Transported

by Tim Jones

  Cliff paused for breath around about then, and I asked, in the nicest possible way, what the hell this had to do with me. Travis tipped my chair forward, hard, so my head banged on Whitley's desk. I protested. Cliff told me not to take it personally and kept right on talking.

  'Our usual methods weren't working in this case, so we decided we need something to flush the perpetrators out. We think they're looking for a manuscript that doesn't exist — but if it does, it has some dangerous secrets in it. So we've decided you're going to sell it to them.'

  'Bad luck, guys. I had it, but I ate the last page yesterday.'

  'Shut up, you stupid little jerk, and listen. Right now, our labs are putting the finishing touches to that manuscript. We put a few things in there that should bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion.'

  'Okay. I've got two questions. Why can't your boys sell it to them? And why should I cooperate with you when I'm out of here in six months?'

  Cliff nodded to Travis. Travis let go of my neck, let the chair down on the floor, and picked up the story.

  'The folks at Quantico are better at some things than others. Brave, tenacious, brilliant, for sure, but they're not too good at pretending. We hear you are. You're the best there is — well, the best we've caught.'

  I was flattered.

  'And if you don't cooperate, we'll tell the state authorities about the body of that small-time operative who turned up in the East River just after the Macy's sting went wrong. Think you can talk your way out of that one? Of course, if you do cooperate we'll pay you. You'll be Special Agent Randy Cusack for the duration of this one. On full pay and benefits. Just give us your Swiss account number.'

  'Sounds reasonable so far. One more question: what is this so-called manuscript about?'

  'Raising the dead. But don't try it on the Macy's guy.' Six weeks later, I was in a helicopter, heading for a private yacht moored off the Big Island of Hawaii. I was Geoffrey de Montfort, antiquarian and rare book dealer, descended on my father's side from the French de Montforts, and on my mother's from English settler stock that went right back to the Mayflower, intermixed (so it was whispered) with an illicit tincture of Penobscot Indian. I had no living relatives. I had been married once, to a showgirl I had met on a rare trip to New York; but there had been no true meeting of minds, and the marriage had not lasted. The young woman had been killed in an automobile accident not long after our divorce, and there had been no issue. I was prematurely grey, a little stooped, a keeper of diaries, a quiet man with only one real passion: books.

  In other words, they had made me into a complete asshole. I couldn't stand Geoffrey de Montfort, and the sooner this job was over, the better.

  On top of all the de Montfort crap, they had filled my head with the most incredible load of superstition, fact, and fiction that together went by the name of the 'Cthulhu Mythos'. A wacko called Lovecraft from Providence began it all, and since then a bunch of other hacks and scribblers had been adding to Lovecraft's basic outline. Now there was an immense number of stories, poems and novels, all about a bunch of anatomically unlikely beings of great antiquity who had kicked Earth around like a beach ball until they packed up and left for spring break. With the right mystical mumbo-jumbo, you could still whistle them up and get them to do your bidding — or so the Mythos claimed.

  Which was really no problem, since it was all fiction, right? But Travis and Cliff had come to the conclusion that there was someone — a rich, powerful someone — who didn't think it was fiction at all, and was trying to turn it into fact. And here was I, Geoffrey de Montfort, about to give that someone what he or she was looking for.

  The FBI boys set me up in a bookshop — me, in a bookshop! — and let out the word that I had a handle on this manuscript. Then we waited for the fish to take the bait. Three days ago, he did, and now we were about to meet.

  The helicopter set down on the afterdeck of a floating palace. I got out in my slow, uncertain, Geoffrey de Montfort-ish way, and tottered over to shake the hand of the tanned, smiling man who advanced to greet me. He looked like a Hollywood lawyer, but cosmetic surgery can do that for anyone.

  'Welcome to the good ship Tekeli-Li, Mr de Montfort. I hope you'll have a pleasant and rewarding stay.'

  'I hope so too, Mr . . . ?'

  'Oh, just call me Ed. We're all on first-name terms here.'

  'Now, about the —'

  'Now, now, Geoff — can I call you Geoff? — let's not talk business just yet. Isn't it a glorious day?'

  I had to admit he was right. The sunlight sparkled off the wave tops, the clouds floated on the breeze, and I wouldn't have been surprised if a school of fish had jumped out of the water and waved their fins at me.

  'Very attractive, Ed. I believe you have a cabin ready for me?'

  'Sure, sure. Right this way.' With one well-tanned arm about my shoulders, he led me to my stateroom.

  I was pretty sure the stateroom would be bugged, so I didn't remove any of the nifty FBI gadgets from their various uncomfortable hidey-holes (Geoffrey de Montfort walked with a very upright posture). Instead, I de- Montforted my way around, falling over things, dropping little white pills all over the bathroom floor. I was removing Geoff's summer wardrobe from my valise and arraying it in neat little piles on the King-Henry-VIII-sized bed when the manservant arrived to tell me that dinner was served.

  There were four of us at dinner, not counting the silent, efficient servitors. Besides Ed and I, there was a young English woman called Melissa and an older man who was introduced as 'the Reverend'. We worked through the prawns, the lobsters, and a dessert that seemed to have started life as a pineapple, all without more than small talk. Then the coffee came, and Ed got down to business.

  'Melissa, there'll be time for more tales of the Amazon tomorrow. I understand, Geoff, you have something we have all been looking for?'

  'Well, I . . . that is to say, I know where it is and I have the means of obtaining it, yes.'

  'And could you describe it to us?'

  'The manuscript is of 64 leaves, unbound, written upon a parchment which — well, I believe it to be human skin, dried and cured.' I saw the Reverend nod gloomily at that. 'Each leaf is the length of a man's forearm from wrist to elbow, and what is to be read there is written in black ink. There are many marginal illustrations and interlineations. Some pages are rendered partially or completely illegible by water and fire damage.'

  'How much?' asked the Reverend. 'How much of the thing is destroyed?'

  'I would estimate less than ten percent.'

  'And —' said the Rev, over what I thought was a warning glance from Ed, '— have you read it? What does it say?'

  'I have some knowledge of medieval Latin, sir, but I have not read more than the first two pages. What I did read left me with a . . . disquieting impression, so that I did not wish to continue.'

  More nodding heads. Ed ordered up another round of coffees and the discussion circled away from the topic again. It was Melissa the explorer — slim, athletic, and muscular, and how I wished the FBI had made me into Indiana Jones rather than Geoff the Dweeb — who brought it back to the point.

  'I think we're all reasonably convinced that you've got what Ed is looking for, Geoff. The question is: where is it?'

  I held up a protesting hand. 'My dear young lady, surely you don't expect me to tell you that without some arrangement as to remuneration?'

  To my surprise, Ed agreed with me. He took me off to a side room, and we haggled. Geoffrey was quite good at that, and in the end we came up with a deal of half up front, half on delivery. If I could hang on to even the first half, that, plus the FBI's contribution, was going to make me a very wealthy man. Possibly a very wealthy dead man, but wealthy nevertheless.

  By the time I'd checked that the first half of the money was in my bank, it had gotten late, and the party had moved to the afterdeck. Ed and the Reverend were in animated conversation, which broke off when I appeared. Melissa rose from the sea like Venus with
a spear gun and climbed a ladder to join us.

  'Is everything in order, Geoff?'

  'Indeed it is.'

  'And?'

  'I have taken the liberty of contacting my associates. They are bringing me the manuscript from a location I prefer not to disclose. I shall go ashore tomorrow morning to meet them and take possession of it. When I have it, I shall call you and arrange a meeting at which the manuscript, and the balance of the funds, may be transferred.'

  My associates, of course, were Travis and Cliff, plus a couple of local FBI heavies. We had chosen a clearing in the tropical jungle for the transfer, and there were five of us good guys to go up against Ed, the Reverend, and Melissa. It seemed like a reasonable match.

  It wasn't. We did everything the time-honoured way: me and my minions on one side, Ed and his on the other. I walked towards Ed bearing the manuscript, he walked towards me bearing the money — just like the scene in one of those old Cold War thrillers when the prisoners are being exchanged through Checkpoint Charlie, and as daring Brit spy Sir Timothy Hyphen-Hyphen walks from East to West and sinister Soviet masterspy Velimir Grushnikov walks from West to East, they resolutely fail to look one another in the eye.

  The thing about those scenes is, they usually end with gunshots ringing out from one or both sides and a close-up of blood staining the snow as the end credits roll. Maybe it was the lack of snow that put me off my guard. Whatever, as soon as I got within arm's reach of Ed, he said one word, there was a blinding flash (I know it's a cliché, but it was minutes before I could see clearly), and by the time I had come to my senses I was being hustled out of the clearing and towards a waiting van. A quick backward glance confirmed that Travis, Cliff and their friends had come off much, much worse than I had. Ed's minions frogmarched me back to Ed's black van, shot me up with some drug, and as I slid into unconsciousness I reflected that it was a man's life in the modern book trade.

  When I woke up, I didn't know whether it was day or night. My head was aching, my body was shaking, and the air was throbbing. For a moment, I thought I was back in my favourite nightclub — but that had never featured Ed and the Reverend, and there they were, sitting just above me, wrapped up in furs and wearing heavy boots. I turned my head and saw Melissa, wrapped up likewise. Even she couldn't have got into the club in that outfit.

  'Where are we?' I enquired groggily.

  'Welcome back to the land of the living,' Ed shouted over the noise. 'Take a look out the window and you'll see.'

  I saw plenty. One, that we were in a plane, and the mighty noise was coming from its propellers. Two, that we were flying above the sea. And three, that the sea was lousy with icebergs.

  'Russia? Greenland?'

  'Antarctica.'

  And before you could say 'But I'm just a humble antiquarian bookseller,' we were making our approach run to McMurdo Base.

  McMurdo turned out to be a little slice of the U.S. of A. at 78 South, complete with pecan pie and Baywatch Nights on DVD. Ed was on easy terms with everyone, particularly the base commander, and the Reverend, Melissa and I were taken on trust as part of his entourage. I had a story I wanted quite badly to tell, but Ed was such a hit here it seemed wiser to say nothing.

  It soon became apparent that, for public consumption, we were a small, privately funded expedition investigating the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

  Ever wanted to go to the Moon or Mars? Save yourself the trouble and go to the Dry Valleys instead. For all its snow, Antarctica is actually the driest continent on Earth. Most of those blizzards are just a few snowflakes blowing from one God-forsaken part of the polar plateau to another. And there are some parts so dry that any snow that falls sublimes right back into the atmosphere, so all you get is a wilderness of rocks and stones with the odd sand dune thrown in for good measure. It looks like those old Mars Rover photos with the red bleached out.

  All this information about Antarctica came courtesy of Trevor, our guide and driver. We were being flown from McMurdo to the Wright Valley. The Dry Valleys were in the part of Antarctica claimed by New Zealand, and Trevor (love that name) would drive us to our destination in a New Zealand Sno-Cat. I listened closely to 'Trev' but I struggled to understand what he was saying. New Zealanders talk funny.

  When we flew down the course of a river and landed near the lake it emptied into, I didn't say 'What do you mean — Dry Valleys?', I just got my pack and stepped out into the bitter cold. Summertime in Antarctica, and the living was easy.

  We bundled our gear into the waiting Sno-Cat. Trevor delayed our departure to show us the mummified body of a seal, its flesh slowly flaying away in the wind. 'They get confused and crawl inland from the sea ice,' he said. 'They can make it fifty kilometres before they die. This one's been here' — he looked at the carcass with a practised eye — 'oh, about five hundred years.'

  If the valley looked desolate from the air, that was nothing to how it looked at ground level. The lake didn't help — it was frozen over apart from a narrow rim of cold, clear water, and the wind whipped little eddies of dust and ice across its surface.

  'It's been growing,' Trevor said. 'We used to have a station here, but we had to move out before we drowned. Global warming, you see.'

  Trevor rattled on about maximum inflows and rivers that only flowed in summer and density structures, but I'd stopped listening by then. Instead, I studied the faces of my captors. The Reverend sat silently, worrying a fingernail and then getting out his Bible for reassurance. He didn't look like the explorer type. Melissa had been first out of the plane, had lugged more equipment than anyone else into the Sno-Cat, and was now looking around with puppy-like eagerness. All this Cthulhu stuff was probably of no interest to her — she just wanted to go places. And Ed? Ed sat there, relaxed, confident, powerful, the sort of man I had always wanted to be. I was sure that, if it suited him, he'd leave us all behind in this wilderness to freeze like the seals.

  As far as Trevor knew, we were a geological expedition with connections to the University of Hawaii. The Hawaii cover provided a neat explanation of why all of us except Melissa were shivering, while Trevor, in his checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, might have been going for a Sunday afternoon drive in his home town. A long drive: the Sno-Cat rumbled on up the valley, which was now beginning to narrow — Trevor said we were drawing close to its head, and that the great polar ice cap was just behind the rim of hills that surrounded us. Ed was now scanning the territory outside with noticeable eagerness. At last, he lifted his hand. 'We stop here,' he said.

  The next few hours were spent in hard and largely silent labour, setting up our camp under Trevor and Melissa's guidance. Before Trevor left, he gave us three important reminders.

  'First. You've got your radio. Don't be afraid to use it. Second. Never travel alone. And third. It may be bloody cold here, but this valley is sheltered. Whatever you do, don't try to climb up onto the ice cap. You'd be frozen in an hour. If I don't hear otherwise, I'll be back for you in two days' time. Good luck.' And with that, he climbed back into his heated cab, revved up the motor, and departed.

  'Good,' said Ed. 'No time to waste. Let's get on with it. You know what we have to do.'

  'I don't,' I said bravely.

  'Oh, you'll find out when the time comes,' said Ed.

  Well, that sounded too good to miss, so I trudged off after them. After all, I had no place else to go.

  While we're trudging, let me tell you about the cold. It was late in the Antarctic summer, and because the rocks and gravel of the valley absorbed more heat than the Antarctic ice, it was actually five degrees warmer on average here than at McMurdo — according to Trevor. But it was still cold. The chill seeped up from the ground through the soles of our boots. It froze our eyelashes together behind our polarised goggles and loosened our teeth in their sockets. No matter how many layers of fur and thermal underwear we wore, it crawled in next to our skin. And that was when the air was still. When the wind blew, it felt as though knives sliced our faces.
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  Nevertheless, we soon found that we sweated like pigs under the bulky garments as we walked, only to have the sweat freeze on our bodies when we stopped. I suggested to Ed we should have stayed in Hawaii, but he wasn't listening.

  After half an hour, we came to a pond, a shallow, brownish pool surrounded by rocks covered in a white coating. 'The white stuff is Antarcticite,' said Melissa, 'solid calcium chloride. This is Don Juan Pond, the only place in the world where it's cold enough and the air's dry enough for Antarcticite to form.'

  Ed looked at her in surprise. 'You know a lot about it.'

  She shrugged. 'When I knew where we were going, I did some reading. This is the saltiest body of water on Earth, so salty it never freezes right to the bottom, even at minus fifty degrees Celsius in the winter.'

  'Yes,' said Ed. 'A lot of salt.' And he stared across the unruffled surface of the pool for some time, his expression unreadable.

  'Some of us are getting cold here,' I reminded him after five minutes of this. Ed shook himself like a dog emerging from the water and nodded. 'Yes. Well, the sun won't be setting, but it's still getting late, and we should take a good night's rest before doing what must be done — eager though I am to see the conclusion of our labours.'

  And we turned and trudged back to camp again. Another day, another dollar, I guess.

  We had two two-person tents, which meant someone was going to get to sleep with Melissa. Randy Cusack, con artist and bon vivant, would have swept her into his sleeping bag in no time — or so he liked to think — but I wasn't certain yet whether the de Montfort cover had been blown, and Geoffrey de Montfort wasn't known for his way with women.

  Which is probably what clinched the deal: as soon as the subject of who slept with whom came up, Melissa said, 'Geoff and I can share a tent — he won't mind,' and neither Ed nor the Reverend cared to dispute this. Perhaps they wanted to spend the night talking about salt.