Daughter of the Deep(23)

I’m starting to deduce my purpose, too – why Hewett and Caleb South both talk about me like a commodity. I’m putting together the broken pieces of this horrible day, and I don’t like what it’s showing me.

I try to pick around the edges of my real question. ‘So, Jules Verne … You say he interviewed actual people.’

Hewett nods. ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Mysterious Island. The foundational texts are based on real events.’

A weight grows in my stomach. ‘Foundational texts … You make them sound sacred.’

‘Hardly,’ Hewett scoffs. ‘They are novelizations. Misrepresentations. But at their core they contain truths. Ned Land was a real Canadian master harpooner. Professor Pierre Aronnax was a French marine biologist.’

‘Ned Land … Land Institute,’ Nelinha says.

‘And Aronnax,’ Gem chimes in. ‘That’s the name of the sub.’

Hewett is silent long enough to tap each of his fingertips against the map. ‘Yes. Land and Aronnax, along with the professor’s manservant, Consiel, were the only survivors of a doomed naval expedition. In the 1860s, they joined the search for a supposed sea monster … a creature that was sinking ships across the globe. Their expeditionary vessel, the Abraham Lincoln, was lost somewhere in the Pacific. Over a year later, Land, Aronnax and Consiel were found, inexplicably, in a small lifeboat off the coast of Norway.’

I find myself leaning forward. I know the plot of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But now it seems more like a prophecy … one that predicts an apocalypse. I don’t like apocalypses.

‘No one believed the story they told about their lost year,’ Hewett continues. ‘They were dismissed as madmen. I doubt even Jules Verne believed them, but he did listen. Several years later, after Verne’s novel became famous, he was approached by a different group of men. These were former castaways who had survived on a desert island in the Pacific. They claimed they’d had an encounter similar to the one described in 20,000 Leagues. They wanted to correct what they called inaccuracies in Verne’s account. Verne’s subsequent novel, The Mysterious Island, was based on his interviews with those men.’

‘Cyrus Harding and Bonaventure Pencroft.’ My mind is racing, connecting dots I do not want connected. ‘The founders of our school. Just like Ned Land founded Land Institute.’

Nelinha raises one eyebrow at Hewett. It’s the same expression she uses when she wants to tell the mean sophomore girls to back off or they’ll get a butt-kicking.

‘If all that’s true,’ she says, ‘you’re telling us the main dude was real, too. Nemo.’

‘That’s correct, Miss da Silva.’

‘And we’re not talking about the cartoon fish,’ she adds.

Somebody had to say it.

Hewett rubs his face. ‘No, Miss da Silva. The main dude was not a cartoon fish. Nor was he the fictional character from Jules Verne’s books after whom that fish was named. Captain Nemo was a real nineteenth-century person – a genius who created marine technologies generations ahead of their time. The most important and powerful advances were keyed to Nemo’s own body chemistry … what we today call DNA. He and his descendants were the only ones who could operate his greatest inventions.’

That’s it. I sit down. I don’t trust my legs to hold me any longer.

‘Ester is descended from Cyrus Harding,’ I say.

Hewett stares at me, waiting. His expression is a mixture of sympathy and cold analytical interest, like a TV-show cop in a morgue, about to uncover the murder victim for the next-of-kin to identify.

‘And Captain Nemo …’ I say. ‘That wasn’t his real name. It was Prince Dakkar. An Indian noble. From Bundelkhand.’

‘Yes, Miss Dakkar,’ Hewett agrees. ‘As of today, you are his only surviving direct descendant. This makes you quite literally the most important person in the world.’





‘Nope.’

Honestly, it’s the only answer I can muster. ‘You are not telling me that our school was destroyed, my brother was killed and Land Institute tried to kidnap me because I am descended from a fictional character.’

‘Not fictional,’ Hewett says again, his voice strained. ‘Prince Dakkar was your fourth great-grandfather.’

‘I agree with Ana,’ Nelinha says. ‘This is crazy.’

Gem sets his Leyden gun on the table. ‘We’ve got evidence.’

Nelinha waves off the gun, or maybe she’s just waving off Gem. ‘Your electroplated zapper is cool. That doesn’t mean Jules Verne wrote non-fiction. I could reverse-engineer a Leyden gun if I had enough time.’

‘Which is exactly what Harding-Pencroft did,’ Dr Hewett says. ‘And Land Institute, unfortunately. But Nemo’s greatest innovations –’

‘Wait.’ I raise my hands like I’m trying to hold all of this new information together, but I’m failing badly. ‘You’ve reverse-engineered super Taser-guns. You’ve got dynamic camouflage and radar blocking that’s better than military-grade. This is all from a guy who lived a hundred and fifty years ago.’

Hewett gives me the sort of expectant nod he uses in his classroom, as if telling me Go on. You are not entirely stupid.