by Mike Ashley
The two “SS” soldiers soon went out on patrol, but it wasn’t long before the two uniformed men hastened back, and Schwabe reported, “Hauptsturmführer, the body of the Untermensch has gone!”
As I quickly learned, Schäfer – who was very vain about his prowess with his Mauser rifle – had shot a dwarf a few hours prior to my rescue. He had shot it directly through the heart, so that Krause could photograph its unblemished head from several angles (using a wonderful future device known as an Arriflex hand camera) and so that Schäfer himself could make detailed measurements using callipers, to record in a notebook. Not wishing to share habitation with the corpse, the Germans had concealed it a short distance away for possible further study. Evidently other dwarfs had quietly sneaked close and carried the body away.
I now began to entertain a suspicion as to the true reason for my recent abduction by the dwarfs. The motive might not be that I should become the object of their carnal appetites (whether rape or cannibalism), nor yet that I should be kept as a goddess. They may have been taking me hostage in an attempt to protect themselves from further murders! Why should they have distinguished between French intruders and the German invaders of their cavern? A hostage would make sense.
“Excuse me,” I said to Schäfer, “if you wanted pictures and measurements, why did you not ask? If only by mime! And you could have offered a gift – some food, or a mirror. A mirror might have been ideal.”
I unleashed a veritable torrent. The dwarfs were degraded parodies of humanity far worse even than Jews! All that the dwarfs merited was extermination. Preceded by study – study was a scientific duty. These degenerates might well be descendants of the same dwarfs that once populated the Earth three hundred thousand years ago when there were three suns in the sky. They might be descended from a sub-race such as the Hottentots, but had lost pigmentation underground.
Scarcely could I believe that these were the countrymen of Goethe. Could reason have so departed from that world only eighty years in my future, at the same time as science had apparently advanced so much, as witness that wonderful camera? During our journey Deville and Verne had often discussed that book about the “evolution” of species by the Englishman, Darwin, which I mentioned earlier. By now I had some understanding of the ideas, since I’m quick on the uptake – not that Verne generally seemed to think so. It seemed to me that these future Germans had interpreted the ideas of Darwin strangely indeed, or maybe the German translation was wildly inaccurate! Purity of race was a veritable obsession with these new masters of Europe. I heard words from them such as superhuman, and subhuman. Schwabe and Hahn were certainly fine physical specimens, both of them tall strapping blonds (Hahn looked less fanatical). I think Schäfer compensated for his own lesser stature by throwing his weight around – he seemed driven and tormented by inner demons.
“The dwarfs have the lustfully sensual lips of Jews,” Schäfer was saying. “If we had not rescued the Frenchwoman, they would undoubtedly have ravished her.” He paused and stared at me. “Mademoiselle Hortense,” he addressed me, “you are not by any chance Jewish yourself?”
“Would it matter if I am?”
“Answer me, damn it!” What a flash of temper. Not unlike Verne, come to think of it.
“My parents never mentioned such a thing to me.” These Germans might aspire to the stature of giants bestriding future Europe, but in other regards, dear me.
“Hauptsturmführer,” I said sweetly, “I think the little people kidnapped me as a way of protecting themselves from you.”
The Little People: fairy folk, diminutive ogres . . . in tales of old that my Grandma told me such beings did kidnap people and take them under the Earth – and in the subterranean domain time behaved strangely so that a century might elapse during what to the abductee seemed only a weekend. Could it be that the dwarfs could exploit the temporal distortions underground, and choose to visit the surface during different epochs which to us were far apart? If so, I’d been right that long ago from our point of view they painted those pictures of animals in the cave we first ventured upon. Maybe from their point of view that was only a thousand years ago.
That the dwarfs went naked wasn’t necessarily a sign of degenerate barbarity. Living among the giant fungi and tree-ferns and beautiful papillons was akin to dwelling in the Garden of Eden in innocence. True, fierce toothy monsters swam in the sea . . .
But then, in the biblical Paradise there was at least one serpent.
And Nazis in this one. Such, I gathered, was the name of the political party which these Germans revered.
“Those dwarfs’ lives are not worth living,” snarled Schäfer.
“Everyone’s life is worth living,” I suggested, “to the person who is living it.”
“Oh no it is not!” he shouted. Snatching up his rifle, he stormed out.
Dr Rimmer – the diviner and geologist – drew me aside, and appealed to me softly. “Please do not provoke Schäfer. He suffered a terrible tragedy. He took his young bride with him on a lake to shoot ducks. In the boat he stumbled and the shotgun went off by accident, killing her. This has made him bitter and unpredictable. Oh I would so much rather I was seeking gold in the River Isar.”
“So it’s gold you divine for, not water?”
The geophysicist Wienert overheard this.
“Listen to me, Rimmer: you and Himmler” (whoever he was) “would have caused every geologist in Germany to retrain as a diviner! That’s the main reason you’re here, to keep you out of harm’s way. Stop entertaining the lady with fantasies.”
“I was explaining . . . never mind. Do you suppose the dwarfs have a fixed abode, or are nomads?”
“An abode where they might keep golden treasure?”
“I was thinking about the Nibelung miners of legend. Those are dwarfs.”
“Who, if I recall, wear aprons and don’t go naked.”
“Ugly creatures, by all accounts, yet very clever. Part of our collective Teutonic race-mind, eh? Why should that be so?”
When Schäfer returned, now sulking – he mustn’t have shot a dwarf – I said to him, “Hauptsturmführer,” for how absurdly pompous that title sounded, “the dwarfs that live here may be the clever Nibelungs of your German legends. Don’t they deserve some respect, or at least merit some caution in your dealings with them, rather than your simply shooting them?” I almost added like ducks, but this would have been to go too far.
Schäfer glared at me. “Did you wish to be ravished by them, then? You are no German woman, that’s perfectly plain. France is a nation of utter immorality.”
Oh-la-la, I thought.
“In fact,” he went on, “I would expel you from our protection forthwith . . . !”
If it were not for the fact that . . . ?
Ah, if set free I might elude the dwarfs and tell my companions all about their German rivals, not to mention the mysterious twist in time which had brought our two parties together. Consequently I must remain a prisoner of the Nazi Reich.
Presently we ate – oily-tasting steaks from some amphibious creature which Schäfer had hunted, accompanied by boiled vegetation which Krause had spied a dwarf eating raw. Then Schäfer declared he was tired, consulted a steely bracelet-watch, and decreed night-time. The electric air of the vast cavern knew no darkness, but the Germans were methodical about observing day and night – as indeed we also had been during the everlasting darkness preceding our arrival here. Their day happened to end hours earlier than a French subterranean day. Hahn sat guard.
As I lay under the blanket upon the loam, waiting for the other Germans to fall asleep, I thought about the large eyes of the dwarfs. If eternal daylight – cavernlight – was usual for them, why did they have big eyes? Was it because the cavernlight was dimmer than sunlight, although after weeks of darkness it seemed bright enough to me? Or was it because the dwarfs spent a lot of their time elsewhere than in the cavern? What did they use to light their way, however dimly, in the tunnels? Lanterns of some so
rt? How little we knew of the lives of the dwarfs.
What had become of my companions? Wouldn’t they have heard the gunfire earlier on, even if the battle between the monsters was preoccupying them? There had been no halloos. They must be searching in the wrong direction.
Finally I judged that all were asleep except Hahn. That vigorous young man may have spent a couple of months underground with no female company. I did hope he wasn’t too pure in mind and body. Sliding closer to him, I whispered, “Manfred, I can’t sleep.”
Modesty forbids detailing my further enticing whispers, but presently he and I were some way from that recess in the cavern wall, half hidden by the fronds of small ferns.
“Your helmet . . . I can’t kiss you properly.”
So his steel helmet joined the gun lying close to us. I began to unbutton his uniform while his hands did things which I did my best to blank from my awareness. He was certainly muscular and eager, yet a man is at a certain disadvantage when his trousers descend below his knees, whereas when a woman’s skirts are lifted she is not similarly impeded. Which of the two objects would hit Hahn’s head harder: the discarded helmet, or the gun? Would the blow be hard enough? How exactly would I reach either of those while he was grasping and groping? If I gripped his jewels and squeezed hard, would he scream and wake the others? Perhaps persuade him to let me ride him? Would an SS man be ridden by a woman? Maybe this excursion of mine into acting was a big miscalculation.
As I struggled to decide, whilst seeming to struggle amorously, something descended violently nevertheless upon Hahn’s head.
A hiss in my ear: “It’s Pierre. What the devil are you up to?”
“Trying to escape, what do you think?”
“Hmm!”
Beside Hahn’s concussed head lay Pierre’s double-barrel revolver, of which he had let go. Pierre and I whispered, me urging the need to relieve the Germans of their weapons. Pierre saw the sense of this. I arranged the German helmet upon Pierre’s head the correct way then I lifted Hahn’s “submachine” gun while Pierre readied his pistol. Softly we trod toward the recess.
Schäfer promptly sat up “So, Schwabe, have you emptied yourself – ?” The helmet confused Schäfer only momentarily, and his hand darted towards his holstered pistol. I shouted, “Don’t move or I shit,” mixing up scheisse with schiesse, but Schäfer understood me well enough and desisted.
The others stirred awake.
Well, we did succeed in impounding the hunting rifle and Schwabe’s sub-machine gun and the pistols of the three other scientists, but the Hauptsturmführer stubbornly refused to yield his own pistol.
“You will have to kill me first,” he said.
Arrogance, pride – then I remembered about his dead bride and his anguish. I thrust this knowledge aside. Here was a man who believed in exterminating mortals he deemed lesser than himself.
“Leave us one gun,” pleaded Rimmer. “The dwarfs . . .”
“You’re superhuman, aren’t you?”
We left the pistol, even though this obliged us to run off in some haste. Don’t forget, Schäfer was a crack marksman.
Pierre led me to a grove of ferns, where Deville and Verne proved to be waiting, armed with our own Purdley More rifles and Colt revolvers. Hasty explanations on my part followed, astonishing everyone. They hadn’t even seen any dwarfs – and they were flabbergasted by my brief account of the German expedition and its origin. Pierre at least had seen the Germans close up, and those guns of the future were persuasive evidence.
“We must return to our baggage,” urged Verne. “Those dwarfs – Antoine might not cope. Time, time!” he exclaimed.
“It’s several hours since we left Antoine,” agreed Deville.
“Not that sort of time, man! I refer to the link with the future!”
The novelist was busy thinking.
As we made to leave, redistributing the weapons amongst us, a rustle in the undergrowth disclosed a dwarf. The naked being rose to stare at us intently, apparently unafraid, taking close account not merely of ourselves but of what we carried, and maybe counting the guns.
“Hallo!” cried Verne, but the dwarf turned and swiftly disappeared. Soon we heard a guttural voice answered by many other voices. When we returned to Antoine, for once he was deeply perturbed and crossing himself. He too had seen “little people.” They in turn had watched him.
We decided that we should set off back to the surface as soon as we replenished our water supplies. Of meat extract and biscuits, ample remained. Dried fish would have made for welcome variety, but time spent in catching and drying was out of the question. A thorough wash would have been a delightful idea, but the Hauptsturmführer still retained his pistol.
Would he retain it for much longer? Much about the dwarfs was surmise on my part, but I think Schäfer had greatly underestimated them. I imagined a wave of dwarfs overwhelming the German camp. Somehow I did not think that the Germans would be killed. I imagined the Germans becoming chattels of the dwarfs, forced to labour for them. No, perhaps the dwarfs would march the Nazis to some point distant in time and release them on an Earth before human beings existed.
Within an hour we were lighting our way through darkness once again. Verne began to discourse about time and the future.
“If only some machine could be made to take advantage – a time machine . . . Hmm, we have a duty to warn France about the future ruled so evilly by Germans. Will people believe us when we only have a woman’s word for it? We have the sub-machine guns. Our industrialists can copy those. Just imagine a larger, more powerful version mounted on a tripod. France will have an advantage in arms.”
“An advantage,” I pointed out, “only until other nations steal and copy – and that’ll be soon enough. War will become an even more horrible slaughter. I say we should hide the German guns before we ever reach the surface.”
“How typical of a woman to hide evidence!”
“And who obtained the guns?” I enquired ironically.
“And by what means?” Pierre murmured softly to me. “Hmm.”
“Don’t be silly. Was I supposed to wait feebly for rescue?”
“Future wars might indeed be terrible,” conceded Verne. “When I think of the ten thousand workers killed in Paris in 1948 . . . It’s enough to make one thoroughly misanthropic rather than hopeful – when there’s so much to be hoped for from science! Ach, dominion by Germans who have twisted science to serve some racial madness . . . that cannot be. Without the weapons, what proof have we? Yet the weapons will produce evil.”
Ah, my opinion was now his opinion. “Plainly we must warn the world. Nevertheless, the tangling of time seems almost incredible.”
As we steadily made our way back to the surface, as dark day followed dark day Verne continued to muse. Was it possible to harness time? To step out of its flow and back in again elsewhen? Yet by employing what possible technology? He quizzed me. “Did you mention powerful magnetic fields . . . ?”
A practical method eluded him. And how could our countrymen best be apprized of the future menace of the Nazis?
“I wonder, I wonder if a novel might be the most effective way. A tale about hostilities between France now, and Germany of the next century . . . Different worlds at war. Hmm, a war of the worlds, employing a time machine based on a plausible scientific rationale . . .”
CLIFF RHODES AND THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY
A Land at the End of the Working Day Story
Peter Crowther
You can always be sure you’ll get your money’s worth with Peter Crowther. Whilst the following story is inspired by Journey to the Centre of the Earth it’s much more than that. Peter gets to the heart of our fascination with all of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires and takes us on not just one adventure, but many.
“That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?”
Ecclesiastes
1 The two strangers
“I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW this place existed!” i
s the second thing the taller of the two strangers says, hands (one brandishing a piece of creased paper) on his hips as he looks around Jack Fedogan’s bar, his having blown in with his companion, a shorter man with beer-bottle-bottom glasses, blown in off of the nighttime street on a cold and blustery late autumn evening.
And who could blame him.
The curiously named The Land at the End of the Working Day walk-down bar, situated on the corner of 23rd and Fifth, just a stone’s throw from the tired regality of the Chelsea Hotel, is not your average watering hole, not even given the myriad strangenesses that make up twenty-first century Manhattan. And, in truth, there are a lot of folks who don’t know the bar is there, finding it only when their need is great – and that’s not always simply the need for beverages . . . such as one of Jack Fedogan’s generous cocktails or a bottle of imported beer from his well-stocked cellar or a bottle of his crisp Chardonnay or chewy claret, always grown on the right slope and its vines always facing the afternoon sun; nor is it just the need to hear some of the best jazz piped over a bar PA this side of New Orleans. There are needs and then there are needs – and you can take that one to the bank.
So the stranger’s opening gambit isn’t too unusual.
As he walks down the stairs, the glorious harmonies of Stan Getz’s tenor and Lou Levy’s piano from Getz’s West Coast Jazz album from 1955 are wafting through a soft fog of cigarette smoke (“smoking ban, shmoking ban,” is Jack’s attitude) and occasional glass-chinking, and mingling with muted laughter from the table along from the counter and in front of the booths. But once he’s spoken, only the music remains . . . while the patrons size him up. And the little guy, too – the little guy who looks like a cross between Peter Lorre and that mad scientist fella used to be constantly getting on the wrong side of good ol’ Captain Marvel.