by Martha Wells
Harrington sipped at his strong brew and looked at the captain. “Wilson? You want to brief them, or shall I?”
“Your boat,” Wilson replied.
“Fine.” Harrington glanced around. “I managed a radio call. The prop’s been damaged but we’ve all been ill for two days, so no one’s been down to investigate as yet. If it can be repaired, all right, but in the meantime it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if a nearby vessel could come along and offer us aid.”
“Two days?” Jacoby’s voice broke as he said the words. It couldn’t have been that long!
Harrington nodded. “Two days. Whatever made us sick, it kept us down a while. No one more than you, Professor.”
Emerson, the closest they had to a real doctor on board, nodded agreement and then started setting out cups. “No one has an appetite, but we’ll need to drink down some broth and water at the least.”
There were grumbles and Jacoby’s was among them. Still, he could feel how badly his body needed fluids. You need to stay alive. You need to be patient, his mind whispered to him. They’re coming.
He said nothing but he frowned at the notion. Harrington had radioed for help, but Jacoby didn’t think whoever might respond to that summons was the “they” he had in mind. He had no idea who his own “they” might be or why he felt so excited when he thought about it. The question haunted him.
The storm had done just enough damage. Though the boat was seaworthy, Toby had reluctantly wrestled on one of the dive suits and gone down into the icy water only to confirm that the props were indeed damaged. They had the tools to at least attempt repairs, but they’d all been ill, and the time it would take underwater to make those repairs meant multiple dives spaced out across days, with no guarantee of success. Even Toby wasn’t willing to make the attempt until he stopped feeling like his guts were going to erupt at any given moment.
Harrington made additional calls on the radio but no answers came save for occasional bursts of static. The air was bitterly cold and the crew continued on, struggling with bouts of heavy nausea and a general apathy that had enveloped them all without explanation. This malaise struck each of them so profoundly that none seemed especially worried about their plight.
Jacoby felt compelled to write of his concerns in the journal he’d been keeping, but even that didn’t go as well as he’d hoped. His handwriting was a nervous scrawl that lacked the energy to complete full sentences, sometimes full words.
The nightmares continued, worming their way into his deepest self, both conscious and unconscious. He woke wanting to flee, but had nowhere to run. The Burleson was crippled, waiting for a diver who was healthy enough to attempt lengthy underwater repairs or the appearance of another vessel.
Perhaps a week passed in this manner, but then, in the midst of static, a message came through from the Ashleigh Michaels. Help was on the way, though it would be several days before it arrived.
Most of that time was lost in nausea and dreams. The sole exception came in the form of a burial at sea for Thomas Benson, the man who’d helped Harrington move the heavy stones from the ivory chest. He had succumbed after ten days of dreadful illness that waxed and waned with no apparent rationale. When a crewman discovered him in his cabin, Benson’s flesh was gray. His skin flaked away upon contact, revealing muscles and bones that crumbled like charred wood.
Others felt sick, but no one else died from the illness.
Though it had taken a great deal of effort Harrington and the captain had put their prized stone figures back into the chest and sealed it. The not-ivory box lay in a corner of the cargo hold and Jacoby spent most of his time down there with a light, studying the markings on the stones and on the box. He made his own guesses as to what the unsettling symbols meant, leaps of logic and intuition based on various symbols and runic writings he’d encountered in other cultures, but the entire matter was little more than a game of conjecture, until the Ashleigh Michaels pulled alongside the Burleson and its captain came on deck.
The Burleson was a working man’s ship. It was old and sturdy, sturdy enough to survive a storm that would have completely scuttled a smaller vessel. The Ashleigh Michaels was a yacht that had no sane reason for being in the Arctic waters.
The captain was not a sailor. He was a tall, lean, and scholarly man with a receding hairline and the hands of an intellectual. He introduced himself as David Ivers, but Jacoby was less interested in his name than in the frantic glint in his dark eyes, a shimmer of desperation so evident that even his thick glasses could not hide it.
Most of the crew came onto the deck to see the newcomers. Aside from the captain there was a small crew on the yacht. They remained on the other boat, not a man among them showing the least interest in having anything to do with the Burleson.
Harrington and Captain Wilson introduced themselves to Ivers, the latter shaking the man’s hand with almost tearful gratitude. Ivers studied him and then the rest of the crew.
“Gentlemen, I’ve read your messages,” Ivers said. “I need only see what you’ve found.”
Harrington frowned. “What are you talking about? We called for help—”
“And here I am,” Ivers replied.
“To help us or to poach our discoveries?” Jacoby snapped, surprising himself with the ferocity of his accusation.
He’d been contemplating the rapid deterioration of his employer. Harrington had been a strong man, but the voyage—the long days since their discovery in particular—had taken a terrible toll on him. He muttered almost constantly beneath his breath and he’d developed a nervous tick under his left eye, which grew markedly worse at the announcement of Ivers’s demand. In that moment, though, Jacoby understood that he himself was in no better condition. He felt that old nausea roiling in his gut, as familiar now as the blur of his failing vision. Spectacles could correct the latter, but the former had come to stay.
“It’s a simple request,” Ivers said. “On the radio, you said you’d brought something up from the wreck of the Eleanor Lockley. I merely want to see it. Feed my curiosity, sir. It’s a small price to pay for whatever help we may offer.”
Muttering, clearly reluctant, Harrington nevertheless complied. He led the way into the ship’s hold with Jacoby, Trumbull, and several others in tow, and showed the not-ivory chest to the man who had come to their aid.
Harrington was reaching to open his prize when Ivers spoke to him.
“Step back from the chest, please, sir. It can only cause you more harm.”
“What do you mean?” Harrington’s angry voice held a tremor that had not been there even a day earlier.
“It might already be too late, but you have to abandon this ship and come aboard mine, and do it quickly. All of you. And you’ve got to leave anything you pulled up from that wreck behind.”
“What are you talking about, man?” Jacoby demanded. “We can’t just leave. The ship can be repaired. As for the chest—”
“Don’t be a fool,” Ivers said. “I can see it in you. The sheen of your skin, the widening of your eyes. You can feel the way those stone figures call out and your fragile flesh cannot endure it much longer. Even if you could survive more of that exposure, it wouldn’t matter. They’ll have heard the call. They’ll be coming!”
“Who?” Harrington demanded. “Who are they?”
But he did not ask that question like a man who thought Ivers might be raving. He asked like a man who already knew something was coming. As Jacoby did. As Jacoby imagined they all did.
Ivers glanced in revulsion at the figures inside the carved chest. “The Mi-Go are coming for what you’ve found and they’re likely already on their way.”
Mi-Go. The word was like a slap across Jacoby’s face and he staggered back at its utterance. He had dreamed of them, of course, had been dreaming of them since the trunk holding the chest and the rare prizes inside had been brought on board the Burleson. But to hear another speaking of them was deeply unsettling.
“Which of you is Profe
ssor Jacoby?” Ivers glanced around, nodding in greeting when Jacoby stepped forward. “I’m here because of you, Professor. You sent a query regarding the history of the Eleanor Lockley to my office at Miskatonic University. Somehow it went astray, misplaced. By the time it reached my hands and I attempted to contact you by telephone, you had already departed on this voyage. I began to retrace your steps, to recreate your research, and when I realized that you might actually find the damned ship, I knew my only choice was to pursue you, and hope that I could reach you before you managed to drag anything to the surface that rightly belongs on the ocean floor. When I received the distress call from Mr. Harrington, I knew I was too late.”
Jacoby stared at him, that old sickness roiling in his gut. “Too late? What are you saying?”
Harrington sneered. “He’s saying he hoped to beat us to the Eleanor Lockley, to claim her treasures for himself!”
Ivers—Professor Ivers, Jacoby now remembered—shook his head, throwing up his hands. “I’m too late to stop you doing the foolish thing you’ve done, but it may not be too late to save your lives. Scuttle this ship, gentlemen. Send her to the bottom with all that you’ve dredged up. Come across to my own boat and I’ll see you home as safely as fate will allow.”
“What kind of fools do you take us for?” Harrington demanded. “Scuttle the ship? Do you have any idea what that would cost me?”
“No matter how high the cost might be, it’s still cheaper than paying the price of staying behind,” Ivers replied. “You’re in great danger, Harrington. Every minute on board this ship risks your health, your sanity and your very lives.”
Sensing the rising hostility in both men, Jacoby intervened, suggesting they all move to the mess hall, the only place on the boat where everyone could settle together with relative ease, though settle was hardly the right word. The men gathered, they shifted and did their best to remain calm, but after nearly two weeks of feeling ill and dealing with the crisis on board few of them seemed capable of anything but agitation.
“All right,” Harrington said, reluctantly. He glanced at Wilson. “Though the captain argued against it, Professor Jacoby has prevailed upon me to let you say your piece. Were I feeling any better, I’d have ignored him, but given the sweat on my brow and the bile I keep fighting down—and the fact that most of these boys don’t look as if they feel much better—I’ll listen. But be quick about it. Whatever we’re going to do, I’d have it done as soon as possible.”
Ivers gazed about the mess hall and then focused again on Harrington and Jacoby. He spoke clearly and calmly, but his words sounded like madness.
“Gentlemen, you have found something that should not exist. You have found the remains of a legend, artifacts that will doubtless prove deadly if you continue to remain in their presence.”
A muttering went about the crew, but Ivers forged ahead.
“In eighteen hundred and seventy-three the Eleanor Lockley set out from Norway with a cargo that contained the fruit of an archaeological excavation involving two professors from Miskatonic University, where I am currently employed. Walter Emerson, the man in charge of the expedition, wrote that he believed they had uncovered real evidence of intelligent life on other planets.
“The rumors about the place had been growing for decades. Old journals, tales passed down from the Vikings, whispers of visions experienced by those who wandered the mountains as if drawn there by forces they could not understand. There were variations, but all spoke of strange, insectoid creatures called the Mi-Go by locals and Yuggothians by others. According to the markings found on the stones discovered during that archaeological dig, the creatures were believed to fly between worlds, without the use of ships, soaring the cosmos without fear of the eternal cold and without need to breathe anything we would think of as air.”
“Pure fantasy,” the first mate murmured, and others clearly agreed.
Ivers went on, undaunted. “The lore transcribed from the figures discovered in Norway—the figures I can only imagine rest in your ship’s hold at this very moment—described the Mi-Go as capable of feats of science unimaginable in the era when those stones were carved. Hell, they’re unimaginable now. They were said to be able to transfer the full intellect of a man long dead from one place to another. Even across the stars.”
“Rubbish!” Harrington pounded his fist into the table where he sat, but winced afterward, his muscles and flesh made tender by the current situation.
“Let me finish, please. The translation of the stones was made easier, according to the men from Miskatonic, by the assistance of a man whose mind was held inside a metallic cylinder. One I can only assume you found alongside those carved figures, inside that chest.”
Professor Jacoby held his breath. How could Ivers know about the cylinder… unless he was telling the truth? He once again had to fight for calm in the room but eventually the crew settled enough for Ivers to continue his tale.
“The men spoke with that mind through the use of technologies beyond their reckoning. According to that disembodied soul, the site they’d found was a waystation of sorts. The Mi-Go used the locale to convene in preparation for their journeys between worlds.
“There were other elements to the tale, of course. Several of the laborers the dig employed grew ill and wasted away. The notes became less rational over time, and there was talk of spectral shapes appearing at night, coming closer to the camp with each passing day. Some of the workers quit, but the men from Miskatonic doubled their pay and the others stayed, in spite of their mounting terror. What they never considered was that the Mi-Go might return.
“There are no notes from what happened then, only a claim from one of the locals that the Mi-Go had come and attacked the archaeologists at their camp. The good news was that the creatures were not prepared for resistance. At least one of those celestial nightmares was shot and killed, and Dr. Emerson was able to escape. He returned in the morning, gathered what he could of his findings, and departed on the earliest ship that would give him passage—the Eleanor Lockley. Emerson sent one final message at the time of his departure, a single sheet of paper noting that he was setting sail with the artifacts recovered from the dig… including the corpse of one of the Mi-Go, which he called ‘a celestial devil.’ You can imagine the excitement at the university.”
Jacoby could imagine it. God help him, he could.
“As all of you know, the ship was lost at sea. Until now. I believe the Mi-Go themselves were responsible for the sinking of that ship, if only to keep the treasures you’ve discovered a secret from the world. In your hold is the detailed history of the Mi-Go’s existence on our planet. And if they destroyed one ship to bury those secrets, they will surely destroy another.”
Ivers stood up, looking around at the crew of the Burleson. “Please, gentlemen, for your own sake, abandon this ship and come with me before it is too late.”
That was when the arguments began.
Tell a man that he is sick and should seek help and if he feels ill he will likely agree. Tell that same man that in order to save himself he must abandon his dreams of fame and fortune, and he will stand firm in his need to defend those dreams.
Ivers was adamant. They needed to abandon the ship.
The very thought made Jacoby feel sicker than ever.
“You’re asking us to give up a fortune.” Harrington summed up the thoughts of a lot of the men.
“I’m asking you to save yourselves. I can take you with me. I cannot take those cursed items.”
“You’re a man of science, Ivers. You can’t possibly believe in curses.”
“I’m a man of science, indeed, Mr. Harrington. That means I keep an open mind. We are well aware that there are elements in this world which can kill us but are invisible to the naked eye. Radiation from a nuclear blast can kill well after the explosion itself.”
He gestured with his soft, scholarly hands. “Look at yourselves. Your hair is thinning, your skin is sallow, and you have little or no
appetite. That’s because of the very ‘treasures’ you brought up from the depths. Leave them, and you should recover. Stay with them and you’ll continue to deteriorate until your only hope is that you die before the Mi-Go come for you. My crew has remained on the yacht because they refuse to be tainted by the presence of those stone figures, or whatever else was with them. I myself am uncomfortable with the idea of being here as long as I have.”
Captain Wilson took a step forward. “What if we threw them overboard? Surely there’s no need to scuttle the ship?”
“I think it’s too late for that. The human body can mend, but I think the ship itself has been tainted.” Ivers paused. “This boat is sick.”
Ivers looked at his watch.
“Two hours, gentlemen. I need your decision then. I’m going back to the Ashleigh Michaels. Be on the deck in two hours if you wish to leave with us.” The man looked around and then squinted through the porthole at the sky outside. “The sun will set in no more than four hours and I intend to be well away from here before that happens.”
“You’re not seriously considering staying here?” Harrington asked.
Jacoby flinched at the question. The whites of Harrington’s eyes had taken on a faint yellowish tint. He’d lost weight and, yes, his hair seemed thinner. It was a revelation. Until Ivers had mentioned it, Jacoby had barely noticed the change in the crew, or perhaps he had simply chosen not to see.
“I have to stay here, Samuel,” Jacoby said. “I have to know. I have to see if there really are creatures from another world like the ones I’ve seen in my dreams.”
Harrington flinched at that. “Our dreams. I’ve seen them too. They’re hideous.”
Jacoby felt a terrible yearning. “I think they’re magnificent.”
Harrington stared at the table between them. “It’s almost time. Is there anything I can do to convince you to leave? If Ivers is right—”