Chapter Six

“All in the Family”

1.

HIS FIRST ALIEN SPECIES. Tally tried to pull his eyes from the creature that sat at the rear of the small boat, but was finding it difficult. Much like his urge to lean over the side of the boat and chuck up his guts. It wasn’t the odd distortion of the human form, the slightly too big eyes or the simian-like length of its arms. It was the skin, or rather what could be seen beneath it. The skin itself was a strange bluish-grey, so thin as to be opaque, revealing the veins and arteries beneath. Call him old fashioned, but he preferred such things to be hidden.

“Don’t you find him a wee bit distracting, Nate?” he whispered, leaning himself closer to Nathaniel.

The professor glanced back at the Drobate. “Not at all, Tally, I suppose on first encounter I was little put off, but also fascinated. Oh, and he…” At this point Nathaniel craned his head down so his lips were inches away from Tally’s ears. “…Is a she. Although I can understand how you’d make the mistake. The females are a lot larger than the males, their brows more prominent, and their skin quite a bit bluer. They’re also, by and large, the more intelligent.”

“Aye, should have realised. Just like me ma.”

“Really? Your mother shared a similarity with Kelp?”

“Well, obviously ma is a much better looking woman, but it’s the look in Kelp’s eyes… Only a woman can look at a man like that.”

“Oh.” Nathaniel shook his head. “Never gave it much thought really.”

“No, don’t suppose you would,” Tally rejoined good naturedly.

He looked around them. They had been travelling some way down the river now—and the idea of an underground river running to the centre of the moon was something Tally found hard to get his head around. Where did it come from, what kind of water cycle was at work? He had asked, but Nathaniel was of no help. Apparently geology wasn’t his field. As it turned out the River of Life, as it was called, seemed to go on forever. They had passed through several tunnels already, and finally began to emerge into a big cavern.

“Is it much further?” he asked, reaching into a pocket for a cigarette.

“Funny you should ask,” Nathaniel responded, and looked at Tally in shock. “What the devil are you doing?”

“Having a smoke, what does it look like?” He pulled out his lucifers, which were immediately snatched out of his hand by Nathaniel. “You daft eejit, what’d ya go and do that for?”

“You’ll frighten the natives.”

“What natives? You said Kelp was intelligent, I’m sure she’ll not mind me having a quick smoke. Aye, sure and she might like to join me?”

Nathaniel shook his head, and Tally had to admit he rather enjoyed the look of exasperation on the professor’s face. “The Drobates are an ancient civilisation—or at least the remains of one, and I assure you they are smart enough to know better than to join a savage like you in inhaling that muck. It may not look like it, but they are far more advanced than we are. They just don’t know how their technology works—it either does or doesn’t, beyond that most of them simply don’t care. They revere their technology, but alas they don’t understand it.”

“Then perhaps it’s time we showed them some of the simpler pleasures of life?”

Nathaniel looked at Tally like he was mad, then glanced over at Kelp. “You surely do not mean you wish to engage Kelp in…” He shook his head. “That is absurd, Tally, patently so. Besides, as Grant’s research showed us they are not biologically compatible with humans. Indeed, they have more in common with the Selenites.”

Tally was, of course, joking. He could barely bring himself to look at Kelp for more than a few seconds, but Nate was such a great mark and it seemed he had been far too serious since leaving Earth. The professor had been loosening up, entirely due to Tally’s influence, during their time in Dublin, but he seemed to have restored his British stick up his arse since leaving Tally’s side. “Well, she’s no Miss Baker and that’s for sure, but if I’m going to be out here in the aether it stands to reason I should explore all aspects of life, would ya not agree?”

“Well, really, Tally! I don’t know what to say.”

Tally said no more, keeping his face as straight as he could. Nathaniel looked quite flushed by the idea. It was the reddening of his checks that cracked Tally. He let out a bellow of a laugh, doubling up in his seat.

For his own part Nathaniel continued looking at Tally, his eyes narrowed at being the butt of another of Tally’s jokes. “Yes,” he said, “very droll. But, you know, with you Fenians nothing is impossible.”

Once he had managed to control his laughing, Tally nodded. “Aye, that’s true. But even I would have trouble with Kelp there.” He glanced back. Her expression had not changed. “Here,” he continued in a whisper, “didn’t ya say she understands a wee bit of English?”

“The words maybe, the meaning… I certainly hope not. Heavens forbid you become the object of an amorous Drobate.”

“Me ma, God rest her, had a fit as it was when I brought Jenny back, and Jaysus, she was only from Donegal.”

The boat took them further into the open cavern and before long Tally saw the city Nathaniel had insisted on showing him. And it was a beauty, he had to give Nate that.

The City of Light and Science took up the far bank, stretching further than he could see from the boat, reaching to the arched roof of the cavern. It was like looking at a city fashioned from some kind of crystal; a complex of buildings, reflecting the glow of the fungus that littered the walls of the lunar underground. The sheer size of it put Phoenix Park to shame, while the beauty dwarfed that of both Trinity College and the Port Authority Building combined. He never thought he’d admit it, but Tally had found somewhere that could easily rival Dublin in his affections.

“What do you think, Tally?”

Tally couldn’t find the words, and for someone like him that was saying something. He could only sit there and look as the boat began its approach.

“Good, what with you missing Dublin I thought this might be right up your street. And until I have the papers I need from the Admiralty or the Chaldrite crystal I find myself at something of a loose end, so your arrival was timely.”

Papers! “Oh, corks!” Tally had forgotten about them. He reached into his jacket and pulled the bound papers out. “Would these be the papers yer waiting on?” he asked, giving his best sheepish smile. “They, ah, slipped me mind. What with Kelp here undressin’ me with her eyes.”

Nathaniel took the papers off Tally, pointedly ignoring the smile offered. “Thank you,” he said sharply. He looked back at Kelp. “Take us back,” he said, seeing an image of the bank nearest Otterbein Base in his mind to back up the words he had spoken. He glanced at Tally. “Unless you wish to remain with Kelp and explore the city, we need to return to my quarters. I have work to do.”

“Oh no, I’ll come with ya.” Tally would have loved to explore the city, with or without Kelp, but the professor was cross, and Tally felt the blame on his shoulders. He was here on Bureau business, not a damn tourist. Tooler wouldn’t be too impressed if he found out. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Nathaniel’s only response, as the boat turned back upstream, was a low rumble of his throat.

2.

ENDERBY HAD DONE HIS usual pompous thing of informing George and Annabelle of every detail of the movements he had planned out. He would once more head to the general store to buy them some victuals, then meander back and look for possible entrances at the back of the mansion, the one place he had not yet checked. Mick Mackett’s no-show didn’t seem to worry him unduly; he waved it off as the man being too drunk or frightened at that time of the morning to have bothered. The last item on his little checklist was to make some gentle enquiries at the saloon bar. He hoped Mackett’s performance at the walls of the foundry yesterday was bold enough to loosen a few tongues. George had wanted to accompany him but the agent had not been keen, reasoning that it was a good idea for the trio to be seen together as little as possible now, so they might act independently when the time was right.

When he did not return at his allotted time, George began to worry. The spy was punctilious enough to have come back even he hadn’t finished his finicky little list, and it only took a few more minutes to pass before Annabelle began to worry too. George insisted on going for a quick reconnoitre; Annabelle countered that she was quicker and quieter (“Even with the leg,” she added childishly) and if anyone it should be her that went to look. Neither would concede the point, and soon both had made plain to the other—mostly through grunts and stern looks—that they would both go and look and rendezvous back in the room in fifteen minutes.

Both searches proved fruitless.

“We have to assume that they know we’re here,” snapped George, throwing his hat onto the bed in frustration. “At least if we do that, we’re prepared.”

Annabelle agreed but didn’t make it plain. “Well you’ve had me cooped up here like a pariah for the most part,” she said. “So if anything, you pose more of a danger in that regard.”

“Well what else are we to do?”

“That unfortunate with the terrible name. Mick Mackett. He said his brother got into the foundry as a blacksmith. I could put myself forward.”

“Now, Annabelle dearest, is that the wisest plan? You don’t look much of a blacksmith, and if anyone finds out you’re actually of the fairer sex, well… I dread to think.”

“Oh, George!”Annabelle seethed, snapping under his stifling. “And the other option is you, is it? With your dismal approximation of the accent and with as much knowledge of working an anvil as an aristocrat.”

“My accent’s not that bad…”

“It’s abysmal, George. It’s wonder it hasn’t got us lynched already.”

“…And besides, it’s not like you know anything about metal working.” There was a pause. “Do you?”

“I spent two years with the apaches, George. The men might shoot the arrows, but who do you think makes them? For heaven’s sake, George, the number of times I have cast an iron arrow tip in a ring of gossiping squaws are without number. It might not be a doctorate in horseshoes but it’s a damn sight better than what you’ve got on offer.”

He deflated, numbed somewhat by her verbal attack. And though she was still unconscionably angry with the man, she could feel another sort of fury mingled with the squabble with her husband. It was a feeling linked strongly in her mind with Kai, and the way these men were most likely responsible for the rape of her heritage; the way they had broken Goyahkla so completely with their callous and selfish destruction of a promise that had been held by his forefathers for aeons past. She would make them pay for their crimes and find out the mastermind who was giving them orders. She’d have her revenge. For her daughter’s sake.

3.

BY THE TIME THEY returned to Otterbein Base, Nathaniel and Tally were back to their usual chattiness, the slight faux pas with the papers forgotten about. What had the delay cost him, other than the few hours it took them to travel to the city and back? The main thing was he had the papers he needed and now he could correlate them with Verney’s observations. Upon arriving at Otterbein, Tally remarked upon his rapidly emptying stomach and so Nathaniel had sent him off to the mess hall.

“Tell chef none of that lunar bat stew this time.”

“Away with ya, it can’t be any worse than the slop I had at Mountjoy Gaol. Besides I have me a way around a good woman—sure and I’ll be bringing us only the best.”

Nathaniel didn’t have the heart to tell Tally that the chef was a man.

Just as he turned the corner to his own quarters he found himself literally walking into Kaplan. The mineralogist was filthy, looking like he’d just returned from a coal mine. He beamed through his blackened face.

“Stone, just the man. We’ve just returned from the surface.”

“Just? My good man, it took you all night?”

“Fifteen miles of excavation is not the work of a few hours, Stone.”

“No, no, I’m sorry. Of course not. Perhaps some tea?” Nathaniel asked, waving Kaplan towards his quarters. Kaplan agreed that it would be lovely; he was parched. “Good, and Tally shall return soon with food.”

They walked to the dormitory that housed his quarters and once the kettle was on the small stove, Nathaniel turned to Kaplan, who had made himself comfortable on a sofa near the coal fire Nathaniel had set up. “So, your findings?”

“Well, you were right. The jothrick continues toward the mouth of the gorge, growing out in a scandent pattern, like you’d expect of any vine. If there had been a wall I’d wager the jothrick would climb it.”

“Growing?”

“Quite. I was a bit confused at first, thought that perhaps the lunar rocks surrounding it had simply cracked through pressure over the years, but on closer examination it was the jothrick itself, spreading out. Now I’m no botanist, Stone, you must understand, but I have kept a garden in my time and I know how plants grow. It’s quite extraordinary, but this jothrick grows just like any plant I’ve seen.”

Nathaniel turned to the kettle and lifted it to the two waiting cups. Yes, this confirmed what he and Arnaud had worked out on Earth when they first examined the mineral. And certainly his little jothrick-bonsai tree proved its growth properties. “It is as I thought, the jothrick shares a lot of attributes we’d usually associate with plants, including cell structure,” he said, making the tea. “And what of the depth?”

“Again, it is as you expected. We dug to a point just above the city, and the concentration of jothrick grew the closer we got. We did discover one odd thing, though.”

“Oh?” He handed a cup to Kaplan who sipped the tea gratefully.

“Yes. We stopped when we came across what look like a stump—if it weren’t for the fact it was jothrick, I would have sworn it was the stump of a tree, only upside down. Which makes the jothrick that rises to the surface, the roots of the tree.”

Nathaniel took the stool at his desk, placing his cup beside him. “Towards the city?” He nodded, rubbing his chin. “Yes, that makes sense. I have hypothesised that the city was grown, although I felt sure the crystal used in its construction is different, although similar, to jothrick. But… The same core material? Or to extend the plant analogy, they are of the same genet.”

Kaplan shrugged. “You have studied them more than I,” he said, the disappointment obvious. Nathaniel chose to ignore it. He would have allowed only one mineralogist to work closely with him, but alas Arnaud was not available. Still, Kaplan’s knowledge of structural geology was proving useful. Nathaniel knew he’d need more than one geologist on his team, one with different fields of expertise to Arnaud; perhaps he had found the man without even looking?

Nathaniel glanced at the small jothrick tree he had idly been running his finger over unconsciously. “Growing down…” Which came first, the jothrick or the crystals that formed the city? Did one come from another? He had run a comparative test, and although they had many differences they shared an amazing number of similarities. What he needed was…

Enter Tally. He flung the door open, his arms full, nudging it with his back. “I bring gifts!” he exclaimed as he entered, trying not to drop the plates he carried, the food safe beneath metal lids, or the small box that sat atop the plates. To make matters worse, one hand clung tightly to the neck of a familiar looking bottle. Bourbon, unless Nathaniel was mistaken, probably purloined from the chef’s private stocks. Well, it was good to see Tally was making friends. That is, of course, if he had asked permission before taking the whisky.

Kaplan jumped up from the sofa and grabbed the box from Tally. “Let me help you, old chap.”

“Ah, cheers and hello,” Tally said, broad smile on display. Once free of the box he carried the plates over to the table where Nathaniel quickly made some room, and placed them down. He looked around. “Three glasses and a toast to new acquaintances,” he said, raising the bottle of bourbon.

“Splendid notion,” Kaplan agreed, and set about looking for something into which Tally could pour the bourbon.

“What’s this?” Nathaniel asked, picking up the box.

“Ah, some wee gobshite was outside looking for you with the box. He was lucky I had me hands full, or I’d have given ‘im a fat lip. Guess he wasn’t expecting a ‘Fenian bastard’ to be on Luna, eh?”

“He called you that?” Nathaniel placed the box on the table and set about opening it.

“Aye.” Tally shrugged. “Still, been called worse at ‘ome. And that’s just by me ma.” He winked and turned to Kaplan who had found a couple of fat test tubes to serve as glasses. “Tally’s me name,” he said, and offered a hand.

“Doctor Marcus Kaplan, your servant, sir.”

“Ah no, don’t be needing me no servants. All made equal in the eyes of God, or so me chaplain used to tell me. Mind you, he was trying to get me in the confessional box with him when he was telling me that, so I wouldn’t take too much stock in his words.”

“Um, yes, quite,” Kaplan said, looking more bewildered by the second.

Nathaniel left them to it—his attention was focussed on the object he had lifted from the box. It was no bigger than his hand but it didn’t need to be. A Chaldrite crystal. Unlike the jothrick it was yellow in colour, and, only now he noticed, it carried the same texture as the city crystal. He placed it on the table and turned to the rack of test tubes next to him.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent running his tests, but by the time he had finished Kaplan had gone, and Tally was sitting comfortably on the sofa still drinking the bourbon, looking through the book he had found on a side cabinet. It was the copy of A Study in Scarlet that Nathaniel had brought with him from Earth, the only possession of Edwin’s he had managed to save from his stay in London at the start of the year. Tally looked up at Nathaniel’s sudden cry of success.

“Love to see a genius at work,” Tally said, placing the book to one side and joining Nathaniel at the table. “Something that Conan Doyle isn’t. I could’ve written better in me sleep.”

“It’s the same!”

“Well now, isn’t that fantastic? Ah, what is?”

Nathaniel indicated the samples before him; the green jothrick, the yellow Chaldrite crystal and the more opaque crystal from the City of Light and Science. “These, they’re all the same,” he said, and looked into the microscope once again. “I cross checked, compared their cell structure, conducted a multitude of tests and—yes!” He looked up, smiling. “They’re of the same genet, as I suspected. Like a…” He stalled, trying to recall some of his basic botany lessons. “Like, say, forsythia, many species of the same genus exist, the iterations thereof are dependent on where they grow. The crystal that forms the City of Light and Science, for instance, is an offshoot of the jothrick stump that grows beneath the Great Crater, but it mutated somehow… Maybe due to the psychic influence of the Heart? Yes. That would make sense. It shaped most everything else inside Luna. And I have learned that the jothrick responds to strong thoughts, as if it becomes what’s most needed. A power source, a mind corrupting drug, a weapon—why even a small tree!”

“Well, sure and that’s grand for you,” Tally began.

“But there’s more, don’t you see? The antenna atop the city, I am certain it was once connected to that tree stump, and that is why the signal is not being transmitted as it should.”

Tally shook his head. “Now yer confusing me. What signal?”

“The glow, of course! It is part of a network, but the Eye of Phobos never received the signal, and so it died, its purpose lost? Yes! Yes, that makes sense. Is that why the monoliths were built, to reboot the signal from Phobos?” Nathaniel’s mind was faltering under the pressure. New ideas, new thoughts were filling his mind—what he would normally have called intuitive leaps, only no… It was something else. Just what had the Heart communicated to him? Is this how it began with Tereshkov and Grant—the madness? “That’s why it took so long for… Where are those papers you brought to me, what did I do with them?”

“You put them in yer…” Tally reached for Nathaniel’s jacket, and stopped suddenly, his eyes drawn to the table. “Are they supposed to be doing that?”

The two men watched in a stunned quiet as the crystals expanded, tendrils of green and yellow reaching out to the opaque Drobate crystal. Slow they merged, the colours fusing, first to an extremely pale shade of green, but then a darker colour appeared in its centre, spreading outwards until they were looking at a much larger crystal the colour of a burning sun.

“Good grief,” Nathaniel said.

“Yer,” said Tally. “Feckin’ hell.”

4.

HE NEEDED TO WARN Nathaniel. Arnaud had heard little about Le Boeuf, but enough to know his life was in danger—and worse, the lives of Nathaniel and Annabelle. It was Le Boeuf who was responsible for Annabelle’s need for a prosthetic leg. And it was down to Le Boeuf that Nathaniel had spent some time in Chatham Convict Prison—and all the subsequent events that followed were a direct result of Le Boeuf’s schemes on Peregrine—including the death of Nathaniel’s brother. No, Arnaud did not need to know everything about Le Boeuf; he knew enough. And he knew that the bastard had supposedly perished with Peregrine.

Arnaud had been surprised to find the door to his room unlocked, but he was not so foolish as to explore straight away. He bided his time, sat at the window and looked out at the moors beyond, waiting until the sun started to set. Late afternoon in the British winter.

He wasn’t sure if he had fully recovered from his exposure to the aleksandrite, but it felt like his mind was clear now—at least compared to how he had felt during the last few weeks. The delusions and hallucinations had passed, and he could once against think in a clear and deductive way. His strength was not as it had once been, and he was a little unsteady on his legs, but he believed himself strong enough to try and find a way from this house. One way or another he had to get a message to Nathaniel.

He carefully opened the door and peered out. A long corridor stretched both to his left and right, seemingly running the entire length of the house. He listened intently. Voices carried through the corridor. He headed right, away from the voices, and soon found himself at the top of one of two staircases that led to a square hall and, more importantly, a large door which spoke of freedom.

He descended the stairs in silence, doing his best to keep his footfalls light, a task made somewhat difficult due to his occasional need to lean on the banister for balance. A balustraded gallery ran along the four walls of the hall, displaying paintings of various people, from an Elizabethan knight through to a buck of the Regency. He stopped a few steps from the bottom, certain he heard the sound of a dog barking nearby.

He looked around. All the doors leading off from the hall were shut—all but one. Arnaud stared in horror. A dog, looking like a mastiff only much larger, appeared in the doorway, glowing with a strange green luminescence. He swallowed. What devilry was this? He screwed his eyes shut. It had to be the aleksandrite—another hallucination. The sound of barking ceased and he slowly opened his eyes.

And laughed.

Entering the hall was a small curly-haired spaniel. Merde, and to think he saw…

Arms grabbed him from behind. He tried to move but his strength simply wasn’t up to it.

“Sorry, old chap, but we really can’t have you leaving,” said a man who emerged from the doorway after the spaniel. The little dog ran around his legs, tail wagging, yapping with excitement. The man was tall, and in some ways reminded Arnaud of Nathaniel, except this man’s hair was dark where Nathaniel’s was ginger. He offered a warm smile, but it was lost on Arnaud who spotted the syringe in the man’s hands. “I’m afraid Willie won’t have you leaving, not until he’s learned all he needs to know.” The man shrugged. “Terribly sorry.”

Arnaud struggled, but the man holding him was too strong. The tall man lifted one of Arnaud’s sleeves and stuck the needle into his arm.

Moments later Arnaud sunk into a peaceful oblivion.

5.

SHE WOULDN’T LET GEORGE help her. If the plan was to work they couldn’t be seen as friends or acquaintances, and struck out at once to put feelers out for smithying work. She hoped the roots would lead back to the rotten nest of the Soup Twins. If she could just get herself alone in a room with them, even for a couple of minutes…

She shook her head to clear the anger. She knew it wouldn’t help her when the situation was at its most dire, and that was a predicament in which she found herself a bit too often nowadays. It didn’t help that she was edgy. She knew she could rely on the apache band situated just outside the town, but with Enderby missing so was the flare gun. She had tried persuading George to ride out and alert them, but he refused to leave her to the Soup Twins’ tender mercies without someone close by, should assistance be required. Enderby’s survival, as it was, being no sure thing.

She waited on a dingy little man named Florence who could apparently get her an in with the Soup Twins. He’d spent much of the afternoon drinking the whiskey she’d bought and telling her of all the fine benefits a man could receive working in the foundry. Oh, the job was hard, sure, but when the working day was over you could relax in the mansion, sleep on the softest feather beds and curing your aches with a nice, hot bath. It almost seemed too good to be true.

It may have been the man’s perpetual drinking or the fact she hadn’t bathed in three days, but he didn’t need much convincing that she was a young man. He’d slapped her hard on the shoulder and toddled off, missing the spittoon by a good foot when he attempted to clear his throat on the way out.

That had been a couple of hours ago, and he was yet to return.

Eventually the door clattered open and Florence walked in, his chest puffed out like the cat that got the cream. “They reckons they’ll try you out,” he said proudly, helping himself to another shot of Annabelle’s whiskey. “I tolds ‘em you was young but they didn’t mind much. Tomorrow morning, they says. Eight sharp. Up to the door, knock three times, and after that you’re on your own, Master Bell.”

Annabelle got up. “You can finish the whiskey,” she said, hoping the ipecac she’d tainted it with in his absence would keep him busy for while.

6.

IN ANOTHER CORNER OF the room, unseen eyes had been taking in her every move.

“Clever girl,” said Baxter as he puffed on his pipe.

“What?” asked Henry. “Over there? That young boy. You surely don’t think…?”

“Oh I do, Mister Henry. The thorax is quite the giveaway. It’s artfully done, but you can’t fool a surgeon.”

“I suppose I shall have to get my blunderbuss ready.”

“Not quite yet, Mister Henry. Not quite yet. I don’t think Casey and Eustace have twigged to her yet. Let’s bide our time. She’s not going anywhere. If anything she may lead us straight into the heart of their den.”

“By Jove, Mister Baxter. I’m glad you’re the brains of this operation.”

“Well you give it its spirit, Mister Henry!” Baxter beamed across to his friend and fellow assassin, then leaned forward conspiratorially. “And speaking of spirits, old chap, I can’t say I think much of this firewater. Terrible stuff.”

Henry puffed himself up excitedly, almost as if he’d expected this germane observation. “I was hoping you’d say that, Mister Baxter.” With a flourish, his cane was suddenly in the grip of his right hand while the left unscrewed the cap. Inside was revealed a small test tube with a cork in the top, filled with a syrupy, purplish liquid. “Plum wine,” he said, his cheeks ruddy and his whiskers bristling. “Never leave home without it.”