Chapter Three

Rendezvous at the Admiralty

1.

AS WAS TO BE wholly expected, Mister Enderby was already in the room by the time Folkard and Nathaniel arrived. Laid out on the table in front of him was a calico sheet onto which had been arranged charred and twisted relics of metal and glass.

“Where is Doctor Fontaine?”

“En route, and rather the worse for wear,” said Folkard bitterly, removing his cap and hanging it on the hat-stand. “There was talk of a champagne fountain, as well as other…distractions. My apologies.”

“Quite. I see no reason not to proceed,” said Enderby stiffly.

Nathaniel looked across to Folkard. The naval man stared back coldly.

Nathaniel was nonplussed by Folkard’s odd behaviour. It was almost as if Folkard couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. He shrugged it off, and when Nathaniel bent down to examine the remnants laid out on the table, any irritation he felt over the spy’s brusque attitude or Folkard’s rudeness instantly dissipated. If Enderby lacked manners, he could be forgiven for bringing Nathaniel so intriguing a collection. The pieces laid on the sheet ranged in size from an almost complete side of casing roughly five inches long to tiny cogs and brass coils no more than a centimetre in circumference. There were also chunks of thick glass, the inner curve of which was covered in a gritty powder, almost like a pale green sand.

“Fascinating,” muttered Nathaniel, removing a pair of ornate, multi-lensed pince-nez which he quickly adjusted and balanced on his nose, peering ever closer at the fragments.

“Our chaps have already given it the once over, of course,” sniffed Enderby.

“Do you have a copy of their findings?” asked Folkard in a clipped tone, and Enderby removed a sheaf of parchments from a black leather carpet bag and passed them across. Folkard flicked idly though the first couple of pages.

“All ancient Greek to me, I’m afraid. Stone, you’ll have to look.”

“Yes yes,” muttered Nathaniel, distracted. “One moment.” He removed a pencil from his pocket and began to prod at a piece of glass. “This substance,” he said. “The silica. What did your chaps make of that?”

“Possibly some form of copper residue, they thought. Right kind of colour.”

“Hmm.” Nathaniel rubbed his finger on the inside of one of the glass pieces and rubbed the grit between his fingers before sniffing it experimentally. He recoiled.

“I’m not sure I agree. May I remove some of it for study?”

“So long as some of it remains for our chaps.”

Satisfied (at least for the moment) Nathaniel folded his glasses up and replaced them in his case. He took the papers from Folkard and began to pace as his eyes flicked through the figures and sketches at a remarkable speed.

“Your…‘chaps’,” he said to Enderby as he paced, “none of them are horologists, I take it?”

“Clockmakers, you mean? What difference would that make?” asked Enderby shortly, before adding, “Professor Stone.”

“Nothing in terms of function, but a lot in terms of artistry. I notice in these notes that none of your,” (and here he cleared his throat) “chaps seemed to notice the single most interesting thing about these remains.”

“And that is?” asked Enderby archly.

“The design.”

“If I could refer you to the third page of the document, Professor Stone, the design is described as operating at a level above the usual backstreet competence, with a higher than usual explosive yield and several mechanisms inserted to prevent tampering, diffusion or lateral transport of said device.”

“Very good,” said Nathaniel, looking up from the papers. “That was word-for-word. But I’m not talking about the prosaic mechanisms of the device’s function, Mister. Enderby. I’m talking about aesthetics.”

“Aesthetics?” asked Folkard, engaging with Nathaniel for the first time. “Do you mean to say…?”

“That this device was not built by someone blind to beauty, yes.”

At Nathaniel’s beckoning, the three men gathered around the table. He pointed out the largest surviving piece of the bomb’s casing, which was etched with an ornate, curling wave pattern from end to end. “Of course, it could just be that the blackguard that built it used some scrap metal with the design already on it. But then I noticed something more interesting.” Using a pair of tweezers he had removed from the inside of his frock coat, Nathaniel picked up one of the gears from the cloth—about half an inch round, and remarkably intact—and gestured around the circumference with his little finger.

“A cog, I’m sure you will agree, that could be found in any broken watch throughout the Empire. Only look here, around the rim. Any industrially produced cog would be rougher in cast, but this is exquisite workmanship—polished, refined. I’ll wager it was hand-made. The same goes for many other of these pieces, gentleman. We are dealing with a sociopath who takes an uncommon amount of pride in his work.”

“And what about the residue?” asked Folkard.

“I’d need to get a sample to my lab. Arnaud may be of no small assistance there.”

And speaking of the French devil, he appeared. Despite the gravity of the situation, Arnaud’s eyes were puffy and red and his face seemed to sag around his dewlap. More hirsute than usual and with his collar undone, he walked with a stoop and groaned with every step.

“Good night, Arnaud?” commented Folkard, his voice chilled. Without answering, Arnaud flopped into a chair and put his head in his hands. Smirking, Nathaniel crossed to the drinks cabinet and fetched a soda siphon to help alleviate the young geologist’s suffering.

After Arnaud, entered Bedford and Annabelle. The latter looked radiant, and the former had a spring in his step that had never, Nathaniel noted, been noticeable before.

“Mrs Bedford,” smiled Enderby icily. “I did not think you would be attending us this morning.”

“That,” said Annabelle brightly, “is because you did not invite me. However, I decided not to let that one small detail prevent me from accompanying my husband. After all, why should you boys have all the fun, eh?”

“I can assure you, Mister Enderby,” said Folkard, watching as Nathaniel passed Arnaud a glass of seltzer, “that Mrs Bedford is as useful an asset as any here, and probably far more so than Doctor Fontaine, given his current state.”

“C’est des conneries,” muttered Arnaud, sipping and grimacing. “This isn’t brandy…”

2.

NATHANIEL HAD INITIALLY wished to use his own finely-calibrated equipment to continue the investigation, but Enderby would hear none of it. Expanding, as it was, from a grand and rather stuffy seat of military leadership into a substantial interplanetary power, the Admiralty was forever adapting and adding to its myriad corridors and anterooms. Many of these additions had been scientific in nature, with both the Crown and the Navy keen to maintain their technological superiority over the rest of the world. Therefore, Nathaniel and the rest of the party were led through the labyrinthine building to a wing that smelled of ozone and sulphur. Wooden walls had given way to white tiling, the clack of typewriters replaced by the hum and groan of steam and engines.

Having begged a brandy, Arnaud was suitably recovered and was being informed of events by Bedford. Enderby strode ahead, with Nathaniel, Folkard and Annabelle maintaining a discreet distance behind him. He reached a door, spun around on his heels, and waited for the rest of the group to catch up with him.

“Mrs Bedford,” said Enderby. “I’m afraid this is where your journey today must end.”

“Now look here,” scowled Annabelle, “as Captain Folkard so rightfully pointed out, I’ve done my fair share of adventuring across the inner planets, and if you think I’m about to turn back after everything I’ve been through…”

Enderby’s face, usually so stoic, seemed to soften as he looked at Annabelle’s resolution. It seemed he knew something she did not. “Mrs Bedford, please understand that your capabilities are not, nor will they ever be, in question. My reticence to allow you further is rather more…delicate in nature.”

“And which issue,” hissed Annabelle, “is the most pressing this time? That I am a woman, that I am a cripple, or that I am a foreigner?”

“Alas, Mrs Bedford, it is none of the above.”

Enderby’s callous and condescending manner pushed Annabelle over the edge. Before Bedford could even dare to reach forward to hook her arm, she had barged past Enderby and swept through into the door beyond with a swish of her skirts.

To find herself staring into the eyes of her uncle, the volatile genius known as Cyrus Grant. She was taken aback, stopped and stared at her shoes, while her uncle looked down, away from her, gripping the edge of a workbench tightly. The others followed Annabelle in, with Enderby entering last. Faces fell, discomfort and unease were prevalent in the air. Enderby cut through the mire of discontent with typical sang froid.

“I did say, Mrs Bedford, it was delicate.” As he picked a mote of fluff from his lapel, he was the only one who moved.

Moments passed.

Annabelle gritted her teeth.

“Where were you, uncle?” she hissed.

Grant couldn’t look her in the eye, waved a vague circle with his left hand and turned away. “The bombing,” he said, his back to her. “Matter of national security. Have to show them which side you’re on.”

“My wedding,” she begged. And with his back to her he waved her off again, like an idle farmhand would bat away a fly.

“Doctor Grant has been assisting us,” purred Enderby. “He seems to believe there’s a link between yesterday’s bombing and an Irish…connection we have. And if you follow the fuse the match was lit in Russia.”

“Russian dogs,” muttered Grant, hugging himself.

Enderby caught Nathaniel’s eye.

“We were wondering, Professor Stone,” he said sadly. “If you could carry on where the good doctor left off. His notes are in the left-hand pile.”

Nathaniel glanced at the left-hand pile, and saw more the beginnings of a small campfire than scientific rigour. “It’ll… take some time,” he murmured.

“Then perhaps it may be advisable for you to start afresh, Professor.” Both Nathaniel and Enderby looked at Grant, who was pacing in a small circle and muttering to himself. For a second, Nathaniel caught a glimpse of his old friend’s face—a face quite unlike the man he had known, with wild, roving eyes, a sallow, jaundiced complexion and tufted, wrangled hair. Grant looked away almost instantly.

3.

WHILE NATHANIEL TRIED to make head from tail of Grant’s notes—a mishmash of formulas, esoteric sketches and snatches of wild, improbable conspiracy theories concerning the moon and a Russian incursion—Arnaud busied himself with the mysterious green residue found within the bomb. He had set up a workstation opposite Nathaniel and was gazing into an ornate brass microscope. Next to him whirred a powerful clockwork centrifuge while a test tube rack held various brightly-coloured acids and solvents to his left. Once in a while, the two would look up and catch each other’s eye, and more than once Nathaniel found himself gazing at the Frenchman’s cheeky grin. Yet Nathaniel could only muster a wan grin in return. The notes over which he pored were not written by a man of sound mind. Often, numbers would transmute into letters, while formulas mutated into nonsensical, paranoid rants and back again, often employing strange, arcane symbols that were not the written language of any earthly tribe. Whatever Grant had gleaned from his studies of the charred remains of the explosive device, no light would be shed by these madcap scribblings. It was like they were written by two different people holding the same pen.

Grant had remained in the lab after Folkard, Enderby and Bedford had left to discuss events in a room of the Admiralty more conducive to such discussions. As far as he could tell, the erstwhile doctor was now sat at a bench on the other side of the room, his back to everybody else. A collection of seemingly unconnected fragments of machinery was sat on the desk before him, and as he arranged these in patterns and piles he muttered to himself and, more worryingly, giggled occasionally.

Annabelle had declined Bedford’s offer to retire to a more comfortable environment, and elected to stay in the laboratory with her uncle. As yet she had not dared to approach him. She merely sat and gazed across at the old man’s back, her face flitting uncertainly between disdain and concern. She did not even seem to acknowledge that Nathaniel and Arnaud were there.

“Nathaniel, if you please.”

Without lifting his gaze from the microscope, Arnaud beckoned for Nathaniel to join him. Relieved to abandon the perturbing papers, he crossed to Arnaud’s side. “Have a look,” Arnaud said.

Nathaniel peered into the eyepiece. It was much as he has suspected—definitely crystalline in nature, with some of the larger chunks hexagonal in shape. They were a curiously pale green, the colour of desiccated grassland, and yet flecks of a darker emerald shade pitted the insides of the crystals.

“Curious impurities,” he murmured.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“And the composition? Could it be some sort of copper derivative?”

“No, I don’t think so. As far as I can tell, it seems to be silicate in nature. Silicate and… Organic.”

Nathaniel bolted up. “Organic?”

“Oui. And here,” Arnaud gently removed the slide and carefully slid another into the stage clips. “Look at this.” He twisted the lens around to increase the magnification fivefold.

Nathaniel looked again. Another, larger crystal greeted him, and here the impurities were far more defined. While some remained as flakes and grains, others looked like snapped pieces of hollow tubing, running parallel to the crystal’s grain.

“Why,” whispered Nathaniel, “I could almost swear they were…”

“Parenchyma,” finished Arnaud. “Or schlerenchyma.” He grinned. “I could never remember which was which.”

“Schlerenchyma,” grinned Nathaniel back. “The supporting tissues of plants. But that would mean…a plant made of crystals. Of silicon.”

“It’s only a hypothesis.”

“And an intriguing one, at that.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“Not in my travels, no. But there remains much of the cosmos to explore. It’s hardly worth saying that, if true, this is a plant that has doubtless never grown on this planet before, perhaps not even the inner planets…” He looked at Arnaud, like an expectant teacher before a pupil, and asked “What else do you think?”

Suddenly, Grant swept his arm across the desk and pitched his assorted detritus across the room.

“No!” he yelled, bolting up and pacing, tugging on his hair. “I won’t have it, no!”

“Doctor Grant…”

“Uncle!” Annabelle, wrenched from her despondent reverie by her uncle’s manic outburst, dashed across to him and grabbed him by the arm. Grant roughly pushed her away and, unsteady on her prosthetic limb, she tumbled into a desk. Arnaud, who was closer, swooped to help while Nathaniel dashed to try and calm the crazed scientist.

“Doctor Grant, really!”

“No, Stone, no! I won’t have it, I just won’t have it! Do you hear me! No!” He barged past Nathaniel and stormed to the door, ripping it open and slamming it shut in his wake.

Arnaud comforted Annabelle, who had settled onto a high stool and was breathing heavily, on the verge of tears.

“Oh Nathaniel,” she breathed, “I try to put him from my mind, I really do. I could do that yesterday, when grander things were happening, but now…to be confronted with his madness… Pain and discord and danger, whenever he appears in my life. To think he is the only member of my family that remains….”

Nathaniel took her hands in his, and smiled gently. “Well, that’s not strictly true now, is it?” Annabelle sniffed, and Nathaniel continued. “I believe that yesterday you made a family of your very own.”

Despite herself, Annabelle looked up and smiled. “Regardless,” she said, “to see Uncle Cyrus so beset by his madness… He’s like a different person, Nathaniel. A person I don’t know any more.”

Nathaniel nodded, grave. That so disturbing a degeneration could follow such brilliance—was that the inevitable price of genius?

It was at that point the door creaked open. Three heads whirled around to see the entrants, and when Bedford saw his bride with puffed eyelids and damp cheeks, he rushed across to take her hand. Folkard stepped in calmly behind him.

“Annabelle,” fussed Bedford, running his hand through her hair, “are you all right?”

“I’m fine, George, fine,” and Annabelle composed herself. “Please stop fussing.”

“I take it,” said Folkard gravely, “That Mrs Bedford’s distress is somehow linked to Doctor Grant’s speedy exit?”

“We saw your uncle make his way down the corridor away from us,” said Bedford to Annabelle. “He was…agitated. We called, but he didn’t respond.”

“Out of nowhere!” exclaimed Arnaud, throwing his hands in his air. “The man just exploded! Pushed poor Annabelle to one side and rushed from the room.”

Folkard looked around for somewhere to sit but, judging a lab stool inadequate, remained standing. “Yes,” he said gravely. “I have been informed that the good doctor’s behaviour of late has been…troubling.”

“To put it mildly,” said Nathaniel. “How on Earth did he come to be working in the Admiralty?”

“Just turned up one day,” Folkard said. “Mad as a March hare and twice as jumpy. Demanded to be let in, then pretty much locked himself away and wouldn’t speak to anyone. I did try to persuade him to attend yesterday, Annabelle. To no avail. I hope you can forgive me for keeping his presence hidden.”

Annabelle nodded her forgiveness.

“His sudden arrival was sinister, to say the least. As are…other developments.” Folkard grimaced.

Arnaud, Nathaniel and Annabelle stared at Folkard. Folkard looked away, disturbed.

“We have intercepted certain heliographs. We can’t as yet be sure of their source but they seem to indicate that one of Doctor Grant’s crazed ramblings is correct. There is, indeed, a connection to the Irish Separatist movement.”

“How so?” asked Nathaniel.

“We’re not sure as yet. All very vague. It will require some digging on ground level, so to speak.” And here Folkard looked pointedly at Nathaniel, before looking away. He crossed to the bench Arnaud had occupied for most of the afternoon and lifted a test tube, held it to the light and peered into it. “Fontaine, Stone… How did your investigations fare?”

“We’ve made some progress,” answered Arnaud, non-committally.

“And that progress is…?”

“We can’t be sure,” said Nathaniel. “The residue seems to be some sort of plant. A plant not known on this planet.”

“And we’re not even sure of that,” added Arnaud.

“Is there a way to be sure?” said a voice.

Everybody wheeled around. Standing nonchalantly by the door was Enderby, once more holding a lit cigarillo.

“Ah, possibly,” said Arnaud, somewhat stunned. “An old associate… Teacher, I guess you would say. When I studied at the Sorbonne. But it may be difficult.”

“My job,” purred Enderby, “is dealing with the difficult. Go on.”

“His name is Garrecreux. Fabrice Garrecreux. A genius when it comes to organic crystallography. As an undergraduate both he and Professor Fournier wanted me to assist each of them with their research. I was flattered at the time, no doubt pompous—though now I realise it was more to do with academic rivalry than my own talents, however substantial they may be. In the end, Garrecreux’s advances were…unwelcome.” Here Arnaud looked down, and didn’t look up. “I chose Professor Fournier, thankfully, and Garrecreux never spoke to me again.”

“Will he speak to you now?” asked Enderby.

Arnaud shrugged.

“The last I heard he had fled France, was living in India. Somewhere near Calcutta, researching the crystalline properties of a hemp plant. Cannabis indica. This was all years ago.”

“I’ll see what we’ve got on him,” said Enderby, stubbing out his untouched cigar on a worktop. “Pack your safari suit, Doctor Fontaine. And a hat for the heat.”

“And that’s it?” Nathaniel asked. “You’re packing Arnaud off to India?”

“And you to Dublin, Professor Stone. Pack a windbreaker. Possibly galoshes.”

Nathaniel shot a glance at Folkard, his gaze furious.

“Captain, you can’t…” Folkard looked him straight in the eye.

“I can, Stone,” he said. “And will. There has been an attack on our soil and on her Sovereign Majesty. And there are calls louder and greater than even the Navy can deny. Is there a problem, might I ask, with you and Doctor Fontaine being separated?”

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow, his posture still and uncompromising. He scrutinised Folkard for a moment.

“And if we are, what of you?” he asked.

“Captain Folkard is required elsewhere,” said Enderby. “Unfortunate, but necessary. Please believe me, Professor Stone. I am more than aware of the dangers you have faced, and overcome, as a group. But when faced with such a pernicious enemy, our only hope is to spread our net wide, and hope to God the gaps are wide enough to catch a kraken.”

“I cannot help but notice,” said a small, sudden voice, “that I have not been mentioned.” The voice came from Annabelle, and it was pure and pointed. “And neither has my husband.”

“Well,” grinned Enderby, carelessly lighting another cheroot, “that may be because you have a honeymoon to enjoy. Courtesy of the Crown.”