by Adam Roberts
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ agreed Billiard-Fanon, scowling.
‘You misunderstand the nature of our … knowledge,’ said Lebret. ‘And do I need to remind you how volatile French politics has been over the last few years? To say nothing of the … extraordinary and … well, intrinsically questionable nature of the information we had received.’ Once more Lebret was unable to prevent his glance searching out Ghatwala.
‘Is this what you’ve been conspiring about, you and he?’ Billiard-Fanon demanded, pointing the pistol at Ghatwala. Pannier, sitting next to the scientist, flinched away, and – a little sheepishly – Billiard-Fanon brought the aim of the gun back round to Lebret.
‘The little I know about this new realm …’ Lebret began to say.
‘This is why,’ Billiard-Fanon interrupted him. ‘This is why you were so insistent we keep diving down – when the captain wanted to refloat the tanks and go back up, towards home. You tricked us into diving deeper! And here we are … descending through watery hell.’
‘As I say,’ Lebret repeated, trying to assert a degree of control over the exchange, ‘I don’t know everything about this place. But I am certain that going back up would be a wild goose chase. I know we have to keep going down.’
‘What choice do we have?’ yelled Pannier. ‘You’ve doomed us all!’
There was general, vocal agreement to this proposition.
‘We’re not doomed—’ Lebret began to say. But Billiard-Fanon cut him off.
‘You still haven’t said why you killed Avocat. Not content to wait for us all to die, you’ve decided to go about the vessel killing us one at a time?’
‘No—no—’
‘Are you murdering to a purpose?’ Billiard-Fanon demanded. ‘Or are you simply insane – a maniac?’
‘I’ll say it again, I don’t know why you won’t believe me. Monsieur Avocat hurt his arm, and I was trying to help! It’s the truth!’
Billiard-Fanon took a step towards Lebret. ‘You’re innocent, you say?’
‘Yes!’
‘Look me in the eye, Monsieur Lebret,’ demanded Billiard-Fanon. ‘Look me right in the eye, and say “I am innocent of murder”. Say it, and I’ll know whether you’re telling the truth.’
The walls of the Plongeur shuddered and groaned, and the boat rolled a little. Everyone in the mess twitched, and gripped more tightly onto whatever they were holding. Lebret looked about him. A bank of hostile faces. His eye snagged on a number of oddities – there was his cigarette, stuck somehow to the ceiling. There, too, were various pieces of detritus and rubbish, discarded food, papers, littered about the ceiling. He wondered, idly, what was sticking them up there. Presumably they were wet, and the water was acting as some kind of glue. He listened – there were roiling, watery sounds distantly visible – and he heard, in his imagination, the sound of the ocean speaking to him as it had done before: the water loves you utterly, yearns to embrace you with all its limbs and press its mouth to your mouth. He tried to focus. Billiard-Fanon was leaning in towards him.
He locked his gaze with the ensign, and began to speak. But as the words emerged, there flashed upon Lebret’s inner eye a vivid image of the scowling captain, struggling with him upon his bunk. He recalled the feeling of the small pistol discharging his hands, and the abrupt stiffening and twitching backwards.
‘I am innocent of murder,’ he said.
Billiard-Fanon nodded slowly, and stepped back. ‘He’s lying,’ he said, and then, once again, for the benefit of the assembled audience, ‘He’s lying!’
‘Of course he is,’ growled Pannier. ‘Does anyone doubt it?’
16
SENTENCE
Lebret took a breath. ‘Listen to me, everybody,’ he said, in a loud voice. ‘Is this truly what you choose? This insanity? I am the only person on board the Plongeur who can ensure we all get back safe to port. Only I!’
This announcement had a gratifying effect. Nobody contradicted it; and as Lebret cast his gaze about he could see on the face of several of the sailors that they believed him.
‘And what assurances can you provide,’ Billiard-Fanon demanded, ‘that you can truly do this thing?’
‘I do not pretend to be a saint,’ said Lebret. ‘But I am no traitor – and most of all I am the only person who even begins to understand the nature of the place in which we find ourselves. I say only this: let me help you. Hold off your trial and sentence until we are docked again. Then, by all means, stand me before a court martial, convened upon French soil and presided over by a French judge, to arraign me for what I have done. But until that time you need me – you need me alive.’
‘He has a point,’ muttered Capot. ‘Does he? Does he have a point?’
‘If you believe him,’ countered Le Petomain.
‘And why should we believe him?’ snarled Pannier. ‘He’s the kind of treacherous dog would promise to rescue a comrade from a drowning room and then abandon him to his fate.’
Sensing an advantage, however slim, Lebret pressed, ‘I do not ask you to like, or even trust me. Judge me by how effectively I can guide you through this place. Because,’ he repeated, playing his trump card again, ‘only I have any idea of what we’re dealing with.’
‘You didn’t help when the cuttlefolk attacked our vessel!’ Pannier called.
‘I don’t pretend to know everything,’ Lebret agreed. ‘But I know something. Which is more than any of you can say!’
‘No,’ said Billiard-Fanon, shaking his head. ‘No, I don’t trust you, Monsieur. Put ourselves in your hands? Who’s to say you won’t navigate the Plongeur straight into the heart of one of these undersea suns, and kill us all?’
‘I know how to get us home …’ Lebret insisted.
‘At least let’s discuss this,’ suggested Le Petomain. ‘Put him back in his cell, and test what he says. Get him to explain this place, whatever it is, and test what he says against observations. That way we can ascertain how useful he will be to us.’
Capot and Jhutti nodded at this. Pannier stared at the wall in disgust. Billiard-Fanon seemed to ponder the variables. Then he straightened his spine. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge now. I have passed sentence.’
He lifted the pistol, and pointed it at Lebret’s head.
‘Wait!’ Lebret cried, his mouth wide, his eyes bulging.
Billiard-Fanon pulled the trigger and shot Lebret in the mouth.
Lebret’s head snapped backward in a splash of vivid red. He lurched, flying back, hitting the angled wall with a thud.
In the enclosed space the retort of the pistol’s blast was ear-stunningly loud. It left a residual tinnitus whine in the hearing of those present. Ghatwala shrieked in surprise. Pannier grinned. Billiard-Fanon flipped his left hand up to grab at the punchy recoil of the weapon, and stop the gun jumping out of his hands.
There was a loud gong-like chime, and a serpentine hissing sound.
Billiard-Fanon yelled with joy. ‘Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy!’ he cried.
‘You’ve breached the hull!’ shouted Le Petomain, in horror.
The look of triumph froze on the ensign’s face. He looked round – it was true. The bullet had pierced not only Lebret’s head and the wall of the mess, but the outer hull of the Plongeur too. A thin spike of water protruded in through the gap, spraying droplets in every direction. Everybody stared at it, horrified. The water died away. There was a gulping sound, and the jet started up again. A thick mist of water roiled around the mess.
‘What have you done?’ Le Petomain shrieked.
‘Plug it!’ yelled Castor.
Capot began to clamber down from his vantage towards the point of the breach, but Billiard-Fanon was closest. He stepped awkwardly over Lebret’s body and tried to scrabble up the sloping wall to where the hole was. But the wall was slippery-wet, and he made no progress.
Capot got to him. ‘Tiny little pinhole,’ Billiard-Fanon announced, in a loud, brittle voice. ‘A strip of chewing gum would block
it … give me a leg-up, Capot.’
‘It’s gone straight through the outer hull,’ yelled Castor.
Billiard-Fanon was lifted closer towards the breach. It was alternately spurting out water and sucking back, almost as if alive and breathing – or at least sputtering. ‘It’s,’ he said, bringing his eye up to it.
Then something quite unexpected happened. A claw poked through the hole, and pulled upwards, tearing the metal as easily as if it had been paper.
Billiard-Fanon yelled with sheer terror, and fell from Capot’s supporting hold. He banged his spine against the edge of one of the angled tables, rolled off, and fell into the V of wall-and-floor next to Lebret’s body. He was screaming ‘the devil, the devil!’
‘What was it?’ yelled Pannier.
‘I didn’t see—’
‘The breach,’ Castor boomed. ‘It’s a rip – it’s a tear—’
‘The devils! They’re outside, trying to get in!’ howled Billiard-Fanon, writhing in the metal cleft.
Le Petomain was already clambering up to the mess hatch. ‘Out of here,’ he called. ‘Everybody! Before the whole panel gives way and this space floods completely.’
The other sailors needed no further encouragement. Even Castor, who was calling out ‘We can mend it!’ nevertheless scrabbled up the sloping floor and out through the hatch.
‘The water is scorching me!’ screamed Billiard-Fanon, struggling to get to his knees, his face contorted with terror – or pain. His eyes were tight shut. ‘It’s the opposite of holy water! The unholy water – that burns me! Burns me! The devils!’
The water was certainly swirling about the space as if possessed; although none of the other men remarked upon its heat. But the uncanny motion of the fluid filled their hearts with fear.
Le Petomain had already leapt through the hatch, and away from there. Pannier bundled Ghatwala through and Jhutti was not far behind.
‘Don’t leave me!’ Billiard-Fanon yelled. ‘Capot – I hurt my back when I fell.’
Water was surging into the mess now, through the enlarged breach. It flew around in a diabolic frenzy like a monsoon rainstorm. The claw, or beak, was no longer visible – if it had ever been there. But whether the claw had been a real phenomenon or a hallucination, something non-human had certainly expanded the hole.
Capot put his shoulder under Billiard-Fanon’s armpit, and helped the ensign to his feet. Together they used the bolted-down tables and chairs as a stairway to climb up towards the hatch. Jhutti on the far side, was leaning through, his arm out. ‘Come on! Come on!’ he called.
‘The devils,’ Billiard-Fanon wept, struggling upward. ‘They’re all about the ship! They want to break in! A cursed vessel, a haunted vessel … we must pray to God! Let us pray!’
‘I pray you to shut up,’ grunted Capot, shrugging the ensign’s body through the hatch. He climbed up after and through. Jhutti slammed the hatch door shut, and spun the wheel to lock it.
They were all wet. Billiard-Fanon lay on his back, sodden, moaning. ‘The devils, the devils!’
‘What were you thinking?’ Le Petomain shouted at him. ‘Discharging your pistol inside the vessel like that? What were you thinking?’
But Billiard-Fanon was laughing, now; and there was a maniac in the laugh.
17
WHO’S IN COMMAND?
They all struggled through to the bridge. The entire vessel shook and rolled suddenly, spinning ninety-degrees and more. Everybody lost their footing and fell. ‘The devils!’ yelled Billiard-Fanon, as the seven men tumbled and fell against the sides. ‘They spin us and roll us – but they cannot snatch our souls!’
‘Take the gun away from him!’ Jhutti urged Le Petomain. ‘He has lost his mind.’
The Plongeur bucked, abruptly, and all seven men fell again. As they struggled to get back to their feet Le Banquier glanced over at Billiard-Fanon. The latter read his intent. ‘No you don’t, Monsieur pilot. I am in command and I won’t stand for any insubordination!’ He brought the gun up. Ghatwala yelled out in alarm.
The Plongeur rolled yet again, and the seven men tumbled and sprawled. Several of them shouted in pain. The fabric of the vessel trembled and made terrifying hooting and keening noises. Grinning, Billiard-Fanon picked himself from the mass of bodies. ‘They are all about us – the devils are all about us!’ He aimed the gun at Le Petomain, as if to shoot him, but just at that moment the Plongeur shook with an earthquake motion, and rolled again – back again. Everybody fell. Billiard-Fanon’s arm struck the edge of a bank of equipment and he yelped. The pistol fell from his hand.
‘Though I walk through the valley of death …’ howled Billiard-Fanon. ‘Rejoice not against me, o mine enemy!’ He lurched towards where the gun had fallen, but the Plongeur rolled again, and the gun clattered chimingly upon the metal of the bridge’s control panels.
The vessel shook once more, but then – finally – it settled, having rolled through a quarter-turn. The walls were now the floor, the seats and controls of the bridge projecting from the wall.
Everybody picked themselves up. Billiard-Fanon was clutching his wrist and grinning. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Monsieur Indian. Now you have the pistol.’
Jhutti was holding the gun.
‘You have lost your mind, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘You cannot be trusted with this weapon.’
‘Jhutti,’ said Le Petomain. ‘Give me the gun.’
Jhutti looked at the pilot. His expression was not calm. ‘He shot Lebret! In cold blood! Billiard-Fanon shot Monsieur Lebret in the face!’
Billiard-Fanon laughed. ‘Lebret was a devil. Literally so! Did you see his master, the father of lies, poke his dinosaur fingernail in at the bullet hole and rip the panel? Satan seeking to reclaim the body of his son.’
Jhutti addressed the ensign directly. ‘Why shoot him?’
‘His head must have been made of paper!’ Billiard-Fanon exclaimed. ‘The bullet went straight through – as if his skull were not there. It went straight through and punctured the skin of the submarine. Did anybody else see that? I expected the bullet to lodge in the man’s skull, but his skull must have been made of soft cheese.’
‘It was a reckless action, Jean,’ said Le Petomain, sorrowfully. ‘It endangered us all.’
‘Nonsense!’ boomed Billiard-Fanon. ‘I saved us all! That man – say rather, that devil, Lebret – he was the cause of all our woes. He was the Jonah. We’ve got rid of him. Now we will be well.’
‘The mess is flooded!’ growled Castor. ‘We have no access to the forward portion of the Plongeur at all!’
‘So what?’ laughed the ensign. ‘We have the bridge, and our cabins. The engines are still working, which means that we still have air to breathe.’ He looked around at the other men. ‘There was nothing fore, anyway. The ballast tanks are ripped. What else? The torpedo tubes? We don’t need them!’
‘The food,’ said Capot. ‘What are we going to eat?’
Billiard-Fanon laughed. ‘Have faith, and the Lord will provide! We can throw a fishing line out through the airlock, and try a bit of native calamari.’ He was rubbing his wrist, back and forth. ‘You’re missing the larger picture, messieurs! Food? Jesus lasted forty days in the wilderness without food, tormented by devils the entire time! God has seen fit to test us. Do you think we’re not in a wilderness? A wilderness of water! And can you not see the devils that torment us? There is only one way to survive this situation, and it is faith. Faith!’
‘Forty days without food,’ said Capot, in a grim voice.
‘Ensign Billiard-Fanon,’ said Le Petomain. ‘I am relieving you of command. Monsieur Jhutti, please give me the gun.’
But the scientist did not relinquish the pistol.
‘Hey!’ said Castor. ‘Why should you assume command? I’m the engineer! I outrank you.’
‘You do not,’ said Le Petomain. ‘And besides, Lieutenant Boucher may regain consciousness at any moment. As pilot, I …’
‘I am chief engineer! I outrank yo
u,’ Castor repeated.
‘A self-confessed bigamist,’ Le Petomain began.
Castor clapped his hands together. ‘What has that got to do with anything? What has that got to do with anything – down here?’
‘I am assuming command of the Plongeur,’ Le Petomain repeated.
‘Monsieur Indian,’ said Castor, stepping forward. ‘I request you give me the gun.’
‘Oh what does it matter who has the gun?!’ shouted Pannier. ‘What does it matter? We’ve no flotation; we’ve no food or drink; we’re tumbling through an alien sea, completely out of control! Command? Command is a chimera! We’re all going to die. We were all always going to die.’ He kicked at the wall. ‘Cut off from the galley! No drink at all!’ he repeated. ‘Not even a single glass to ease the terror of mortality!’
‘We could, perhaps,’ suggested Capot, whose mind was also clearly running along similar grooves, ‘use the remaining diving suit? We lost one suit when de Chante … was taken, but we have another.’
‘Taken!’ repeated Le Petomain. ‘You’ve no proof that’s what happened to poor de Chante! None of us know what happened to him!’
‘At any rate, there is another diving suit, down below. One of us could get into that, and retrieve some food and drink from the kitchen.’
‘It’s …’ said Le Petomain. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. But it would be a desperate strategy. How would we gain access? The mess is flooded now – if we opened the hatch, we risk inundating the bridge as well.’
‘Perhaps a diver could swim out and round. The breach in the wall is large enough to allow a diver in, I think?’
Billiard-Fanon had sat himself down and was kissing his wrist and repeating the Lord’s Prayer. But upon hearing this he spoke up. ‘Satan himself is out there. Good luck swimming through that! You wondered what happened to Monsieur de Chante? Now you know! The devil snatched him to his scaly bosom.’
Castor took another step towards Jhutti. ‘I repeat my request, Monsieur, that you give me the pistol. I am now the ranking officer.’
