Part 28 (1/2)

When Robur finally ceased his struggles, Nemo looked down to see that the warlord's helmet had filled with water, and his eyes and mouth were open. The fearsome caliph looked like nothing more than a dead fish. With a heart of stone, Nemo had no regrets for what they had been forced to do. He grasped Robur's body by the thick sleeve and dragged him to the Nautilus Nautilus airlock. airlock.

Liedenbrock did the same with the guard. The crew would have plenty of time now to repair the underwater suits. When Nemo emerged from the airlock into the sub-marine, dripping and exhausted, he saw that Cyrus Harding had done his part. They had succeeded in capturing the Nautilus Nautilus.

Nemo lifted the bra.s.s helmet from his shoulders as the ecstatic crewmen set up a loud cheer. He was their captain, and these men would follow him around the Earth, if he asked it. They had lived and worked and suffered together for years. They had built an unparalleled sub-marine vessel, they had slain a brutal warlord who wanted to be master of the world -- and now they were free again.

The Nautilus Nautilus remained submerged while the crew washed the blood off the deck and disposed of the bodies, feeding the caliph and his hated guards to the fishes. remained submerged while the crew washed the blood off the deck and disposed of the bodies, feeding the caliph and his hated guards to the fishes.

Nemo stood at the helm of his great sub-marine boat and studied his loyal and devoted men. They were now in command of their own destinies. According to Auda's note, it would not be safe to go back to the Ottoman Empire for some time. Instead, he would take the Nautilus Nautilus and head out of the Mediterranean. and head out of the Mediterranean.

”Captain . . .” Cyrus Harding said, looking at the other men as if they had elected him to speak for them. ”We've all been away for six or seven years. The things we've done, and the things we've seen since then -- well, sir, our homelands are just memories now. They ain't n.o.body's home home anymore.” anymore.”

Liedenbrock stomped his foot on the metal deckplate of the Nautilus Nautilus. ”Ach! If we were having anything to return to, why would we join the war in the first place? I want to stay aboard this s.h.i.+p that we built, with these men who are closer comrades than anyone I knew back in Europe.”

A Sardinian gla.s.smaker with long hair said, ”If it's all the same to you, Captain, I'd rather wait out the year and go back for my family in Rurapente. I want to take them away from there. When it's time.”

Hearing his men, Nemo nodded. He longed to go back to France and see Caroline again, and Jules Verne -- but he had traveled so far along life's path since he'd last spoken to them. He was married to Auda now, and he loved her. Thanks to the vile deception Caliph Robur had perpetrated, Nemo knew that Caroline had believed him dead for years . . . lost to her. By now, she would have gone on with her life, perhaps even married again. He could not bear to torment Caroline -- or himself -- with things that now could never be. Better to let her keep thinking him lost than to suffer more regrets. . . .

The Nautilus Nautilus headed out into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, setting a course eastward. Nemo would not forget what lay behind him. He vowed someday to return to his wife and son. headed out into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, setting a course eastward. Nemo would not forget what lay behind him. He vowed someday to return to his wife and son.

”For now,” Nemo said, ”perhaps we will simply enjoy our freedom.”

Part IX

20,000 leagues

i

Paris, 1862.

At the age of thirty-four and bored, Jules Verne considered his life a failure.

When a brown-wrapped package arrived with the afternoon post, Verne took it from the delivery man himself, trying not to let Honorine see -- knowing, dreading, what it was.

The sky outside was a robin's-egg blue, the air sharp and autumn cool, pleasant enough to make pedestrians smile as they walked the streets. The delivery man tipped his hat to the bearded writer and strode away, whistling. Verne envied the man's optimism.

With a growing sense of resignation, he shuffled over to the low writing desk and used a pocketknife to snap the twine on the packet. Honorine watched from the other side of the room as she gathered her hoops and threads to begin a new needlework pattern for a pillowcase. She smiled encouragement to him, but Verne turned his back on her. He already feared what the parcel contained.

Year after year, he had continued to strive at his writing career, and achieved just enough success to keep him doggedly trying. No one would sing his praises in the halls of literary fame because of the few minor plays he'd had produced. No one would remember his clever verse or his magazine articles. Still, he tried . . . and tried.

He had spent a full year on an ambitious new ma.n.u.script, burying himself in clippings and books and journals. He had devoted his research attentions to a ma.s.sive scientific study based on the uses of balloons in travel and exploration. He himself had never been up in a balloon or explored distant lands . . . but he had talked with Nemo and Caroline, and had read Dr. Fergusson's published account of the voyage across Africa. That should have been sufficient.

Now, if only someone would publish Verne's tome. It had begun to seem hopeless. . .

After five uneventful years, his marriage to Honorine had settled into a quiet numbness. He paid scant attention to his wife, spending but a few minutes with her at meals, during which he spoke little before das.h.i.+ng back to his writing study. This wasn't how he had fancied his life as an author. Perhaps Alexandre Dumas had been kind in trying to discourage him, or at least make him face the realities of the career.

His tedious job at the stock market provided enough money for them to live in reasonable comfort, though without extravagances. Verne had managed to represent every member of his extended family who had any money at all to invest. Sometimes his advice was good, sometimes it failed, but he did nothing so rash as to make his relatives consider his performance disastrous. Jules Verne made no waves, no ripples in life whatsoever.

He and Honorine became the parents of a baby son, Michel, more through a fortuitous accident rather than any ambitious effort on Verne's part. A colicky baby, Michel spent most of his time fussing and causing disturbances. Dreading the future, Verne a.s.sumed the baby would grow up to be a difficult youngster as well. In stories, life never seemed to happen this way.

In the household, with her daughters visiting their grandparents again, Honorine's task was to keep the infant as quiet as possible so her husband could concentrate on his writing. Later, after he had trudged off to the dreary stock exchange, Michel could wail to his lungs' content.

As his creative frustration built, Verne became a more impatient person, sharper tempered. The stamina he needed to continue his unflagging (and unrewarded) writing efforts began to wane. The noise and disruptions at home made concentration even more difficult. Even the plots of his own adventures gave him diminished enjoyment.

Still, Verne had been proud to complete his exhaustive balloon ma.n.u.script, convinced that he had found his path to success. Honorine could sense her husband's excitement about the project, and she smiled at him whenever he bothered to give her a glance.

Full of optimism, he had selected the best Parisian publisher and submitted the completed ma.n.u.script. Surely, the hungry minds in France would want to read everything there was to know about lighter-than-air travel. And the book came back -- rejected.

Undaunted, silently dubbing the editor a blind fool who could not recognize talent, Verne sent the balloon treatise to his second choice, an equally reputable and impressive publisher. Again the book was returned to him.

Angry, but still determined, he submitted the ma.n.u.script over and over . . . and waited for the return post. Each morning, like a sleepwalker, he went to the Bourse, uninterested in the endless routine of selling and buying shares. Days, sometimes weeks, pa.s.sed -- but always his ma.n.u.script came back with similar verdicts. ”Too long.” ”Too dull.” ”Too unfocused.”

Verne's coworkers knew of his ambitions and joked about him being a lightheaded dreamer. While they thought he wasted his time at writing, they themselves spent extra hours in the stock exchange, making (and losing) fortunes.

As the balloon book repeatedly failed to find a home, Verne's mood soured, and coworkers stopped teasing him. In fact, they stopped conversing much with him at all. . . .

Now, with his palms sweating, he unwrapped the parcel and closed his eyes. He drew a deep breath and removed the handwritten note on top of his fastidiously produced ma.n.u.script. Deemed unpublishable.

Again.

Verne had lost a substantial sum in the stock market that day, and the baby's loud crying exacerbated his headache. The letter from yet another ignorant publisher only reinforced his doubts and his foul mood. Rejected seventeen times. How could an 800-page ma.n.u.script about the history and engineering of ballooning possibly be boring boring? It went beyond all reason.

Giving in to frustration, Verne strode across the room with the heavy ma.n.u.script in hand, his only copy of the work that had taken him a year to complete. He threw open the iron door of the stove where a fire burned, warming the house against the autumn chill. With a wordless gesture of disgust and a dramatic flair, he tossed the thick ma.n.u.script into the fire and slammed the door with a nod of petulant satisfaction.

Honorine froze in place, and her dark brows furrowed with concern. ”Jules?” She looked from him to the torn brown postal wrapping, to the letter from the returned ma.n.u.script. Then she noticed his smug expression directed at the stove. ”Jules, don't you dare!”

Stern and uncompromising, she shouldered her husband aside and flung open the stove door. Without a moment's hesitation, she reached into the fire, burning her own fingertips, and yanked out the stack of ma.n.u.script pages. She dropped it onto the floor and stamped on the edges to extinguish the flames.

”You are even more a child than Michel,” she said. When he reached for the ma.n.u.script, confused and guilty but still full of rage, Honorine s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and turned away from him. ”No. I see that I must keep this safe until you come to your senses.”

Marching over to the desk, she opened a wooden file drawer and dropped the stack of papers inside. She locked the drawer and then placed the only key in a pocket of her dark skirts. ”You worked far too hard on that book, Jules. It took you away from me for a year. You have been obsessed by it. I will not let you throw it all away. I will not let you throw it all away.”

”But I have tried every publisher,” he said, cowed. ”It will never see print.”

”It will never see print if you give up and burn the ma.n.u.script, foolish man,” she said, wagging a finger at him. ”You have friends who are writers. I hear that Dumas has returned to Paris. Ask him him for advice . . . but don't you dare give up now.” for advice . . . but don't you dare give up now.”

Though Honorine had never shown an interest in his writing, she did have a concern for her husband and knew how the pa.s.sion drove him. He looked at the locked desk drawer and fumed.

Verne didn't speak to Honorine for the rest of that evening -- didn't thank her, did not apologize -- but the wheels began turning in his head, and he considered other options he might pursue. He went to a bra.s.serie and read his newspapers, keeping an eye out for old writer acquaintances. He found none. He did, however, spot an article about a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war sweeping across the Turkish peninsula -- rumors that had been denied by Ottoman officials. He considered clipping out the article for possible use in a fiction piece, but decided he had no interest in a struggle among the barbarous Turks.

The next day he went to see the great Dumas. The enormous writer had returned to Paris, pretending that his financial troubles had never occurred. Once again the big man indulged in the extravagant lifestyle that had caused him so much misery before. Verne just wanted to hear some of the famous author's advice before Dumas went bankrupt again.