Steampunk Cthulhu: Mythos Terror in the Age of Steam

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “—the paper you and your late husband presented, the one theorizing a passage to the center of the earth from Australia—” someone said to Professor Edison, who was piling sliced cheese and roast beef between pieces of buttered toast.

  “Hubie and that damned red rock, rest his soul…”

  A scholar with the haunted look of someone who spent far too much of his time in dank library archives wanted to discuss non-Euclidian architecture with Chantal. “Particularly as it pertains to churches, temples, and houses of worship…”

  Reggie Wilmott, munching sugared dates, listened to the engineers arguing the feasibility of Verne’s ‘moon-gun’ and lunar colonies. “Fancy that!” he remarked to the company at large. “The moon!”

  A woodwind threnody resonated through the speaking-tubes, followed by the female voice. “We will now commence descent. All crew, dive stations, dive stations please.”

  The sound and feel of the turbines changed. The water that had been lapping along the lower edges of the panes climbed as the Thetis began to submerge. Waves broke against the front, parted, rushed over the glass in foamy frills and swirls. A loose streamer of kelp undulated past.

  A hush fell over the assembled passengers. Arthur Pearce found himself standing beside Chantal Noir, or found her standing beside him, without quite knowing which of them had moved. Drinks and delicacies went forgotten as faces upturned to watch the sea rise to close over their heads.

  If their view of the sunlit sky through the faceted dome had been as to looking out from the heart of a diamond before, the diamond first lost some of its clarity to occlusion and blur…then a tinge of color crept in…diamond to aquamarine…to blue topaz glimmering with rays of gold…

  A discomfort in his ears proved easily allayed by stretching his jaws, as the earlier announcements had informed him. Arthur noticed others doing the same, even as they stood transfixed by the deepening jeweler’s spectrum above them.

  Next came the rich, rare hue of a Ceylon emerald, with the sun a liquid bright rippling starpoint distant in it. He felt a touch as Chantal leaned against him, and looked down to see her gazing raptly upward. The colors played in her eyes, tinted her fair skin. Although he had seen her in many strange, uncanny, and even terrible situations before, he had never seen her with such an expression of wonder, almost childlike in its purity.

  Emerald to sapphire…and darker…midnight sapphire…and without realizing or intending to he had slipped an arm around Chantal, as her hand settled soft upon his chest.

  The last hint of light lingered like a mirage, or lingered only in imagination that could not last…and then even that was gone. Gone, and the Thetis rode through inky blackness more complete than the darkest night.

  Silence held.

  It seemed no one even breathed, or as if no one else were even there.

  Utter silence. Utter darkness.

  Then, by the doing of some unseen crewman, the myriad of tiny bulbs set into the central pillar winked on. A ribbon-tube of greenish-blue neon gases outlined the room. As their vision adjusted, the shapes of their fellow passengers once again became discernible.

  Arthur became keenly aware of the intimate closeness of their pose. Chantal, at the same moment, also discovered this. They stepped apart with quick grace, almost like dancers. If a blush tinged her cheek, he could not tell by this eerie lighting…which meant, to his relief, that neither could she tell the same of him.

  Then the silence was broken. And it was of course broken by the exuberant voice of Reggie Wilmott.

  “Spec-tac!” he cried, bursting into wild applause. “Bravo, what a show! That alone makes it well worth the price of admish, hey-what?”

  ***

  Chantal Noir had to agree, it was indeed some show; she’d seen some odd things but never seen the like.

  The show was, as Captain Burnham explained, why he started his voyages by day. The Atlantic was vast, but fairly empty. Even with the Thetis’ exterior illuminaries on, there wasn’t much to look at most of the time.

  Oh, there’d be schools of fish now and then, he told them. Whales, particularly during their migrations. Sharks, yes. Jellyfish, yes, sometimes thousands of them drifting together in pallid quivering swarms.

  But, he said, it wasn’t until the real depths, toward the ocean floor, they’d behold sights the likes of which folk on land could scarcely imagine.

  Mountain ranges that put the Himalayas to shame, and trenches so deep the Grand Canyon would look a mere sidewalk crack by comparison…vents of scalding water and undersea smokestacks billowing sooty gas-bubbles…swaying forests of tube-worms each twice the height of a man…balloonlike fish aglow with their own inner radiances…spider-crabs bigger than trolley cars, their spindly, elongated legs moving with a jointed precision the finest clockwork figures couldn’t match…

  “Sea serpents?” Reggie asked. “Giant squids, aren’t there? Mermaids? Shipwrecks? Sunken cities, lost civilizations and whatnot?”

  “We aren’t here for any of those,” Lord Smedley, the energy baron, replied in a curt tone. “Put together your own expeditions, if that’s what you’re after.”

  They’d all taken seats around a conference table. The polished tabletop was littered with charts, maps, diagrams, books, and papers.

  Arthur Pearce sat next to Chantal. His presence here was a surprise, a not unpleasant one by any means, but that earlier moment had caught the both of them off-guard. He made notes in his precise hand as the various experts reiterated the known facts of the case – something had cut a fiery streak across the sky, plummeted into the sea, capsized a fishing boat, and sunk into the deep.

  “So,” said Lord Smedley. “An object of substantial size, apparently of non-terrestrial origin and composition—”

  “A rock.” That from General Thomsfield.

  “A space rock,” said an engineer.

  Thomsfield and the taller of the dark-suited governmental types shared a “we’ll see about that” glance, clinging to their pet theory that an enemy nation had launched the object, perhaps from one of Verne’s ‘moon-guns.’

  Lord Smedley rapped his ring on the table’s edge. “The initial sighting was reported by several ships, as well as a research station in Iceland, all of whom reported compasses and other pieces of equipment gone haywire. That indicates—”

  “Suggests,” said Professor Edison.

  “Suggests,” Smedley amended, sneering, “some form of energy field, perhaps electromagnetic in nature, perhaps teslic, gaseous—”

  “Or arcane,” said Gabriel Marlecroft, the pale scholar. “At the moment it appeared, many notable mystics were disturbed by visions, omens and premonitions.”

  “Seems dodgy, if you ask me,” Reggie said. “You’d think, wouldn’t you, that a premonition would come before an event. In the very word, isn’t it?”

  Smedley’s secretary, whom Reggie had already spent a portion of the bruncheon trying unsuccessfully to chat up, aimed a scowl at him that would have withered anyone else. His response was an amiable, even daffy, grin.

  “Are you saying it’s a power source?” The speaker, a portly banker with imposing white muttonchops and a more imposing cigar, puffed an indulgent smoke ring. “Is that what this is about, Smedley? A potential new fuel? Harnessing it, patenting it, charging for it, making a fortune?”

  “Another fortune,” Arthur murmured to Chantal. “Which would make, how many? Six?”

  “At least.”

  Smedley ignored the banker. “Miss Philips?” He nodded to his secretary. She brought over a map marked with several lines and circles. “After plotting and comparing the trajectories, we’ve determined these as the most likely locations—”

  “Begging your pardon, your lordship,” Captain Burnham said, his booming voice rolling through the room, “but there’s someone you could do to hear from first.”

  A man in a cable knit sweater came in, ducking his head in the manner of someone familiar with the confined quarters of seagoing cr
aft. He stood of medium height and build, his hair gray-shot and shaggy, his skin leathery, his cheeks grizzled with stubble.

  But his eyes… Chantal quelled a shiver at the bleakness of the man’s eyes. They were dull blue stones at the bottom of sunken hollows. Gabriel Marlecroft, across the table from her, lifted his chin in a sagacious nod.

  “This is Captain Gunderson,” Burnham went on. “His was the fishing boat as was there when it hit. He can give you the eyewitness of it all.”

  Gunderson took one of the remaining chairs. He tossed back enough spirits at a gulp to raise impressed eyebrows from Reggie. His bleak gaze roved around the table, without seeming to register much recognition of his audience. Then he finished the drink, and began talking. He told them what he’d seen, what he’d heard, what happened that night. He told them how a looming wall of water bore down on his poor little Duck.

  His coarse, scarred fisherman’s hands were folded on the table. Chantal noticed how, as he spoke, the topmost clenched upon the bottommost until the knuckles went white from the strain.

  “I thought sure we were done for,” he said. “We’d be swamped, scuttled, dashed to pieces. But she weathered it, our Duckie, weathered that wave like it was no more than a ripple in a washbasin. I’d like to see any of these newfangled ironclads or brassy hulls do that!”

  An engineer stirred, but only grunted as Professor Edison bumped his ribs.

  “The men, my crew,” said Gunderson, “we could hardly believe it. Not a soul lost…battered about some, scraped, bruised…everything not nailed down thrown about or washed overboard…but not a soul lost. The Duck brought us through.”

  “Huzzah for that!” said Reggie. “Good show!”

  “As we went about making her secure, seeing to the wounded, salvaging what we could…the new lad, Jim, he leans over the side and yells how he can see it, the glow of it, how it’s getting bigger, how it’s coming back up.”

  “That’s impossible,” said the engineer who’d started to protest before.

  “So we told Jim,” Gunderson said. “He’d have none of it, though, until we went and had a look for ourselves. And damned if the sonofawhore wasn’t right!” He spared an apologetic grimace for the sake of the ladies. “We all saw it, the glow, yellow fire burning under the water, impossible, aye, impossible as can be, but there it was, and rising fast. Huge. Ten times the size of a whale, if it was an inch, a bloody island in its own right, popping to the surface like a cork.”

  “Devilish exciting, don’t you think, Miss Philips?” Reggie beamed at the secretary, but her squinting attention remained on Gunderson.

  “I called for the men to hold on,” he said. “It wasn’t directly below us, off to our starboard side, but I knew the waves would have another go at swamping us. You could see how the water belled up, where the thing pushed the sea ahead of it. The waves did try, but our good Duck weathered them again. When all was calmed…”

  He described how the enormous object had floated there, festooned with kelp, rivulets of seawater sluicing off it, hissing and steaming from its own heat.

  “Rocks don’t float,” General Thomsfield said.

  Professor Edison snorted. “Some do. Pumice, a type of volcanic rock—”

  “Right-oh, I know just the stuff!” said Reggie. “Knew a bloke had a bit of it, carried it around in his pocket, looked like stone but floated pretty as you please. Won him a lot of bar bets, that trick.”

  “Was it porous?” At Gunderson’s blank look, the professor elaborated. “Full of holes, like a sponge, or a piece of coral.”

  He nodded. “Aye, mum. That’s just how it was. Still aglow in places with that yellowish flame, sputtering here and there with those bluish sparks.”

  “An energy field,” Lord Smedley said, vindicated. “A power source.”

  “We’d none of us seen the like.” Gunderson directed another bleak-eyed stare around the table. “What we should have done, having escaped death by a hair already, was gone and gotten ourselves well away. The men, though…young, most of them, and greedy…took it into their heads this could be a valuable find.”

  “Absolute cert,” Reggie said. “Wasn’t there some caliph or rajah, bought a falling star on auction at Harbury’s? Paid a fortune for it!”

  The term ‘falling star’ elicited winces from the scientists, but, Chantal knew, the rest was true enough. Whether the object contained precious metals, was of mineralogical interest, was an energy source as Smedley maintained, or was simply a curiosity that could be exhibited, the crew of the Duck had not been wrong.

  “You went closer,” she said. “Your men, they went…ashore? aboard? Whichever. They wanted a better look. And you let them go. You were so glad to be alive, so relieved, you told yourself what could be the harm? So, you let them go.”

  Gunderson hung his head. “More than that, miss. Worse than that. I sent them.”

  ***

  Lars allowed none of the crew to set foot upon it until it had cooled so that no more steam arose, eager though they were to explore and gather keepsakes as proof of their find.

  He cautioned them to keep their distance from the spots that glowed, burned or sparked…and to use their wits in choosing where to lodge hooks and hammer pitons for the securing of the tow-lines.

  It would be slow going and clumsy, but if they could haul it like a barge, bring it into port…

  “So much as a hint of trouble,” he told them, “and you’re to hie yourselves back with all speed.”

  When he first heard the screams, he mistook them for whoops and cheers, jubilation. They’d found treasure…gold, jewels…

  No.

  Men gladdened by discovery did not make such sounds.

  Lars rushed from the wheelhouse to the rail. He saw none of his crew, nor any of the lights they’d taken. The ship’s lanterns showed only ropes and chains stretching across the gap, where rubber-ringed drums buffered the wooden hull from scraping.

  His shouts went unanswered by anything but more screams, screams of pain, terror, agony and anguish.

  And there was another sound, a grating rumble, a grinding crack like the splitting of a mountainside. Waves heaved in a disturbed sloshing and slapping. Gritty fractures raced in jagged paths over the strange, rough stone. Shards and pebbles skittered down its slopes, bounced, rained into the sea and floated there the way breadcrumbs floated strewn on the surface of a lake.

  He scrambled over the rail and leaped, landing badly. An ankle twisted. He spilled full-length, clothes tearing, abrasions stinging his skin.

  No sooner had he regained his feet than a tremor beneath them sent him stumbling again. He pushed up and ran on, ran on toward voices shrieking for God, wailing for their mothers and sweethearts, pleading for help.

  Ropes creaked and chains clanked, snapping taut. The entire island shook as if wracked from within by jolting blows.

  The sea around the immensity of rock began to burble, to gurgle, to bubble and glug. Wet gusts like whalespouts coughed up, filling the air with spray.

  It was taking on water, Lars understood. Taking on water, the way a barrel punched with holes would, and when enough of its hollow spaces filled…

  Half the island dipped down while the other half tipped up, a horrible slow wallowing grandeur to the movement. Lars thought of an upended turtle struggling to right itself, or a fat old woman lolling and rolling her bulk as she tried to get out of a bath.

  He scrambled for purchase, hardly caring how his hands bled, how a fingernail ripped off at the quick and another splintered. No longer flat on the rugged ground, he clung to a slope, clambering up a steepening precipice.

  A rope broke, the ends whipping through the air. Lars twisted his head around and saw that the rest of the lines held, held even as the rock they were affixed to dunked lower into the surf…dunked lower, pulling the fishing boat’s prow down and down…waves surging over the sides, flooding across the deck.

  The slope was rapidly becoming a cliff…it would teeter at s
ome inexplicable balancing point and then it would go over…slamming down atop him, crushing him into the sea…

  ***

  “Then it all went black,” Gunderson said. “I don’t remember anything else.”

  The way he spoke, and, more, the way he fixed his gaze upon his hands as he did so, made Arthur Pearce conceal a frown.

  “I must have been flung clear when I lost my grip,” he continued. “When I came to, it was to find myself adrift, hanging onto a buffer-drum. No idea how I got there.”

  “And the object?” Lord Smedley asked.

  “Your men?” asked the general. “Your ship?”

  “Gone. Just gone. Some flotsam, nothing more. But, what you need to take into account what with your plotted trajectories as you’re thinking where to begin your search, is how the current moved along that damnable rock half the night. It didn’t sink where it struck, you see.”

  Two engineers and Professor Edison slapped their foreheads. There followed a flurry of the scientechnical – jargon, calculations, comparisons of charts and consultations of instruments, meteorological reports and tide-tables.

  “I say, old salt,” said Reggie, turning to the fisherman. “You did have a rough time of it, didn’t you? I say! Lucky escape for you, pity about your crew of course. Must admit, I’m wild to hear how you survived, another boat come along and pluck you from the drink, hey-what?”

  “Later.” The professor shouldered the eager youth aside. “What was your approximate position, Captain?”

  As the discussion raged on, those of them not immediately of useful contribution returned to the lounge area of the observatorium. Small cut-crystal gas lamps had been lit during their absence, adding a golden shimmer to the eerie ambiance.

  If not for the constant thrum of the engines – a sensation almost more felt than heard – Arthur might have believed the Thetis was immobile, at complete rest. When he went to the glass and peered out, he could only barely discern, or imagined he could, undulant fluid motion in the unfathomable darkness beyond…beyond the doubled panes, and beyond the ghostly reflections of himself, the lounge, and his companions.