Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [157]
A Sardinian glassmaker with long hair said, “If it’s all the same to you, Captain, I’d rather wait out the year and go back for my family in Rurapente. I want to take them away from there. When it’s time.”
Hearing his men, Nemo nodded. He longed to go back to France and see Caroline again, and Jules Verne -- but he had traveled so far along life’s path since he’d last spoken to them. He was married to Auda now, and he loved her. Thanks to the vile deception Caliph Robur had perpetrated, Nemo knew that Caroline had believed him dead for years . . . lost to her. By now, she would have gone on with her life, perhaps even married again. He could not bear to torment Caroline -- or himself -- with things that now could never be. Better to let her keep thinking him lost than to suffer more regrets. . . .
The Nautilus headed out into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, setting a course eastward. Nemo would not forget what lay behind him. He vowed someday to return to his wife and son.
“For now,” Nemo said, “perhaps we will simply enjoy our freedom.”
Part IX
20,000 leagues
i
Paris, 1862
At the age of thirty-four and bored, Jules Verne considered his life a failure.
When a brown-wrapped package arrived with the afternoon post, Verne took it from the delivery man himself, trying not to let Honorine see -- knowing, dreading, what it was.
The sky outside was a robin’s-egg blue, the air sharp and autumn cool, pleasant enough to make pedestrians smile as they walked the streets. The delivery man tipped his hat to the bearded writer and strode away, whistling. Verne envied the man’s optimism.
With a growing sense of resignation, he shuffled over to the low writing desk and used a pocketknife to snap the twine on the packet. Honorine watched from the other side of the room as she gathered her hoops and threads to begin a new needlework pattern for a pillowcase. She smiled encouragement to him, but Verne turned his back on her. He already feared what the parcel contained.
Year after year, he had continued to strive at his writing career, and achieved just enough success to keep him doggedly trying. No one would sing his praises in the halls of literary fame because of the few minor plays he’d had produced. No one would remember his clever verse or his magazine articles. Still, he tried . . . and tried.
He had spent a full year on an ambitious new manuscript, burying himself in clippings and books and journals. He had devoted his research attentions to a massive scientific study based on the uses of balloons in travel and exploration. He himself had never been up in a balloon or explored distant lands . . . but he had talked with Nemo and Caroline, and had read Dr. Fergusson’s published account of the voyage across Africa. That should have been sufficient.
Now, if only someone would publish Verne’s tome. It had begun to seem hopeless. . .
After five uneventful years, his marriage to Honorine had settled into a quiet numbness. He paid scant attention to his wife, spending but a few minutes with her at meals, during which he spoke little before dashing back to his writing study. This wasn’t how he had fancied his life as an author. Perhaps Alexandre Dumas had been kind in trying to discourage him, or at least make him face the realities of the career.
His tedious job at the stock market provided enough money for them to live in reasonable comfort, though without extravagances. Verne had managed to represent every member of his extended family who had any money at all to invest. Sometimes his advice was good, sometimes it failed, but he did nothing so rash as to make his relatives consider his performance disastrous. Jules Verne made no waves, no ripples in life whatsoever.
He and Honorine became the parents of a baby son, Michel, more through a fortuitous accident rather