Elise and The Astonishing Aquanauts

by Steven Welch

  They had bumped into a giant crab.

  Jules panicked and went for his revolver. Elise grabbed his arm, holding him, stopping him.

  It was her crab. The one that saved her. It was hiding under the big model, it had been there first, and the dead sea monkey was still on its back.

  “He’s nice,” she said through a whisper.

  Jules’s eyes were like saucers.

  “It is a huge crab carrying a dead monkey.”

  “Yes.”

  The crab moved slightly, turning, and its antennae moved towards them. They were like stalks, and at the end of the stalks were eyes.

  The crab looked at them. First at Jules, then at Elise.

  The sound of the wooden ship being destroyed lessened. The squid was finishing its work.

  “Hi,” said Elise.

  The crab didn’t respond, as one would expect, as it didn’t have vocal chords and whatnot, but it continued staring at Elise with those tiny eyes.

  The thing reached out a massive razor sharp claw. Elise had seen that claw destroy one of the Men of Many Eyes. It slowly touched her face, gently brushed her hair.

  Elise patted its shell.

  “Mon Dieu,” said Jules.

  The noise of the squid had stopped. Elise and Jules peeked out and saw that the massive creature was moving quickly through the hall, the viridian tentacles searching, reaching into every nook and cranny, as if each arm had its own intelligence. It made a deafening slap sound as it went.

  “Idiot crab girl, we need to get to the diving bell. There.” He indicated a wooden and brass diving bell the size of a small car that was on display. It was on the other side of the hall, with a raging green land squid between them.

  Elise pushed up against the crab, squeezing further under the display and against the wall. No way.

  Jules shrugged.

  “Bon chance.”

  He was gone before she could say a word. Jules shot out from under the display and hit the floor at a sprint.

  It was at least fifty meters to the diving bell.

  Jules picked up a small litter bin as he ran and tossed it hard to his left. The bin hit the floor with a loud crash. The noise attracted the squid and the colossal thing rushed towards it, arms thundering across the wooden floor. Jules dashed past it and kept going, not looking back.

  Elise watched in terror as he climbed into the diving bell, slammed its little observation hatch, and disappeared.

  The crab was still as stone; even its strange eye stalks froze as it watched the squid.

  Breath deep and stay quiet.

  Don’t move.

  There was no clever way out, nothing to do. She didn’t even pull out her blade. The machete would be of no use against something so huge, so monstrous.

  Elise touched the crab shell and shut her eyes.

  The squid would eat the crab and she didn’t want that.

  Disappear. Just breath and pretend it all away. She thought about her Dad and other good things, the way she would when the girls at the Garden had been cruel. Elise was quiet and still as she was the first night alone after her Dad’s death.

  Just be calm.

  The wooden floor beneath her was cold, and now it shook with the movement of the giant squid as the beast came closer. The suction cups stuck to the floor as it went and they made a loud popping sound. Pock pock pock.

  A single tentacle as thick as her leg hovered a meter away from Elise. Did it sense she was there?

  It came closer and the crab scuttled out, coming between the disgusting green arm and Elise.

  She could see the suction cups that lined the tentacle. Each of them was circled with tiny teeth and the fear hit Elise then. This would be a horrible death. Her blood became ice and she couldn’t breath.

  The air exploded with a sound like a heavy metal guitar chord. A wave of air slammed into them, so hard that she felt it in her bones. Her ears popped as if she were on a plane.

  Again, that noise and that pressure. Again.

  The squid arm retreated, writhing and flopping. Elise looked out from under the display table.

  The giant squid was rolling on the floor in agony, tentacles flailing and smashing everything they struck.

  Again, the noise and the pressure.

  Jules Valiance was standing at the diving bell. He was wearing a massive backpack and aiming a gun the size of a tree limb at the kraken. The bizarre weapon was of shiny metal and shaped vaguely like a torpedo. He fired again and there was the noise and the slamming thud of pressure.

  The giant squid exploded.

  A ghastly shower of cephalopod pulp and blue blood rained over the museum hall, painting everything in gore. Even Elise, under the table, was sprayed with the stuff. Huge chunks of it plopped down like nasty squid hail for a few moments.

  Quiet.

  Elise ran to Jules. He shed the backpack and gun.

  “What was that?”

  “I will call it The Landopus. No. The Terra Squid. Yes. An unknown species. This new, weird nature reveals another of her infernal secrets.”

  “No. That gun.”

  “Ah. Do you know how a sperm whale hunts the formidable Architeuthis Dux, or giant squid?”

  She giggled.

  “You said sperm.”

  “Sound waves. Not even leviathan wants to dance with tentacles of death, so the sperm whale emits a stunning bolt of sound, created in its massive cranial cavity. This atomic echo location incapacitates the colossal squid, making it easy prey.”

  He patted the gun.

  “This, I developed for much the same reason. Stun the colossal squid, tag it, track it for research and amusement. Today, I adjusted the dial to eleven. The results speak for themselves.”

  He indicated the hall of squid gore.

  “Calamari. Bon appetit.”

  “I thought you left me.”

  “I did. Then I remembered the sonic gun and was afflicted with guilt. You are an idiot, but an interesting one.”

  The crab sidled to them, antennae waving. It had a chunk of squid in its pincers and was eating.

  “You have a friend who is a crab the size of a cafe table and there is a dead sea monkey on its back. Do you not find this peculiar?”

  “Absolutely. I think he’s been following me.”

  Jules kneeled down in front of the crab.

  “What are your secrets, monsieur crab? Why do you follow this idiot? Who is the monkey?”

  The crab continued to munch on pulpy squid.

  Jules began a strange movement, swaying back and forth while slowly waving his hands. He looked like he was doing a squatting hula dance.

  The crab’s eye stalks tracked him. Then, the crab began to mimic the dance.

  Jules knees made a loud cracking, popping sound.

  “Merde.”

  He toppled over backwards. The crab stopped dancing.

  Elise leaned over Jules. He held his knees and sat up.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Betrayed by age. The dance of the Polynesian whisper crab is for the young.”

  He stood carefully.

  “But now we know that it does not see us as food. It sees us as kindred spirits. Why? Who can say? This is the mystery.”

  He motioned for Elise to follow him into the diving bell.

  There was barely room for the three of them and they made quite a spectacle.

  Jules punched a button on the bronze interior of the bell.

  “If the emergency power systems have survived we descend now far below the Maritime Museum. We will be safe there, I think.”

  The diving bell began a smooth descent down into the floor. The mechanism was as quiet as an elevator. Blackness enveloped them except for little lights at the control buttons.

  “Good. The roof is a field of solar cells. Obviously not terribly damaged by the storms and the sand. There will be light below.”

  And then there was a soft amber glow that showed their destination.

  Eli
se stepped out into a dream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE HALL

  “WHAT IS THIS place?”

  “A joke. A graveyard of clowns. Welcome, little idiot, to the Hall of Les Scaphandriers.”

  Jules flipped a switch on the wall and incandescent light bulbs hummed to life.

  Here was an expanse of impossibilities, a room as vast as the museum above, and in so many ways it was exactly as Elise’s Dad had described in his bedtime stories to her, just as thrilling and strange and surprising.

  If the League of Astonishing Aquanauts was real, this would have been the perfect place from which to launch adventures into the ocean’s most improbable mysteries, an underground academy dedicated to weird science and exploration. Elise stared with wide eyes, not breathing, and had a sickening moment when she doubted her own sanity or consciousness.

  This isn’t real. I’m lying in a pit somewhere, alive but dying, hallucinating. Or I’m dead and this is what happens and I’m not cool with that. Or this is a dream.

  There were tubes of glass as tall as sailing masts. Great cables of copper and rubber stretched the length of the golden vaulted ceiling, attached to gadgets as small as her hand and as big as a house. The hall stretched on for dozens of meters and there were displays of marine life, globes, maps, couches, desks, and flags of every nation.

  Elise turned and was face to face with an old fashioned diving suit, the three window copper helmet of intricate and artful design, lead boots, soft rubber skin that spoke of mysterious missions to the depths of the South Seas.

  Here was an aquarium without water and it was as big as a car. Inside of it was a diorama of the sea, with plastic sea creatures and divers and submarines in a riot of color and exploration. What possible purpose could this have served?

  Then there was a globe where the land receded and the ocean basin was the surface, the skin of the globe created in relief so that the great canyons and mountains of the Earth’s ocean were raised up and rough to the touch.

  She tried on a set of mesh metal globes that were too big for her hands and were labeled “For Shark Feeding Only.”

  She skimmed the titles on the bindings of the library of books. “My Oceanic Life.” “The Living Deep.” “On Cephalopod Intelligence.” “The Higgins Study on Cetacean Ecotypes.” “Doc Savage and The Bubbles of Fear.” “The Snorkeling Manifesto.” “A Confounding History of Weird Sciences.”

  She studied the devices of exploration that ran the length of one wall. There were grappling devices with suction cups instead of hooks. There were nets, cradles, and bins of all colors and shapes. Snorkeling and scuba and diving gear galore. Brass widgets, iron weights, wooden buoys, glass bells.

  There had always been an amazing vessel in her Dad’s stories of Les Scaphandriers, the proud and bizarre ship of the Aquanauts that seemed to have a life of its own and could journey into the darkest depths or even fly above the clouds like an airplane. When death or worse was knocking on the door of Jules Valiance and his mighty team, this miraculous submersible would always find a way to bring them home and usually it was an unlikely way indeed.

  Their ship was named The Aquaboggin and there, at the far end of the hall Elise discovered a sleek vessel, a submarine resting in a tall metal cradle. She was a beautiful thing, ten meters long and maybe more, sleek with golden metal and clear glass, dressed in dark blue and bright green paint. Elise could look down below the cradle that held the sub. The floor disappeared beneath the web of armatures and lashings. The submarine was suspended over a hole in the floor and the darkness there seemed to go on forever.

  This ship was just as her Dad had described, and there, on the bow, was inscribed her name.

  Elise sat on the cold floor and stared up at the ship for a long time.

  So many strange and amazing things to see.

  Elise had never seen an old fashioned phonograph before, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what it was and how it worked. She rifled through a stack of old vinyl albums with wonderful, evocative covers. A platter of black went onto the phonograph and in a tick she was dancing to a lovely steel drum calypso sound that filled the hall.

  Jules was lying on a couch. Areas around the hall were set up as little lounges with furniture and conveniences. He was smoking, his eyes closed.

  “Why?” asked Elise.

  “Why what?”

  “Oh, maybe just a few things. Like, maybe, why were you on top of the Eiffel Tower when you could be here?”

  He was quiet and didn’t even open his eyes.

  “Why do you smoke? It’s wicked bad for you.”

  “What’s up with the guns? You hated guns in the stories Dad told me.”

  Nothing. Elise kept dancing as she spoke.

  “This was a secret, right? I mean, I never heard of Les Scaphandriers, except in stories from Dad. So, why was this place so secret? What did you guys really do? Where are the rest of them? What’s next?”

  Jules cleared his throat.

  “I went there to get away from here. I smoke because it makes me feel good and these are not tobacco cigarettes they are the medicinal seaweed reefers of Les Scaphandriers.” He took a deep drag of the weed and exhaled.

  “I found the guns on a dead soldier and they did today what they were made to do. This place was a secret, yes, and it was a secret because that was our tradition. We preferred it that way.”

  He looked straight at her with cold eyes.

  “We did many things, and the last of them was terrible. Les Scaphandriers and everything we stood for died because of this last thing and this last thing killed the world too.”

  He shoved a finger into her chest.

  “Shut up and let me sleep because, next? There is nothing next.”

  He closed his eyes and turned away.

  The record skipped. Elise stopped dancing. She moved the needle away from the record and sat down on a soft velvet couch as far away from Jules as she could. She didn’t think he wanted to talk anymore, and she didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say, not for a while at least.

  The last thing she saw before she fell fast asleep was the crab settling in on the floor next to her.

  *

  There were showers and toilets but no water. There was the amber glow of the solar lights, but there was no warmth. When Elise woke up she found the shower room and cleaned up as best she could with one of her bottles of water, using as little as possible.

  She found metal lockers in the shower area and on each of these were names in copper plate. She chose one labeled “Splatter” because she thought it was a funny name and unloaded weight from her backpack.

  She smelled something cooking. Her stomach practically jumped out and started searching around on its own.

  Elise found Jules in a small kitchen frying meat in a skillet. There was blue flame from a propane tank. The sizzling meat looked suspiciously like dog food, but smelled delicious.

  “Can I have some?” asked Elise.

  “It is tinned meat. Canard. Duck. We will share.”

  There was an open bottle of white wine at his elbow. He took a swig then offered the bottle to Elise. She waved it off.

  Breakfast was at an ornately carved dining table set with unusual nautical ornaments, flowers ten years gone, and a few candles. Elise sat at one end of the long table and Jules sat at the other.

  He had created quite a feast out of a Scaphandrier survival kit. There was the fried confit de canard sautéed in olive oil, canned apples drenched in syrup, a dark, mysterious broth that tasted of onion, and another bottle of wine. Jules had drained the first bottle while cooking and was now well into the second. His nose and cheeks were bright red.

  Elise devoured the food. It wasn’t bad, and it was the first warm meal she’d had since waking up to this new world.

  The crab was still nibbling the massive chunk of squid pulp it had scavenged in the museum. It stayed close to Elise and had followed her as she explored the Hall that morning
.

  Jules wasn’t speaking. Elise didn’t like the awkward silence.

  “This is great,” she said.

  Nothing.

  “I slept like a rock. How bout you?”

  Nothing.

  “Is it ok if I stay here for a while? It seems safe here.”

  “You need to go. You and the crab with the dead sea monkey on its back. You both will leave this place today.”

  “Why?”

  “This word. Why. It is your favorite, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is a dangerous word. A curse. If it had an opposite the world would be a better place. An antonym of why. What is the antonym of why? Perhaps content? Perhaps zen? Perhaps you should stop using that damned word.”

  Elise pushed back from the table and went as far away from him as she could go.

  She was reading one of the thousands of books from the library, an illustrated little book that smelled of age and spoke in French of prehistoric creatures, when she heard a loud metal sound from the other end of the hall.

  She noticed that the crab was no longer at her side. Curious, Elise walked to the sound and found Jules and the crab standing by a carved wooden box the shape and size of a coffin. Wait. It was a coffin.

  The sea monkey was lying in the little coffin on a pretty yellow quilt, its hands at rest on its pale white chest.

  The crab’s eye stalks hovered over the coffin and Jules stood with his head bowed.

  Elise joined them and they stood silently for a few moments. Then, Jules gently placed a wooden door atop the coffin and latched it into place with bronze latches.

  He motioned for Elise to grab the end of the coffin and they lifted. It was light enough for the two of them to carry, and Jules led them through the hall. The crab followed.

  There was a room of white stone with a curved archway entrance that was set off to the southern end of the hall. Inside, there was a room lit by the soft glow of the solar lights that was rounded and bare, except for a trio of wooden benches set like church pews. They faced an alter of dead flowers.

  The walls were bronze busts of men and women long dead. There were plaques with names, and there were remembrances of all kinds. It was a mausoleum for Les Scaphandriers, and that’s where the monkey was placed in his little coffin, in a metal and marble slot in the wall.