He probed, seeking to look deeper.
Deep in the rusted keep, something stirred and Noble suddenly felt fear, a loosening of the bowels and weakening of the knees.
He pushed one last time and thought of the warmth of the lab, of Suzie’s smile.
When he opened his eyes he was looking into her concerned face. The sample in the jar smoked and bubbled and Suzie had a jug in her hand, emptying acid over the material.
“I had to destroy it,” she said softly. “It was taking you.”
At first, her voice sounded soft, as if coming from a great distance. Someone started pounding a hammer inside his skull. But slowly, the lab started to fill in around him. There was an acrid tickling at his nostrils caused by the acid eating away at the sample in the jar.
“Was it worth it?” Suzie asked.
He nodded.
“I know what we’re looking for.”
July 24th - In the Air Again
* * *
The Colonel arrived soon after.
“Your ride is waiting, folks. I hope you’re ready.”
He led them back up through the fort to the esplanade. The chopper was there already. When they got in, they were given lifejackets and headsets, the wearing of which made Noble feel like an extra from a war movie.
“The team’s carrying enough ordnance to blow away a town,” the Colonel shouted from the doorway, “And we’ve retrofitted some weed-killer backpacks with acid.” His face contorted with something that looked like rage. “Kill this bastard. Wipe it out, before it does the same to us.”
He closed the door on them and they felt the chopper buck and sway as it lifted away from the fort. Suzie wasted no time in unpacking a laptop and firing it up, searching for streaming video news. She was able to use a small set of headphones, but Noble had to rely on the pictures. No sound was needed. The pictures told the story all too well.
Carnage and panic.
Noble looked away, his attention caught by a movement across the chopper. The far side from where he and Suzie sat was occupied by a row of marines, all now engaged in checking equipment and weaponry. They looked calm, deadly, and efficient and gave Noble a feeling of reassurance that they weren’t on a wild goose chase.
The C.O. looked to be a Lieutenant he’d seen around, Mitchell, a Welshman, a man of no more than thirty, who looked too young to be commanding a dozen hardened soldiers. But it looked like the men all knew their officer and respected him, for when it was obvious he was speaking to them in their headsets, they all paid attention and there was no talking back, no shows of bravado.
Suzie nudged him in the ribs, bringing his attention back to the screen. The Minister hadn’t been able to keep a lid on the story about the kelp’s origin. Noble knew that neither he nor Suzie had spoken of it, so either it was the Minister himself or someone in his office. Either way, he’d fallen on his sword and news pictures showed him outside a huge house, looking stern and grim over the headlines that spoke of his dismissal. What Suzie wanted him to see came next. It was grainy, in black and white, but it was obvious what he was looking at.
A tall, studious looking man who could only be Professor Rankin, stood, centre-stage, and waited for the Brass to move into their place along a harbour wall before speaking. Although Noble couldn’t hear what was being said, he could see the defiance and pride in every move Rankin made.
Rankin dragged on a chain. The lid of a box that sat in the harbour started to open, slowly at first. Tentacles found the edges and tore. A chunk of metal flew like a discus, passing less than three feet over the head of the assembled dignitaries. The kelp came out of the box like a greyhound from a trap, expanding as it came into a roiling mass eight feet wide and near again as thick.
It completely ignored a net full of fish. Instead, it threw out a writhing forest of tentacles… straight towards Rankin.
The screen froze, showing a mass of tentacles seemingly suspended in the air, small moist eyes wide open along their length.
“Well, the secret’s out,” Noble said.
Suzie smiled thinly.
“A wee bit too late. Anyway, it makes no difference to our mission. All it means is they’ll have someone apart from us to blame when this is all over.”
If it’s ever going to be over.
Noble was thinking about the presence he’d felt in his mind, the thing that seemed to be inside the rotting keel of the cargo ship. It hadn’t felt like something from the Second World War. It had felt older—far older, a presence that had always been there, dreaming, waiting for the stars to turn in their course for the right time for it to rise and lay claim to its domain.
He laughed at his own bombast, then got embarrassed when he noticed several of the marines were looking at him as if he were mad.
Maybe I am.
He was remembering the Spanish Captain’s words, over four hundred years old, but more pertinent than ever.
There is no pain in the dream, no fear, no hunger, just the sweet forever of the dead god beneath. There is a spot where a dead god lies dreaming. We will find him and join him there.
July 24th - The City on the Sea
* * *
Sometime later, Lieutenant Mitchell’s voice came over the intercom.
“We’re approaching the co-ordinates we were given. We need the experts up front here.”
Noble got up gingerly. He was used to walking around on boats tossing on strong seas, but just the knowledge that there were hundreds of feet of air beneath him made him more circumspect. Suzie had no such qualms and was already ahead of him and into the cramped cockpit, so he heard her reaction before he saw the sight for himself.
Bloody hell.
He heard Mitchell’s laugh.
“My thoughts, exactly.”
He saw why seconds later as he pushed past the Lieutenant and looked out the front windscreen. He knew they were out over the open ocean, a long way from the mainland, but below them was what looked, at first glance, to be a modern city of glass and plastic, tall skyscrapers rising in canyons along a grid of streets laid out in chequer board fashion. There were several blank areas, like municipal parks, dotted throughout, all a deep shade of green. as if planted with trees.
But those are no trees and that is no city I recognise.
The chopper descended slowly, the pilot taking no risks. Sleek black things shuttled to and from in the street, but this wasn’t traffic, not in any sense Noble knew it. Shoggoths, some grown to the size of trucks, went about some unknown business. The city stretched almost from horizon to horizon and must have been more than twenty miles on each side.
How in hell did they do this without anyone noticing?
He saw why when the helicopter turned and banked around one edge of a street that looked like it was under construction. The scene below was no less regimented than the marines’ preparations earlier. A line of Shoggoths carried plastic and Perspex materials across the kelp, while another group of the beasts seemed to mould and build, a small building going up even as they watched. They worked as one, as if with a single purpose.
Like an ant colony. I wonder what’ll happen if we kill the Queen?
Another thought struck him.
This is all new. It’s only taken them a matter of days, built during the growing panic on shore. What in God’s name will they be able to do if we don’t stop them?
“Over to you,” Suzie said in his ear. “Where’s this boat of yours?”
Noble looked down over the expanse of the city.
I was asking myself the same thing.
He could see no reference points he remembered from his vision and had no idea where to start. Then a thought struck him.
I’ve touched its mind once. Why not again?
He reached out with his mind and pushed.
Something below responded and once again, Noble went away, for a time.
He felt the grip in his mind, much stronger now, and was given a mental picture of the rusted keel, lying parallel
to the edge of the largest of the parkland areas. At almost the same instant, the tide took him again, and he was floating, lost, in a luminescent sea, dancing to a rhythm he could feel pounding in his chest, lost with the Dreaming God.
This time he was brought out of it, not by a slap in the face, but by Lieutenant Mitchell shouting in his ear.
“For God’s sake, man, pull up!”
As Noble disengaged from the hold on his mind he felt a pang of disappointment, then a sudden burst of adrenaline and fear as he looked forward.
The chopper spun wildly. The pilot tried to right it, but he looked dazed, almost sleepy. Blood dripped from both his nostrils, but he did not have time to wipe it away, having to focus his whole attention on the bucking craft.
“Hold on to something,” the pilot said. “I’ll have to put her down and it’s not going to be pretty.”
Suzie grabbed Noble by the arm and dragged him back to his seat, where they tried frantically to buckle themselves in. The soldiers opposite didn’t look quite so sanguine about the situation now, but there was still no panic and one young marine even managed to give Noble a thumbs-up when he finally clicked the buckle in place.
And not a second too soon. The chopper bucked and spun and Noble felt like a sock in a tumble dryer.
But only for two seconds.
“We’re going in,” the pilot screamed in his ear.
There was a shattering crash and everything went away again. This time there were no dreams, no visions, just a deep, unending blackness.
He came back out of it into a chaotic world of screaming and gunfire. Someone had him by the shoulders and he was being dragged bodily across cold metal. He tried to stand.
“Stay down,” somebody shouted at him, a tone that brooked no argument.
More shots were fired, almost deafening. His back hit what felt like a lip, then he fell into open air, arms flailing.
The fall was short and his landing, surprisingly soft. He found out why when he finally got his legs under him and stood. He was on a sheet of what felt like soft plastic. In some places it was clear, with dark water visible many feet below, and in other places the plastic was punctuated with pictures, or pieces of paper, labels from whatever piece of refuse had been used in the construction. The closest piece to his feet advertised a well-known brand of lemonade. But he had little time for study. The gunfire started up again and when he turned towards it, he saw what had happened. The chopper had crashed, embedding itself partially in the plastic material of the ground. It looked like the crew were all out safely, but even now, they were being forced to back away from the crashed craft as the black forms of the kelp-covered Shoggoths tried to crawl over it, intent on assimilating whatever pieces of it they could eat.
The soldiers poured volley after volley into the vegetation, to no effect.
“Break out the acid,” Noble heard Mitchell shout.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Suzie stood there, her face pale, which only accentuated the redness of the line of blood that ran from her hairline down the left side as far as her earlobe.
Three of the marines strapped on what looked like oxygen tanks attached to short, almost pistol-like hand-held hoses.
“Fire at will,” Mitchell shouted.
Like firemen hosing flames, the marines sent a spray of acid over the Shoggoths nearest the chopper. The result was immediate. The vegetation retreated fast, pulling away from the falling fluid, leaving bubbling and hissing fragments behind where the acid hit its target.
Noble let out a small involuntary yelp of triumph, but he had celebrated too soon. The ground buckled beneath them, like a beast in the throes of pain. The marine nearest Noble, one with an acid tank on his back, fell heavily. The plastic beneath him opened like a mouth and closed again, tight, around the soldier’s waist. The man immediately started to scream. That, too, was short lived. Blood ran from his lips. He coughed, once, and the blood became a fountain. The plastic snipped –and the marine’s upper torso fell forward, cleanly cut away from the part that was embedded in the surface underfoot.
Suzie stepped forward. At first, Noble thought she was intent on trying to help the man, but he soon saw what she meant to do.
She means to take the acid tank.
Noble moved to get there first. The ground buckled again as he tried to un-strap the tank from the dead weight of the torso. Suzie steadied him and helped him strap the tank on, the weight of it threatening to overbalance him until he found the trick of redistributing his centre of balance by leaning slightly forward.
The ground bucked again, a series of mouths appearing around them, as if something was fishing—fishing for men.
Mitchell called out.
“To me. Fall back.”
Noble didn’t have to be told twice. He followed as Mitchell led the team away from the chopper and the opening mouths. The Shoggoths wasted no time in slithering over the chopper. In seconds, it had disappeared under a mound of kelp.
Noble saw Mitchell look back and caught the brief, but obvious, despair that showed on his face. Just as obvious, was the way the young officer pushed it away to focus on the survival of his team.
“In here,” the Lieutenant said and stood to one side, motioning at a semicircular opening in one of the buildings. Noble and Suzie held back, at first, but the marines, used to obeying first and asking questions later, showed no hesitation, filing through and taking positions so that each man was covered by another. Noble was last in.
By the time he turned and looked outside, he could no longer even see where the chopper had been. Several Shoggoths crawled lazily over what was once again a smooth, even surface. They seemed to have lost all interest in the occupants of the craft and were now dispersing to different parts of the city.
Noble turned to Mitchell and motioned at the backpack he carried.
“Tell me we’ve got a radio?”
Mitchell shook his head.
“I’m carrying enough C4 to blow a hole in the planet. But the only radio with the range needed to get a message to the mainland was on the chopper. We’re on our own.”
“What about a rescue?”
Mitchell looked Noble in the eye and said nothing. He didn’t have to.
Looks like this was a one way trip.
He looked around the room. They seemed to have come in the only thing that might resemble an entrance or exit. In fact, Noble thought the whole chamber might be no more than an artefact of the way the structure had been built by the Shoggoths, rather than any attempt to make a room, as such. The place was built out of more of the recycled plastics, the walls looking like a patchwork of stained glass windows of different coloured materials and papers, with thin sunlight and scudding clouds laying multi-fractal patterns all around them. It was strangely beautiful, but at the same time terrifying in its sheer strangeness.
Suzie seemed rapt and had turned on her full-on science geek mode. The eight marines, on the other hand, were all business.
“What’s the plan, Lieutenant?” Noble asked, as one of the marines helped him out of the harness and took the tank from him.
Mitchell was still looking out over where the chopper –and the dead marine—had disappeared from view.
“We came here to do a job. That hasn’t changed.”
He turned to Noble.
“How’s your sense of direction? You said the boat was on the edge of a large park?”
Noble nodded and pointed to where he hoped was West.
“That way. But it’s a bit of a walk, if I’m right. At least a mile.”
Mitchell grinned.
“This team walked more than that through hostile territory in Tehran. I think we can handle it.”
As one, the marines replied.
“Yes sir!”
Noble looked out over the street. A single Shoggoth slumped along on the far side, carrying a lump of black plastic almost as big as itself. There was no other sign of movement.
“It’s as if they don’t see u
s as a threat,” Suzie said at his side.
Mitchell came to stand beside them.
“Let’s see if we can do something about that,” he said, then called to his team. “Okay lads. Saddle up. We’re moving out.”
Noble and Suzie fell into the middle of a line of Marines and Noble’s grip on Suzie’s hand tightened as they walked into the street.
The city could almost have passed for any on the mainland on a quiet Sunday morning.
Almost.
It was only when Dave looked closer that he could see the mosaic of recycled material, or a piece of plastic from something he nearly recognised. At some points, he was able to make out a roiling, seething sea beneath, but the ground, such as it was, felt firm enough underfoot. No matter how normal it all seemed, this was far from a Sunday stroll. The men around were tense and sullen, ready to avenge their dead. A piece of plastic crackled on their left-hand side and before Mitchell could stop him, one of the marines hosed the whole area with acid.
Everything went quiet for the space of several seconds. A thin column of acrid smoke wafted above them before being dispersed in a light breeze. And on the same breeze, came a response, a high keening sound that Noble was coming to know—fear.
Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.
“Run,” he shouted to Mitchell. “We need to get out of here. Right now.”
To his credit, the Lieutenant did not hesitate.
“Move out. And heads up. We’ve got incoming.”
The small squad broke into a run. Noble and Suzie kept pace in the middle of the team, hard pressed to maintain their positions as they ran through streets that suddenly seemed even less inviting than previously.
“Where are we going?” Suzie shouted, but Noble had no answers. Nor, it seemed, did the Lieutenant. It all became moot seconds later. Noble looked up and saw two hulking black shapes block the road ahead. The squad turned back. Three more Shoggoths blocked their retreat.
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