“In Which Nathanial and Arnaud Hear of Annabelle’s Experience”
1.
“Mon dieu!” exclaimed Arnaud.
“What?” asked Nathanial anxiously.
Arnaud was standing at the far end of the apparatus, monitoring the dials and gauges on what they decided to call the analyser—the device designed to receive the light transmitted through the sample from the arc-lamp. “This…” He paused and ran his hand over his dark hair only to have it bounce right back. “I don’t understand.”
Nathanial sighed and joined the Frenchman. The needles on the gauges had moved and were, if he was correct, showing that the light received was delayed by several fractions of a second. If that were true, did that mean that the plate somehow concentrated the aether? Was that even possible?
“Try again,” Arnaud said. “Perhaps the equipment is damaged or needs to heat up.”
Nathanial was resetting the lamp when he heard the sound of the door.
“Nathanial!” came a voice from behind him, and he spun round to see Annabelle standing there, looking—if he were honest—a little frightful. She was breathing heavily and her hair looked a bit windswept, but it was the wide-eyed look of alarm on her face that caught his attention. In her arms was a collection of folders, the documents they contained all but spilling out.
“Annabelle? What’s wrong? Come in, come in.”
“Oh dear Lord, Nathanial. You’ll never guess what I’ve just seen. A ghost! A real, live ghost!”
“Where?”
“In the hospital.” She paused to take a few deep breaths. It was clear she’d been running. “Can you believe it?”
“If this had come from anyone else, I’m not sure I would. But if you say you’ve seen one…Arnaud’s been telling me about them.”
“Perhaps a glass of cognac will help steady your nerves,” ventured Arnaud, raising the bottle.
“Is that your answer to everything?” asked Nathanial and then sighed. “Perhaps on this occasion you might be right. A small medicinal brandy might help steady your nerves, Annabelle. Sit here and tell us all about it.” He gestured to a chair and she sank into it and accepted the glass from Arnaud. The two men took seats opposite her. “Now,” said Nathanial. “Start at the beginning and don’t miss anything out.”
Annabelle set down her folders on the table and took a gulp of the cognac. She winced a little as it burned her throat, and handed the glass back to Arnaud, before proceeding to tell them everything that had happened in the hospital with Corporal Heath.
“Remarkable,” whispered Nathanial when she’d finished. “So what did it look like, exactly?”
“That’s the strangest thing—I can barely remember now. I’m fairly sure that it was a man—and wearing some sort of uniform, I think.” She shook her head, clearly irritated at her own inability to remember. “Someone said that remembering them was a little like remembering a dream—I know exactly what they mean now.” Her face pursed up in annoyance. “Oh, Nathanial, you’ve no idea how frustrating this is!”
“Don’t worry about it, Annabelle. It sounds like these ghosts, or whatever they are, have the same effect on everyone. I wonder why it appeared then, whilst you were there. Arnaud and I haven’t seen one yet.” There was a trace of disappointment in his voice.
“Perhaps they only appear to people who believe in such things, and maybe the scientific mind isn’t as approachable as the normal one,” Annabelle suggested, with just a hint of archness in her voice.
“That is possible,” Arnaud agreed. “Religious people are often more gullible, are they not?”
“Are you calling me gullible, Doctor Fontaine?”
“No, no, not at all,” Arnaud said hastily. “Perhaps ‘open-minded’ would be better—that’s correct, yes?”
Annabelle took a breath, mollified. “Perhaps these will help.” She gestured at the pile of documents on the table.
Nathanial began to leaf through them. “Medical documents… Reports of the sightings… Where on Earth did you get hold of these, Annabelle?”
“Uncle Ernest gave them me. I don’t think he was intending to, but I talked him round. I think he’s actually quite relieved that I’m here. It means he can let me do the investigating without having to give the impression of taking it all too seriously. Is there anything interesting in them?”
“Hmm,” Nathanial said. “Not sure—we’d need to sit down and go through them, see if we can find some common factor between all these people.”
“I’ll do that whilst you two do whatever it is you scientists do, shall I?” She peered over Arnaud’s shoulder at the device they’d been fiddling with when she’d come in. “Fascinating,” she said unconvincingly. “I’m sure it’s very complicated work, so I’ll go to my quarters and have a look through these, and you can tell me all about your samples and rocks and things tomorrow.”
She got up to leave.
“You are quite sure that you’re all right?” enquired Nathanial, solicitously, handing back her notes. “You’ve had quite a shock you know. It’s not every day that someone sees a real, live—erm, dead—ghost.”
“I’ll be fine—but thank you for asking. And thank you for the brandy, Arnaud. I rather think it’s doing the trick.”
“Well if you’re sure,” Nathanial said. “But at least let me walk you back. It’s entirely possible that you might have another visitation, or whatever we’re supposed to call them.”
“Oh Nathanial,” smiled Annabelle. “You’re such a fusspot. You can’t be at my side twenty four hours a day, you know.”
There was a slightly awkward pause.
Nathanial gave a little cough. “Well maybe I am a fusspot—but I’d feel much better knowing you were safe. No arguments, young lady.”
Annabelle let her shoulders fall with a melodramatic sigh that made Arnaud chuckle. “Oh, very well—if it will let you sleep sounder, then of course you may escort me. Good night, Arnaud.”
“Goodnight, mademoiselle. Have the beaux reves—the sweet dreams.”
Annabelle looked back at him from the doorway. “Trust me, Arnaud—dreams are the last things I want to experience tonight.”
2.
“He seems a pleasant enough fellow,” said Annabelle as they headed for her quarters.
“Oh, he is. A little…unorthodox might be the world. And he does love his brandy. How is your uncle, by the way? Has he been deliberately keeping out of our way since we arrived? I hope I didn’t scare him off with all those questions.”
“I think he’s more preoccupied with these ghost sightings than he’s letting on. Poor Uncle Ernest… He’s not terribly happy here.” She looked up at the sky. “Earlier on it seemed beautiful and exotic. But to spend every day, all day, in it… I’m not sure I’d like it very much.”
“Yes,” Nathanial agreed as they passed under the purple-green foliage of one of the local trees, spiked leaves glittering in the streetlight. “A shame Mercury has no moon—moonlight would be nice.”
Annabelle glanced sideways at him. “Moonlight? Surely you’re not turning into some old romantic, are you?”
“Ha! Less of the ‘old’, please. And no—I was just thinking that it might introduce a little variation.”
“Uncle Ernest and Doctor Schell thought the conditions here might be responsible for the ghost sightings—well, partly.”
“How did Heath strike you, then—as someone prone to flights of fancy or melancholia? And how was he when you left him?”
“I can’t say he did, no. He seemed to be a perfectly decent, ordinary chap. Nurse Lopez gave him something to help him sleep, and I made sure he took it.” They rounded the corner to the three rows of whitewashed accommodation bungalows, and she indicated the documents in her arms. “Maybe these will give us a clue.”
They walked in silence the rest of the way until they reached her bungalow, whereupon Annabelle stood on tip-toe and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thank you Nathanial,” she said.
“What was that for?” he asked, slightly surprised.
“For being a gentleman.”
“Oh my,” he laughed, feeling his cheeks colouring. “I shall have to be a gentleman more often, shan’t I?”
“Good night, Nathanial—don’t work too hard with Arnaud.” She smiled and gave a matronly wag of her finger. “And don’t let him lead you astray with that brandy of his.”
“Yes ma’am,” said Nathanial, giving a little mock salute.
He waited until Annabelle was inside and the door closed, and then set off back to the lab, his cheek still burning.
3.
Annabelle’s head was still whirling as she made ready for bed. Only two days ago they had been in space, heading for what she thought was an insignificant little rock. If it hadn’t been for the discovery that Uncle Ernest had been here, she would have been quite happy to return to Earth, but she had enjoyed her adventures on Venus with Miles, Thymon and Nathanial so much that she’d seized on any opportunity to extend her journey. She missed home, but she knew that as soon as she set foot upon the Earth, she’d start missing her travels even more. Especially at the Chatham Dockyard, despite the Whites’ generous hospitality.
Fluffing up the pillows, she positioned herself upright in bed and started to leaf through the documents. It was dry old stuff—even the reports of the sightings—but she picked up a pencil and a wad of paper, and started making notes, condensing down the often rambling statements to the bare facts. It took about an hour and then she put the pile of reports to one side and scanned her notes. It took only a few moments to see that there was no discernible pattern or common thread to the sightings.
Annabelle sighed and rested her head against the wall, catching sight of the clock on the bedside table. It was a little past two in the morning. It was so easy to lose track of the hour on this timeless world. She found herself yawning and decided to leave it until the morning: perhaps with a refreshed brain, something might come to her. Turning off the light, she lay back in bed and stared up at the ceiling. Once her eyes had adjusted to the almost-complete darkness afforded by the shutters, she could just about see the fan slowly rotating, whuffing around and around and around….
4.
Nathanial was woken from the strangest dreams about talking to himself in a mirror by a hefty rap at the door and sat up in bed feeling very sweaty and annoyed.
There was another, louder knock, followed by Arnaud’s unmistakable voice. “Nathanial! Are you awake?”
“Yes, yes—come in.”
Arnaud’s tousled head appear round the door, his brown eyes bright and his eyebrows raised. “Are you decent?” he asked with a grin.
“I’m always decent, Arnaud. I’m British, remember. Come in, you look silly like that. What time is it?”
“Quarter after seven.”
“What? Why are you waking me at such an ungodly hour?”
“Ungodly? Mon ami, we have much to do today. They will be finding the professor’s body—would you not wish to be there?”
Nathanial pulled an expression of horror. “Why would I want that? I’m not a surgeon or a coroner, you know.” He sat up in bed, self-consciously pulling the damp sheets around him.
“But you are a scientist, non? This would be a good opportunity to see the caves, whilst there are many soldiers around to protect us—or extricate us if there is further rockfalling.”
Nathanial scowled. He could think of better things to do than wandering around dank caves in search of a corpse, after all what could the caverns of Mercury offer that Luna’s did not? But he supposed Arnaud had a point. “Oh, very well. Give me ten minutes to get dressed. Where shall I meet you?”
“Do you know where the bathing beach is?”
“This place has a bathing beach?” asked Nathanial incredulously. “Why on Earth would it have one of them? Who’d want to bathe here?”
Arnaud shrugged. “I have no idea, but apparently the water is very warm and full of minerals and salts—as long as you don’t swallow it. I’m also told it is a very romantic place for couples to have their secret meetings.”
“Well I hope we won’t be encountering any of them today—now shoo!” Nathanial waved Arnaud away. “You continentals may be happy with wandering around in front of strangers with barely any clothes on, but—”
“You’re British,” Arnaud finished for him. “Yes, I know. Ten minutes then, on the beach. And don’t forget your bucket and spade.” And with another cheeky grin, Arnaud left Nathanial to get on with it.
5.
Finally washed and brushed, Nathanial followed the sound of voices to find a group of five soldiers assembling in the main square, with ropes and lanterns and all sorts of digging paraphernalia.
“Are you chaps going down to get Professor Fournier?” he asked one of them.
“That’s right, sir. We’ve got the go-ahead—the way’s clear. Are you coming with us, sir?”
“If that’s all right, yes.”
“You’ll need one of these, then, sir,” the soldier said, offering him a solid-looking metal helmet. “Not taking any chances, not after what happened before.”
Nathanial tried it on and found it surprisingly comfortable. On Earth, he suspected, the increased gravity would have made it tiresome, but here, it had as little weight as a bowler. Lieutenant Palfreyman—the young soldier that had been assigned to help them out when they’d arrived—appeared, and the casual, chatty soldiers stubbed out their cigarettes and stood to attention.
“Morning, Professor Stone,” said Palfreyman. “You coming with us then?” He indicated Nathanial’s helmet.
“If you don’t mind, Lieutenant. Doctor Fontaine will be coming too—he’s down on the beach waiting for us.”
Palfreyman nodded and turned to his men. “Right you lot—let’s get to work. And bring along a spare helmet for Fontaine.”
Leading the way, Palfreyman headed off, the others in a neat line behind him, like well-behaved school children. Nathanial brought up the rear, feeling very much like the new boy in class. Within a couple of minutes, they were at the edge of the compound, looking out onto the World River.
He estimated its width at about a tenth of a mile—perhaps two thirds of the width of the Thames. So it was by no means the widest river Nathanial had ever seen; but regardless of width, the fact that it was nine and a half thousand miles long and looped back on itself, like a snake eating its own tail, made it worthy of a few moments’ contemplation. It rushed by, its sound a gentle susurration. In the dim light, its surface was almost featureless—but occasional flashes of pinkish silver showed, reflected from the sky above. Palfreyman was leading them along the edge to where a narrow, rocky path zig-zagged down, about fifty yards, to what was obviously the bathing beach. Nathanial squinted and spotted the tiny figure of Arnaud, sitting on a little wooden jetty to which three small boats were tied. He waved cheerily up at them. It took nearly ten minutes to negotiate the rough path down, and the absence of any handrail made Nathanial a little queasy. He tried to avoid looking down at the precipitous drop, instead keeping his eyes fixed on the soldier in front of him. Not soon enough for Nathanial they were down and Lieutenant Palfreyman went to talk to Arnaud while the soldiers chatted and checked over their equipment.
“No disrespect, sir,” said the soldier who’d given him the helmet, suddenly at his side, “but you do know that this might not be pleasant?”
“Don’t worry, it can be no worse than seeing a giant ant sever the head off a Russian soldier.”
“Ah, right,” said the soldier awkwardly. “Very good, sir, just thought I’d mention it. From what Corporal Heath said, she’s likely to be pretty mangled up.”
Nathanial nodded and threw a glance at the stretcher as Arnaud and Palfreyman returned to the group.
“Remember lads,” said the lieutenant as Nathanial watched Arnaud trying on his own helmet at a variety of jaunty—and, frankly, silly—angles. “We have a couple of VIPs with us this morning. The safety of Professor Stone and Doctor Fontaine comes above all other considerations, right? Any sign of things getting dodgy in there, get these two out pronto.”
Again, he led the way, followed by the soldiers with Nathanial and Arnaud bringing up the rear.
“They’ve been reminding me that Professor Fournier’s body might not be a very pretty sight,” Nathanial whispered. “Have you seen many bodies before?”
“Not in the condition that the professor is likely to be in, no,” Arnaud answered, pulling a face. “My mother died peacefully in her sleep and my father, he still lives. I am hoping this will not be too awful.”
“Don’t worry,” Nathanial assured him as they headed down the beach and into the shelter of the rock wall where another narrow path took them along the bank of the river. “Better men than you have found these things a bit much to take. No one will blame you if…you know….”
“Thank you, mon ami. I am expecting it will not be as bad as that, but it is impossible to say until you are faced with it. You have seen much of this kind of thing?”
Nathanial sighed. “Too much, I’m afraid,” he said, reminded of the show O’Rourke had put on for them on Venus. “I fear that I am becoming somewhat inured to death.”
“Inured?”
“Accustomed—hardened you might even say.”
“But that is a good thing, is it not? Death is a part of life, a natural consequence of living. It comes to us all, I suppose, in the end. It is not hardening, surely—just a realisation that none of us can escape it. Unless,” Arnaud added mock-spookily, “you believe the ghosts are really the souls of the dead. In which case, none of us really dies, do we?”
“I take it from your tone that you don’t believe that, then?”
The Frenchman shrugged. “I am not a believer, no—but as a scientist, I like to keep my mind open. The last few years have shown us that there are things that we would previously have dismissed as fantasy and fiction. Who knows what more wonders lie ahead of us? Perhaps we shall discover that the soul itself has a rational explanation.”
“Careful now!” called Palfreyman suddenly. “This path’s a bit of a tricky bugger, and if you fall in the water, there’s more than a few beasties in there that might come to take a look at you. And even if they don’t, try not to get it in your mouth—it’s full of zinc and tin and lead and won’t do much for your digestion.”
“Never mind all that,” Nathanial whispered to Arnaud. “Are these beasties dangerous?”
“Not so much. If you fall in, just…” He waved his arms around madly, almost unbalancing in the process. Nathanial pulled him back by his collar. “They will leave you alone.”
“Well that’s something.”
“Unless they eat you. of course.”
“Now you’re just trying to scare me.”
“For a Britishman,” laughed Arnaud as they began to negotiate the path, keeping their backs to the cliff wall, “you scare very easily.”
“I didn’t say,” Nathanial said pointedly, “that you were succeeding in scaring me.”
“Touché!” laughed Arnaud, giving him a gentle prod in the side. “Now move—we’re getting left behind.”
6.
Annabelle suddenly realised that she wasn’t alone.
Sitting bolt upright in bed, her heart thumping madly, she looked to the foot of the bed where the silhouette of a figure showed black against the almost-black of the rest of the room. Automatically, she reached out to turn on the light.
“No,” said a woman’s voice. “Please, if you do not mind, not the light.”
There was an accent to the woman’s voice, and it only took Annabelle a few moments to place it: French.
“Why not?” she asked cautiously, withdrawing her hand.
“The sight of me may distress you somewhat, mademoiselle.”
Assuming that the station wasn’t staffed with that many Frenchmen, Annabelle hazarded a guess as to who this woman was. “You’re Professor Fournier, aren’t you?” she said.
The woman gave a little laugh. “You are a very perceptive young woman. Yes, I am Professor Fournier—although sometimes, I’m not completely sure. But please call me Maria.”
“Why…why are you here?” Annabelle paused and then, her mouth dry, she asked: “‘Do you know what happened to you?”
“I died, didn’t I?”
Annabelle thought that honesty was the best policy. “I’m sorry, yes, you did.”
“It comes to us all, does it not? Only I did not expect it to come to me so soon. And yet…here I am.” The ghost suddenly shimmered into near invisibility and then stabilised again. “I am not practised at this,” she said, as if by way of apology.
“At being a ghost?”
“If that is what I am, yes. And what else could I be?” Again she flickered—and vanished, to instantly reappear a few feet to the left of where she had been standing. “I feel…incomplete,” she stated flatly after a few seconds. “Does that make any sense?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t, really, no—none of this makes any sense. What do you know of the other ghosts?”
“The other ghosts?” echoed the professor. “There are others?”
“There have been lots of sightings. I saw one myself, briefly, earlier on.”
“Another?” Fournier whispered, the previous monotone of her voice modulated by an edge of curiosity. “Like me?”
“It was hard to tell,” Annabelle admitted. “I only saw it for a few seconds and it was less clear than you are, less distinct. And it was a man.”
There was a gentle intake of breath from the ghost—and Annabelle wondered, briefly, how a ghost could breathe or why it would even need to.
“These other ghosts,” the Frenchwoman said. “They are like…like me?”
Annabelle realised that the poor woman was confused and desperately trying to make sense of what had happened to her, and wished with all her heart that she could reassure her or tell her something that might help. But she was as much in the dark as Fournier.
“I’m sorry, I honestly couldn’t say. But none of them have spoken like you are speaking to me—which is strange, don’t you think?”
The ghost didn’t answer—instead, she flickered into near invisibility again. “Something is wrong,” she said when at last she’d regained her previous opacity.
There was a pause and Annabelle feared that Professor Fournier was about to disappear, but she suddenly gave a little exclamation—perhaps of alarm, perhaps surprise. “Oh!”
Annabelle sat up in her bed. “What? What’s wrong?”
Professor Fournier pressed her hands to her mouth. “Oh, mon Dieu! It has suddenly come to me!”
“What has?”
“So very strange…” Her voice dropped to a whisper that Annabelle could barely hear. “So very, very strange. It scares me you know. Its thoughts scare me. I remember now. It doesn’t think like we do, you know.” Annabelle wasn’t following this at all: one minute the ghost was talking about the other ghosts, and the next it seemed like she was talking about something completely different. Maria leaned forwards, lowering her voice again like she was afraid of being overheard. “Its thoughts are so deep and dark, my dear. Be careful, please. It has such plans…” She paused and then continued. “And, très étrange…there is a poem—a line in a poem that confuses it. My favourite. It has read it through me and I think it’s scared of it. Can you imagine that? Being scared of a line in a poem?” She shook her head as if in sorrow.
“Which poem?” asked Annabelle in a whisper.
But Professor Fourier just gave a little jolt, as if someone had prodded her. In the darkness, she glanced around. “There’s someone else here,” she said sharply. “I can feel them.”
Annabelle peered into the gloom, unable to make out anything other than the ghost of the professor. “Here? In my room?”
But the professor didn’t answer. Instead, she gasped, threw back her head and shimmered—and let out a little cry before she disappeared completely.
Annabelle sat, shivering, in bed, staring at the chair and almost willing the ghost to come back. For a full two minutes she stayed like that, afraid that if she took her eyes off the chair she might miss her return. But of the ghost herself and the “someone else” that she had mentioned, there was no further sign.
Annabelle glanced at the clock beside the bed, and was horrified to discover that it was almost a quarter after nine. Had it simply been a dream? Was she falling under the spell of Mercury? Or was she actually losing her mind?