Gears of a Mad God Omnibus

by Brent Nichols

"Ah. I see."

  "Did you come to build here, Boss?"

  "No," said Carter. "No, we're archaeologists." When the man gave him a blank look he said, "We've come to dig. To see what's under the ground. There might be an ancient town under there."

  "Oh, you dig. For science?"

  Carter nodded. "For science."

  The man turned and held a brief conversation with the people behind him. Then he faced Carter again and said, "You need people to help you, Boss?"

  "We do, actually. You're not afraid that the hill is haunted?"

  The man shrugged. "A man needs to work, Boss."

  "Don't call me Boss, for heaven's sake. My name's Carter. This is Miss Havisham and Miss Garman."

  "Maggie," Maggie corrected him. "And Colleen."

  The man bobbed his head. "Very pleased to meet you. I'm Bill. When do want to go to work, Mr. Carter?"

  "Tomorrow morning, I think. We'll have a look around today, and start early tomorrow. Can you find us some more men willing to work?"

  "I sure can, Mr. Carter. We'll be ready, tomorrow morning at sunup."

  A dozen men were waiting when the three of them walked out of Government House the next morning. They carried bush knives and axes and adzes, and led the way down the beach to the hill. When Carter, Maggie, and Colleen reached the hilltop, the men were already hacking away at a spot near the east edge of the hilltop. They burrowed their way into the jungle, felling small trees, clearing fallen tree trunks, and cutting back the brush.

  "What are they doing?" Maggie asked. "I rather thought they would wait for instructions."

  Carter shrugged. "They're certainly enthusiastic. I wonder why they picked this spot." He peered at the opening they had carved. "Good heavens, is that a building?"

  The original construction site from six years before was quickly exposed. There were two buildings, long wooden structures with tin roofs, and a vast, rust-colored hulk that had to be the hauling machine.

  Bill strolled up, beaming, as they inspected the buildings. "Still standing," he said, and thumped a wall. "Still solid. We'll chase out the rats and clean them up nice."

  They used fire to clear most of the hilltop. The prevailing wind whipped the smoke away over the ocean. Carter tried to supervise, but it was clear the work crew knew what they were doing.

  Colleen, meanwhile, turned her attention to the hauling machine. She borrowed a machete and cleared back the brush, then stood back to see what she had. Maggie joined her, and they looked over the rusting behemoth. A tank eight feet across loomed above them, nearly twice their height. Attached to the front of the tank were a pair of massive iron spindles five feet long and two or three feet across with meshing gears. Smaller cylinders ran here and there, connecting the pieces.

  "It's certainly impressive," Maggie said. "I wonder what it is."

  "This," Colleen told her, "is a double-cylinder steam hoist, more commonly known as a donkey engine. They're used a lot by logging companies to drag fallen timber."

  Maggie raised her eyebrows in surprise. "You know about this sort of thing?"

  "Sure. My dad was a clockmaker by choice, but we had to diversify to survive. We fixed anything with springs or gears, basically. I've worked on a couple of these."

  "Does it still function, do you think?"

  Colleen shrugged. "It's hard to tell. On the one hand, it's been standing here completely unmaintained for, what, six years? On the other hand, they're designed to be dumped in the middle of a forest and cared for by lumberjacks. So, who knows? Maybe I can get it working."

  They returned to town that evening to spend their last night in Government House. When they set out the next morning they were accompanied by a small army of local women, laden with brooms and buckets, blankets and pillows. The women set to work scrubbing the insides of the abandoned buildings, shooing Colleen away when she tried to help.

  Meanwhile, Maggie put the men to work digging a trench from one side of the hilltop to the other. It didn't take long to make a discovery. When Colleen and the others clustered around the trench to see what Maggie was so excited about, no one else could see anything but dirty rocks. Maggie, however, assured them that it was the foundation of a forgotten building.

  In the afternoon Maggie laid out a grid with stakes and twine and supervised a careful excavation of the foundation, taking careful notes as the dig began. Meanwhile the local women emerged from the tin-roofed buildings, pronouncing them mostly fit for habitation. Some windows were broken and had to be boarded over, and there were some minor repairs, but for the most part the buildings were intact.

  Colleen, finding herself with nothing to do, turned her attention to the donkey engine. In a corner of one building she found a crate with a few basic tools, cans of grease, and an operating manual. She set to work disassembling every moving part, cleaning and lubricating, and putting it all back together.

  The local women prepared a feast as the sun went down. They would be returning to town that evening. This was the last chance for many days for husbands and wives to be together, or for the expedition to eat much fresh food. They roasted beef at a bonfire, and someone produced a sasando, a harp-like instrument with a bamboo tube for a frame and a fan of dried palm leaves acting as a resonator.

  Maggie and her workmen were filthy from digging in a layer of ash all day. Colleen, with grease up to her elbows, felt like one of the cleanest people there. Everyone washed up as best they could, and ate and laughed together as the stars came out in brilliant hosts. The dark machinations of the cult seemed far away.

  The tin-roofed buildings had once been brightly painted. Most of the paint was gone now, but enough remained to show the colors. The buildings were immediately dubbed "the red hut" and "the blue hut." The workers would be staying in the red hut. The blue hut would house Carter, Maggie, and Colleen, as well as their food supplies and most of the equipment.

  When the last of the food was gone and the music faded away, Colleen stumbled wearily into the blue hut. She and Maggie shared a room at the back, with beds made from pallets of blankets. She sank down on her pallet and quickly fell asleep.

  Colleen knew she was dreaming as it happened. She wandered through a dark mist, grass cold and ticklish against the soles of her feet, and a figure came lurching out of the darkness. It was Jimbo, who had tried to strangle her in Vancouver, and she drew away from him. He came toward her, his face twisted with hate, and something bumped her leg.

  There was a club dangling from Colleen's hand, a strangely-shaped thing, pale green and flattened at one end, with a spike protruding from the tip. She hefted the club, grunting at the weight, and snarled at Jimbo. Rage filled her, and a savage desire to strike him down.

  But she'd already done that. She'd fractured his skull, and the last time she'd seen him he'd been an inert figure handcuffed to a hospital bed with a tube helping him breathe.

  Her rage faded, replaced by a queasy regret, and Jimbo vanished into the mist. She looked at the club in her hands, thought about tossing it away.

  Another shape loomed in the mist. This time it was a tall, round-faced man in steel-rimmed spectacles and a pinstripe suit, his lip decorated with an absurd little brush of a mustache. It was the mysterious Englishman who'd led the cult in a brutal counter-attack in Victoria. He'd escaped at the end, warning her that she'd see him again.

  The rage filled her again, and she seemed to hear a cold voice whispering in her ear. "Smash him! Kill him! He destroyed your life. He destroyed your friend! This is your chance for revenge!"

  She stood frozen with indecision, and something gleamed in the Englishman's hand. A knife! He came toward her, and she swung her club at his head. She connected, the impact jolting her hands. He barely reacted, and she swung again and again. A predatory joy surged within her when a line of blood finally appeared on his temple.

  A corner of Colleen's mind was horrified and sickened, but rage and hate surged through her veins as she hammered the Englishman over and over. When she'd k
illed him she stood over his battered corpse, panting and triumphant, and the dream faded away, only to begin again.

  She woke feeling exhausted. She found Maggie brewing coffee and Carter breakfasting on a cold square of beefsteak from the night before. Both of them were clear-eyed and cheerful, but Colleen noticed several diggers with the same haggard and haunted look that she herself wore. She thought of the tales of the hill being haunted and wondered if there was a connection.

  "I'm sending a message to Captain Libertad," Carter said. "There's no point in paying him to sit there tied to a wharf. I'm asking him to drop in every two weeks or so to check on us. In the meantime he's free to resume trading."

  Colleen nodded. It made sense, but it made her distinctly uneasy, too. There was no telephone or telegraph connection to the island. If something went wrong, there would be no way to summon help. They were stuck on the island, for better or worse.

  She resumed her work on the donkey engine, telling herself that it might come in useful for dragging up supplies. The truth was that she found the machine fascinating and loved the challenge of getting it to work. Plus, there was nothing else to do except wield a shovel under Maggie's supervision.

  Carter apparently came to the same conclusion, and set off for town himself instead of sending someone. A few hours later, Colleen saw the Persephone steaming away, heading for Sumatra.

  Colleen was reassembling the main piston housing when someone cleared his throat behind her. It was Carter, back from town, with a bundle in his hands. It was a rolled-up jacket, which he unrolled with a flourish, producing a bottle of Coca-cola. He handed it to Colleen. Moisture beaded the bottle, which, if not quite cold, was still cool to the touch.

  She grinned her thanks, pried the cap off with a wrench, and took a long drink. When she looked up, Carter was staring off at the horizon. "Now, that's odd," he said. "Is Libertad coming back?"

  She followed the direction of his gaze. A ship was rounding the southern tip of the island, a dozen miles away. She switched her gaze to the north. The Persephone was over the horizon, but she could see a hint of coal smoke marking her presence.

  "It's not Captain Libertad," she said. "It's a new ship." And what might that mean? There was a cargo ship that called three times a year. She wasn't due for almost three months. Although other ships did visit the island, they were extremely rare occurrences. The Persephone had been the first strange ship in over two years.

  "I suppose it could be a coincidence," Carter said, "but I wouldn't bet on it. We have to assume it's the opposition."

  Colleen glanced again in the direction of the Persephone. Libertad and his men wouldn't reach land for another two days. She wouldn't even be in radio range of the Dutch East Indies yet. "How could they know?" she said. "How could they possibly know we're here?"

  "I'd give a pretty penny to know that," Carter said. "It's almost enough to make you think their dark religion is real."

  "What do you mean?"

  Carter rubbed his mustache. "Well, if there really is some mad god out there, marshalling his followers to free him, he could be acting like a giant, supernatural switchboard. He gets reports via prayers, and gives instructions to his minions on the other side of the world. Or perhaps he watches us directly."

  Colleen shivered in spite of herself. Carter continued blithely. "Maybe he speaks to them directly, like when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Or perhaps he talks to them in their dreams. I say, Colleen, what's wrong?"

  "I had some pretty bad dreams last night, that's all."

  Carter chuckled. "Probably the food. I doubt their god is reaching out to you."

  She laughed in reply, weakly.

  A cry went up from one of the diggers, and Colleen turned, glad of the distraction. She saw Maggie hurry over to where a man with a hand trowel was waving excitedly. Maggie knelt beside him, borrowed the trowel, scraped at the soil for a minute, and then heaved at something in the ground. Then she stepped back, rubbing the small of her back, and gestured to the man.

  He reached down, grabbed something in the dirt, heaved, and stood. He was holding a rectangular block of stone. He carried it out of the dig site, stepping carefully over the lines of twine, while Maggie made careful notes.

  Colleen and Carter gathered around as Maggie cleaned the artifact. It was a stone tablet, a foot wide by a foot and a half tall, and about four inches thick. The top corners were rounded, and every surface was intricately carved. Maggie removed layers of dirt with a wooden scraper and a brush, revealing more and more of the carving. The more Colleen saw, the less she liked it.

  Something about the pattern seemed subtly wrong. She couldn't have said what was wrong with it exactly, but the abstract lines in the stone were somehow offensive to the eye. She turned away, not wanting to look at it any more, and heard an uneasy muttering from the closest diggers.

  Maggie said, "I've seen this before." She looked up, and her eyes met Carter's. "Remember that poor boy in New York? Wilkinson?"

  "The artist? The one who drew pictures of Katharis?"

  Maggie nodded. "He drew this tablet. I'm almost sure of it. We'll take some rubbings, bring them back to Washington and do a direct comparison. But I think it's the same."

  She returned to her work, and Colleen and Carter moved off to one side. "This is an interesting development," he said. "I'm not sure if it proves we've got a connection to the cult, or if it just proves something about the awesome power of coincidence."

  "Who's Wilkinson?" Colleen asked.

  Carter heaved a bleak sigh. "Wilkinson was an artist. Quite a talented young man. He came to our attention when he started selling paintings with names like 'The Face of Katharis' and 'Katharis is Watching.' We had people watching the newspapers for any mention of Katharis, among other things. It's a word that's come up a few times in our dealings with the cult."

  "So this artist was part of the cult?" Colleen asked.

  "No, not so far as we could tell. He was entirely the wrong sort. Really, he was just a nice young man. But he was having dreams, he said. Wild, vivid dreams with impossible creatures and places in them. A voice spoke to him, he said he couldn't make out most of the words, but he caught a name. Katharis. And he painted this Katharis."

  Carter scrubbed a hand over his face, lost in memory. "A remarkably ugly fellow, tentacles all over his face. We'd have written him off as a nutter, except we found references to Katharis on the other side of the world. There's a group in the Congo that worships Katharis, and they carve his likeness in some of the ugliest statues you'll ever want to see. And the statues look just like young Wilkinson's paintings."

  Colleen stared at him. "But how is that possible?"

  Carter shrugged. "I think some people are sensitive to messages from these mad gods, or whatever it is the cult is so determined to follow. The nasty ones hear the message and join the cult. The better people just use it as the inspiration for really bad art."

  "The way you talk about this Wilkinson," Colleen said. "Did something happen to him?"

  Carter's tired brown eyes met hers. "He died. Suicide, apparently. He was a... sensitive young man. The things he saw in his dreams might have pushed him over the edge. Or it might have been murder. He knew too much about the cult, even if he thought it was just nightmares. One of their mad gods was on the verge of becoming a sensation in the New York art world. They may have wanted to silence him."

  By the end of the day a dozen more artifacts were laid out neatly beside the stone tablet. Anything of wood or metal would have long since disintegrated. What remained was ceramic and stone. There were two clay jugs, one nearly intact, the other in twenty or more pieces. Several plates and cups, most of them broken, a stone pestle, and an intact bottle of dark blue glass rounded out the collection. But what caught Colleen's attention was the club.

  It was made of pale green stone, flattened at one end like a blade. She could see a jagged spot where the spike on the tip had long since broken off. She didn't have to touc
h it to know how it would feel in her hands. It was the club from her dreams.

  She dreamed again that night. As the mist closed in around her she knew she was dreaming, but knowing didn't seem to help. The club dangled from her hand, and she hefted it onto her shoulder where it was easier to carry. She thought about throwing the wretched thing away, but she remembered the Englishman with his knife, and was afraid to disarm herself.

  Something came spinning out of the darkness. It was a small rock, and it bounced from her shoulder, bruising her, before clattering into the fog. Then shapes appeared all around her. She recognized them, though she'd forgotten most of their names. They were children she'd gone to school with, frozen in time, ten or eleven years old.

  And she was no bigger than they were. Eventually some of them had become her friends, she remembered. Abigail, a skinny girl with braids on either side of her head, had even apologized years later for being so hateful on Colleen's first days of school.

  All that was in the future, though. What she saw now was her classmates as she'd known them during that awful first week in a new school. Spiteful. Contemptuous. Driven by some dark herd instinct to gang up on the stranger.

  Another rock came flying, and she dodged it, but she didn't see the third rock. It hit the back of her head, the pain sharp enough to bring tears to her eyes. She whirled, and the ring of taunting faces seemed to spin around her. They all held rocks in their fists, and terror and rage churned in her stomach.

  But this isn't how it happened, she thought desperately. They made fun of my dress. One girl pulled my hair, and I gave her a black eye. They called me names for a few days, and then they stopped. It was never like this.

  A short boy with a pinched face hurled a rock at her, and she batted it aside with her club, then charged at him. He tried to dodge back, but he wasn't fast enough. She swung the club, it connected with the side of his head, and he pitched forward on his face.

  Instantly the others swarmed her, and she laughed. They could have killed her slowly with their rocks, but they were stupidly charging into range of her club. She swung and smashed, slamming them back, knocking them over, and when they drew back she sprang on the ones who had fallen. Rage filled every part of her, intoxicating her, and she whooped in delight. There were no more nasty smirks on the faces of the children, only horror, and she savored it as she swung and smashed and hacked.