‘Yes, indeed,’ Luca agrees. ‘The metal survived. The original leather was damaged beyond repair. Also, well, the remains of your ancestor had been sitting there for over a century …’ He glances at Ophelia to see if she will swat him again. ‘We committed Nemo to the sea. Then I recovered the chair. The material itself is seaweed-based. Fortunately I have an excellent leatherworker friend in Firenze. Italian workmanship is the best, as everyone knows.’
Ophelia rolls her eyes. ‘We have, of course, tried to activate more of the ship’s systems. But the captain’s chair seems to govern access to everything critical: propulsion, weapons, navigation, communications.’
She points to each of the four control stations in turn. Then she faces me again, as if waiting …
Of course. She’d like me to sit in the chair. She doesn’t want to push, but she’s dying to see what will happen if I put my hands on those control spheres. Even for Luca and Ophelia, who have been so kind and welcoming, it’s hard for them to see me as a person and not as an all-purpose miracle tool.
I take a deep breath. I don’t want to sit in that chair. It isn’t mine. I haven’t earned it. I’m trying to figure out the politest way to decline when Ester saves me.
‘You shouldn’t start there,’ she says. She’s been quiet so far, standing in the middle of the bridge, taking in every detail, maybe listening to the mood of the ship. ‘You should start there.’
She points to the pipe organ. I’ve been trying not to think about the huge musical contraption and why it suddenly decided to play a single blast all by itself.
Something about its presence on the bridge creeps me out, even more so than the dead captain’s chair. Trying the pipe organ before the bridge controls doesn’t sound logical. But, then again, Ester seems to understand the ship in a way that goes deeper than logic.
I approach the forest of gleaming metal pipes.
The four-tiered keyboard has seen better days, but it is still beautiful. The major keys look like abalone. The minor keys have the same dark lustre as my mother’s black pearl. Like the pipes, the pull-stop levers and pedals are of gleaming nemonium, etched with decorative fish leaping through waves.
The bench’s velvet cushion is black with mould. Its wooden legs look ready to collapse.
Luca coughs. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know much about pipe organs,’ he says sheepishly. ‘I cleaned it as best I could, but its more delicate pieces are still in bad shape. I’m sure it needs tuning … however one tunes an organ.’
‘I have no idea,’ I admit. ‘I took piano lessons, but …’
The memory takes me back to elementary school.
I recall Dev complaining bitterly whenever Mrs Flannigan arrived at our house for twice-weekly lessons. He hated playing the piano. It wasn’t a sport. It wasn’t outside. He couldn’t kick it, shoot it or tackle it.
Still, our parents insisted.
Your future depends on many skills, I remember my father saying, including the keyboard.
I’d never understood that. I just chalked it up as yet another of our parents’ strange and inscrutable commandments. Like so many things that involved Dev, my own piano lessons were an afterthought. Mrs Flannigan was coming over anyway. She might as well give us a two-for-one deal.
Dev was always better. Despite his complaints, he had a natural ear. He never practised. He just stormed up to the keyboard, listened to Mrs Flannigan play, then imitated her perfectly. His sloppiness and impatience drove her crazy, especially since it didn’t stop him from mastering whatever she put in front of him.
As for me, I plodded along, carefully and mathematically, treating the keyboard like another language, learning each song like a sentence to be diagrammed.
Now I wonder if my parents knew about Nemo’s pipe organ. Verne mentioned it in 20,000 Leagues, didn’t he? Were they preparing Dev for something more specific than just playing a few nice tunes at a dinner party?
‘Did Dev ever come here?’ I ask.
Ophelia looks shocked. ‘Of course not. It would’ve been much too risky.’
Luca adds hastily, ‘You would not be here, either, my dear, if not for the dire situation.’
I still shouldn’t be here, I think. I’m a consolation prize. A last-ditch, third-string quarterback for Harding-Pencroft.
‘Dev wanted to see the Nautilus, of course,’ Luca continues. ‘When he was your age … Well, the staff at HP had a difficult time convincing him to wait, once he was told the truth. He wanted to come here immediately. Then he argued that he should come right after his graduation from HP. Eventually, he listened to reason. He agreed to go to college first, giving us four more years to restore the ship and understand how it worked. That would also have given him four more years to learn and mature.’