The Dead Gentleman Read online

  Something that Scott mentioned earlier suddenly struck me. “What do you mean, you conquered the last frontier of this planet? What other planet do you mean?”

  The Captain smiled. “Countless others, my boy. Countless! Other worlds, hidden under our very noses. Stuffed away in the folds of time and space!”

  “Now you’re just talking nonsense,” I said. “You’re having me on.” A fancy underwater ship was one thing, traveling to other planets was another.

  “Was that bridge troll nonsense? You think that fellow came from your neighborhood? Or Brooklyn, perhaps?”

  I didn’t answer. He had a point, there.

  “BEGINNING PREPARATIONS TO DIVE! You see, Tommy, that troll came through a portal—kind of a doorway to another world. Most people think of reality as being a dependable, solid thing, but it’s actually more like a block of Swiss cheese. Full of little pockets and holes. Full of doors. Can’t say we understand the science behind the portals, but they tend to appear in the most ordinary places. Old gardens, cellars, behind bookcases, even. Your troll came here from another world where blokes like him are commonplace. Probably the world of Faerie, judging by his looks, or maybe New Hamelin. Usually the doors stay closed, but it happens sometimes that a creature finds his way through. Most keep a low profile, since it doesn’t pay to draw too much attention. This nasty fellow just got too big for his britches, started making waves.”

  My stomach gurgled again at the mention of “waves.”

  “Besides,” the Captain continued. “The vast majority of people wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual about him if he were napping in their own bed. They wouldn’t see past the Veil.”

  “The Veil?”

  The Captain nodded. “The Veil is a kind of energy field that hangs over everything. Invisible, imperceptible, but it’s a part of nature, as real as the open sky or this vast ocean. And it’s very good at reckoning what belongs on Earth and what doesn’t. It softens the harsh realities of things that are too different—things most folks aren’t ready to face. It blurs the edges, so to speak, and makes the unbelievable into something … acceptable. It hides the portals to those other worlds and disguises the beings who come through them. To the common eye, a troll that crosses into our world becomes a big, ugly lug of a man, though still just a man. But the Veil is not all-powerful, and there are those who can see past it, who can lift the Veil and see the truth. Children often have the gift, which is why you’ve been having so much trouble these last few weeks. I’d say your Veil has been lifted—and then some.”

  “I’m not a child,” I said, maybe a bit too quickly. “I take care of myself.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Scott nodded. “Of course, my mistake.” He looked at me for a moment. I felt my cheeks redden beneath their greenish tinge.

  “But as I was saying,” he went on. “There are precious few adults these days who can see past the Veil. Some artists manage glimpses, but even they usually blame it all on an overactive imagination in the end. Take this ship, for instance. I knew a Frenchman once who looked out the window of a coastal hotel one blustery afternoon and spotted a great metal ship rising up out of the waves! A ship that had emerged intact from beneath the sea! Being a literate fellow, he immediately put pen to paper and wrote about what he’d seen. But within hours the Veil had worked its magic on him, and instead of the truth, he ended up with a novel!

  “Perhaps you’ve read it? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?”

  I shook my head. I had no use for novels. Not that I had any problem with other people enjoying them. After all, it was much easier to lift a man’s wallet if his nose was buried between the covers of a book.

  “Well,” said Scott. “The book made him famous but left him none the wiser to the truth of reality. I rechristened the ship after the name of the one in the novel—the Nautilus. Seemed the least I could do.

  “There are other, sadder cases of those with the gift, but they are often, well, a bit soft in the head. Take those poor bridge folk of yours. The Duke was able to take over their home because they could see him for what he truly was and were rightly terrified.”

  I remembered the look in Prune-face’s eyes when the Duke came stalking toward them. How many horrible things had that old woman witnessed over the years?

  “And what about you?” I asked. “You saw him. You’re not a child. You an artist? Or …”

  The Captain chuckled. “Neither! It’s training, my boy! We Explorers join when we are children, well, young men like yourself. Then we train for years to see past the Veil. Some make it. Most, unfortunately, do not. It takes a steel mind to discipline oneself to avoid the Veil … ALL HANDS PREPARE TO SUBMERGE! TO YOUR STATIONS!”

  I glanced around the empty ship as Scott shouted orders to a crew that wasn’t there and wondered, for what wouldn’t be the last time in our career together—was it discipline that kept the Veil away, or did this Captain have more in common with the bridge folk than he liked to admit?

  But even if the Captain was a touch delusional, the Nautilus was certainly real. Scott continued to bark orders as he flipped a barrage of switches, and the entire vessel began to rattle. A bell dinged somewhere in the distance as my eardrums began to crackle and pop.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted, covering my ears with both hands.

  “Shift in pressure,” the Captain shouted back. “We’re diving!”

  The noise of waves chopping at the ship’s hull gave way to a muffled roar as it was surrounded on all sides by ocean, aft to stern, top to bottom. The nausea lessoned a tad as the ship’s motion steadied, but it was replaced with the cold sweat of absolute terror. I knew we were going to die. The Nautilus would sink until the pressure crushed it like an empty snuffbox. I’d escaped a dead gentleman and a bridge troll, only to die in the deep ocean.

  Or not.

  After a time, when the ship’s quivering had ceased and the pops in my ears subsided, I opened my eyes just a squint and risked a peek. The porthole was dark, and the interior lights of the Nautilus’s bridge lit up the glass like a mirror. But at least the room had stopped spinning. If not for the constant thump of the ship’s engines, I wouldn’t have been able to sense any movement at all. We might have been standing still in any posh room in New York.

  “Are we really … underwater?” I asked.

  “Not quite twenty thousand leagues under the sea, but we are deep enough.” Scott smiled, his teeth shining white beneath his sandy mustache.

  “Have a look.” With that he turned a crank on the wheel, and the lights in the cabin dimmed as the floodlights on the outside of the craft blinked and sputtered once … twice … and lit up with a flash. The deep, impenetrable black of the ocean outside came alive all at once as a school of brightly colored fish zigzagged past the porthole, and for a few seconds it looked like we were in some kind of painter’s dream. But they soon cleared, and what was revealed was … unbelievable. Never had I imagined such a sight. The Nautilus was traveling above a giant trench in the ocean floor. Towering shapes loomed in the distance, which I could only guess were the shadows of some kind of mountain range—a mountain range on the bottom of the ocean! The waters between our ship and those peaks were filled with schools of strange fish swimming through a tangled coral forest. And below, the yawning mouth of the chasm a mile wide, the blue-black ocean disappearing over its edge and from view.

  “That is Kraken’s Gorge. And at the bottom is a very, very big portal.”

  At that moment there was a dull rumble somewhere along the hull of the ship.

  The Captain must’ve caught my worried expression. “Not to fear, just the Nautilus adjusting to the deep water. A kraken hasn’t slithered out of there in a hundred years or more.” This was answered by another, more distant rumble that seemed to come from somewhere much lower, somewhere in the depths of the gorge. Merlin, who’d been perched contentedly on the railing, let out a low whistle.

  “Of course, no need to sail too close, at any rate.” The Captain cough
ed into his hand and turned the wheel, steering the Nautilus farther from the chasm’s edge. “What I wanted to show you is there anyway,” he said, pointing to the far edge of the coral forest. “The Lemuria Outcropping.”

  “The what-what?” I asked. I was glad to see the chasm mouth growing smaller in the porthole, but I was getting awfully tired of understanding only every fifth word out of the Captain’s mouth. “I thought you said we were going to some kid’s bedroom! What are we doing on the bottom of the ocean?”

  “Miles Macintosh lives in England, which is where we’re headed. I just couldn’t resist taking the scenic route. We are about to pass one of the most awesome sights on this planet. Why don’t you look it up for yourself? L for Lemuria.” Scott gestured to a pedestal that stood a few feet from the Captain’s wheel, and resting atop it was the biggest book I had ever seen. It looked old, with sturdy brass bindings and a fat padlock on its front. It was the lock that piqued my interest, of course. Books are nothing to get excited about, much less really big books, but people only put locks on things that are valuable, and I definitely have an interest in valuable things.

  The cover was faded and cracked. I could barely make out an illustration of the Earth, surrounded by a ring of other, smaller planets. “Silly drawing,” I said. “So, what’s the lock about? This thing hollowed out or what? You keep your cash in there?”

  “The Encyclopedia Imagika isn’t worth anything in currency. But the lock does guard a treasure.”

  I tested the cover—it was unlocked. I felt a familiar itch in my fingertips. “So what sort of treasure? Jewels?”

  “Words.”

  That gave me pause. “Words? Words are your big treasure? You’re joking, right?” I flipped open the book, which was no easy task, given the size of the thing, and looked. It was no joke. It was filled with words. There were some sketches of strange buildings and such, but mostly just words.

  “Turn to page one thousand five. Under the heading Lemuria, Ancient.”

  I flipped until I found the page marked one thousand five—which was not even close to the halfway point—and looked it over. About halfway down was a drawing of some kind of temple built into the face of a giant hunk of rock. “This it?”

  “Yes. Now read the entry. Out loud, if you please.”

  “It’s all faded,” I said, quickly letting go of the page. “Besides, I lost my spectacles in the tussle with the Duke.”

  “Glasses? You?”

  “Fine, I’ve just never had much use for reading, all right?”

  “Fair enough,” answered the Captain gently. “There’ll be time enough to correct that, I suppose. What it says is that the Lemuria Outcropping was part of the ancient Lemurian civilization, which disappeared thousands of years ago beneath the waves.”

  “Disappeared? How?”

  “No one knows for sure. Could’ve been an earthquake. Some say it was swallowed by a kraken, though I think that’s a load of poppycock. Regardless, the Outcropping is what they left behind. A single shelf of rock, and the ruins of a temple. But what’s even more astounding, what makes this place so very special, is that Lemuria never existed on Earth!”

  “Sorry?”

  “The ruins fell through the Kraken’s Gorge portal, but they fell through the other side. Into our world. What you are looking at is a chunk of another planet, Tommy.”

  “Can’t see much of anything right now,” I said. The view outside the portal was just mostly black water and shadows again.

  “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.” The Captain threw some kind of switch and the powerful floodlights on the outside of the hull grew even brighter, illuminating more of the dark ocean around us.

  I’ll admit now that I hold on to a few happy memories of my mother. Despite what I said before, there are one or two times that I don’t mind talking about. One was the night she took me to see a play. I can’t remember the name, or much about the story, even—something to do with gods and heroes. But I do remember the scenery. It seemed enormous at the time, a wall of tall stone columns and ornate arches, lit by flickering footlights and multicolored lanterns. The backdrop was a painted landscape of purple clouds drifting over a burning orange sun. Though my mother explained that the whole thing was just a construction of paint and wood, I hadn’t believed her. It was too massive, too solid to be anything but real, weather-beaten stone. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I had ever seen.

  All that was gift paper compared to the temple of Lemuria. Perched atop a tall outcropping of rock, the underwater temple dwarfed the Nautilus. It was so gigantic that the ship’s floodlights could light up only a small portion of the whole thing. A twisting archway, broken in places and barnacle-covered, shone green-gray in the lights. Beyond were the ruins of a once-great building, now a graveyard of toppled statues and crumbled chambers.

  But what unnerved me, what caught my breath in my throat and kept it there, were the proportions of the place. They were all wrong. The steps were not carved for ordinary feet. The gates were not built to be opened by human hands.

  This was not a massive temple built for men … this was a small temple built for something much bigger.

  “Giants,” I whispered.

  “Hmm?” asked Scott. “Oh, yes. I suppose so. The Lemurians were on the largish side. Which, again, makes the kraken theory a bit suspect.”

  The Nautilus slowed as we approached the arch. The water here was hazy and thick with silt. The effect was like driving a carriage through the fog—the diffused light played tricks on your eyes.

  “I … it’s just … I’ve never dreamed …”

  Scott chuckled. “I know, I know. This is all a whirlwind, Tommy, and for that I apologize. But I had to take quite a detour to come get you, and that’s put us behind schedule. You’re going to have to learn as you go—”

  The Captain was interrupted by a bell dinging somewhere, followed by another even shriller than the first. Merlin began to whistle and chirp in a way that I recognized. I’d heard that song plenty of times in the last few weeks—it meant trouble.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Scott pulled a long cylinder down from the ceiling and peered through a kind of window at its base. It looked like one of those moving-picture boxes you’d see at fairs and the like.

  “Unbelievable,” the Captain said, clucking his tongue. “Of all the things …”

  “What?”

  “Bit embarrassed to say it, but it looks like we’re about to be swallowed by a kraken.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JEZEBEL

  NEW YORK CITY, TODAY

  Bernie removed his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as he let out a long, worried sigh. “I know how it sounds. But you must believe me, Tommy Learner is long dead and buried.”

  “It sounds like a load of—”

  “Language, now, young lady.”

  “Forget my language, Bernie. I’m telling you he’s not dead. He can’t be—I saw him. He spoke to me!”

  “A great poet once said that there was more to this Earth than is imagined in your philosophy.”

  “Okay, there is something weird going on—but it has got to be something explainable! Something to do with, like, magnetic fields or gas leaks that cause hallucinations or … anything other than a … a ghost story.”

  “Would you prefer that? Would you really rather learn that this is all in your head? A silly daydream, maybe?”

  Jezebel started to answer in the affirmative, but she hesitated. What did she want the truth to be? As of yesterday, when she first saw Tommy in the basement, her life had become … unique. Terrifying, yes, but also unique. In the last day and a half she’d experienced excitement that had nothing to do with ex–best friends or first kisses or growing up. Her life had suddenly turned mysterious; did she want to chalk all that up to an overactive imagination?

  “Then what is the truth, Bernie? What’s going on?”

  The old man shoo
k his head. “I don’t know everything, myself. But Tommy Learner was a member of the Explorers’ Society, a secret organization that existed over a hundred years ago. The Explorers are all gone now—disappeared. But if you are right, if that really was Tommy, somehow, miraculously, alive and in the flesh, then he’s the very last one.”

  Jezebel looked at Bernie, this little old man surrounded by bits and pieces of junk, and thought of people who sit in their basements wearing tinfoil hats, afraid the Martians are trying to get into their minds. But if Bernie needed a tinfoil hat, then Jez should start making one, too. She was just as crazy as he was.

  “How do you know all this stuff?” she asked.

  Bernie walked over to the closet and pulled down a giant, leather-bound book. The old man grunted and groaned as he hauled it over to the table. The mechanical bird whistled at him.

  “It’s all right, Merlin,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m lifting with my legs.”

  The book landed on the table with a loud thump, spilling newspapers everywhere and sending little springs and cogs rolling in all directions.

  “This book,” he said, breathing heavily, “is called the Encyclopedia Imagika. It’s part history of the Explorers’ Society, part encyclopedia of the bizarre, and part textbook. You can see it’s a bit unwieldy.”

  Jezebel stepped forward and ran her hands along the spine. It felt old and sturdy. On the cover was a kind of padlock that dangled, broken, from its clasp.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous, but according to this book, these Explorers traveled between different worlds,” Bernie said.

  “What, you mean like astronauts?”

  “No, more like inter-nauts. They didn’t travel through outer space. They traveled through inter-space. You’ve heard of quantum mechanics?”

  Jez nodded. “Sure. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and somebody’s cat explodes here in New York.”

  “Eh, not quite, but close. At its most basic, it means that everything is connected. And beyond your charming butterfly/cat example, that means that many planets in our great universe are connected by more than just distance. The Explorers called them portals. Today we would call them wormholes.”