opened, flooding outward, and the ship began to level.

  Fulmer increased speed from the helm, and went to the crew call. “Attention, all hands that are still awake! This is Mr. Fulmer! I’m again at the helm, but make no mistake, Nemo’s the captain of the Nautilus, and we’ll follow his commands to the letter. I’m not hearin’ any arguments so, all hands, stand by.”