A Company of Heroes Book Four: The Scientist (20 page)

She found the professor on his hands and knees collecting bits of lichen from the rim of a tiny, hissing fumarole a hundred yards beyond the outer perimeter of the camp. Holding a damp handkerchief over her nose against the sulfurous fumes, she showed him the copied map.

“What do you think of this?” she asked.

“Where did you get this?” he replied, and she told him.

“Interesting,” observed the professor. “Not honestly procurred, but interesting. He certainly doesn’t seem to know much about geography, does he?”

“I think that it’s speculative geography,” the princess said, “if I’m not coining a term. I think that this is what the world is
going
to look like. See? Skupshtina Island is almost exactly in the center of this so-called Tudeland
.
And look: the dotted line is almost perfectly circular. Doesn’t that suggest something to you?”

“Not really.”

“Do you mind if we go over there to talk?” she asked, pointing to a broad, flat boulder that protruded shelf--like from the gently rising ground a hundred yards away. “These fumes are making me sick.

“You and Tudela have both told me,” she continued once they had reached a strata of sweeter air, “that he intends to drop the moon not only onto the earth, but that it’s going to drop right here, right on top of Skupshtina Island. What if this Tudeland is what’s left of the moon after it falls?”

“That’s possible, that’s possible,” the professor mused, sitting down on the prickly surface and staring at the map. “It’s quite possible. But look here: this Tudeland is nowhere near big enough to account for the mass of the moon. At first glance I would have told you that your suggestion is untenable. But I’ve been thinking about this coming collision. There is a point above the earth where a large object could not orbit without unbalanced tidal forces tearing it apart. One of the Academy’s mathematicians calculated this and it’s called Mozzuferplore’s Boundary in her honor. If the moon were to simply drop onto us, like an interplanetary meteoroid, it would pass through this critical distance relatively unscathed, it would, after all, take some time for a body the size of the smaller moon to be disintegrated by internal tides. However, the moon is not dropping onto us, it is spiralling in gradually. I suspect that it will have more than enough time to be torn into a number of fairly large pieces before any one of them can enter the atmosphere and reach the surface. It would not take all that large a piece to create this Tudeland. Perhaps this area on the map indicates that Tudela expects only the core to survive.”

“What about the rest?”

“Oh, the creation of Tudeland would of course automatically stop the effects of the good doctor’s machinery and without that influence I suspect that the remainder of the moon would simply stay in orbit.”

“So the whole idea behind his scheme is to create this new island?”

“Continent, rather; this Tudeland is awfully large, as you can see. But, yes, apparently that’s his idea.”

“That’s what I thought, too. We’ve got to stop this, of course.”

“Well, yes. I have to agree with you. The fall of even such a relatively small remnant would prove catastrophic to the rest of the world.”

“What would happen?”

“Earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves miles high, that sort of thing. The impact would no doubt reduce all of the modern world to subprimitive barbarism. If, of course, it doesn’t eradicate life from the planet entirely.”

“I would have thought that such an impact would create a huge hole, like the craters on the moon, not a new landmass.”

“That’s because the constitution of the moon is quite un-like that of any other celestial body.”

“How do you mean?”

“One of the things that I discerned while visiting our doomed neighbor is that its composition is much like that of a spongecake. You know that I was puzzled at how such a relatively large body could contain so much gold in its composition, yet not have nearly the mass it ought to have. The answer is that the whole body of the moon is porous, sponge-like, riddled through and through by millions upon millions of bubbles. When it hits the earth, it will simply collapse, like a failed soufflé.”

“Leaving Tudela with a fresh, new continent all his own.”

“I suppose that’s the idea.”

“But he’s planning to devastate most of the planet in the process, just so he can have a continent he can call his own! The man’s out of his mind.”

“Out of his mind or not, the problem is that he’s fully capable of carrying out such a scheme. In fact, he’s doing it at this very moment. The process may already be irreversable.”

“Well, we’ve still got to try to stop him, that’s all.”

“How?”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“I wouldn’t be terribly leisurely about it, if I were you,” suggested the professor, rising and dusting off the seat of his trousers. “It is probably only a matter of days before the fall of the moon is absolutely irrevocable and anything that we do won’t stop it.”

Think about it Bronwyn did and by the following afternoon she decided to act upon the only idea she managed to develop. She and the professor were undertaking another of their afternoon strolls along the windy clifftops. This time, once they had reached the terminus of a prominent, flinty buttress that flung itself in a soaring arch out into the deep water fifty yards from the cliffs, she horrified Wittenoom by insisting that she needed to navigate its treacherously narrow, mossy, wet spine. While the poor man waited, gnawing his fingernails, the princess, like some high-wire artist, tottered gingerly over the convex, slippery surface, her arms extended, her jacket whipping disconcertingly like a ballooning sail in the powerful, misty gusts that swept up the face of the cliff, threatening to wipe her from the slick black surface like a damp rag erasing a chalk figure drawn on a blackboard. She was immensely sorry that she had not thought of taking the coat off and knew now that it was impossible to perform any action not directly related to maintaining her precarious balance. She found herself desperately wishing that Rykkla were here rather than herself: the circus girl could have danced to the end of the arch and back with a lively step and a cheery yodel on her lips. The mental image made Bronwyn feel even dizzier.

The spine of the arch ended in a kind of low dome that sloped off in three directions in precipitous drops to the raging olivine waves. Bronwyn carefully lowered herself to one knee, bracing herself with the opposite hand. From the waistband of her trousers she removed a green glass wine bottle that she had securely corked with a heavy blob of red sealing wax. From a string tied around its long neck was a cardboard shipping tag on which was written, in grease pencil,

Grasping the bottle by the neck she threw it as far as possible into the breakers that were pounding against the monolith. She watched the tiny, glinting object for several anxious minutes, until she was assured that the current and ebbing tide were combining to take it away from the island. With even more apprehension than before, she renavigated the treacherous path back to the clifftop and her almost prostrate companion. Only now, it seemed, was she entirely aware of the jagged rocks two hundred feet below, as lashed with churning foam as the teeth of a rabid dog. Focussing her attention on the professor and desperately trying to develop a sense of tunnel vision, she crept on hands and knees until, heart pounding like a trip hammer, she fell, faint, nauseated and pale as a sheet of decent bond paper, panting like a donkey engine, into Wittenoom’s shaking arms.

Not more than two days had passed after Bronwyn’s experiment at the rim of the island before there was a knock at the door of Tudela’s house. The doctor was, according to his habitual wont, long since at his sinister labors, the professor was cocooned in the library and the princess, left to herself, had been curled in the seat of a bay window, reading, when she heard a rapping at the door. She waited a moment to see if the professor would answer, though she knew that it was a forgone conclusion that he would not. The knock was discretely repeated and with an ungracious and exasperated sigh, she rose and went to the door. Opening it revealed a person who was not only a stranger to her, but looked very much like a stranger to the human race. He was a small man, a full foot or more shorter than Bronwyn, dressed in a simple but impressively tailored uniform of blue-grey cloth that had an expensive-looking metallic sheen to it, as though it were covered with iridescent scales. It was simply decorated with silver epaulets, frogs, buttons and stripes and was accompanied by a military hat whose high crown was adorned with an elaborate silver device of seahorses and dolphins. The face that was revealed between these two bits of operetta costume was immensely more interesting. Round, with enormous yellow eyes set so far apart that the princess wondered that he didn’t have to look crosseyed to see her, short button nose, wide mouth with a disconcerting harelip splitting his philtrum, and a distinctly visible fuzzy coating of grey hair all over. His eyebrows were but a dozen long, stiff hairs sticking out at a surprised angle and he had a drooping moustache of even longer bristles that arched down past his almost nonexistent chin.
He looks,
thought Bronwyn,
for all the world like a melancholy cat!

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I thertainly hope tho,” he replied in a fruity voice that, oddly, was not at all unpleasant. “My name ith Captain Wow and I’m looking for, um, “ he consulted a card in his hand “, Printheth Bronwyn Tedethchiy?”

“You’ve succeeded.”

“Pardon?”

“I am Princess Bronwyn. How may I help you?”

He looked surreptitiously from side to side before leaning forward slightly to reply, “I don’t think that I thould tell you that out here. May I come in?”

Bronwyn could see no reason why not and stood aside. Captain Wow entered with a curiously graceful movement.
He really
does
look just like a cat!
Bronwyn realized. As she shut the door behind her visitor and turned to face him, Captain Wow held out his hand and she took it. like his face, it was covered with a soft grey down. The fingers were unnaturally short, half the length of her own.

“I apologize for dithturbing you and for the nethethity of acting tho thecretively. I am,” and he lowered his hushed, sibilant voice even further, “an agent for Lord Thithcundman.”

“Sithcundman!” the princess cried, and the captain winced, glancing furtively from side to side. “It’s all right,” she said, noticing her visitor’s anxiety, “there’s no one here but Professor Wittenoom and myself.”

“Profethor . . . ?”

“He’s a very good friend and in just as much trouble as I am.”

“I thee. Well, then. Ah. Lord Thithcundman hath thent me in reponth to your methage.”

“He got the bottle!”

“Of courth. You addrethed it to him, did you not?”

“Look, Captain, would you care to come in and sit down? I don’t know how you got here, but it couldn’t have been an easy journey, as I know from experience. Can I get you anything? Something to eat? Something to drink?”

“You’re very kind. What do you have?”

“We’ll see,” she replied, and, indicating that he should follow her, led him to the kitchen. She gestured to a chair and turned to open the mechanical icebox. When she turned again, laden with cold cuts, beer and cheese, the captain was bent over the sink, where Tudela’s servant had just placed the breakfast dishes, making snuffling sounds.

“Captain?”

“Thith ith very nice,” he said, raising his head from the porcelain basin and licking his lips.

“May I ask a personal question, one that I hope will not be too impertinent?”

“Of courth; I am your thervant.”

“How is it that Sithcundman has a human being at his service? I mean, exactly where did you come from?”

“Ah! That’th not impertinent at all; it’th a very reathonable and underthtandable curiothity. I’d athk the thame thing mythelf, were I in your plathe. May I thit?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” and she sat as well, facing her odd visitor from across the small wooden table. She absently chewed on a piece of cheese as he spoke, thinking that she liked this odd little person very much.

“If I’m not mithtaken, Lord Thithcundman wath oneth inthtrumental in tranthforming you into a merperthon.”

“You’re perfectly correct; he did, saving my life thereby.”

“It wath thomething that had not occured for a very long time and wath the talk from one thide of the Great Thea to the other. You were quite a thenthation, if I may thay tho!”

“Uh, thank you.”

“Your, um, abdication wath equally thenthational. Few have ever athked to be returned to the earth. Your requetht wath, to put it baldly, both unprethedented and incomprehenthible.”

“Well, I thought that my reasons were sound.”

“Oh! of courth! I have no doubt that they were, no doubt at all. In fact, it hath made you thomething of a thelebrity.”

“I hope that no one took offense!”

“No! No! Not at all! Not at all!”

“Does that have something to do with why you are here? Do you want my autograph, or something?”

“No, thank you. Well, yeth I would, of courth. But what I meant wath, no, that’th not the thpecific reathon that brought me here. Lord Thithcundman wath very dithturbed by your letter. The eventh that you predict would be devathtating to the Triton’th empire, ath you evidently realized: there would obviouthly be very little left of the Great Thea with the moon occupying motht of it. To do anything about it at all obviouthly requireth drathtic thtepth.”