by Steven Welch
There was a television screen on the wall. It powered on as Elise and Taariq approached. Taariq flinched.
“What the hell is that?”
Elise ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on the screen.
The image was a bold logo of blue and gold, drafted in a distinctly retro style, as if pulled from the pages of a comic book. Then, the image disappeared and there was an eccentric-looking man on screen. He smiled.
Elise smiled back.
“Bonjour, I am Commander Jules Valiance of The Astonishing Aquanauts,” said the strange man on the screen, “bienvenue to The Aladdin Vault here in the heart of the Middle-Eastern Headquarters of Les Scaphandriers. You have ten seconds before you die a horrible death.”
THE HAT
The octopus of our world are remarkable in their ability to squeeze through the smallest crack or hole.
Squids and cuttlefish don’t have near the same ability, limited as they are by the hard pen that runs the length of their mantle. The octopus though, the creature Cousteau called “the soft intelligence,” has no pen and no bones with which to contend. A determined octopus can push and pull their boneless body through any opening, no matter how small, limited only by the size of their beak and by natural law. Escape becomes effortless. The possibilities when hunting prey are almost limitless. They are adaptable.
The Octo-Thing was not a creature of our world but he was like the common Earth octopus in this aspect, in adaptability. And he was far more clever. While the tips of his tentacles appeared to be hands and feet, they were still boneless appendages of muscle and tissue.
The old creature observed Elise and the untrustworthy man as they entered the pyramid of dark bones and considered options with its several brains. He was the gray of the brick building on which he clung and his eyes were slits that revealed just a sliver of the cat-like pupils. With a soft gust of breath from its mantle he climbed down.
First things first, he thought as he went.
The hat. I need to save the hat.
A light wind graced the plaza in front of the obscene pyramid where the museum had once stood, creating little clouds of dust along the square. So many vehicles, all tumbled together and burnt, relics from The Turn. So many wonderful places to hide.
Elise’s black cowboy hat sat on its brim in the middle of the street that led to the front door of the bone tower. It moved slightly in the breeze and cast a long shadow against the ground from the setting sun.
The Octo-Thing had nearly slithered to ground level, his suction cups finding easy purchase along the brick walls, when he noticed a disturbing bit of business that immediately changed his plan.
A thin old human shrouded in filthy rags stood on wobbly legs over the hat. The woman was dark of skin and made darker still by grime and dried fluids. She was frail and ancient and the Octo-Thing could not smell but he imagined that the scent of the human would have been the stench of waste and madness.
Don’t you touch that hat, he thought, just before the ancient human reached down and grabbed the hat with a dirty hand.
Do not put that hat on your filthy head, thought the Octo-Thing.
The old woman put the hat on and danced a little jig to music of the mind that only she could hear.
The Octo-Thing flashed red, remembered that he should be in hiding, and became the color of the ground all around.
That will not do, he thought. The Octo-Thing scrambled on his eight arms quickly and in silence until he was only a few meters away from the dancing old woman in Elise’s cowboy hat.
A single tentacle shot out and grabbed a small rock. He tossed the rock off to the east, toward a rusted car. The rock made a loud clang as it struck metal.
The old woman turned to the sound, and that’s when the Octo-Thing leapt, propelled by a blast of air from its mantle.
It was quite a sight. The Octo-Thing, seven arms wrapped tightly around the old woman’s face while the eighth snagged the hat from the grizzled head and hoisted it high in the air. The human reached and clawed and screamed through the mass of writhing tentacles. The Octo-Thing flashed red and green then blue again as he took a deep breath and released his grip.
With a sound not unlike a wet fart, the strange creature propelled himself through the air holding tightly to the hat.
The Octo-Thing splattered to the street and scrambled as quickly as he could toward the mountainous black Pyramid of Bone. He kept two tentacles now tightly on the hat while the filthy human screamed obscenities and made chase. One of the cephalopod’s eyes was on his destination while the other stayed trained on the woman in pursuit.
The human was fast. Faster than me if I’m running with only six arms, thought the Octo-Thing. The eyeball that was focused on the pyramid of bone did a calculation. Can the hat fit through the spaces between the bones? The other eye calculated the odds of escape while scrambling with only six tentacles in relation to the madwoman’s speed.
The human will overtake me before I reach safety, he decided. If I drop the hat, I will be quick enough, but not now.
Elise loves the hat.
Yes, but Elise loves me more he thought, and he tossed the hat toward the human. The madwoman dove for the cowboy hat but never got her hands on the brim.
Three of the Men of Many Eyes emerged from their concealment among the femurs and ribcages of the pyramid. One of them tossed a tibia at the Octo-Thing and all three scrambled toward the dancing woman.
The Octo-Thing flashed white in panic. I can’t see them if they’re hiding in that mass of black bone. There could be hundreds more there. Thousands.
The human screamed and then made a gurgling sound as she was torn apart by teeth like knitting needles.
The Octo-Thing willed itself to become as brown as the dirt of Tahir Square and its skin rippled in new textures that mimicked the rubble and the sand.
I can make it through the wall of blackened bone and I will find her.
He dashed toward a dark cavity near the massive wooden door to the place and ducked inside.
Eyes, many glowing eyes, appeared above him. A Man of Many Eyes stood at the doorstep. The Octo-Thing went black and jetted between the creature’s thin legs just as a claw swiped down where it had crawled.
No. Not like this.
I see a light. A dim light.
Tentacles splayed and grasped while the Octo-Thing shoved himself between charred bones toward the glow of light in the distance. The spaces between bone were thin, more thin that the finger of a child, but the cephalopod was adaptable and quick. He heard the hissing and fussing of the Man of Many Eyes as the creature clutched and reached but the Octo-Thing slid between the most impossibly tight of crevices.
His hearts were pounding. I need food, he thought, then felt silly because food meant nothing if he was dead.
Yes, there was a light. The bones stacked and piled and tumbled in bunches two hundred meters high above the streets of Cairo made a pyramid shell over the old museum but the old museum was a damaged thing and there were holes and cracks within its walls.
The Octo-Thing slid between some bricks and flopped down onto the cold, wet, tile floor of the museum.
His eyes didn’t have time to focus before the rat pounced. The Octo-Thing felt the impact of the attack, the pain of claws and teeth as the creature bit and scratched. There wasn’t time to panic. The cephalopod wrapped his eight arms around the thing that was trying to eat him and fought back hard.
What a day, he thought, strangely enough, even as he was being eaten by a rat.
The rat’s attack became frenzied. It had clearly never attempted to ambush and devour a land-dwelling octopus before. It made harsh, hissing sounds. The skin of the Octo-Thing was tough and resisted the teeth and claws even as he flashed white and red like a police siren. Tentacles subdued the rat’s arms and legs. The Octo-Thing slipped around so he was on top of the thrashing rodent. There was a powerful beak at the base of the mantle and the Octo-Thing used it.
The rat’s sp
inal cord was severed instantly. It made a small sound and went limp, then dead.
The Octo-Thing breathed hard through his funnel and his color went dark as camouflage in the gloom. He looked around and saw nothing, no other danger, at least not at the moment.
A tall room, vast, lit by tiny glowing creatures from another world that had taken up residence here among the relics and remains of an old Earth civilization. Fascinating, thought the Octo-Thing. On his world there wasn’t such reverence or even interest in the past. His species lived in the moment but had long memories to keep them company when necessary.
I hope my friend is alive, he thought. Then he noticed a light unlike the others, a light that was not a glow worm or some other creature.
There was a tiny puddle on the floor that burned like flame. Then, another far beyond that one.
If Octo-Things had lips with which to smile, he would have grinned.
Clever girl.
Still, I am hungry so now I must eat, he thought, as he chewed into the dead rat’s flesh with his radular tongue and powerful beak.
I will eat this thing that tried to eat me and then I will go to my friend.
THE HORRIBLE DEATH
Jules Valiance was younger than she remembered.
He stood ramrod straight against a flat sea the blue of a robin’s egg and a sky so clear that the line between it and the ocean was invisible. Seagulls were swooping white triangles in the distance. The screen was dusty and touched with a thin layer of mineral from years exposed to the chamber’s atmosphere. This gave the image a haze, so it looked almost like one of the Impressionist works Elise had seen in the Orsay. In the left corner of the screen was a towering cliff and at its pinnacle was a massive fortress of white stone. Elise recognized it as the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, founded by Prince Albert I and curated for many years by the legendary Jacques Cousteau and his crew.
Elise had fond memories of training there after The Turn, of helping to bring its countless jewel aquariums back to life, this time with creatures from both Earth and distant Orcanum. She wondered if Lyndsey, the aquarium keeper, still kept watch over her vibrant aquatic worlds. So much beauty. So much danger. So much fun.
Zuzu had been a wonderful teacher and friend but Elise had often wondered what it might have been like if Jules had survived, if he had been with them at the museum, at the headquarters in Paris, on their trips into France and beyond, on that adventure in Chamonix when the Great-Grandfather of the late North McAllister had saved them from the sea wolves that had made The Mont Blanc tunnel their home.
Elise wished that the Octo-Thing was with her. He would have been thrilled.
On screen, the blue Les Scaphandriers uniform with the gold piping was familiar, but this younger Jules Valiance had a smaller belly and a dashing hairstyle that reminded Elise of an old-time movie star. Elise remembered him with a mass of white dreadlocks. The hair was a jet black wave that crested onto the tall forehead just above bushy eyebrows. Eyes that twinkled sat above a shockingly bulbous nose and a trimmed mustache with teeth stained from wine and seaweed reefers.
Yes, that was him, the man who had died in her arms when they had brought back the ocean from a distant world, the legendary Jules Valiance. Her friend.
She liked him better with dreadlocks. Still, ten seconds until we die a horrible death. That’s a thing, thought Elise.
The warm amber lights that activated when they entered the chamber glowed red and flashed. An alarm blared from the speakers beneath the screen. Elise kicked the wall.
“Ten seconds,” Taariq said, “what does he mean?”
Elise scanned the coquina chamber. Nothing. Damn. Not a clue.
“Tick, tick, tick,” came the voice of Jules Valiance from speakers mounted under the screen. His smile grew wide, and he opened his arms as if to say, “what are you going to do?”
They could run back into the railway tunnel, Elise thought only a moment before a rusted metal door slammed down and closed off the only exit from the chamber.
“Five seconds,” said the video screen image.
“I’m an Aquanaut! I’m on a mission! I’m Scaphandrier! I’m Ensign Elise St. Jacques and I command you to stop!”
The lights flashed more brightly and the alarm intensified.
“Three, two, one.”
The noise stopped and the lights restored to their warm amber glow.
“Well, there you go. This was not a test,” said Jules Valiance with an exaggerated shrug, “this was an exceedingly bad joke. Not my idea, but Private Splatter was insistent that we create a moment of false panic upon arrival to The Vault. Anything less, he deemed unworthy of the moment. A stone chamber. Trés boring. So, my sincere apologies if you experienced an inordinate amount of anxiety, or perhaps even messed yourself a bit. You might still die a horrible death but it will not be in this room, at this moment, unless life has thrown an extraordinary bit of bad luck your way. Who’s to say?”
“How do we get out of here?” asked Taariq.
“Quiet, he usually got to the point. Eventually.”
“You might be hoping that I get to the point,” said Jules Valiance, “well, so be it. To continue into The Vault simply enter the code into your Aengus and return to The Sand Flea.”
Silence for a moment and then Jules Valiance shook his head as if he just realized something important.
“Oh, The Sand Flea is the name of the unlikely vessel that brought you to this point of your journey and will carry you deeper, should you have the proper code. If you are returning to The Vault, welcome back. If you are new to her depths, prepare for titillation, hold your expectations close, and tread lightly. If you speak only Arabic and are horribly confused at this point, ‘ana ‘asaf.”
A hairy man in a tiny bathing suit and a topless blonde woman carrying what appeared to be a martini entered the scene and put their arms around Jules Valiance. She looked familiar. Elise thought she might have been a movie star.
“Bon voyage, fellow travelers and Les Scaphandriers,” Jules said with a crisp salute.
Then he smiled and blew a kiss.
The screen went black.
Elise smiled and returned the salute, then the kiss.
“I miss you,” she whispered.
She turned with a deep breath and said, “Taariq, so I don’t know the code. We might be here awhile. Better get comfortable.”
She lifted the wrist gadget and input the six digit number assigned during her training as Scaphandrier. It was her birthday, month, year, and day.
This’ll never work but it’s a start, she thought.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep.
Click.
The first four bars of La Marseillaise, in midi.
The coquina wall in front of The Sand Flea lifted with a groan and revealed the darkness of a tunnel where the rails continued on.
“Sometimes you get lucky,” Elise said. She moved fast and dropped into the left side seat of The Sand Flea. Taariq followed. Their seat restraints made clicking sounds as they buckled up.
“That screen. That was a television? It was like some kind of magic,” he said, “it was horrible.”
“Not so bad,” Elise said, “and yeah, kind of like magic.”
Taariq was next to her. She felt his warmth, and it made her feel nervous.
“You know these things from before The Turn like you were old, like you were there. You’re younger than I am. How do you know these things?”
Elise’s hand hovered above the big button that would close the glass bubble top and launch the vehicle. She hesitated.
“I was a twelve. I was alone. I told you that my Dad had died and I was sent to a place in Paris, a school for girls. But there was more, there was a blanket Dad gave me, a really beautiful and strange blanket of fabric that didn’t tear or rip, and he told me to always sleep with it wrapped around me. I went to sleep one night and I woke up ten years later, ten years after The Turn.”
She looked at him and when
their eyes connected Elise felt as if she balanced on a ladder that was about to fall.
“The world changed around me, but I was still twelve. That was five years ago. So I know television and the internet and cars that run and all of that. It’s fresh to me. And I miss it sometimes.”
A tall ladder. It tipped. She closed her eyes and so did Taariq and they kissed. His lips were warm, and he tasted sharp but good. Elise felt self-conscious and started to pull away but he brought his hand up to her cheek. His hand was rough and warm. She returned his kiss and her awareness faded away. The first kiss had been a rush but this seemed to be even more. Elise could sense the sweat dripping down the back of her Kevlar vest, could feel her belt digging into her stomach, and her neck strained from the awkward position but all of those things drifted away with the kiss.
In that moment, the kiss was everything.
Something dark passed through her thoughts.
She pulled back with sudden force and slammed her hand down on the button. Taariq’s eyes opened and he looked startled. Elise turned forward as the glass canopy dropped into position.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Where?”
“I’m supposed to store the paintings here. Somewhere in here. Let’s go.”
The Sand Flea rocket forward into the darkness.
They felt the force of the acceleration. It shoved them back into the seat cushions. Elise tried to force her head forward and could barely move. The vehicle was fast. How did it work? The rails were metal, she thought, maybe electrified? Where did it get enough power? Were old solar cells enough?
Why do I get so angry for no reason? Why do I get so angry when I’m feeling good?
How can I feel good if my friends in Paris are dying?
I can’t think that way. Zuzu will take care of things. She always does. But what if this time it’s different?
I should have left for Paris. No, it still would have taken me weeks to get back there. No point in that. Finish this.
Zuzu will take care of things.
A small chime sounded. The vehicle suddenly dropped and Elise could feel her stomach flip. They were going downward, then sideways, then down again. The Sand Flea slowed and then hit the water.