by Bill Schutt
“So then why would it work in this case?” Yanni asked.
“Okay, I’m only hypothesizing here,” Mac said, “but what if there’s something in the water or in that glop they fed us—a bacterium—something that initiates a positive feedback system? In other words, once inside our bodies, it somehow calculates what needs fixing, then fixes it, maybe even improves it.”
“That would be a new one,” Jerry said.
“Yeah,” Mac went on, “but our own immune system adapts to fight thousands of foreign invaders every day—some of them brand-new. This could be a take on that mechanism.”
Yanni shot Mac a skeptical look. “Okay, assumin’ this is an organism we’re talking about here—what does it get out of the deal?”
“Especially,” Jerry added, “when you consider the seriously hazardous digestive system this ‘what-zit’ runs into after being ingested.”
Mac considered the imagery for a moment. “Well, maybe some of it doesn’t get digested. Maybe it can withstand the acid wash and enzyme rinse, pass through the walls of the digestive tract, and find a nice safe place to live and reproduce.”
“And the more it reproduces, the more positive effect it has on the individual?”
“Could be.”
Yanni shook her head. “Yikes.”
Mac let out a loud whistle, and failed to notice the stares of the Morlocks as he continued his thoughts aloud. “Hendry was right. Back when Hitler dreamed of a master race, they would have needed generations. But with this kind of biological tool kit—damn!”
“That’s assuming your hypothesis holds water,” Jerry added. “I’m wondering how these individual changes get passed on to the next generation?”
Before they could bring their debate to the origin of Morlocks, the Morlocks themselves were pushing and poking again. As they moved forward, Mac began to suspect that their captors understood the rapidity with which the organism (if indeed it was an organism) produced its effect. It seemed to him that they realized their captives could be prodded along more quickly now. This added to a growing list of evidence indicating that the Morlocks were far from a pack of dull brutes who had stumbled into the ruins of someone else’s lost civilization.
More archways loomed ahead, and beyond them still more galleries—forest cathedrals with walls supported by a dense meshwork of Jerry’s “ice composite.” In the distance a whole arboretum of columns and branching arches marched away into lurid shadows and phosphorescence.
They followed a long, narrow incline, which led, finally, down into the strangest space of all. Just how strange, Mac could not have guessed, at least initially.
“This thing is huge!” Jerry exclaimed. A fog appeared to have rolled in, completely obscuring the roof of the cavern. “Like something out of Journey to the Center of the Earth. The biggest cavern behind us could easily be lost in a small corner here.”
“No more arches,” Mac observed.
“So no more ceiling,” Yanni said.
“Then we’re outside,” Jerry said, finishing the thought.
“I think you’re right,” Mac added.
“Could be the valley we were supposed to land in,” Yanni suggested.
Mac managed a smile. “Now I think you’re both right.”
As they stepped out of the stony passageway, their feet crunched on a carpet of ground frost covering a surprisingly rich-looking layer of soil. Dusk and a thickening fog seemed to be closing in, limiting visibility to perhaps forty feet in any direction. Upon closer inspection, the incoming fog appeared to be a misty suspension of snow. Mac held out a hand and indeed some of the tiny crystals clung to it. Others, though, took the opportunity to demonstrate some very unsnowflake-like behavior by swerving away just before contact. As he watched spellbound, the pseudo-flakes, which MacCready now believed to be insects, resumed their mimicry, blending seamlessly into the frozen fog.
There were other amazements, and these were terrestrial in nature—loud, trumpetlike sounds coming from something unseen within the mist.
“Don’t tell me, Yanni,” Mac said. “Mini-mammoths with two trunks.”
“Could be,” Yanni replied. “But those calls are very different from anything you’d hear from an Indian or African elephant.”
Much nearer than the unseen trumpeters, colorless plants were peeking up through the soil in clusters. The predominant flora reminded Mac of a drooping rosebud grafted on to the end of an asparagus stalk. Waxy and pallid, the plants stood just a little higher than Mac’s knees. No chlorophyll here, either, Mac thought, as yet another set of bitonal calls, haunting and even mournful, emanated from somewhere behind the veils of fog.
“I think it’s a type of corpse plant,” Yanni said, having seen Mac’s interest in the white clusters.
“That’s pleasant.”
“They’re also called Indian pipes,” she continued, in the lull between the presumed woolly mammoth calls. “They steal the energy they need from ground fungi.”
“Parasites, huh?”
“Yeah, but compared to anything I’ve seen or read about, these specimens are on the extra-large side.”
The botany lesson ended rather abruptly when the quartet of Morlocks pushed the trio of humans into a tight cluster, which they then immediately surrounded.
Even Alpha’s getting into the act, Mac thought as the presumptive Morlock leader took up a position at the head of the formation and they set off along a trail that ran uphill.
At first the march reminded MacCready of three people simultaneously entering a revolving door, but the giants backed off a bit once their intentions became clear: the single-file line they had assumed in the mountains and through the subterranean cathedrals of ice had been replaced by a more compact grouping that would circumvent any thoughts the captives might entertain about suddenly breaking rank and tearing off into the frozen mist.
In reality, thoughts of running had not occurred to either Mac or Jerry, although Mac wasn’t anywhere near as sure about Yanni, who seemed entirely enthused at the prospect of meeting up with some new pachyderm pals. Soon enough, however, the point became moot.
Approaching a field of ghostly white grass, the Morlock leader began shuffling his feet, kicking up clumps of frost and earth. In response, the carpet of ground cover before him began to part. Some of the blades scuttled off in high-speed inchworm style, exposing a narrow trail of bare soil bordered by frantic movement.
“Swell way to cut the lawn,” Mac said, nodding to the Morlock leader. But the look on the creature’s face revealed that he considered the proceeding to be anything but humorous. Instead, it was clear that Alpha was uneasy about the strange new path, and his enormous associates appeared even more wary.
A second revelation was olfactory in nature: the unpleasant, musky odor the Morlocks gave off had been ramped up to borderline nauseating. Further intensifying the stench, all four of the creatures began moving their arms up and down, as if performing jumping jacks.
“That’s a nice touch,” Jerry said, joining Mac and Yanni in what had turned into a group wince.
“I think that skunk scent they’re giving off repels these grass mimics,” Mac said, watching as the blades nearest the Morlocks beat an even hastier retreat.
The lead giant then turned to his captives, wordlessly calling for their attention, before withdrawing something live and squealing from a fur pouch it had evidently been carrying. Mac recognized one of the rodentlike creatures he had seen earlier. It resembled an eyeless albino squirrel but before he could get a better look, the Morlock casually flipped the animal into the field of white blades. The “squirrel” let out a series of yelps, cut off by a flurry of motion as the tiny troglodyte was stripped to the bone. Seconds later there came a new sound, a disquieting crunching communicating that the bones, too, were being consumed.
The message was simple: This can happen to you.
“So noted,” Mac acknowledged.
The group moved slowly along the trail, whose bound
aries seethed backward, then ever so threateningly forward—giving every indication of being held barely in check—before closing in behind the last (and indeed the most nervous looking) of the Morlocks, only seconds after it had passed by.
MacCready was drawn back to the Old Testament and what he’d always considered to be the most cinematic of biblical tales. The imagery was unavoidable once he saw the “grass” creeping in hungrily behind them. Now the trio of humans drew deliberately closer to their captors for the very first time—despite the inherent threat they posed and despite their god-awful smell. Glancing back, R. J. MacCready watched the turbulent swarm flowing around the Morlock footprints and closing off the path they’d traveled. He recalled an ancient description of the Red Sea rushing in to wash away the footprints left by Pharaoh’s troops and carrying off the terrified men who had made them.
“They’ll need to do that one in Technicolor someday,” Mac muttered to himself.
In the Valley of the Cerae
May, a.d. 67
Gaius Plinius Secundus came to the realization that any concerns about the Cerae looking upon him as a potential meal might have been unfounded—at least for the moment. The curiously lithe race he called “architects” seemed so focused on their work that if they glanced in Pliny’s direction at all, they regarded the odd-looking strangers with contemptuous indifference.
“Who are these people?” Proculus asked, yet again. “And what will they want with us?”
“I don’t know,” Pliny said. “At this point, the only certainty is uncertainty.”
A strangely high-pitched growl in three syllables and a sharp thump from behind communicated that there was to be no further talking. It did not matter. In this strangest of strange lands, Pliny found that there was little left to say. What he could not shake, however, was the guilt that his mind should choose to be more dominated by a sense of wonder than by the all-too-recent loss of more than sixty men.
The structure toward which they were being ushered was a dome, built on a scale Pliny had never seen—even in the most imaginative architectural designs. At the base of the dome’s nearest arched buttress, a wall was being constructed. Blocks of ice were being broken out of molds and set into an interlocking arrangement.
Those Cerae doing the building were strikingly different from any of Pliny’s brutish captors. The “architects” had longer, more spidery arms and legs than the others, larger eyes, and higher foreheads. Now that the Romans were being led directly beneath them, one of the workers finally seemed to take notice. Without thinking, Pliny raised a hand, as if greeting an acquaintance. Standing amid a pile of recently poured and frozen blocks, the creature seemed to disappear before his eyes. Pliny squinted into the shadows.
Can it move that quickly? he wondered.
The answer came to him as the architect reappeared just as suddenly in the exact position and pose it had occupied a moment before, staring back at him again in open daylight.
It’s playing some sort of game with me—trying to frighten with a demonstration of muscles and reflexes so powerful that it can indeed move in a blur.
Pliny reminded himself that he had, at almost every step, continued to underestimate the Cerae and that every one of his assumptions about them was probably wrong.
Failing to ask the right questions.
He supposed there were enough new questions to be discovered just outside the threshold of the great dome to keep him busy through the next two or three imperial reigns. But there was no time even to begin working on the first few questions before he and the other two captives were shepherded inside.
But inside of what? Pliny asked himself.
Under the dome, tiers of arched supports had been grown, rather than built. A colossal and unfamiliar form of vegetation, looking like a cross between a paper birch and a mushroom stem, was being carefully directed in its growth by the Cerae. They had managed to guide these buttress trees with far greater knowledge of nature than any vinetarius ever applied to guiding grape vines along trellises.
The interior was illuminated by millions of ice-refracted glimmers from the setting sun. Pliny’s mind, too, was illuminated—asking the right questions now: Are these Cerae animals that think like men, or men who look like animals?
Proculus paid less attention to the Cerae, but their architecture seemed to hold him completely in its spell. He was a cavalryman, and under Roman law, every equestrian or equestrian candidate was required to achieve an expert rank in at least one trade. Before Pliny had begun his mentorship of Proculus, he had already watched him advance at a very young age from gifted artist to designer, specializing in the rapid construction and dismantling of boats and bridges. Pliny knew this was the reason for their shared appreciation of the skill necessary to raise structures such as these. He had noticed a similar genius and hunger for adventure in Severus, and had carefully mentored him as well.
“I suppose you both think this is a good place to die?” Severus asked.
“Better than most,” Pliny responded.
“Then find me a sword,” the centurion said. “So that I can die like a soldier.”
“Go easy, my friend,” Pliny said. “Were you to reach for anything remotely resembling a weapon, you would die here and now—but with no purpose.”
Pliny thought that Proculus was about to say something but instead he lost his footing and stumbled against him. Blood continued to seep from his leg wound, pooling beneath his left foot.
Alarmed, they eased him down into a sitting position.
“I’m fine,” Proculus said, attempting unsuccessfully to regain his feet.
“Remain seated,” Pliny commanded, observing how difficult it had suddenly become for Proculus to fill his lungs.
As if in response, a score of hirsute brutes appeared, quickly surrounding the Romans with their bodies. As the Cerae encircled them in a living fence of flesh and fur, Pliny felt as if he were being enclosed in a corral.
“What now?” Severus asked.
Three of the newly arrived Cerae stepped into the circle with such suddenness that Pliny scarcely had time to follow their movements before Proculus was lifted to shoulder height. Just as swiftly, two more creatures, white-furred and noticeably lankier than the rest of their kind, sprang like acrobatic children onto the backs of the individuals securing the wounded man. Advancing with quick precision, they began probing and examining their prisoner. All the while, three pairs of hands clamped Proculus’s arms and legs, rotating his body beneath the inquisitive new arrivals as Pliny and Severus watched in confusion and amazement.
The two examiners—Pliny immediately identified them as female—ran their fingers over Proculus’s chest, back, and legs as he was rotated for their inspection. Thoughts of being consumed crept into Pliny’s mind because he found it impossible not to think of a pig being slowly turned on a spit over a cook fire. Thankfully, the thought was fleeting, as it suddenly occurred to him that the more thickly muscled Cerae (a warrior caste?) were acting in tandem as a form of living medical instrument, allowing the two physicians to clamber around and examine their patient in the most efficient means possible.
Proculus’s two examiners had more elongated faces than the other Cerae, a characteristic that gave the impression of being less brutish and more civilized. Pliny classified them as “a physician race.” He noted that their more enlightened countenance was counterbalanced by short white fur covering the entire face (while the facial skin of the other Cerae he’d encountered was bare and leathery). Oddly, even the lids of the “physician” eyes were furred, and Pliny hypothesized that, out in the snow, the covering might be needed to protect and camouflage the eyes themselves, which were disquietingly large and intense. Similarly striking were the great manes of hair that framed their faces—combed and, curiously, either dyed or dusted in unnaturally dark hues.
Initially, Pliny wondered how these particular markings tied into their penchant for camouflage, until he realized that the dark streaks would r
esemble natural features of the landscape had they been set against snow and rock.
Despite the distinctive and terrible odor their bodies gave off, along with the inescapable sense that from certain angles they looked more animal than human, there was something dreadfully beautiful about the big-eyed physicians, who were currently smearing a yellowish waxy substance into Proculus’s leg wound. Pliny observed that it seemed almost immediately to halt the seepage of blood and he wondered if it had squelched the man’s pain just as instantly. One of them, keeping a hand planted firmly upon the cavalryman’s chest, produced a small leathery pouch with a nozzle, through which she squirted a black, molasses-like substance into his mouth. That quickly, the refreshment the patient received from each intake of air was improved enormously.
“What form of magic is that?” Severus exclaimed.
“Real phenomena, poorly interpreted,” Pliny said, quietly. “It’s not magic. It’s medicine.”
For a while longer, the two physicians commenced to run their hands over every part of Proculus’s body, monitoring his responses to their salves and elixirs. One of them flashed her patient an expression that in Pliny’s view was a disquieting smile. As if she enjoys the feel of his smooth bare skin.
Proculus, for his part, reacted with disgust, deciding to focus his attention elsewhere by looking away from his caregivers. As his breathing became progressively easier, he was lowered to the ground. He stood, shakily at first, then seemingly recovered to a degree that Pliny would have found difficult to comprehend, even if his thoughts had not been interrupted by attention from the physicians. Thankfully he received a quicker examination than Proculus—which concluded with one of them squirting the same black elixir into his mouth. It was horribly bitter but almost immediately he could feel his breathing improving.
Finally, Severus was snatched up and raised high for inspection. As the centurion was being rotated and examined for wounds, Pliny noticed that the physician who had earlier taken an inordinate interest in Proculus’s almost completely hairless skin was now demonstrating an even more unsettling interest in the Roman officer’s well-muscled arms and legs.