Fri, May 18 2012
Jules carefully put more wood on the campfire, grateful to be of some use, while Passepartout scrounged together a meal. He glanced again at Phileas, at the bandage encircling his head. ... It had been such a very near thing, and Fogg, as usual, had borne the brunt of it. If not for Passepartout ... Jules couldn't bear the thought. He noticed belatedly that Phileas was awake. Jules nudged Passepartout and moved to help Phileas sit up.
"How do you feel?"
"If I ignore the herd of elephants stomping through my head, passably well, Verne."
"Here master," offered Passepartout. "Willow bark tea. The elephants, they will tiptoe after you drink this."
"Thank you Passepartout." Phileas sipped and slowly looked around. "Rebecca ... ?"
"Right behind you Phileas. Just making sure there are no stragglers about. I prefer a private breakfast. You are looking better this morning."
"And you Verne," Phileas asked solicitously, "How are you?"
Jules turned away. "I'm fine," he said, almost angrily. "I'm not the one Count Gregory--" He stopped, as Phileas laid his hand on Jules' arm.
"I'm well aware that you were not physically harmed, this time, just as you are well aware that that was not my question."
Jules studied the ground, unable to look Phileas in the eye. When neither Rebecca nor Passepartout broke the silence, he felt worse--were they all worried about him? "I'm fine," he repeated quietly. "But I can't help thinking that you would all be better off, and surely safer, if you had never met me."
"'Safe'? Jules, I am an agent of the British Secret Service. 'Safe' isn't in the job description. With or without your acquaintance, there is risk." Rebecca smiled at him. "Would you deny me the pleasure of your friendship?"
"Not the pleasure, but the consequences. If you didn't know me ..." Jules paused to consider a tactful way to say what he had to say, when Phileas stepped in.
"Never an option, Verne. My cousin and I have actively opposed the League of Darkness all of our adult lives. When you came to their attention, you came to ours. And once we sorted out that you weren't some mad assassin, but rather an endlessly creative visionary who refused to stay uninvolved ... well, your friendship has become one of the things that makes the fight worthwhile." Now it was Phileas who paused. "Do you regret our friendship, Verne?"
Jules shook his head. "I can't imagine what my life would be without it. Except perhaps much shorter." Jules laughed ruefully, while Phileas and Rebecca smiled as they shared the same thought: such disarming candor, and he has no idea how appealing that is.
"Nevertheless," Jules continued, "you have to admit there's been a cost."
"Far outweighed by the rewards. You puzzle me Verne. Why is it so astonishing that your friends should value you at least as much as your enemies?" Phileas wondered what he could possibly have said wrong, when Jules became disturbingly quiet. Finally, the young man spoke.
"Fogg," he said softly, "What is it about me? I know my vision is ... unusual, that I see things others don't. But this is an age of science and technology, of invention and discovery. There must be dozens, perhaps hundreds out there who would willingly sell their souls for the chance to make their dreams real. Yet Gregory keeps coming after me. Why?"
Phileas arched an eyebrow, knowing Jules wasn't quite finished. Under such scrutiny, the younger man struggled for the words, which came out in agony.
"Does Count Gregory . . . sense . . . some sort of . . . kindred spirit . . .?"
Passepartout snorted. Rebecca remained carefully quiet. Phileas managed to quash the derisive response such a question deserved and converted it to a gently-voiced query. "Is that what you are afraid of? That Gregory has only to pull the proper string and you will suddenly forget everything you have ever believed and become a willing accomplice to evil?" Put like that, Phileas was pleased to see, Jules recognized how absurd a notion it was. The young man blushed, too easily, Phileas thought, but on this occasion he was glad of it.
"My dear Verne, nothing could be further from the truth. And that is precisely what makes you so valuable to the Count."
"I--" Jules pondered a moment, but it didn't help. "I don't understand."
"You are quite right that there are others with the touch of genius, but not of scruples. The Prometheus did not build itself, and when the League built your devilish burrowing machine, they made modifications to it that you never envisioned. But there are inherent difficulties in hiring those willing to be bought; the first being that they ARE so willing. Loyalty to the money, not the man, makes them untrustworthy.
"Then, there is the simple truth that anyone in it for hire will do exactly what is asked of him--and no more. To succeed in his task is good enough; to show initiative or imagination is to run the risk of failure. When you work for someone like Count Gregory, who rules by fear and who does not take failure well, that risk is substantial indeed.
"And finally, Verne, there is you. You are young and idealistic and enthusiastic and passionate, and, in many ways, fearless. You are constantly curious, and there's nothing you won't question. If you devise a contraption that turns out well, you wonder how you can make it better. 'What if...?' and 'Why not...?' are your mantras. You are, in short, everything Gregory is not, and he is intimately aware of that fact. That," Phileas concluded, "is why you are so valuable to him."
Jules considered all that Fogg had said. Still ... "There's something else, isn't there?"
"Yes, but I'm not going to tell you what it is." One look at Fogg's face and Jules knew better than to protest. "There are certain things a man should discover about himself. This is one of them. If I simply tell you, I might distort the gift. You will find out someday; it's nothing to fear."
"Gregory will keep coming after me, won't he?"
"Undoubtedly. In point of fact, he'll keep coming after all of us. You, especially, Passepartout, have made a new enemy."
"No, master. Always I have been his enemy. He never before notice me is all. If he comes, he comes."
"When he does, we'll just have to make sure he never succeeds," Rebecca added confidently.
"But someone like Gregory--the more you defy him, the more determined he becomes," Fogg warned. "Rather than be continually thwarted by you Verne, eventually he will decide to use the mindscrew, or the cortical lobe stud, or kill you. We must destroy him before then."
"Yes master," Passepartout agreed. "On him we must practice the Golden Rule. We must be doing to him before he is doing to us."
And they finished their meager breakfast in silence.
Afterward, Phileas tried standing with the aid of a taff Passepartout had fashioned. "This will do nicely," he judged. "Passepartout, lead on."
"Master?"
"To the Aurora, Passepartout. You do know where she is, don't you?"
"Oh yes, master. I know just where she is."
"Then what is the difficulty?" Rebecca inquired.
"Tell me please. Where is it we are?"
They all looked at one another. "I was unconscious," Jules said.
"As were we," Rebecca contributed.
"And I was a very long time folded with blinds," Passepartout finished.
"Then we head west," Phileas decided. "Eventually we will hit water, and where there is water, there is a way to England."
"You know, Passepartout," Jules mused as they traveled, "there should be a way for a person to tell where he is, anywhere on the planet ... "
The End
Chapter 14 | Chapter 15