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“Ach! An underwater boat?” Liedenbrock said. “This is impossible.”

“Your word impossible does not translate into my language,” Robur said.

Cyrus Harding maintained his silence, but his brow furrowed as if his mind were already imagining solutions to the problem the Caliph had posed.

Nemo remembered the drawings Captain Grant had shown him of the prototype sub-marine boat that Robert Fulton had designed and built for Napoleon Bonaparte. That idea had always intrigued him. “We can do it,” he said in a low voice, already calculating how he could turn this task against the caliph.

Robur made an instant decision. “You, Engineer -- I place you in charge of the project.” Nemo couldn’t tell if the caliph had planned this assignment all along, or simply rewarded the young man for his quiet confidence.

“You shall have all the resources you need. Any calculations you desire, any raw material, any assistant. We expect you to work and to cooperate. Once my underwater boat is functional, you will all be given the greatest riches you desire. Perhaps you will even be allowed to go home.”

The captives grumbled, still uncomfortable to be assisting a man who -- though ostensibly an ally to their European countries -- had already proven his complete disregard for the rights and freedom of so many people. The caliph could well become a tyrant . . . especially given such a weapon.

But this was not the moment to challenge him. Nemo would bide his time.

“The Suez Canal will take many years to complete,” Robur continued. “You must succeed in your task before that time.” He turned to descend the raised platform, but stopped and spoke again as if in an afterthought, stroking his beard. “If you fail me, or if I sense your work is progressing too slowly, I will execute you -- all of you -- and find myself another group of engineers.”

Then, leaving them stunned, he mounted his stallion and rode off down the streets of Rurapente to his ornate pavilion.

Part VIII

Master of the world

i

Amiens, France, 1857

By the age of 29, Jules Verne had resigned himself, and so he finally married. Someone other than Caroline Aronnax.

While spending two weeks in Amiens for a friend’s wedding, he met a sturdy woman named Honorine Morel, a widow whose husband had died of consumption a year earlier. She was pretty enough in a plain sort of way, though encumbered with two young daughters, Valentine and Suzanne.

Drowning in the celebratory atmosphere of the friend’s wedding, swept along with the joy and love and well-wishes, Verne convinced himself that he could make a life with the widow Morel. While she wasn’t Caroline, he had decided to be pragmatic. Thanks to the inheritance from her first husband, Honorine had a solid dowry, and Verne was weary of being a bachelor. Having few other prospects, he decided to give as much of his heart to her as he could spare. So long as she allowed him to continue writing his stories, even if in secret. . . .

Years earlier, Verne had joined a bachelors’ club, les Onze Sans Femmes, sanguine young men who had declared their total independence from female company. Together, they shored up each others’ beliefs, convinced each other of their continued bliss without the encumbrances of a spouse and children. But recently many of his “bachelor society” friends had finished university, settled down in marriage despite their earlier smug protestations of disinterest in feminine company, and started their own lives. Some seemed quite happy with their new situation -- and Verne felt restless again.

Gloomy and impatient, he convinced himself that Caroline would never accept the obvious. Although Captain Hatteras could have been legally declared lost at sea years before, she vowed not to make any such decision until Nemo returned from the Crimean War. But their friend’s last letter had been dated a year before the peace treaty, and they had heard nothing from him since. . . .

Verne had a decent job at the Bourse, the Paris stock exchange. Once married, he would settle into a normal existence, without adventures