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Personal Journal of Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Chevalier de Lisieux
Friday, 16 July onward
En route to Hochbaden
The Jean Bart departed Dunkelheim during the night of the fifteenth into the sixteenth.
The voyage ahead is straightforward.
Approximately three days to Hochbaden.
Two days there for discharge, passenger movements, cargo, and local traffic.
Then roughly three final days to Aurore.
After the events of the past week, this sounds almost restful.
Fortier remains in custody.
Danton remains in custody.
Valette remains in custody, though he continues to object that no one has established any crime on his part beyond being an insurance lawyer with unfortunate acquaintances.
This is technically true, but I distrust the man, and would object to his release.
Colette Marceau also remains confined.
The precise legal status of several of these people will become someone else's problem once we reach appropriate French authority.
Miss Cassart continues to recover.
Her improvement has been rapid enough that she is now confronted by perhaps the gravest consequence of her illness:
she remembers how she behaved.
Not all of it.
That appears to be part of the difficulty.
There are conversations she recalls only vaguely. Moments she remembers from perspectives that make no sense. Emotions which embarrass her because she cannot entirely determine whether they were hers.
She has also become increasingly aware that during the more intense days aboard the ship, she abandoned several of the standards of decorum she normally maintains with almost religious determination.
She is horrified.
I have chosen discretion.
There are subjects one does not raise with a lady.
There are subjects one does not raise with a subordinate.
There are subjects one does not raise with an armed Frenchwoman who has recently recovered from an unexplained neurological episode and already finds one's personality trying.
This matter falls into all three categories.
Should Miss Cassart ever ask, nothing happened.
Should others ask, considerably less happened.
If documentation exists, it should be burned, and the thrown into the Seine.
Sergeant Blanc agrees.
For once, we have achieved complete unity of command.
Élodie remained inside the Pentapod pod throughout much of the voyage to Hochbaden.
The phrase Pentapod pod has unfortunately become established aboard the ship.
It sounds ridiculous.
But after hearing medical personnel, security officers, stewards, Sergeant Blanc, and finally Doctor Okafor use it without irony, I surrendered and embraced the term.
The Pentapod pod opened while we were over Hochbaden.
Élodie emerged pale, tired, and otherwise recognizably herself.
I attempted to question her once Doctor Okafor permitted visitors.
She was not entirely cooperative.
When pressured, she reminded me that she is married to an American citizen of some wealth and possesses dual citizenship.
I am not entirely certain why she thought this should frighten me.
The Americans have recovered considerably since the humiliations of the Twiligght War and subsequent century of decline. Their industry grows. Their fleets grow. Their colonies grow. One hears increasingly confident predictions that they intend to resume their old place among the foremost powers.
But the fact of the matter is they remain upstarts.
Nevertheless, I had no desire to conclude a successful French murder investigation by producing an international incident involving the semi-conscious wife of an American businessman (not to mention my affair with said married woman).
I therefore approached the matter rather more diplomatically.
There was, however, one question I refused to abandon.
Several nights before the murder, during a gathering involving Élodie, Miss Cassart, Marceau, myself, and considerably more wine than any physician would recommend, Élodie claimed to be a psychic.
At the time, I assumed this was flirtation.
Élodie can make almost anything sound like flirtation.
She then demonstrated what she called mind reading upon the other two women with enough success to disturb the joke.
She anticipated words.
Identified thoughts.
Answered questions before they were asked.
Miss Cassart initially accused her of some trick.
Marceau laughed, obviosuly delighted.
When asked how she did it, Élodie eventually claimed that a Pentapod implant allowed her to do it.
I accepted this explanation provisionally because Pentapods are involved in enough inexplicable things that one more seemed plausible. Also, I was blind drunk at the time.
Doctor Okafor has since examined Élodie rather thoroughly.
There is no implant.
I therefore asked her again.
How did she do it?
Élodie smiled and blamed the Pentapods again.
Eventually, however, she conceded one point.
She has always possessed what she calls “a touch.”
Occasionally she knows what someone is feeling before they tell her.
Sometimes she anticipates words.
Sometimes she forms an unusually strong impression of another person.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing reliable.
More interestingly, she admitted that she has sometimes felt faint impressions from other women derived from the same old enhancement programme.
Never anything strong.
Never anything approaching what occurred aboard the Jean Bart.
With Miss Cassart and Marceau, she described something much deeper.
She spoke of moods passing between them.
Thoughts becoming difficult to assign.
Memories that seemed temporarily shared.
Knowing what one of the others would say before she said it.
She could not explain why.
When I pointed out that the phenomenon appeared to grow stronger over several days and then cease almost completely, she shrugged.
I asked whether she could concevably reproduce it.
Élodie smiled in the particular way that has caused me difficulties throughout this voyage.
She pointed out that we had enjoyed ourselves.
I was in no position to dispute this.
I therefore terminated the interrogation on grounds of national interest.
There are mysteries which demand investigation.
There are others which demand restraint.
And there are a very few which should be discussed only after everyone concerned has agreed upon what did not happen.
The Black Thread Cylinder remains missing.
Danton insists the object was fraudulent.
Valois believed it important enough to discuss privately before his death.
Fortier confessed to murdering him.
Marceau has been recovered.
Élodie is healthy.
Miss Cassart is again correcting people.
The security problem is contained.
The collection can be audited.
The relevant prisoners can eventually be handed to proper authorities.
Are there still unanswered qeustions?
Yes.
Are there details not fully explained.
Absolutely.
But these are minor matters and I consider the affair satisfactorily resolved.
Chef Blanc does not appear entirely convinced.
He asked me this morning whether I thought it strange that Miss Cassart, Marceau, and Élodie all improved after the Cylinder disappeared.
I told him correlation is not causation.
I do not think he understood what I mean.
But he did understand that now was the time to move on and never talk about this affair again.
Blanc is quite clever in his own, low-born way.
We are now at Hochbaden.
Beyond it lies Aurore and the Foreign Legion.
After murder, theft, vanished pursers, fake artifacts, possibly fake replacements for fake artifacts, psychic socialites, and Pentapod pods, I confess that ordinary military service sounds increasingly attractive.
Perhaps there will be some colonial unrest.
A patrol.
A little shooting.
Something simple.
I find myself looking forward to it.