Transported

by Tim Jones

  When we'd both snuggled into our sleeping bags, still clad in a goodly proportion of our winter clothing, I asked her, diffidently, why we were here. She looked at me for a while before answering.

  'That manuscript you obtained for us is the missing piece of a puzzle, Geoff. The last missing piece. Ed has been assembling this puzzle for the best part of twenty years. It started with a chance reference he read in a book, and now it's led us here.'

  'To do what?'

  'In 1931, the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation financed a Miskatonic University geological expedition to explore the region inland from the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, whose foothills surround this valley. The expedition made considerable progress for a time, but then reports from it became fragmentary and contradictory. Many of the party were —'

  'Great lecture,' I interjected.

  'Shut up! I memorised this stuff specially. If you keep interrupting, I'll forget.'

  'Sorry.'

  'Good. Many of the party were killed by what was described as a freak windstorm. The survivors of that expedition were always curiously reticent about what transpired during its last days, although they made a concerted and ultimately successful attempt to prevent the departure of the planned Starkweather–Moore expedition to the same area some twenty years later.

  'The Reverend told me that Ed read the official accounts of this expedition while he himself was a student at Miskatonic University. They piqued his interest, and as he made his way in the business world he devoted a part of his time and fortune to gathering further information. Three years ago, those investigations led him to mount his first Antarctic expedition. What he discovered then led him to scour the world for the manuscript you eventually found for him. You may have noticed, Geoff, that Ed is a man who gets what he wants.'

  'Including you?'

  She did not look offended. 'He doesn't want me for my body, Geoff, if that's what you mean — indeed, he seems completely indifferent to me. He needed someone with cold-climate experience, and I was recommended. I accompanied him on his last expedition, although he insisted on completing the final stage of it by himself. Still, with him, I've been places I never thought I'd go.'

  'And the Reverend?'

  'He's a strange one, isn't he? I'm never quite sure whether he loves Ed or hates him. He's known Ed for much longer than I have. He gets terribly agitated at some of the things Ed talks about, but he won't stop dogging his footsteps, and Ed seems to find him . . . useful to have around. Ed judges everyone by how much use they are to him.'

  'How much use am I?'

  'I'm sure you'll find out tomorrow. But I think we both need our sleep.'

  Silence for a while. 'I'm not indifferent,' I said.

  'Hmmm?'

  'To your body. I'm not indifferent to your body.'

  'I never thought you were. But let's see how things stand after tomorrow, shall we?' And with that she was silent.

  The alarm told me I'd been woken up too early. We added layers of clothing, breakfasted, and trudged off again. Same path, same cold, same pond. When we got there, Ed bade us walk round its white-encrusted shore until we stood on its up-valley side.

  'Over three hundred years ago,' he declaimed, 'the philosopher and sage Borellus established that a human or animal could be reconstituted after death from its essential salts. Today, we will put this to the test for quite a different order of creature.

  'Many years ago, while still a student, I learned from the Reverend here of his researches into the confused notes and secret autobiography of John Charles Danforth, a junior member of the 1931 Miskatonic University Antarctic expedition — the expedition whose official records I had read in a seldom-opened crypt beneath the library of that same university. On this historic occasion, Reverend, I think it's incumbent on you to take up the story.'

  The Reverend looked surprised, then took a deep breath and prepared to speak. I shivered: it wasn't warm out here. Were we in for a sermon?

  'Thank you, Edward. Some of the . . . junior members of our little party may not be aware that, while still an ordained member of the Church, I became interested in certain matters about which the Church had chosen to remain silent for some hundreds of years. I discovered, in the course of lengthy researches, that what we think of as history is in reality only the topmost layer or stratum of the history of intelligent life on this planet, and that our achievements are as dust beside those of our predecessors — the race known as the Great Old Ones, the race whose final fastness and stronghold was in this hellish waste of ice and snow. Even before I heard the name of John Charles Danforth, I had reached these conclusions; and what I could decipher from his notes, shot through as they were with madness and terror, convinced me that as recently as our own century, some remnant of these beings could still be found here.

  'What a civilisation they raised, in those long years before a puny, aggressive ape first came down from the trees and shook its fist at the stars! Their great cities were masterpieces of art and culture; their thought spanned the galaxies; their learning put the greatest of our scientists and mystics to shame. As I learned more of them, I found that I could no longer accept the narrow certainties of the Church in which I had been raised, and I left my pastoral duties to pursue my researches full-time.

  'In the course of those researches, I encountered Edward, and he provided the encouragement and financial support I needed. His reasons, no doubt, are his own. Many of the uncanny geographical features that Danforth describes have never been found by subsequent explorers — who knows what strange distortions of time and space may have been experienced by those final survivors of the Miskatonic expedition? However, when I heard of the researches of Borellus, Danforth's mention of "the pond of salts, where the One suspended waits" became suggestive; a chance reference in a book of Antarctic geology told me what the "pond of salts" might be, and it then remained only to acquire the manuscript so expertly provided by our friend Mr de Montfort, which —'

  'Was it necessary to acquire Mr de Montfort as well?' I interrupted.

  Ed moved closer to me and took my arm. 'We do regret that necessity, Geoff, but we're sure that you'll find what we're about to do of interest. We believe that the salts of a Great Old One lie suspended in this pond, waiting for one who has suitable knowledge to restore it to life — not only life, but full possession of its powers, and of the secrets of the aeons! Normally, the salts would need to be dried, but the concentration of this pond is such that all that we require is the correct mixture of chemicals. Reverend, if you please?'

  The Reverend drew from his voluminous pockets an ancient phial, unstoppered it, and sprinkled its contents on the water. Nothing happened.

  He and Ed looked at each other. 'I fear that an additional ingredient will be required,' said the Reverend sadly. Ed whipped out a knife and held it to my throat.

  I had the time it would take him to say 'blood' to act. I jack-knifed backwards and kicked Ed in the face. The knife fell from his grasp and skittered off the rocks into the water. We both reached for it, but he was faster. That was his undoing. He plunged his ungloved hand into the pond, then screamed as the water, strong as battery acid, burnt his flesh. Before he regained his feet, I banged his head, hard, against a rock. Ed slumped into the water, a thin trickle of blood from the cut on his forehead staining it red. By the time Melissa and the Reverend pulled him out feet-first, his face was hideously disfigured. He sobbed, slobbered and whimpered.

  'You've destroyed him!' cried the Reverend. Melissa just looked at me. I shrugged. 'He destroyed himself. My name is Randy Cusack, and I'm a con-man, a thief, and a murderer. So what do I care?'

  'We've got to get him back to civilisation,' said the Reverend.

  I considered this. 'Yeah, I suppose we have. Wipe that stuff off his face first.'

  All this drama had distracted us from the pool itself. It was the sucking, gurgling noise that caught our attention. The Reverend's researches had not been in vain, because something was rising f
rom the water. If this was a Great Old One, I was mighty glad I hadn't been around when they ruled the planet. It had a tubular, ill-defined body with a mass of protoplasmic extrusions that shifted and writhed as it hauled itself from the rapidly shrinking pond. A cluster of tentacles surrounded its head, for want of a better word. That head rose high for a moment, seemed to sniff the air, and then pointed straight at us. The thing was coming closer.

  'My God,' said the Reverend. 'That's no Great Old One! We've raised a Shoggoth!' And, his concern for Ed forgotten, he ran.

  I stood rooted to the spot and watched the monstrosity approach. It was Melissa who roused me, taking my arm and screaming 'Run!' So we ran around the pond and back down the valley toward the camp, following the Reverend. We would have had no chance if the thing hadn't stopped to dispose of Ed first; we heard a brief, horrible scream, soon cut off, and then appalling sounds of sucking and slurping. My education in the finer points of criminal life sure hadn't prepared me for this.

  Melissa was fit, and I had the desperation of a cornered rat. We soon caught up to the Reverend, who was tiring badly. We tried to drag him along with us, but that only slowed us all down. So we left him behind.

  Hey, I never said I was a hero.

  We left him, but he returned to us soon enough. We heard a shriek, and then the Reverend's body, minus its head, flew through the air and landed just in front of us. The sight was so unexpected that for a moment we stopped. In that moment, the great black bulk of the Shoggoth slid smoothly between us.

  For a moment, before I screamed and ran, I caught the thing's eye. There was an intelligence there, a nightmarish awareness of my presence. The Shoggoth was thinking, considering its options: which tasty morsel to eat first?

  It must have liked the taste of the Reverend's head, because it decided to eat the rest of him. So I ran once more, trying to catch up with Melissa, who hadn't stayed around to peer into the thing's soul.

  As we crested a shallow hill, we could hear the Shoggoth slithering close behind — and then we could see Trevor and his Sno-Cat coming towards us. I didn't know whether a Sno-Cat could outrun the thing, but I had a keen interest in finding out.

  Trevor was brave. As soon as he saw our plight he accelerated straight toward us. 'Do it!' Melissa screamed.

  Do it?

  Trevor jumped down from the cabin, ignored us as we ran past him, and opened his mouth. I don't know what strange language he was speaking, but whatever it was, it sure worked. The Shoggoth stopped its advance. Trevor pointed, and it circled us. He pointed again, and it wriggled its sinuous bulk onto a long trailer that the Sno-Cat was towing, then submitted as Trevor hauled a tarpaulin over it and tied it down. I was so astonished by this performance that I didn't realise Melissa was pointing a gun at me until she told me so herself.

  Trevor came back and hugged her. 'Any trouble?'

  'Not really. The other two are dead. It never quite got to the stage that I had to try the secondary incantations, or push Geoff in its path. What should we do with him?'

  'Oh, leave him here. It's too dangerous to wake the Shoggoth to kill him, and bullets lead to questions. Geoff —'

  'Randy.'

  'How American. Well, Randy, I suggest you head back to the camp. You can stay warm there for a while, and the food will last for . . . maybe a week? When it's all used up, just walk out into the cold. You won't feel a thing when the end comes, and by then we'll be too far away —'

  'And too rich!' put in Melissa.

  'And too rich to care. Bye-bye, Randy. We've got a cargo to deliver.'

  They climbed into the cabin of the Sno-Cat — Melissa still aiming the gun at me — turned, and drove off. I thought about jumping on the trailer as its tail swept by me, but I realised I would rather die than face the Shoggoth again.

  But that gave me an idea. If a Shoggoth could lie suspended in that pond, why couldn't I? I went back to the camp and found the whisky. Before setting out to drink myself into enough of a stupor that I could face jumping into the pond, I decided to finish writing up this diary. If you're the one who finds it, there's a bunch of incantations jotted down at the back. Try to pronounce them just like they're written. And have some food ready. When I get out of there, I'm going to be ravenous.

  BOOKS IN THE TREES

  As soon as I understood what a book was, I resolved to become a bookkeeper. To the dismay of my parents, I was forever climbing trees in hopes of catching an unwary volume. Of course, I never did; they were far above me, flapping unmolested from branch to branch.

  My proudest achievement was to bear back to the ground a whole egg, but my pride turned to dismay when my mother scolded me and insisted that I put it back in the nest immediately. 'That might be another Calvino or Bulgakov!' she told me. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I made the long climb anyway. (I have a strong suspicion the egg hatched into one of the flock of self-help books that used to stoop upon us as we walked, tangling their claws in our hair.)

  It was not until I began my training that I realised how much more was required than the ability to climb trees. There were cliffs, mountains, and sea-stacks to be scaled, of course, but also the myriad arts of classification and cataloguing, acquisition and disposition. The reward for endless hours of drudgery was the swoop of a thriller from a clear blue sky, the heavy 'whump' of a fantasy series flying north for the summer, the chirping of young pamphlets in the spring.

  I have grown old in the service of these magnificent creatures, but I prepare for my retirement in growing dismay. The age of the book is ending. The wide forests are no more, cut down for wood and land and greed, and the great flocks of books that filled the skies of my youth have dwindled to lone volumes fleeing the hunters. Now all kinds of buzzing, brightly coloured things clamour for our attention, and books are almost forgotten.

  In an attempt — perhaps it will prove vain — to preserve what we can, we have trapped many endangered books and placed them in sanctuaries we call 'libraries'. It breaks my heart to see them trammelled so; yet perhaps I shall live to see the day when booklets bred in these libraries are released back into the wild. May the last sound I hear be the rustle of their leaves.