ODD?

by Jeff VanderMeer

  To the right and the left, I caught sight of ground which was much lower and which was covered by a forest of immense expanse, with this peculiarity: that the trees were shiny as if they had been rubbed in graphite, or like certain petrified wood that is found in coal mines. But all my attention fell toward the accursed mountain, which, through a well-known optical illusion, seemed to me very close, even though I was still very far from it.

  The sea in this place was sown with reefs and sandbanks, crossed through with currents, among which I had a lot of trouble maintaining my craft; the cadavers of fish and birds floated belly up, as if the proximity of the accursed mountain could be mortal to all animate beings. A smell of carnage and of corruption rose from these desolate waves.

  No terrestrial landscape can give an idea of the sinister and grandiose appearance of this prospect.

  Near the middle of the day, I passed the coast of an islet covered with greenery and flowers and I came near to it with the intention of making a stop there for some time. I would wait there, taking a little rest, until the hour had come to witness the immolation of the Vampires.

  But when I was near those enchanted banks, I saw that they were planted with giant oleander and the breeze conveyed to me the bitter smell of prussic acid.

  I understood that it might have been deadly to set foot on this poisoned ground. The debris of insects, of small mammals and of fish that were strewn over the sand, confirmed my fears only too well. I used my oars to move away.

  You understand now my profound aversion for any perfume which comes near to that of bitter almonds.

  This discovery made a great impression on me. I saw that all was danger around me and from that moment forward I was persuaded that the Vampires had said the truth, and that I was the plaything of an unknown and formidable power.

  This time I was determined to turn around and return; but I calculated that there remained to me hardly more than two hours of daylight. It would have been the maddest recklessness to start my return voyage at night; I was so troubled that I didn’t know if I would have been able to recognize the South-North current which was to bring me back to the glass towers.

  I had wanted to see it, I would see it, be it in spite of myself. I resigned myself to this, trembling, and I glided cautiously to come near to the base of the mountain; I was now close enough to it to recognize that it was entirely formed of white quartz.

  This rounded cliff that rose perpendicularly in front of me was as abrupt as if it had been cut from a single block or cast in a mold.

  For a long time I went along the base obstructed by sandbars, which, I saw with horror, were covered with piles of Vampire palps and wings, and which exhaled a suffocating stench.

  I noticed then that it had been possible to catch sight of that hideous debris without the help of my mask.

  The capacity of being invisible, which the Vampires possessed, was thus linked to their existence and disappeared at the moment they died.

  I would have been able to row for weeks around the giant dome without being further along. I was making up my mind to cast the ingot of metal which served me for an anchor, when I noticed, approximately in the center of the base of the mountain, a dark blotch which gave me the impression of a door or something similar. It must have permitted entrance into the interior of the dome, into the very flanks of the monstrous block of quartz.

  I rowed hard in this direction and finally reached a large shadowy bay that opened up awash with waves.

  I didn’t even dream of venturing into this den, especially when I observed that the debris of the Vampires was more plentiful there than everywhere else, and formed in the proximity a sort of fetid swamp, full of the creeping of animals and the noise of jaws.

  I thus moved away from it, but not far enough to lose this frightening entrance from sight. I took position on a small rocky island situated to the left and I tried to eat, in spite of the anguish which clenched my throat and the nausea which turned my stomach. I had not yet eaten anything that day; but in spite of my efforts, it was hardly as if I succeeded in drinking a sip of the fortifying liquor and a pinch of those starchy grains that I had found in the subterranean galleries.

  With an inexpressible emotion, I watched the night arrive. The sun had still not disappeared when already the thunder started to rumble, and the daily gale burst out.

  It was then that I observed a strange phenomenon. As the lightning redoubled in quantity and intensity, the forest with metallic trees was surrounded by a bluish atmosphere of electricity; the treetops were crowned with fire similar to that which sailors observe sometimes at the tip of the masts. The forest seemed literally to drink the storm and be saturated with fluid.

  I understood nothing; neither on earth nor on Mars had I seen wood behave in a manner so contrary to the laws of conductivity.

  I was soon torn from this mute contemplation; night had come completely, and furious wind had arisen; but, dominating its howling, a heart-rending roar arose from the end of the horizon to the north and increased from moment to moment.

  I felt the marrow of my bones freeze and my hair stand on end with horror in recognizing the high-pitched cry of the Vampires that this time was their cry of agony.

  They had left the towers, like those that I had seen the preceding month, and here hideous and pitiful they arrived, carried on the wings of the gale.

  Already they stained the sky striated with lightning bolts with their livid mass; I heard the rushing noise of their wings, and those bitter cries which tore my heart.

  It seemed to me that they came toward me, that they begged for my help! It was dreadful . . . I had fallen, gasping for breath, on the sand; I would have wanted to close my eyes so as not to see and yet, I looked, drawn by the vertigo of the horror.

  The flock of the miserable monsters passed only several meters above me and I saw the first rush, with a speed of which only a waterspout or a whirlwind can give the image, under the dark porch of which I spoke and which now was illuminated by a vague phosphorescence.

  Their swarm rushed in, dragged by an invincible force, they fell over each other like sheep at the too-narrow door of an abattoir. The screeching and imploring horde was slowly absorbed by the mountain.

  The high-pitched cries faded into soft noise of a ground up thing, in a burp of deglutition which could be heard as far away as me. From time to time, the porch, which I didn’t dare call a mouth, discharged in a flood of bloody foam the wings and the palps which went to pile up in a semi-circular shoal, like filth forms at the entrance of sewers . . .

  And above this hideous drama, the large black sky slashed with bolts of lightning, which showed the nightmare landscape and the angry waves. . .

  It was more than my strength could bear. I fainted.

  When I opened my eyes again, the swarm of vampires had disappeared, all had tumbled into the gaping maw, the gale raged solitarily above the desolate horizon; but an inexplicable modification had been produced in the appearance of the mountain: it shined now all over with a milky phosphorescence. I had before me a wall of livid light, the impression of which was terrible beyond what you could imagine.

  I was not able to stop myself from thinking of those glowworms of the tropics who cast their fire only once full; now, no doubt, the Leviathan was digesting.

  I was shattered with exhaustion and fear, sick, nauseated. There remained to me not even curiosity anymore; I had only one thought: to flee forever this accursed place.

  Ah! Why had I left Earth, the good maternal Earth, for this bloody planet where the laws of competition were exercised in so atrocious and so harsh a fashion!

  I had only one idea, I repeat: to flee, to flee at any price, no matter where, no matter at the price of what dangers.

  I didn’t even consider the gale which whipped with its lashes of lightning the flock of waves into frenzied foam. I untied my skiff and I seized my oars with a sort of madness; but I was hardly two cable-lengths from the shore when a ground swell lifted
the nacelle and made it swirl about like a wisp of straw. I held on tightly to the edging and I proceeded to the crest of the waves with a stupefying speed.

  I think now that I certainly owe not having sunk to the bottom to the extreme lightness of my craft.

  I was thrown over the points of rock, cast brutally onto a beach of pebbles, then taken again by the flood and thrown again; a large wave engulfed me, my arms went slack and I sunk to the bottom. . .

  By what miracle did I not perish?

  When I opened my eyes again to the hot rays of the sun already high in the sky, I was stretched out on a bank of stones and at the first movement that I tried to make I experienced lively pains all over my body.

  I was broken like a man that would have been beaten by blows of a stick, the acute points of the rocks had covered me with cuts and bruises, finally the seawater that I had swallowed had caused me violent stomach cramps.

  I believed my last hour had come. Yet, I had the strength to drag myself outside the reach of the waves; a few paces from me, I glimpsed the debris of my tortoiseshell barque, punctured and broken apart, and also several of the objects that had made up its load.

  I crawled in this direction; but I was so weakened that I certainly needed more than a half hour to cross the ten paces which separated me from the flotsam. Each movement tore from me a moan of pain and I was tortured by thirst.

  It was with a feeling of unutterable happiness that I recognized, more or less intact among the pebbles, the bamboo keg which contained my warming liquor. With a lot of time and effort, I managed again to drag myself up to it and undo the cover.

  With rapture I swallowed several gulps and almost immediately the effect of the noble elixir made itself felt; I found myself better and, although my injuries made me suffer a lot, I was able to stand and pull aside the debris of my bark, in the vague hope of repairing it later.

  I barely could stand and the sun, quite blazing at that moment, started to bother me.

  It was only then that I thought to examine the shore where the gale had cast me. Facing me, at a little distance from the sea, extended the petrified forest with strange glints of graphite, that the night before I had seen crowned with electric flashes: very far behind, the cone of a volcano plumed with smoke; to my right, the accursed mountain blocked the view with its vast white mass, of which the rounded summit was lost in the clouds.

  The terrible vision of the scenes of the night rose in my memory.

  I trembled with horror; I believe that I would have believed myself more in safety under the claw of a lion than in this awful vicinity. I knew that a whim of the monster hidden in that mountain would have been enough so that I might be sucked in, and devoured like one of the microscopic animals upon which whales in certain periods nourished themselves.

  I wondered how it was that I was still alive. The same fervent desire to flee took hold of me, I thought that I owed my life only to the torpor in which, during its digestion, the mysterious leviathan suffered.

  To flee. . . But that was impossible for me; I threw a desperate look at my blood-drenched legs and at the debris of my bark. I couldn’t set back to sea without healing and resting and without having mended, somehow or other, my skiff.

  I was absorbed in these sad reflections when I had the idea that the cordial of my keg would be an excellent dressing for my wounds; its balsamic scent encouraged me to use it and I experienced almost immediately the good effect; the distressing smarting of the cuts relented and, while still limping a little, I felt more solid on my legs.

  I used the rest of the day to rest and to recover what I could of my provisions. In giving myself over to this work I noticed, half-buried in the sand, the opal mask which must have come off at the moment of the shipwreck; this discovery caused me great joy.

  I put it in safety in a hole in the rock with what I had saved. I lit a fire thanks to the lens and I cooked a sea turtle with a serpent’s neck that I had captured in the sand.

  I won’t speak of the daily storm which arose as soon as the sun set, and against which I sheltered myself as best I could. Exhaustion and, perhaps, the properties of my cordial made me enjoy a profound slumber. Upon awakening, I found myself nearly refreshed, in any case ready to set to work; the idea that the digestion process of the Leviathan must make it harmless for several days in a row had greatly comforted me.

  First of all, the debris of my fire, near which were scattered the remains of the sea turtle, made me think that with the aid of a certain number of similar shells, softened by the heat, I would easily be able to repair my craft. But the shells shriveled in the fire and I remembered that, in comb-making, it was boiling water that was made use of to soften the material before working it, and I had nothing which could replace a vase proper to containing it.

  I was discouraged. I took my axe and headed in the direction of the crystallized forest; in the other direction I glimpsed the crater crowned with a plume of smoke.

  The environs of the volcano gave me hope, rather vague for that matter, of finding a source of hot water.

  I moved forward into the empty space which was found between the mountain and the forest. I noticed then—I was no longer keeping count of the surprises and I was blasé about the most extraordinary phenomena—that the trees were not at all, as I had believed, petrified fossils, that they weren’t trees, but actually metal masts where the smallest bars came to fuse at right angles. These bars were forked into metallic sticks sharpened into very fine points.

  The whole had the appearance of a fir tree with a pointed treetop. The base of each of the masts, which served as a trunk, was securely fixed into a large plate of glass.

  I had before me a non-vegetal and completely artificial forest, a forest of lightning rods!

  I was no longer surprised now by the electric fires that I had seen fluttering about during the storm above these strange branches. But what became of the enormous quantity of current thus harnessed during each storm, that is to say each evening?

  I lost myself in conjectures.

  I continued to follow alongside the forest and I arrived at a vast square, paved with large plates of transparent glass, below which I heard a murmur of running water. I kneeled and through the thickness of the paving, I distinguished a large metal beam to which were connected a multitude of smaller cables and which were immersed in the water of a lake or of a subterranean canal.

  I had no doubt that each of the cables was attached to the foot of one of the metal trees.

  Thus all electrical energy harnessed by those thousands and thousands of lightning rods was absorbed and utilized—for what task?—by the unknown and formidable being that I had called the Leviathan, for lack of another word to more clearly define it!

  I was so preoccupied with the discovery that I had just made that without being aware of it I passed the square paved in glass. I entered into the metal forest, where the slightest breeze made the branches vibrate like Aeolian harps.

  “What on earth can this current really be used for?” I cried aloud.

  And, while monologizing, like all people who are under the empire of a fascinating idea, I continued to walk quickly.

  I must have walked for a long time thus, because, as I calculated since, the forest, at this spot, was around a league wide, with a length three times greater.

  I only stopped in a stony and bare spot because a stream barred the path; I had crossed the width of the electric wood and I saw, at a small distance, the first foothills of the volcano.

  The lava field was sewn with pumice stones, ashes and scoria.

  I prepared to step over the stream when I noticed that its water exhaled a thick steam. I dipped my hand in; its water was boiling hot; by a strange bit of luck, my hypothesis was right, I had before me one of those hot springs so common in the environs of volcanoes, and I was able to say that this discovery had not cost me great difficulty.

  I would be able to patch up at my ease the sides of my tortoiseshell bark. I couldn’t get o
ver the luck that I had had and I was going to get myself underway to go look for my skiff, when I had the fancy to follow the course of the stream which ran toward the base of the mountain, whose assizes it bathed for a while.

  On the way, it received the tribute of a small spring whose waters, of a dirty yellow and with a pungent odor showed me that I had before me a stream of acid, a phenomenon moreover as common in the volcanic regions as a jet of hot water.

  I remembered that Humboldt reported in the Andes a “natural” source of sulfuric acid weighing a degree rather elevated on the Baume aerometer.

  But, in the way in which the vitrified lava of the banks was hollowed and as if dissolved, it wasn’t this substance that I was dealing with: it had to be instead hydrofluoric acid, the most corrosive of all the substances, since it even ate away the glass decanters in which it was put.

  In mixing with the stream, the spring communicated to it its corrosive qualities and, when I arrived at the place where it was in close contact with the mountain, I perceived that the uninterrupted work of the waters had hollowed into the quartz a recess of around a meter in height.

  The current entered into that miniscule grotto, from which it came out a few steps farther along, to be lost in a swamp, stinking with a smell of sulfur, which reminded me of the surroundings of Etna, which I had visited in the past.

  I had stopped before the grotto and I examined the stone that I had taken for quartz and which formed all the surface of the mountain; in the places where it had been eaten into by the action of the acid, it was completely like the stone with pink and gray glints of which my mask was made and which I had taken to be opal.

  It was one more enigma to decipher; but at first I didn’t attach to it any importance.