Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History Of A Dark Genius Part 25

When the group returned to Rurapente the following day, Caliph Robur summoned them to the center of the compound. The sun crackled through the air, making them all restless and uncomfortable. The independent warlord had brooded throughout the tedious journey across the plains and back down to his secret industrial city.

During their absence, the miners and smelters had continued to produce raw materials and metals. Slaves and indentured workers awaited the orders of their master. Everything was prepared . . . but the engineers still didn't know why they had been brought here.

Robur stood on a platform, ready to give instructions to his engineers. "You have seen a demonstration of my ambitions. The Sultan rules the Ottoman Empire, and the caliphs are his military advisors. Others whisper conservatism and cowardice in his ear, but only I have the vision, and so I must act on my own, to prove I am right. I intend to provide the Sultan with everything he needs -- including weapons and my own wisdom as his primary advisor."

He drew a deep breath. "You men were brought here for one purpose. In Egypt, Pasha Mohammad Said has given his permission for the construction of a ma.s.sive ca.n.a.l across the Suez Isthmus. When completed, this waterway will bring a flood of European trade through the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. If unchecked, this Suez Ca.n.a.l will mean the destruction not only of the Ottoman Empire, but of Egypt as well.

"I, however, intend for my Turkish people to use this to our advantage," Robur said, his voice rising. "Just as we control the bottleneck of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, we must also maintain an iron grip on the Suez. For that, I require an unprecedented weapon weapon. A vessel that can raid and hold for ransom any ship that pa.s.ses through this ca.n.a.l."

The emerald in his turban gleamed in the sunlight like an evil green eye. He looked at the Europeans, then squarely met Nemo's eyes. "You men will invent, construct, and test a powerful warship -- but not just any warship. I must have one that can travel unseen under the water, like an armored fish, so that I can strike at all who defy our tolls."

"Ach! An underwater boat?" Liedenbrock said. "This is impossible."

"Your word impossible impossible does not translate into my language," Robur said. does not translate into my language," Robur said.

Cyrus Harding maintained his silence, but his brow furrowed as if his mind were already imagining solutions to the problem the Caliph had posed.

Nemo remembered the drawings Captain Grant had shown him of the prototype sub-marine boat that Robert Fulton had designed and built for Napoleon Bonaparte. That idea had always intrigued him. "We can do it," he said in a low voice, already calculating how he could turn this task against the caliph.

Robur made an instant decision. "You, Engineer -- I place you in charge of the project." Nemo couldn't tell if the caliph had planned this a.s.signment all along, or simply rewarded the young man for his quiet confidence.

"You shall have all the resources you need. Any calculations you desire, any raw material, any a.s.sistant. We expect you to work and to cooperate. Once my underwater boat is functional, you will all be given the greatest riches you desire. Perhaps you will even be allowed to go home."

The captives grumbled, still uncomfortable to be a.s.sisting a man who -- though ostensibly an ally to their European countries -- had already proven his complete disregard for the rights and freedom of so many people. The caliph could well become a tyrant . . . especially given such a weapon.

But this was not the moment to challenge him. Nemo would bide his time.

"The Suez Ca.n.a.l will take many years to complete," Robur continued. "You must succeed in your task before that time." He turned to descend the raised platform, but stopped and spoke again as if in an afterthought, stroking his beard. "If you fail me, or if I sense your work is progressing too slowly, I will execute you -- all of you all of you -- and find myself another group of engineers." -- and find myself another group of engineers."

Then, leaving them stunned, he mounted his stallion and rode off down the streets of Rurapente to his ornate pavilion.

Part VIII

Master of the world

i .

Amiens, France, 1857.

By the age of 29, Jules Verne had resigned himself, and so he finally married. Someone other than Caroline Aronnax.

While spending two weeks in Amiens for a friend's wedding, he met a st.u.r.dy woman named Honorine Morel, a widow whose husband had died of consumption a year earlier. She was pretty enough in a plain sort of way, though enc.u.mbered with two young daughters, Valentine and Suzanne.

Drowning in the celebratory atmosphere of the friend's wedding, swept along with the joy and love and well-wishes, Verne convinced himself that he could make a life with the widow Morel. While she wasn't Caroline, he had decided to be pragmatic. Thanks to the inheritance from her first husband, Honorine had a solid dowry, and Verne was weary of being a bachelor. Having few other prospects, he decided to give as much of his heart to her as he could spare. So long as she allowed him to continue writing his stories, even if in secret. . . .

Years earlier, Verne had joined a bachelors' club, les Onze Sans Femmes les Onze Sans Femmes, sanguine young men who had declared their total independence from female company. Together, they sh.o.r.ed up each others' beliefs, convinced each other of their continued bliss without the enc.u.mbrances of a spouse and children. But recently many of his "bachelor society" friends had finished university, settled down in marriage despite their earlier smug protestations of disinterest in feminine company, and started their own lives. Some seemed quite happy with their new situation -- and Verne felt restless again.

Gloomy and impatient, he convinced himself that Caroline would never accept the obvious. Although Captain Hatteras could have been legally declared lost at sea years before, she vowed not to make any such decision until Nemo returned from the Crimean War. But their friend's last letter had been dated a year before the peace treaty, and they had heard nothing from him since. . . .

Verne had a decent job at the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange. Once married, he would settle into a normal existence, without adventures and without anxiety. Over the years, much to Pierre Verne's satisfaction, his redheaded son had grown more serious toward life. Though he continued to write plays that were never produced and scientific articles that never got published, Jules Verne no longer talked about becoming a famous writer like Dumas or Hugo. He kept those dreams to himself, but they did not vanish entirely.

For his wedding, Verne managed little more than a meager ceremony and a spa.r.s.e dinner for the dozen attendees, including his parents. Honorine's lacy wedding gown emphasized her broad shoulders, wide hips, and dark brown hair that curled against her skull. Stoic and placid, she had pale eyes and a wide mouth that rarely showed any expression: not a scowl or pout or smile of joy. Still, she had a steady keel, and Verne welcomed the stability she would bring to his life. Though pa.s.sionless, at least Honorine was quiet. And he could still work on his stories to his heart's content.

Verne lived in a small flat a few minutes' walk from the Bourse. He'd found the place comfortable enough as a bachelor, but it was unsuitable for a man, a wife, and two young girls. Valentine and Suzanne were shipped off to spend several months with the parents of Honorine's first husband, while Verne and his new bride settled in.

Though she was a devoted wife who did everything society required of her, Honorine spent little time in conversation with her husband. She showed no interest in Verne's stories and did not share his creative needs. She felt no particular obligation to understand: After all, what wife did did know about her husband's interests and activities? know about her husband's interests and activities?

Instead, Honorine supported him in her gentle, st.u.r.dy way. Verne rose at five o'clock every morning and retreated to a small room where he closed the door and spent hours reading newspapers and magazines, scribbling notes, and writing drafts of ma.n.u.scripts.

Honorine brought him freshly brewed coffee or tea and a small breakfast. Most importantly, she left him in peace. When her two daughters stayed with them, making the place oppressive and crowded, Honorine did her best to keep them silent until ten o'clock came around and Verne emerged from his writing study to dress. He would then leave for an early lunch and spend the remainder of the day in the stock exchange.

Although Verne was not happy happy, he could not ask for more. His wife did not intrude on the time he spent in his writing room. He read scientific journals voraciously, clipping articles for his folders -- though he spent far more time in research than in actually putting words on paper.

Each day he scanned the news for events of the world, new discoveries and reports of far-flung lands -- places he and Nemo had dreamed about in their youth. Most of all, he tried to be satisfied with the life he had accepted and never to think of Caroline Aronnax again. . . .

One morning, a bizarre article in a Paris weekly caught Verne's attention. German explorers in a caravan marching south into the Sudan from Tripoli had discovered a strange wrecked vessel in the sand dunes of the Sahara. The iron-walled capsule, shaped like a gigantic artillery sh.e.l.l, had been embedded in a crater in the rolling ocean of desert. The projectile seemed to have fallen out of the sky and crashed.

While the uneasy nomads hung back on their camels, the German explorers had pried open the wreckage. Inside, they found the remains of several men squashed to jelly, bones pulverized by an explosive acceleration of inconceivable magnitude. Desiccated supplies, dead chickens and goats lay in a mashed clutter. But the explorers could find no explanation of how these poor wretches had gotten here, what they had been up to, or why they had undertaken such a terrible risk.

Puzzled, Verne used his heavy scissors to snip out the article. Such mysteries tantalized him. Even without additional information, Verne could perhaps invent a tale to explain such a fantastic occurrence, but he could think of no circ.u.mstance outrageous enough to fit the facts.

He added the clipping to his growing pile of notes and ideas, wondering when he would ever have the freedom or enthusiasm to pursue all the stories that floated in his head. Perhaps he needed a "fiction factory" of his own, like Dumas . . . but for that, he would have to begin making money at it, and that seemed a long way off.

Honorine knocked on the door and quietly reminded him of the time. With a heavy sigh, Verne finished his cold tea and stood to get dressed. Once again, he had written nothing all morning, had made no progress toward creating a famous work of literature.

Instead, he spent the rest of his day at the dreary stock exchange, making and losing other people's money.

ii

Over time, Nemo came to love Auda, his a.s.signed wife in Rurapente.

She was a beautiful Turkish maiden with silky black hair and creamy tan skin, her sepia eyes large and catlike, her mouth full, her body lean and supple. Auda would have become part of the Sultan's harem in Ankara, if Caliph Robur had not given her to Engineer Nemo as a reward. . . .

For more than two years now, Nemo had managed the caliph's ambitious project to create an armored sub-marine boat. He had been given comfortable accommodations, good food, and various amenities, all of which were intended to make him forget his situation -- and he had demanded the same for every one of the captive men.

But even his beautiful wife and luxurious dwelling could not disguise the fact that he remained the Caliph's prisoner, forced to work against his will on a terrible weapon of war. Every time he saw the dusky, exotic features of Auda, he could think only of Caroline, their stolen moments of love aboard the ship home from Africa, and in her own bedchambers on his last night before departing Paris by train to the Crimean front.

Every day, he saw Auda's caring in her deep-brown eyes, and he felt sorry for her situation as well as his. His own guilt and longing for Caroline had made him avoid this unwanted young woman for many weeks, but Auda was patient, and loving. The only bright flower in this miserable place.

Caliph Robur would never let them leave Rurapente.

With his European comrades, Nemo had developed a plan for the sub-marine boat. In a written list to Robur, he proposed a long series of tests to determine the best method for building an underwater war vessel. Together, the men set to work, clinging to their only hope of freedom.

The boat-builder Cyrus Harding a.s.sisted with the overall concepts of a water-tight submerged boat based on what Nemo remembered of Robert Fulton's design. The metallurgist Liedenbrock experimented with alloys to create a strong but light material for plating the hull of the vessel. Conseil strove to develop ways to contain atmospheres inside the craft, compressing air and mixing blends of oxygen and nitrogen to produce the best breathing gas for underwater explorers.

Other engineers expanded upon Nemo's childhood idea of enclosing one's head in a breathing sphere so as to allow a man to walk beneath the sea. Gla.s.smakers, hydraulic engineers, and mechanics all pitched in, resigned to their fates as the years pa.s.sed.

The facilities and resources of Rurapente gave them everything they requested, any necessary supplies or materials. Throughout the work, Caliph Robur scrutinized their progress, riding about on his dark stallion and keeping a watch on the smoke belching from the smelters and gla.s.s blowers' huts. He demanded regular reports, and Nemo had long ago given up any pretense of concocting exaggerations. He let the intense man see for himself how much progress his captive experts were making.

After six months of satisfactory work, Robur had brought in a group of women and a.s.signed them as wives to the European engineers. He seemed intent on making his pet scientists settle down and forget their former lives. Under the caliph's watchful eye, Nemo knew they might remain trapped here in this hidden city for years. Though he pretended to cooperate, at night Nemo seethed over his stolen life, and his lost Caroline. . . .

The lovely Auda was one of twenty daughters sired by another caliph, Barbicane, a conservative rival of Robur's. The jewel of the group of a.s.signed wives, Auda was quiet and intelligent, a prisoner of fate as much as Nemo was. Though he still thought of Caroline, despairing that he had broken his promise to return to her, he also knew that Auda would be punished and ridiculed if he refused her. And she did not deserve that.

He treated his wife well, and she proved to be a warm companion for him. When Nemo came in after a day's hard work, Auda would rub his shoulders, bathe his feet, and wipe cool perfumed cloths over his forehead and neck. She spoke a little English, much to Nemo's surprise, and over the following year and a half she taught him to be fluent in Turkish, while he reciprocated by teaching her French.

Late at night, while he stared at his blueprints and calculations by lamplight, Auda often sat by his side and studied the drawings herself. Not until she began to make insightful and relevant suggestions did he realize that she understood the intricacies of his diagrams. Though he had accepted her as his wife, he'd never imagined Auda might be as educated or clever as his beloved Caroline.

"I studied in Ankara, my husband," Auda answered. "I learned mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, and even some surgery. The eunuch in my father's house was fond of me and shared his books. But my father, Caliph Barbicane, abhors science -- especially if it is taught to women. When he discovered what the eunuch had done, he executed the man and banished me here to Rurapente. He considered it a great punishment to place me in the clutches of Caliph Robur."

When she smiled at Nemo, her sepia eyes glittered like mysteries in the yellow lamplight. "But it is no punishment after all. I find each day with you to be a reward, my husband. You treat me as a friend and teach me even more. How could I have hoped for so much?"

After that evening, Nemo made a point of discussing the sub-marine development with her, though she warned him not to mention their conversations to the other engineers -- and most particularly not to Robur.

Auda explained how, in the politics of the Ottoman Empire, the great Sultan was pulled in various directions by his military advisors, the caliphs, who often held secret and enormous power. Some caliphs, like Robur, wanted Turkey to become a modern nation, comparable to the European states, while others -- conservatives such as her father -- wanted to return to rigid Islamic principles and blindfold their people to changing times.

Now Nemo understood why Robur so often disappeared from the isolated industrial compound to ride inland for days. He was running back to Ankara to sit in the Sultan's palace and advocate his new weapons and technology. When Robur returned from his sojourns in a foul mood, he roared at Nemo for not making sufficient progress. "Your men must must complete the sub-marine boat in time to show the Sultan its wondrous power. My own fate depends upon it -- and yours as well." complete the sub-marine boat in time to show the Sultan its wondrous power. My own fate depends upon it -- and yours as well."

Nemo and his men developed a metal-walled chamber to be submerged in the deep cove of Rurapente. It was not meant to move, simply to test the hull metals and the water-tightness of the seals. The first unmanned test chamber broke apart in the deepest water, its window panes shattered.

The caliph wanted to behead the gla.s.smaker whose work had failed, but Nemo stood up for the man, placing himself in mortal danger. Robur grudgingly backed down in his rage, and all the captives looked relieved.

After the second experimental tank retained its integrity, Caliph Robur insisted that a "volunteer" slave be placed inside for the third test, as a demonstration of human endurance. The chamber sank to the greatest depths of the channel and remained intact. Unfortunately, it took Nemo and his engineers several hours to raise the vessel again . . . by which time the poor man inside had suffocated. Conseil, who had designed the air-storage systems, shuddered with guilt over the man's death.

Though Nemo and his team learned a great deal from each experiment, Robur considered the failures to be dire setbacks. The stern caliph punished the men by reducing their rations, and Nemo had to argue furiously with the stubborn warlord to have their full privileges reinstated. For days afterward he fumed, once again trying to determine how they could all escape from Rurapente -- and once again he came up with no answers. Auda comforted him, and told him to be patient. . . .

Two years after they were married -- five years after he had left France for the Crimea -- beautiful Auda bore him an infant boy who became the bright light in Nemo's life. After the birth, her face drawn with the effort and her silky hair streaked with sweat, Nemo found his wife more beautiful than ever. In that moment he realized that he had indeed come to love Auda.

Looking back over everything he had lost, Nemo took comfort in this one thing: at least he had gained her her. As he remembered his childhood and the happy days in Nantes, he held the baby son in his arms and smiled.

"We will name him Jules," he said.

iii

Long after the Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War, soldiers continued to trickle home from the Black Sea battlefields. They were a sorry sight, wounded in mind and body, completely without the songs or hurrahs they had carried in their hearts when they'd gone off to war.

But Andre Nemo was not among them. Month after month, he did not come home, nor did he send any word. He had vanished somewhere in the war.

Preoccupied with his new family, his struggles as a writer, and his daily work in the stock market, Jules Verne spared only an occasional thought for his old friend. He and Honorine, with her two daughters, traveled to Nantes for a spring holiday, where Verne ate well of his mother's cooking. In Paris, their personal finances had been tight, as always.

During the visit home, he held the usual brief conversations with his father while reading the newspapers and reviewing the events of the day. The "Iron Tsar" Nicholas I had died the year before, leaving the country in the hands of his more open-minded son Alexander. Autocratic Russia had grudgingly resigned her protectorate over the Orthodox Church in Turkey, and the great Sultan of the Ottoman Empire promised privileges for his Christian subjects. The Black Sea became a neutral body of water, and the world began to settle down.

France's Parliament engaged in heated discussions about the outrageous inept.i.tude of the military bureaucracy during the conflict. Others challenged Emperor Napoleon III's clumsy foreign policy that had unnecessarily drawn France into the war in the first place. In Britain, the outspoken reformer Florence Nightingale used official records and d.a.m.ning statistics to show that of the 100,000 fatalities in the Crimea, fully a quarter of them had died of disease, exposure, and lack of supplies rather than from battlefield injuries. Inexcusable. Inexcusable.

Tennyson's scathing but heroic poem immortalized the Light Brigade's senseless and futile charge against murderous odds. The victims -- "Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do or die" -- became symbols for the confusion and tragedy of the Crimean War. . . .

Thus, by virtue of his brief vacation in Nantes, Verne was at his old house when the terrible message came from the French war department.

When enlisting years earlier, Nemo had written down the names of Jules Verne and Caroline Hatteras as 'next of kin.' The war department letter, identical to so many others, gave few details aside from the stark announcement that Andre Nemo had been killed at the battle of Balaclava. According to military records, he had been buried with other brave soldiers outside Sevastopol. He had left no personal effects.

Standing in the doorway, Verne held the official communique with trembling hands. While arranging flowers in a vase in the back room, Honorine watched him blocking the sunlight, observed her husband's reaction as he opened the note and read the words. She came forward, grasping the flowers in her hand, as she instinctively tried to comfort him. Instead, Verne walked in a daze away from his father's old house to wander the streets of Ile Feydeau.

Not surprisingly, he found himself on Caroline's doorstep. Despite her new offices in Paris, she still lived much of the year in Nantes. Now he heard music inside, her delicate fingers on the keys of the pianoforte, no doubt playing one of her own secret compositions, a mournful and ethereal melody that sounded like a dirge. When she answered his insistent ringing of the bell, Verne saw from her drawn face, reddened eyes, and tear-streaked cheeks, that she too had received a letter.

"He went to the Crimea because of me," Caroline said. "He wanted to get away for a year. We should not have waited! I cared nothing for any public scandal." She looked at him with her glittering blue eyes. "Ah, Jules, I pushed Andre from Paris, and he went off to the fighting so that he could forget about me until I was free."

Verne didn't know what to say -- but then, he had always been tongue-tied around her. Just seeing the beautiful woman who had consumed his youthful, imaginative pa.s.sions reminded Verne of all the things he had not achieved in his life. "No one could ever forget you, Caroline," he said.

Without a further word, she leaned forward to let Verne awkwardly gather her in his arms. He embraced her, thinking of all the times he had longed to do just this. But now grief made her touch cold and desperate.

"I will survive somehow, Jules," she said. "I cannot believe Andre is gone, when his memory lives so strongly in my heart. Could it be a mistake? We thought him dead before, and yet he returned. He promised me he would return."

"I . . ." Verne found himself at a complete loss for words, again. "I would not want to give you an unreasonable hope, Caroline. This letter leaves no doubt." He held up the paper note he had wrinkled in his grasp.

"We must remember Andre as the wonderful man he was, you and I. No one knew him better." She brushed her fingers across Verne's unruly reddish-brown hair, sending a shiver down his spine.

His heart pounded, and his blood grew hot from reawakened longing. But now that she might finally give up waiting for her lost captain, and waiting for Nemo . . . Verne himself was married. They stood together for a long moment, until Caroline pulled away.

"Yes, I'll certainly remember him. He was closer to me than my own brother," Verne said and understood that he had to go. His wife was waiting for him back at home.