Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Like you,’ said Lebret, ‘I am accustomed to the exercise of authority, and have grown used to others deferring to me. Nevertheless, I am confident we will be able to maintain a détente during the short period we must spend together.’

  This evasive answer, of course, caused the captain’s ferocity to focus. ‘No, M’sieur!’ he said forcefully. ‘No. Not like me. You may be accustomed to ordering others about, but your experience is not like mine. You did not fight for the Free French, risking death every day in the black waters of the winter Atlantic. You were not shipwrecked three times, clinging to wreckage in a sea of spilled oil amongst the corpses of your comrades!’

  Lebret’s eyebrows rose, but his expression settled almost at once back into its serenely insolent mask. ‘Perhaps I understand your animosity, Captain Cloche. You have, I suppose, heard of my work for the Vichy administration?’

  ‘I have heard the rumours,’ said the captain, directing his attention to the food on his plate.

  ‘Ah, but rumours,’ said Lebret easily, ‘may not be trusted. Appearances, you see, can trump reality. And since you claim familiarity with my past, captain, let me say: I know a great many things about your career, too. I may even be better placed to assess which of us has more truly served France.’

  ‘You dare not compare our experiences!’

  ‘I report directly to the chief of National Defence, de Gaulle himself. You think he would be happy having me working under him if he were not satisfied with my war record?’

  ‘The ministry of National Defence,’ Cloche returned, ‘is under the joint command of Messieurs de Gaulle and Guillaumat. How do I know which of the two is your true master?’

  Lebret pushed his plate away. ‘My true master is France,’ he replied, complacently.

  ‘I insist,’ the captain retorted instantly, ‘that you agree to submit to my authority during this voyage!’

  ‘I concede you are the captain of this vessel.’

  Cloche glowered at the shoreman, his broad beard trembling as he chewed. But he said no more.

  A gloomy mood settled over the table. Boucher, a red-faced, jolly-mouthed fellow whose small eyes were overroofed by a great white dome of bald forehead, tried to lighten the mood.

  ‘So,’ he said, perkily. ‘Can anyone explain the why this atomic pile must be so large and heavy? It seems counterintuitive, since atoms themselves are the smallest of things!’

  ‘Our pile is one of the smallest yet made,’ replied Ghatwala. Then, looking at the ceiling, he added: ‘I appreciate that you spoke in jest, Monsieur.’

  ‘Top secret,’ grumbled Castor. ‘And more than half of what I knew about engines thrown in the incinerator!’

  ‘That,’ said Lebret, is one reason why we have the pleasure of Messieurs Jhutti and Ghatawala’s company.’

  Castor, the engineer, had a snouty, swarthy face; and a tendency to snuffle into his own sinuses. He glanced at the scientists, sitting awkwardly about the captain’s narrow table, and scowled. ‘There’s some will hate a man for a black face,’ he announced, to nobody in particular. ‘But not I.’ Something about the way he said this did not inspire confidence.

  For several long seconds nobody spoke.

  ‘Come!’ said Lebret, suddenly, lifting his wine glass. ‘We are sailing in open sea in the most advanced submarine France has yet seen! We have stolen a march on the USSR, on the British, even on the US Navy! Let us not sour the mood.’

  Everyone at the table raised their glasses.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said the captain. ‘We shall take her down to a thousand metres, and see how well she stands the force of deep water.’

  ‘I am confident,’ said Amanpreet Jhutti, ‘that she will surpass your expectations.’

  ‘Speaking of rumours,’ said Castor, although nobody had been. ‘The chatter below decks is that this technology has been, shall we say, appropriated from the Russians.’

  Jhutti shook his head, rapidly. ‘Is this what the crew believe? Why would they think so?’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Castor. ‘With any respect due to you, M’sieur, and so on, and so forth. But whoever heard of an Indian designing a submarine?’

  ‘The inventor and captain of the Nautilus, Jules Verne’s celebrated submarine, was an Indian,’ observed Ghatwala.

  Castor jerked in his seat and sat up straighter. ‘By no means,’ he snapped. ‘A Pole.’

  ‘I assure you, Monsieur,’ Ghatwala began to say; but Castor spoke across him. ‘Captain Nemo, the hero of a novel I know very well – written by a countryman of mine after all, and not yours – Captain Nemo was a Polish aristocrat.’

  The Indians exchanged glances, and returned quietly to their meal.

  ‘At any rate,’ said Lebret, ‘whilst the design of the atomic pile does owe a great deal to the input of these two talented Punjabis, the design of the submarine itself …’ He broke off, and looked around. ‘Well, shall we say – blueprints were discovered in Abdallabad. Despite their age, they specified a number of remarkable innovations in submarine design.’ He lifted his glass of wine.

  Lieutenant Boucher swallowed his mouthful. ‘You don’t say?’ he said, perkily. ‘Lucky for us that the Indian navy didn’t seize those plans!’

  ‘Lucky for us?’ echoed Jhutti.

  ‘For France, I mean.’ He grinned. ‘Now, don’t get testy, M’sieur. I was born in Algeria. I have no problem thinking of a man with a black face as French – it doesn’t disqualify him in my eyes.’

  ‘I shall assume you intend no offensiveness in speaking this way,’ said Jhutti, coolly.

  ‘France is shattered,’ declared Lebret, grandly. ‘It has endured its greatest catastrophe, invasion and submission – and it has survived. Nevertheless we are barely piecing together our nation again. How many governments have we had in the last five years? Nine, is it? And the war is thirteen full years behind us now! Still we suffer.’ He shook his head, took a slurp of wine and picked a cigarette case from his jacket pocket. ‘The money for this project is not French, messieurs – the captain knows this already. The funding is, mostly, Swiss. This may in part explain his hostility.’

  Cloche made a noise, halfway between a bark and a syllable of speech. He glowered at Lebret, who did not flinch.

  ‘But,’ said Boucher, startled, ‘we do sail under the French flag!’

  ‘Switzerland lacking seaports,’ suggested Ghatwala, ‘finds itself at a disadvantage, perhaps?’

  ‘I talk of private money, not governmental funding,’ said Lebret. ‘May I smoke, captain?’ he asked, pulling a cigarette case from his jacket pocket. ‘My understanding of the technology involved in this manner of boat – incomplete though it is – leads me to believe that you can conjure air magically from the seawater itself, using the paring knife of atomic power. So perhaps you do not mind if we contaminate the breathable with a little fragrant tobacco?’

  Captain Cloche was glowering at the official observer. ‘Perhaps a cigarette,’ he said eventually, ‘will be a cork, to stop up your babbling mouth?’

  Lebret laughed a gurgly laugh, clicking his lighter and dabbing a painterly touch of orange flame to the end of his cigarette. ‘But discretion is my saint’s day name, Captain! It is my very stock-in-trade! Of course, if you think I have said too much, I will happily hold my peace.’

  The others continued eating, in silence, whilst Lebret sat back (as far as the confined space permitted him) and extruded limbs and tentacles of smoke from his mouth, as if a smoke-octopus lurked in his torso. Eventually the captain wiped his mouth with a napkin and spoke again.

  ‘Messieurs,’ he declared. ‘Since our official observer has permitted the feline secret egress from its sac, I ought perhaps to say a little more. I am a Frenchman, first and last. I am a sailor, first and last. I do not concern myself with the doings of politicians and financiers, of businessmen and Jews and communists and capitalists. How the government of France were able to finance this splendid machine is not my business. Say the money is Sw
iss! Money is not our concern. Our concern is the sea. The sea is not persuaded by bankers’ drafts and stocks of bullion; the sea respects nothing but the grit and willpower of dedicated seamen. And with that, messieurs, good night.’

  The captain got creakily to his feet and withdrew to his cabin.

  The Plongeur rode the tranquil sea that night, beneath the infinite spread of constellations; each star its own intricate world, gleaming white in the black ether. Waves caressed the flanks of the floating submarine with the tenderness violent beings sometimes bestow on a whim. Inside some men slept, and some served their turn on the night watch.

  The dawn rose swiftly, as it does at sea. Captain Cloche took a last turn upon the deck of his conning tower. The wind was growing brisker, and myriad wavelets covered the surface of the water with dragon scales. The sky a pale blue. A few submarine-shaped white clouds clustered together near the western horizon.

  ‘Prepare to dive!’ Cloche announced, fitting his burly form through the small hatch and trotting down the metal ladder. Matelot Avocat followed him, drawing the hatch closed after him; shutting away – in fact – the last view of the wide sky any of that crew would ever see again.

  3

  THE DISASTER

  The crew took up their places and the engines powered up. Air was pumped from the two main floatation tanks and compressed into stainless steel cylinders; cold seawater flooded in to replace it. Le Petomain, sitting in the pilot’s seat, steered the craft forward and downward, tipping the floor through twenty degrees, and causing the three observers – Lebret and the two scientists, none of whom were experienced in submarine operations – to skitter and slide on their feet, grasping at the grips depending from the ceilings to steady themselves.

  The Plongeur dived.

  The bridge of the craft was a low, angular place. Though built for a larger crew than presently manned the vessel, it nevertheless felt crowded. Electric lights, cradled in wire mesh, threw graph-grid patterns of shadow over the metal walls.

  All eyes were on the depth metre – six sets of sliding numbers, marking out the tenths, the metres, the tens, hundreds and thousands, as the boat descended through the water.

  The walls creaked, and sang. Loud, unpredictable popping noises resonated through along the central corridor of the craft. Ghatwala flinched at the first of these; but Lebret leaned back against the angled face of a locker and coolly lit a cigarette.

  ‘One thousand metres, sir,’ announced Le Banquier.

  ‘Level out, M’sieur Le Petomain,’ replied the captain.

  The floor angled slowly back to the horizontal. The depth gauge hovered between nine hundred and ninety eight and nine hundred and ninety nine. ‘Pressure one hundred kilograms per square centimetre.’

  ‘Sounds a lot, doesn’t it, Monsieur Lebret?’ said the captain, without looking at his interlocutor. ‘And indeed, if it were applied unequally upon steel even of the thickness of the hull of the Plongeur, it would punch through in a moment. Luckily for us, it is applied on all sides simultaneously.’

  ‘Indeed,’ drawled Lebret.

  ‘What of the observation porthole – are the steel shutters holding up?’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  ‘Sonar?’

  ‘Nothing to report, Captain.’

  ‘What do you say, messieurs?’ announced the captain. ‘Shall we try her lower?’

  ‘You’re sure that’s a good idea, Captain?’ Lebret asked.

  ‘Ask the two messieurs standing to your left,’ the captain returned, without looking at him. ‘Take us down to one thousand five hundred metres.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  The vanes on the exterior of the vessel tilted, and more air was pumped from the main tanks; at the same time, the four smaller orientational tanks shifted ballast between them. The Plongeur tilted forward and resumed its descent.

  Almost at once, disaster struck.

  There was a cacophonous report, like a cannon firing. The whole vessel shook and trembled. An alarm sounded a flute-like, almost musical noise. The angle of the deck did not increase, but the boat began to fall much faster. Nobody on the bridge needed to look at the suddenly spinning numbers of the depth gauge – everybody registered the suddenly accelerating descent in their guts. ‘Hey!’ cried Lebret.

  ‘Report!’ demanded the captain.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Le Banquier, looking frantically between the readouts of his various pieces of equipment. ‘We’re descending …’

  ‘That much is obvious, sailor!’ shouted the captain. ‘Go aft, Capot! Avocat go to the stern. Find out what has happened.’ The two crewmen hurried from the bridge.

  ‘I’m trying to close the main ballast tanks, sir,’ said Le Banquier. ‘But the vents are not responding. Or perhaps they are. But either way – we are still going down.’

  Metres fluttered past on the readout; tens adding to tens. The hundreds began to click round.

  Abruptly Capot burst into the bridge from the stern of the vessel, sweat polishing bright patches upon his face. His eyes were wide, and for a moment he could not speak. ‘The engines are fine,’ he gasped. ‘It must be the forward ballast tanks!’ He ran through the bridge, heading fore; and Avocat followed after him.

  The hull growled and coughed with the increasing pressure.

  ‘Sir?’ cried Le Banquier. ‘I must report that the forward vanes are stuck in descent position.’

  ‘What?’ snapped the captain. ‘The vanes themselves? Or have the control cables sheared?’

  ‘I—I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Well get forward and find out, man!’

  Le Banquier scrambled clumsily from his seat and hurried down the forward corridor. The hull gave a great, shuddery moan, punctuated with rifle-shot cracks.

  Nobody spoke. Of the remaining individuals inside the bridge, only Lebret could master even the appearance of unconcern. The scientists were gripping their leather ceiling handles tight; the captain brooded. One thousand five hundred metres flickered past on the depth gauge. Cloche drew a breath deep into his chest. ‘So messieurs,’ he said, addressing the Indians. ‘We shall now see how far your design exceeds its safety margins.’

  ‘May I go forward, captain?’ asked Jhutti. ‘To see if I can render assistance?’

  ‘By all means.’

  Jhutti made his way downslope and left the bridge along the corridor.

  The silence was oppressive; but nobody broke it. For long minutes the only sound was the strangely mournful hooting of the alarm, punctuated by the raucous gong-like clatterings made by the increasing weight of water pressure on the steel flanks of the Plongeur.

  ‘How deep does the ocean go in these parts anyway?’ asked Lebret.

  ‘You ask an interesting question, sir,’ replied the captain. ‘In the open Atlantic, the seabed is between four and five thousand metres down – assuming that one does not disappear into one of the celebrated ocean trenches, some of which are ten thousand metres deep and more. But—’ a drumroll of bangs and snaps clattered through the craft, and the captain stopped speaking. ‘But,’ he resumed, shortly, ‘we were sailing east as we dived, and we have not moved far from the coast of France, so that we are in effect diving towards the mountain-slope of the continental shelf. As to its precise depth, it is hard to say. Somewhere between two and four thousand metres, I would guess.’

  ‘Two thousand is fast approaching,’ reported Ghatwala.

  ‘And if we crash nose-first into the ocean floor,’ Lebret said, insouciantly, ‘I presume it is the end?’

  ‘There’s no chance of us settling gently onto a soft bed of sand,’ said Cloche. ‘If that is what you mean. No, if we hit the floor it will rupture the craft and we will die in moments. But, Monsieur, if that possibility scares you, I can assure you: the pressures at the abyssal depths will crush us in an instant, like an ogre’s paw closing around an egg. Such a death will at least be quick!’

  ‘Hardly a fairy-tale ending,’ replied Lebr
et, distantly.

  The depth gauge spun past two thousand metres.

  The noises increased in volume and variety. A toccata of snapping and cracking noises marked the ever-increasing external pressure squeezing the hull. The whole submarine began to vibrate, and sway its massy snout in the water.

  ‘Castor?’ bellowed the captain, abruptly, shouting along the corridor. ‘Report!’

  When there was no reply, he called again, ‘Monsieur! Tell me at once – why is my ship shaking her head like a melancholy-mad elephant?’

  There were some indistinct voices from the front of the craft, and then Castor came clambering up the corridor. ‘I’ve closed the ballast tanks by hand, but the pumps are struggling to pump air back in – the pressure’s too high. Or else there’s still some breach in the tanks. Or … I don’t know! It ought to be working, but it is not.’

  ‘Why are we shaking from side to side?’

  ‘I don’t—don’t know, Captain.’

  A growling noise swelled from the rear of the craft, overlaid by a wild percussion of cracks from the hull all around them, like a great quantity of pebbles hurled forcefully against a wall of metal.

  ‘What about the vanes?’

  ‘Won’t budge, sir, I don’t know why! They’ve seized, they’ve seized completely.’

  ‘Captain,’ came another voice. It was Billiard-Fanon, running through from the rear.

  ‘What is it, enseigne?’

  ‘The propellers are turning! The gearing has sheared – I can’t turn them off, short of shutting down the entire engine.’

  The skin above Cloche’s beard whitened visibly. ‘There must be a way to decouple the driveshaft!’

  ‘Do I take it,’ said Lebret, his insolent smoothness apparently unaffected by the disaster, ‘that we are not only sinking, but actively powering ourselves into intolerable depths? Actively hurrying towards the rocky anvil that will shatter us to pieces?’