The Underwater Ballroom Society

  Bertrand rolled his eyes and picked up Harriet’s valise. “Come on, old thing. Let’s grab the best seats. I’ve never been on a submersible before. I hope it doesn’t sink.”

  “I think it’s supposed to.”

  “What? Oh, yes, right. Sink. Ha! Of course.” He cleared his throat. “But…you know.”

  “I’m sure the Louros Hotel wouldn’t use it if it had a habit of drowning passengers.”

  “I suppose you must have a point. First time for everything, though, eh?”

  The submersible was larger than Harriet had imagined, although she wasn’t sure what exactly what she had been expecting. Perhaps a tight, claustrophobic space, like an automatic carriage, bitter with the smell of oil and metal? Instead, it was seventy or eighty feet long, maybe twenty wide at the bows, and shaped like stubby cigar. A gangplank protected by handrails and lit by photon-emission globes led up to an open iron doorway. Inside, the submersible was as plushly decorated as the Clockwork Express, with velvet drapes tied back at each wide porthole and comfortable armchairs beside each. A small bar stood at one end, attended by a ro-butler.

  “I should like,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said, as she entered, “to meet the pilot of this…thing.”

  “That would be me,” the young Chinese woman said.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you know how to drive this, girl?”

  Harriet bit her lip to prevent a sarcastic comment escaping. Keep a low profile. A spy doesn’t get noticed, unless they choose to be. She saw the young pilot’s eyes tighten, but the woman kept her voice steady.

  “My father built the submersible.”

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick met her husband’s cold eyes. “How…singular. Well, no doubt he had assistance. What are you waiting for, girl? I shall require the best seats.” She glanced around. “If such things exist.”

  The pilot was showing remarkable restraint. If that had been her, Harriet considered, she probably would have punched Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

  “Come on, Harry,” Bertrand urged. “Let’s grab these ones.” He slid into a seat beside a porthole. “We’ll get a good view from here.”

  Harriet joined him. Water lapped against the thick glass. It was still dark outside, but Harriet thought she could just see the faint watercolor of dawn spreading on the far horizon. It would be darker still beneath the waves, and she wasn’t sure they would see anything. She obviously wasn’t the only one who had come to that conclusion. A couple of red-headed young men—brothers, perhaps?—had headed straight to the bar, ignoring the portholes entirely.

  “This reminds me of that airship we went on,” Bertrand said. “At least we’re not trying to catch a thief this time, eh? All pleasure.” He eyed the ro-butler. “I wonder what’s for breakfast?”

  As soon as everyone was seated, the pilot disappeared through a door at the front of the submersible and the automatic servants began to take orders. Shortly after, Harriet felt the submersible’s engines come to life. Water churned, and they pulled away from the dock. Below them, Harriet heard the rush of water entering the ballast tanks, and the submersible sank.

  Moments later, powerful beams of light sprang from the submersible, slicing through the dark water. Photon-emission devices, Harriet thought immediately. Big ones. They couldn’t have come cheap, but then this whole venture had been prohibitively expensive. If the British-Martian Intelligence Service hadn’t paid for it, it would have cost Bertrand most of his year’s salary.

  At the bar, one of the young men pulled out a newspaper. Harriet’s heart jumped as she saw it was a copy of the Tharsis Times. Was her contact really going to reveal himself here? She squinted. No. The headline was wrong. She’d memorized the right edition of the newspaper. The twelfth of April edition had news of a new manufactory for spring-powered automatic carriages that was to open on the edge of Tharsis City at the top of the front page, and below it a report of a Mars-ship that had somehow crashed into the Valles Marineris (thankfully without passengers aboard). This was yesterday’s newspaper, not the twelfth of April edition. Blast! Why was she so on edge?

  She looked up and saw that the young man had noticed her watching. He was grinning, and as she met his gaze, he winked. Harriet looked away, furious and embarrassed, her face as hot as an oven.

  Gasps went up from several of the other passengers by the portholes.

  “Harry! Look at that!” Bertrand said.

  Harriet peered out. At the range of the lights, a gigantic, shadowy shape slipped through the water. It was larger than the submersible, with long, limb-like fins, a tail like an enormous eel, and massive, elongated jaws. Someone screamed.

  “No need to worry,” a voice said. Harriet glanced back to see the pilot had emerged from her door.

  “What is it?” someone called.

  “A mosasaurus. A large predator.”

  “A predator?” Mrs. Fitzpatrick demanded. “Why do they allow predators?” Her husband’s eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the porthole. There was something very unsettling about that man, Harriet thought.

  “It’s no danger to us,” the pilot said. “It eats plesiosaurs, squid, and sometimes even a small whale, but it has no interest in the submersible or the hotel buildings. I’ve been running trips down to the ruins for almost ten years with no incident.”

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick sniffed. “I shall hold you personally responsible should we be attacked.”

  “If we’re attacked by one of those,” the pilot said, one eyebrow lifting, “none of us will be around to blame anyone.”

  Harriet hid a grin.

  Mr. Edgeware, the father from the young family, spoke up before Mrs. Fitzpatrick could respond. “Do you believe that the ruins we are to visit were truly built underwater?”

  This was too much for Mrs. Fitzpatrick. “What nonsense! It is clear that the ruins were built on land and that they later slipped into the water and were submerged. An earthquake, I expect. The Martian primitives clearly could not have constructed such sophisticated buildings beneath the water.” She shot a contemptuous glance at Mr. Edgeware. “I mean, look at the creatures. Most native Martians can scarcely speak a civilized tongue.”

  These ‘primitives’, Harriet thought, had found their way from Earth to Mars thousands of years before the first British and Chinese explorers. They had built a civilization and developed technology that even the greatest mechanicians alive struggled to replicate. The civilization had collapsed almost two thousand years ago, but many of their artifacts remained in their ruins and in the hidden dragon tombs and were objects of great value.

  The pilot shrugged. “The ruins show signs of having once been sealed against the pressure of the water.”

  “Nonsense, girl. I’m sure your…type…find such things hard to grasp, but I have been to Vienna and Paris. There are wonders there you could scarcely comprehend.”

  Wonders that had been built on the foundations of Ancient Martian technology, Harriet thought. She had visited the Great Wall of Cyclopia in the Martian wilderness. Vienna and Paris would both have been lost in its shadow.

  If the pilot was bothered by Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s comments, she didn’t show it. She simply turned and disappeared back through the door to the control room, leaving the passengers to watch the water slide past their portholes.

  “Well,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said loudly. “Well, really.”

  It took nearly an hour for the submersible to make its way through the waters of the Valles Marineris to the sunken ruins, but eventually Harriet spotted them through her porthole.

  “There!” she said, and crowded with Bertrand against the glass. A series of elegant domes rose from a wide underwater ridge. They had once been joined by sweeping hallways, but both the domes and the hallways had been shattered by time or some seismic force, opening them to the water. Still, in places the domes and arches remained, and Harriet could just make out the strange twisted patterns that covered their surfaces. Ancient Martian decorations tricked the eye, seeming to change from abstract,
curving patterns to hints of scenes, then away again, but here, in the deep water, among shifting strands of seaweed and darting shoals of fish, the buildings themselves seemed to suddenly disappear, only to reappear again moments later. The sun had finally risen above the surface of the Valles Marineris. Faint light made the whole scene look ghostly.

  The Louros Hotel was a squat, new building of white marble and reinforced glass constructed in the middle of the ruins. On one end, a glass and steel ballroom, looking like a bulky greenhouse, had been added to the hotel. The ballroom had only been finished in the last couple of months, and the ball was being held to celebrate its official opening. Harriet understood that the hotel could accommodate two hundred guests, and most would be crammed into that glass and steel bowl. It was a remarkable engineering achievement. Always assuming it didn’t collapse.

  The submersible sank below the ridge and entered what Harriet at first assumed to be a cave. But then the submersible’s lights picked out more of the Ancient Martian carvings on the walls, and she realized it must have been a tunnel. Within a couple of minutes, they were rising toward bright lights.

  The submersible broke the surface of an enclosed pool. Through the porthole, Harriet saw two other moored submersibles. A grand marble entrance led into the hotel. Water-filled pillars, alive with luminescent creatures, reached to the high ceiling, throwing fluid light in bright green, red, and blue across the walls.

  Harriet and the other passengers disembarked, followed by the submersible’s automatic servants carrying the luggage.

  “This is the life, eh, Harry?” Bertrand said. “You know”—he laughed—“I really thought they were sidelining me when they stuck me in the Extraordinary Investigations Department.” He threw out an arm, almost knocking one of the red-headed young men into the water. “But look at all this! They wouldn’t have sent me here if they were sidelining me, would they?”

  Harriet kept her face still. Bertrand didn’t pick up on much, but he’d been right the first time.

  “Let’s find our rooms, shall we?”

  Humming, Bertrand led the way into the hotel foyer, where he came to an abrupt halt.

  A short, stocky man with bristling sideburns and small eyeglasses had leapt up from his chair and was now striding toward Bertrand, his face furious.

  “Sir William…” Bertrand managed.

  Sir William Huntsworth, Harriet thought. Head of the Tharsis City Police Service.

  “What a surprise,” Bertrand said. “I didn’t know you were coming, too.” He turned to Harriet, who was standing stock still in horror. “See, Harry—”

  “Deputy Chief Inspector Simpson,” Sir William ground out. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  “I don’t understand it, Harry.” Bertrand sat back on his bed, head in hands. “Why was Sir William surprised to see me? Why was he angry? I thought he’d sent me the invitation.”

  Harriet gritted her teeth. Someone in the British-Martian Intelligence Service hadn’t done their research. They should have known Sir William would be here and prepared a different cover story. Or, worse, someone had known he would be here and decided on this story anyway. Someone who wanted to make it difficult. Someone like Reginald Pratt.

  “I thought he thought I was doing well. You saw that piece in the Tharsis Times saying what a wonderful job I’d done with the Glass Phantom. Everyone was talking about it.”

  Not only had Harriet read it, she had written it, anonymously, after they’d returned from the dinosaur hunt.

  “All it means is that you’ve got another well-wisher. Isn’t it good that you have someone important on your side, even if you don’t know who they are?”

  Bertrand let out a sigh and buried his hand in his thick, black hair, making even more of a mess of it. Harriet resisted the urge to pat it back down.

  “I suppose,” Bertrand said. Then he brightened. Bertrand could never stay miserable for long. “Why don’t we take a poke around? I’ve never been anywhere like this before, and I dare say you haven’t either, even with that Lady Felchester of yours.”

  They found a large drawing room with a steel-framed window looking out through the dim water to the silhouettes of the ruins. The glass was no thicker than Harriet’s knuckle. It’s safe. It has to be. The secret to this glass had been discovered among the artifacts of a dragon tomb, and she knew it was strong enough. Even so, it didn’t feel like it should support the pressure of so much water. A shoal of spiral-fish whirled past just outside, sliding through the water like glittering drill bits.

  “I’m going to see if I can get us some tea,” Bertrand announced. “And, you know, some cakes or something.”

  Harriet waved him off, entranced by the spectacle through the window. This was what she’d always dreamed of, seeing the wonders of Mars.

  Light grew within one of the collapsed domes twenty or thirty feet beyond the window. At first Harriet thought it was a passing submersible or perhaps a strange sea creature, but then she saw a train of photon emission globes appear through a break in the wall to glide through the water toward the next set of ruins.

  “They must be powered by some inertially-guided device to circulate around the hotel,” a voice said right at her shoulder. Harriet stiffened in surprise then glanced back to see Reginald Pratt standing far too close. He had noticed her twitch and was smirking.

  “Well, obviously,” Harriet said, as witheringly as she could manage.

  Reginald’s face dropped. He eyed her up and down. His gaze made her feel like she needed a wash.

  “You scrub up…adequately.” He tipped his head to one side. “You’ll do, anyway. Probably won’t draw too many looks.” He faked surprise at her reaction. “What? That’s a good thing for a spy. You don’t want people noticing you.”

  Harriet’s jaw tightened. The truth was, she didn’t much care what anyone else thought of her appearance. It was simply the sheer audacity of a man wearing two brightly colored waistcoats and a jacket covered in cogs and levers that sprung into motion whenever he moved to comment on her appearance.

  A loud gasp made Harriet look past Reginald. Mrs. Fitzpatrick had entered the drawing room and was now striding toward them, her husband almost flowing after her.

  “Have you no shame?” she demanded.

  Harriet looked around, bewildered.

  “Where is your guardian?”

  “What? Bertrand?” Coming to think of it, where was Bertrand?

  “You are unmarried, of course,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said. “It is true that you are unattractive, but with other accomplishments and a good dowry, that should not be insurmountable. However, you cannot afford to squander what reputation you might have by…conversing…with unmarried gentlemen.” She shot Reginald a piercing look.

  Harriet cheeks reddened again. Why couldn’t she control that?

  “I am in no hurry to marry, madam,” she said.

  Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s eyes widened. “Well. Well. How very impertinent!”

  Reginald offered a bow, but his smirk had found its way back to his face. “I shall leave you. Your guardian is returning.”

  Bertrand had appeared at the door, accompanied by the Edgewares. The two young children raced to the window, not even slowing as they shot past an outraged Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

  “I say, Harry,” Bertrand called. “Mr. and Mrs. Edgeware are taking a trip out in one of the smaller submersibles to explore the ruins. They’ve invited us along. What do you say?”

  Harriet shot a longing look through the window at the enticing ruins. No. She had a mission, and the sooner she completed it, the better. “I fear we must prepare for the ball.”

  Bertrand’s face crumpled into confusion.

  “But that’s not until—”

  “Oh, I quite understand,” Mrs. Edgeware said, cheerfully. “I’m told that it can take hours to prepare for one of these events. Come on, Colin,” she said to her husband. “Let’s see what we can spot!”

  Harriet took Bertrand by the arm an
d led him from the drawing room.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, plaintively. “Is it going to take you that long to get dressed? We’ve got all day. Do we at least have time for cakes?”

  “I just want to take a look around. You know. See who’s here.”

  “Oh.” Revelation spread over Bertrand’s face. “You want to see if you can spot Sir Lancelot Coverdale, too.”

  Harriet blinked at her brother-in-law. “Who?”

  “The famously handsome bachelor Mrs. Edgeware was talking about.”

  “What? No.”

  Bertrand kept grinning.

  “For goodness sake!”

  The hotel was already filling. Harriet and Bertrand passed several dozen couples as they strolled around. Harriet kept her eyes open for newspapers, but while several gentlemen were carrying them, none were from the right date, and Harriet began to wish Lady Felchester had chosen a more unique identifier for her contact. All part of the test.

  After half an hour, Harriet relented and allowed Bertrand to guide her to another drawing room where he had discovered cakes.

  He let out a sigh of relief. “I was starting to worry they would all be gone by the time we got here.”

  Bertrand poured them tea, and Harriet was just helping herself to a thoughtful petit four when a scream sounded so clear and loud it almost made her drop her plate. The room suddenly went silent. Then everyone rushed for the door.

  Harriet and Bertrand hurried after them. The screams, which had now quieted to hysterical, muffled sobs, were coming from a wide, marble atrium. A grand staircase rose to a balcony. A crowd had gathered at the foot of the stairs, around a sobbing maid in the uniform of the Louros Hotel. As Harriet shouldered her way through, she saw what the crowd was staring at.

  A body lay at the bottom of the stairs, sprawled half on the stairs and half on the floor. It was a young man, also dressed in the hotel uniform.

  Bertrand pushed past and knelt beside the body. There was blood spreading from beneath the young man’s head.

  Keep calm, Harriet told herself. She’d been trained not to react, to take in everything around her. He had fallen, that much was obvious, away from the balcony, like he’d hit it at speed. How? Had he tripped?