by Adrian
1. Go to the archives of the Sanders Society and get them to lend you their account of NG's
London expedition in '96. You can't imagine how I felt, when I finally got hold of a copy.
Here was someone doing exactly what I was - going into the metropolis' Underside - and they
had come back! It could be done.
2. Ask the University what happened to Dr Fallon and his research graduates in '73. They
won't want to talk about it, but that alone should show you that there is something at the heart of all of this. They disappeared. They went in but they didn't come out. Of course Fallon was
unprepared. He didn't have two decades of extra research to draw on.
3. Go to the museum in town and talk them into showing you Drawer K in their archives.
Then tell me it's nothing. Things leak. The barrier is permeable both ways. I won't be the first to cross downwards, and things have been crossing upwards perhaps forever. How long has
there been an Underside? – RH’s wartime studies have shown it is not just an urban
phenomenon. How deep might I go?
33
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
I need your help. I need a point to rappel out from. I've not had a fixed address for over a year now. There's no 'home' for me in this town. I didn't want to try the obvious map-points - the
University, Cemetery Junction, the River - because that would be jumping in at the deep end
and no mistake. So I'm going to make my descent from your place, from the pavement
outside your house. Maybe you'll even see me there, if you're looking out at two in the
morning. The walls are thinner at night.
You should be able to write to me. I want you to write to me. Leave the note under that loose
brick at the top of the pillar to the left of your drive. Put it in a waterproof bag or something.
Tell me you've got this note.
And tell me if there's anything else. There might be. I might kick up the waters a bit, when I
go. You must be on the lookout for anything strange you might see in the next few days. For
God's sake write to me, if there's anything out of the ordinary. It could genuinely be a matter
of life or death.
I'm sorry to put this on you. I have no choice. There's no-one else. Please just remember we
were friends once - have faith in me - and tell me you've got this note.
Your friend
JB
34
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
2.
Jed, what on earth are you playing at?
Yes, I got your letter - obviously. Yes, I sat up on Thursday night till two to meet you.
Actually my intention was to intercept you, drag you in, sit you down with a good strong cup
of tea and get to the bottom of this nonsense. Don’t you know how worried we’ve all been
about you? Carol was really upset when you disappeared off our radar – in fact, she was so
upset I haven’t dared tell her you’ve been back in touch. For two years all we’ve heard is
rumours that you’d dropped into a pub to harangue people or attended the odd open lecture
on campus. And now this. I don’t know where to start, Jed. If Carol had known you were
coming she’d have been out there waiting with a net.
As it was, I missed you. I set up my armchair in the darkened sitting room, facing the
window. But it had been a hell of a long day lecturing and I dozed off. I woke up again at this
godawful crash which sounded like a jet had landed on our roof, and the first thing that went
through my head was, ‘What has the silly sod done now?!’ I jumped up, couldn’t see
anything out of the window, and ran round the house trying to switch the lights on, but none
of them would work. Carol was scared out of her wits. We had no idea what was happening.
She thought it was some sort of terrorist attack.
Please tell me none of that was your doing, Jed. My paranoid side is wondering just what the
hell you were planning and how you got hold of an EMP generator. Of course, the electricity
board is saying it was a lightning strike on the sub-station over the wall, which I suppose
makes more sense. It fried every fuse and circuit-board in the house and melted all the
battery-operated devices so it must have been one hell of a hit. Even my digital watch
stopped dead. The neighbours got off with just a temporary blackout. Tell me it wasn’t you
messing around in the sub-station Jed, or I swear I’ll strangle you myself: Have you any idea
how much work I lost when my laptop fritzed?
I comfort myself with the thought that a) if it was you messing about then you’d have been
fried to a crisp yourself and serve you right, and b) it probably was a lightning strike.
Certainly when I first shot out of my chair my eyes were playing up, so I think there must
have been one hell of a flash just before the bang. All I could see outside was the silhouette of the houses opposite against the pale orange of the cloudy sky. No street lights of course,
because they’d all blown, but nothing else either: no detail of the facades, no the reflection of the sky in the windows of Number Eighteen, no white frames of their double-glazing. Just an
inky blackness. It wore off after a few moments though - by the time I ran outside to see if
there was a chunk of fuselage sticking out of my roof.
Anyway, that explains why I haven’t caught up with you and I’m forced to resort to this crazy
dead-letter drop, like we’re spies in a Le Carré novel. If Carol intercepts one she’ll have my
guts for garters. But at the moment I want to know that you’re still alright. Jed, where are you staying? Have you got a job? I am seriously worried about your health. I remember that
35
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
smoker’s cough of yours. If you’re living on the streets … Look, just remember I’m your
friend. If you need a place to sleep you can come to us. If you need food or a loan or
whatever, we can arrange it. But the one thing I will not get involved with is any more of this
Underside nonsense.
I haven’t called on the Sanders Society as you suggested because I haven’t been into London
this week. But I asked round at the University as you suggested, and I’ve paid a visit to the
museum. Jed, you have to stop this nonsense. You’re confabulating from evidence that
you’ve badly misinterpreted.
In the first place, Dr Fallon didn’t disappear in 1973: he was sacked. Okay, so nobody knows
where he or his research team went to after that, but given the disgrace they were in it’s not
surprising. Did you get the whole story? Of course the department wasn’t keen to talk -
because Fallon nearly got the whole Medical Research faculty closed down. They’d been
experimenting with some West African hallucinogen - typical Seventies psychedelic stuff –
some root or something that causes overwhelming hallucinations of the ‘spirit world’. Fallon
and his team were so convinced they were close to the pharmaceutical breakthrough of the
century that they were deliberately addicting themselves to heroin in order to test the cure.
When he was exposed they gave him and his team an hour to clear their desks, and that’s
when they ‘disappeared’. Is that your great pioneer?
I hope to God you’re not involved with heroin or illegal hallucinogenics. Jed, you’ve got to
keep a grip on what’s real and what’s not.
As to the infamous Drawer K at the m
useum, I’ve seen the contents and I’m far from
impressed. Drawer K, Jed, is where they put the fakes and the freaks, all the anomalous
rubbish with no provenance that they’ve been presented with by the ignorant public. K is for
Krackpot. That ‘fossil’; the little mummy which is clearly a Victorian fake; the clockwork
apparatus – they’re all just junk. Toys created by bored academics. I admit the insectile thing
gave me quite a start, but the museum staff were quite sure it was just constructed from
pieces of the carapace of horseshoe crabs.
Why do you find this so hard to accept? Why do you so want there to be an Underside? Jed,
I’m not a psychiatrist and I hate to bring this up, but we were always honest with each other.
I’d not be a friend if I weren’t honest now. Your interest in this Underside started, as far as I remember, soon after the car-crash. We were all heartbroken for you, and we understood that
your mourning might manifest in some unexpected ways. Nobody was trying to get you
committed because they thought you were crazy, Jed: they just thought you needed help.
If you want to come back, we’ll be overjoyed to see you. I remain, as ever, your friend.
Oliver.
36
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
3.
My good, dear friend,
Do you remember those card tricks I used to do, back when we were students. You could
never work out how I did them, and I used to lie through my teeth and tell you they were
magic, and you didn't, of course, believe me, but you couldn't disprove it. We're at the same
impasse.
Because I'm there. I'm in the Underside. And I can't prove it to you. My camera isn't working,
or at least the instants it spits out bear no resemblance to what I'm seeing, or anything I've
ever seen. The means I'm using to get this letter to you won't admit any more material
evidence to be translated into surface-side Reading. So you'll have my word, Olly, and you
can't disprove it. You can't see how it's done.
I think there is a way to put something more solid back up through the - what? Through the
sky? That's what it looks like to me. Something more substantial, though. Some of the
inhabitants must know. The monks, perhaps. I haven't dared make contact yet.
I'm getting ahead of myself. I need to present you with a reasonable record of what has
happened to me, for posterity if nothing else. If I fail here, if I don't make it back like poor Fallon, then you must preserve my account for whoever comes after me. I don't care if you
don't believe a word of it. There will be someone who badly needs to know what I have done.
The insertion: This went smoothly, far better than I'd hoped. I thought I had got in without
attracting too much attention. I was dead wrong, from your letter. Look: that wasn't me. It
sounds ridiculous, but I went in quiet as a mouse. Yes, the amount of energy you have to
generate to make the descent is colossal, but it all goes downwards. I can't stress that enough.
The Underside is at a lower energy level than topside. It is a parasite layer, entirely dependant on bleed-off from the main paradigm (don't have time to explain the jargon - see Fallon's
paper if you can find it). Hence when I made the insertion the effects on the underside were
catastrophic, but no more than a whisper behind me.
So what you mention, it wasn't me. It scares me more than I can tell you to read your account.
There are only two possibilities: either someone was trying to follow me through, and they
were too slow, the energy of their own generation earthing on the barrier, or else something
came out. I'm up against the limits of my knowledge here. Either seems equally possible.
The underside. I lost consciousness in transit, which could have gone very badly, but my
calculations were sound. I woke up on your street, in a sense. Did you know that you live on
one of the nicer areas of town? Good old Victorian architecture, you can't beat it. It's a
marvellous anchor, solid and reliable. Good to see that my choice of departure lounge was
justified. The street looked just the same, in a sense. Aside from the mess I'd made coming in,
anyway.
37
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
The problem is the energy levels. Because everything Underside is like a shadow or a
reflection the colours are very different, and the sounds. My senses have still not really
adjusted. It's like seeing a photograph of the place, but a photograph where everything has
been toned down, muted and faded, and a little blurred. That's not so bad for the buildings.
It's worse for living things, moving things. Your street's a quiet one, down here. I had time to get my bearings before morning tide.
Getting ahead of myself again. Have to get this all down fast so I can get it off to you with the even-tide, but I have to keep moving. It means this account will be a bit fractured.
So there's your street, only smudged and greyed like I say, and with, well, imagine that in the
centre of the road, the road outside your window there, someone had turned the street to
liquid and then exploded it, and in the middle of the rush-up of the fluid tarmac and stone and
what-have-you, made it solid again. A kind of kinetic sculpture twenty feet high. It was the
damndest thing I ever saw, and I'm making a real fist of describing it. It took me far too long
to realise what it was. It was my entry point. I'd done that.
I've seen others since, a few but more than I'd thought. Some are very old.
The next thing I saw was that I was glowing, almost on fire. It was the energy again Imagine
if a part of the sun had visited the earth, how bright it would be. I was boiling off energy into the grey air. I put my protective measures up as quickly as I could, the nodal circuit and the
pentagonal one, working in opposition just like the texts say. That cut the bleed-off a lot,
although I'm still shining like a maniac down here. I only hope I was quick enough to put up
my shields before something caught the scent. If I'd gone on without them it would be like
trailing raw meat through a bear enclosure.
And the sky - looking at the sky was a mistake. The sky here is a kind of sepia colour, and
clouded over, only the clouds are... it's like looking at some nasty bloated thing in a jar at the Biology department, but formless, as though it's been soaking in formaldahyde so long it's
just gone soft and spread, or- no, this is better - it's like one of those cocktails where they put the cream liqueur in and it makes something really hideous in the watery bit. The sky here is
rotting. I don't know whether that's a general Underside trait or whether it's just this town. It could be just here. I'd believe that. Nobody has ever mentioned this before. This is the very
first time most of these observations have ever been recorded. Fallon and the others were so
damn close-mouthed.
Fallon did disappear. They gave him notice, true, but he and his team had already made the
preparations, and they tried the insertion. I'm heading for the University district now, and I
expect to find what happened to him. Might be able to report in this letter if I make good
enough time.
38
Short Changes
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Morning tide. That was the next thing. It nearly caught me. There's no dawn here. A kind of
drab light picks up at the edge of the sky, all around, at about the time I reckoned dawn
/>
would be happening above. It doesn't improve matters much. My watch had also stopped,
you'll be pleased to know. I've tried to get it working but the display has started making very
odd patterns, as though it's trying to make words, so I've taken it off. Should have brought a
clockwork one. Hindsight again. Anyway, when the morning came, probably at around eight
o'clock your time, the tide began. I started to see movement, a kind of cobwebby movement,
all down the street. At first there were no shapes, but then there were kind of shadows of
people, just a few and then hundreds, rushing in a river down your road towards the town
centre. I got caught in it. Before I could hold onto something this invisible force was rushing
me towards the commercial district. I don't need to tell you I wasn't ready for that. I fought
against it, exactly as you would a current or a strong wind. I was eight streets away at least
before I clawed my way into the shelter of a doorway. The tide went on for over an hour, by
my guess, and then started to recede. Again, nobody had thought to mention this before, not
even the NG expedition from Sanders, although it must have been a damn sight worse in
London. Commuters, Olly. When you and yours go to work, all the numberless hordes of
you, it makes a stir down here, an echo. Now I know to get well out of the way a little after
dawn, and again before what limp gloom passes for sunset, when the even-tide comes rushing
back out. It's like the city breathing.
The city is inhabited, here on the underside. I'm hurrying now, but there is information here