The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (21 page)

It takes a few minutes before everyone stops coughing and spluttering. And then it’s Edgar who is the first to speak. “Well,” he says, “I hope they didn’t go that way.”

“No, they went up the steps,” says Jack.

“Then why didn’t they say something?” Jim asks, suddenly aware that he’s shivering.

“You said before that they’d get their heads knocked off going up that way,” Cliff Rhodes reminds Jack. “Wouldn’t it be better if they’d gone through the hole?”

Jack doesn’t respond.

“I think they went through the hole,” Cliff says.

“Ed?”

“I dunno, Jack,” Edgar says. “If we’d thought, then maybe we could have seen footprints or hand marks.” He shines the flashlight beam in front of the hole and the steady dust-cloud still issuing from it. “But I just don’t know.”

“Maybe they went up through the manhole cover and just —” Jim claps his hands, one hand shooting off in front of the other. “— skidaddled.”

“Without saying anything?”

“Well, they went through here,” Edgar sighs, “then I reckon they’re flattened by now.”

“They went through the hole,” Cliff says again. “And they’re not flattened. They’re on their way on a great adventure.”

“What makes you so sure?” Jim asks. “That they went through the hole?”

“Or the adventure part,” Jack adds.

“Faith,” Cliff says.

“Faith? What the hell has faith got to do with it?” Edgar snorts.

Jack leans over in front of the hold, hand over his mouth. “There’s no way anyone could get through that,” he says, indicating the pile of rubble inside the hole.

“It wasn’t like that when we first got here, Jack,” Cliff Rhodes says in a measured tone. “And as for what faith has got to do with which way they want,” he adds, turning to Edgar, “I can only say that faith has got something to do with everything.” “I think we’re gonna start singing hymns,” Jack says to Jim Leafman. And then, “You okay?”

“I need to pee.”

“Let’s go back,” Jack announces. “We can’t do anything here.”

On the way back, Edgar taps Cliff Rhodes on the shoulder. “So, okay, tell me about faith.”

“Faith can be interpreted as positive thinking,” Cliff begins. “You heard all those stories about people lifting autos off of injured relatives? How you think that happens?”

Edgar sniggers. “That’s strength, bud,” he says.

“Okay, so how come those same people were unable to lift anything like what they did lift when the need wasn’t as great?”

The light of Jack’s outer corridor can now be seen in front of them and tensions ease . . . not to mention the strain on Jim Leafman’s bladder.

“Those two guys had faith in abundance,” Cliff continues. “The stories about Verne’s book, the heritage of the little guy —”

“Meredith,” says Jim.

“— Right, Meredith. Maybe he was the descendant of the guy who went in Verne’s story — which calls for an earlier maybe, of course . . . that the story was real. And maybe the parchment was real which means that maybe the second entrance was real.”

“If it was, it ain’t no more!” Edgar says.

Cliff stops at the doorway back into the main corridor and, placing one foot on top of a crate of Budweisers, he says, “You know, Edgar, you’re a downer.”

“What the hell’s a downer?”

“It’s someone who has to poo poo everything that someone else says, or thinks or believes.”

“Poo poo’?”

“See?”

Edgar’s mouth clamps shut.

He waits a few seconds, staring at Edgar, and then Cliff Rhodes says, “I think it’s my turn to tell a story.”

“Can I pee first?” Jim asks.

“I’ll get more beers,” Jack announces.

11 A sense of closure

Sitting back around the table, fresh beers in front of them, the four men listen intently as Cliff Rhodes begins.

“This is probably apocryphal.”

“A pock of what?” a now calm Jim Leafman asks.

“An urban legend, Jim. Like the story about the escaped maniac with just one hand and a metal hook for the other . . . and he tries to get into a car while two youngsters are making out —”

“And they think they heard something so they drive off and when they get to the girl’s house, the guy finds a hook hanging from her door handle.”

“That’s the one,” says Cliff. “So, years and years ago, the story goes, a hard-bitten journalist is driving through the back of beyond, somewhere in the Appalachians. You know, duelling banjos country.

“And he sees a young boy walking towards the road from the field on his right. It’s only as he gets closer that he sees that the boy isn’t walking through the field, he’s walking towards him on water. They’re right next to a small lake.

“So, the guy stops his car and gets out, calls for the boy to come over to him — which he does. Then he asks him how he did that. The boy says, ‘Did what?’ And the guy says, `Walk across that lake?’ The boy looks back at the way he’s just come, frowns and shrugs. ‘Just put one foot in front of the other, sir,’ comes the response.

“So the guy asks the boy if he does it often. ‘Every day,’ the boy says. ‘You gonna do it tomorrow, too?’ he asks. And the boy nods. ‘I do it every day,’ he says — because it’s the fastest way for the boy to travel from his house to the tiny village down the hillside.

“So the guy tells the boy to be here tomorrow at the same time, because he’s going to bring some people to take his picture and put it in a newspaper. The boy is taken aback and he asks the man why he would want to do that. The man’s reply is thus: ‘Because,’ he says, putting an arm around the boy’s shoulders, ‘what you just did isn’t possible. There isn’t another person in this whole world can do what you just did. This makes you special. Makes you different.’

“The boy frowns and looks out at the lake. And the man tells him to be here the next day. Then he drives off.”

Cliff takes a drink and carries on.

“The next day, sure enough, the man arrives at the same spot and this time he has a camera crew with him plus his assistant editor. The boy is there as well, sitting on the grass at the far side of the lake looking nervous as hell.

“The man shouts for the boy to come over and he gets the camera crew pointing in the right direction, film running. The boy starts towards them and . . . he wades out into the water. The journalist shouts for him to stop, tells him to go back and try it again. Which the boy does. Same thing.

“This happens a couple more times, during which everyone is getting pissed at the journalist. So the journalist, he goes over to the boy and he grabs a hold of his shoulder, shakes him a little. ‘What you doing?’ he asks the boy. ‘You told me to come over,’ the boy answers. ‘Boy whyn’t you walking on the water instead of through it?’ And the boy says, ‘You said it was impossible.’“

As Cliff settles back in his chair, his hands still raised up on each side of him, Jack nods, smiling. “That’s a nice story,” he says.

“Is it true?” Jim asks.

Edgar snorts.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Cliff Rhodes tells Jim. “It’s a story, just like
Around the World in Eighty Days
or
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

“Or
Journey to the Centre of the Earth,”
adds Jack Fedogan.

“Absolutely. And all the stories in
The Bible,
too. Some are true and some aren’t. And a lot of others have just become exaggerated over the years. But what they all do is they give hope and , they provide answers and encouragement. And that’s what journeys do.”

“Journeys? Why journeys?”

“Well, Edgar himself said that all stories about journeys are good stories. They reach a part inside us all that other stories don’t quite reach. And that’s because we’re each of us on our own journey.

“Jim, your story about the ghost who’d gotten himself into some kind of loop — that was a journey he undertook every night of his life, and the back-story was that he was doing it because he was so sad at the loss of his wife. And Edgar’s story about the boy — and, later, the man — on the bus, that was a wonderful story, but it’s the way it brought a sense of closure to Edgar’s mom that makes it all the more poignant.”

Cliff pauses and looks around the table. “And that’s what Jules Verne was all about. He was about feeding people’s need for adventure . . . making sense — and entertainment — on the journey we all make to its inevitable conclusion.

“The two men we met tonight — two adventurers in search of new experiences . . . two men who believed in what they were doing. The worst thing in the world,” Cliff says, looking straight across at Edgar, “is for someone to come up to them, or to any of us, and
have
those hopes, beliefs and dreams flattened.”

“Should we call the cops?” Jack asks.

“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Jim Leafman protests.

“He means for the two guys,” Edgar says, slapping Jim’s arm and trying to cover up his smile.

Cliff shakes his head. “I found their footprints,” he says. Edgar leans over the table. “What?”

“I found their footprints around the steps. They went out on to the street that way.” He shrugs.

Everyone stares at Cliff in silence.

“Why didn’t you tell us right away?” Jack asks.

“Because we made a story out of it. We made an adventure. We imagined that Fortesque and little Lorre were already high-tailing it down narrow ledges, striding through fields of giant mushrooms, discovering endless sandy beaches by the side of an azure sea and beneath the rocky dome of a gloriously high cavern before negotiating turbulent waters and watching to-the-death battles between creatures we only know about in old nature books and Steven Spielberg movies.

“We wanted them to be doing that. We wanted them to have gone through the hole. Isn’t that right, Jack?”

Wide-eyed, Jack nods.

“Jim?”

Jim Leafman doesn’t hesitate in saying “Yes.”

And finally, “Edgar?”

Up to that point, Edgar has been staring at his beer. When he looks up, there’s moisture in his eyes.

“Ed, you okay?” Jim asks.

Edgar nods. “Thinking about my mom,” he says. And then, nodding, “Yeah, I wanted those two looney tunes to have gone through the hole, sure.”

“Well,” says Cliff Rhodes, lifting his glass to his mouth and taking a long drink, “maybe they did.”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“But you —”

Cliff stands up. “I told you a story. I told you a story so’s I could get your real reaction. I wouldn’t have gotten it if I’d done it any other way. Truth is, I don’t know which way they went. Don’t know if they were who they said they were and I don’t know if anything Jules Verne wrote was based on truth. But I do know this,” he adds as he places his empty glass on the table. “It’s been a great night. Telling stories — that’s the most important journey of all.”

And as Cliff walks up the stairs towards the waiting streets, the bank problem he had when he came in seems a whole lot smaller.

They’re still sitting there, the three caballeros, when Cliff Rhodes shouts down, “Jack, there’s a guy says his name is. McCoy banging on your door. You want me to let him in?”

They exchange glances.

And smiles.

“Sure,” Jack calls out, “let him in.” Turning to Edgar and Jim, first one and then the other, he says, “Beers?”

“Well,” Jim says, “this is a bar, ain’t it? And what’s a bar any good for if not beer?”

“And stories,” adds Edgar.

“Guys,” McCoy shouts from the stairs, “you wouldn’t believe the journey I had across town.”

Their laughter is so loud it blends in with that of Cliff Rhodes, striding the street, his coat collar pulled up against the Manhattan rain.

— For Hugh Lamb, Brubeck fan extraordinaire

THE TRUE STORY OF BARBICANE’S VOYAGE by Laurent Genefort

By 1864 Verne was on a roll. Having completed
Voyage au centre de la terre,
and the next Captain Hatteras novel,
Le Désert de glace,
he turned his eyes to the heavens and wrote the first genuine scientific novel to explore the complex subject of getting a man to the Moon. No one had done this before. There had been plenty of fanciful stories taking man to the moon, as far back as the
True History
by Lucian of Samosata in the second century AD. His travellers are whisked to the Moon by a whirlwind. The noted French swordsman, Cyrano de Bergerac, had several ideas of space travel in
The Government of the World in the Moon
(1659), the one that worked involving a plentiful supply of firework rockets. In
A Voyage to the Moon
(1827) George Tucker (writing as Joseph Atterley) uses a newly discovered element, lunarium, which is repulsed by the Earth and attracted by the Moon, whilst in 1835 Edgar Allan Poe took his adventurer, Hans Pfal, all the way to the Moon by balloon. None of these or other writers had considered the implications of the lack of air or the forces needed to escape the Earth’s gravity. Verne, though, went into immense detail, so much so that he took up most of one novel,
De la terre a la lune,
describing the plans of the Baltimore Gun Club in designing and building their giant gun and the projectile and needed a second novel,
Autour de la lune,
to record the adventures of the company in their trip round the Moon. We are introduced to the characters Impey Barbicane, President of the Gun Club, who originally conceived the idea of an unmanned shot to the moon, the Frenchman Michel Ardan (an anagram of Verne’s friend Nadar), who pushes for a manned expedition, Barbican’s adversary, Captain Nicholl, who opposes the experiment but is literally brought on board, and the mathematician J.T. Maston.