Morlock Night

by K. W. Jeter

  The only thing offered to my senses at all was the sight of the submarine now wallowing several yards away from me. What the function of the row of lights along its top was I could not guess; perhaps a signalling device of some kind. By their general illumination I could make out the details of the underwater vessel that had come upon us. An ovoid tapering to a point at both ends, it had indeed the baroque appearance of an illustration to one of Jules Verne's fantastic romances. Odd fins and propulsive devices jutted out at angles from the bolt-studded flanks. It lay without further motion in the slowly subsiding waters.

  As my strength was quickly being exhausted by the effort of staying afloat in the cold water burdened as I was with my sodden clothes and Excalibur strapped to my back, I resolved to approach the submarine. Perhaps the Morlocks who piloted it now felt that their mission was accomplished in the sinking of our little boat and our deaths from drowning thereby. I could perhaps grasp one of the submarine's protuberances unseen and regather my strength until the vessel submerged again. Or if it stayed on the surface I could remain with it until it reached its home port, wherever that may be.

  Beyond that I had no plan, only the faintest spark of hope kept alive by the weight of the clothwrapped sword across my shoulders. However diminished its state, Excalibur still inspired in me a bit of the courage of our heroic British ancestors, as well as that of my lost comrades. I couldn't let myself sink with it into the foul depths of the underground sea until my last ounce of will was gone. As noiselessly as possible, not letting my hands breach the water's surface, I swam toward the submarine.

  I soon had hold of one of the fins near the vessel's waterline and managed to pull myself into a sitting position upon it, with only the lower part of my legs left dangling in the water. Pressing myself close to the hull, I could hear various scraping and scurrying noises inside. I took them to be the footsteps of the Morlocks and the incessant throbbing and clanking of the vessel's engine. A great exhaust of steam bubbled into the water from an aperture a few yards away from me, and I was grateful for the warmth it gave me. I could feel blood and life returning to my chilled limbs. Although my plight had not been improved a whit, a tiny bit more hope filtered through my irrational heart.

  The submarine still had not moved from the point where it had erupted upon my late companions and myself. Was something amiss inside? The hurried noises that came to my ear through the metal seemed to grow more frantic, with the footsteps pounding back and forth from one end of the vessel to the other. The engine alternately roared or slowed almost to the point of stopping. Various propellers and fins dipped erratically in and out of the water. The one I was perched on tilted, but righted itself again before I could slide off. From a distance the foundering submarine might have given the bizarre impression of a giant sea turtle that had somehow lost the ability to coordinate its limbs.

  My rapidly mounting suspicions about what was going on inside the vessel forced me now to revise my plans. I had saved myself from drowning by clinging to the submarine, but neither my lost companions, our overturned boat, nor any safe point to which I could swim had since appeared. The submarine gave no sign of progressing toward a landing, and was perhaps even in danger of inadvertently sinking. As the various noises banged through the hull like scrap metal in a dyspeptic mechanical oesophagus, I pondered my chances.

  Finally, more from a lack of better ideas than anything else, I began to inch my way higher on the vessel. I had the vague notion that I could perhaps find a hatch or vent through which I could better discover the state of affairs inside. To what purpose I could put such knowledge I had no idea.

  Using the various fins and propeller shafts for handles, I dragged myself to a point where I was lying prone upon the curved top surface, stretched between two of the glowing lights we had first spotted underwater. My calculations were at least partly correct. Through a tiny ventilator shaft with a cover that apparently closed with submersion in the water, I could hear distinctly the voices of the Morlocks inside. Their harsh gabbling was raised in argument – that much was clear, though I could understand none of the words. Volleys of scorn, accusation, contempt and other vocal passions sounded below me.

  Had a mutiny split their ranks? I wondered. Their ferocious debate gave no sign of lessening, and the submarine's erratic twitches, meanwhile, continued. Perhaps, I hoped wildly, a fight would break out among them leading to a general slaughter, and I would be left the sole living tenant of the submarine. I dismissed the notion; it was too much to wish for.

  So intent was I upon my eavesdropping that I almost didn't hear the slow opening of a hatchway behind me. Only when the circular metal door was thrown back upon its rasping hinges did I turn my head and see a pair of Morlocks come boiling out of the submarine's interior, their dead-white hands outstretched for me.

  I leapt to my feet as they came scrambling across the hull toward me. Backing away as fast as I could upon the slippery metal, I interposed a large upright stanchion between myself and them. This brought me only a few second's grace, as I could see several more of their kind emerging from the open hatchway to join in the chase.

  Hastily I decided to give up my position on the submarine. With no time to order my thoughts, I instinctively resolved that it would be better to swim or drown in the cold water than to be captured by the Morlocks and put to whatever filthy uses they could devise.

  The curve of the submarine's hull was too great for me to clear if I tried to dive directly from it into the water. I quickly dropped to my stomach again and half-slid, half climbed down to the vessel's waterline. The hand of one of the Morlocks caught me by the collar of my jacket and stopped me from slipping into the water. I let go of the fin I was using as a handhold, grabbed his arm, then pulled him off his feet and in an arc over my head. I heard him collide with a spinning propeller, shriek as its blades tore at his flesh, then fall into the water.

  More hands clutched at me from above, but I had slid far enough down the hull to be out of their easy grasp. A heavy iron bar whirred down toward my head. I twisted to one side and the weapon struck the submarine's metal flank with a dull clang. I turned my head away from my pursuers in order to spot the next foothold I needed for my descent.

  A loop of rope fell across my throat and tightened in back of my neck. My hands flew to the noose in which one of the Morlocks had caught me, but it was already pressing into my flesh and cutting off my breath. I felt myself jerked back up the side of the submarine by the rope while the dimly lit waters grew even darker.

  Hands I could no longer see grappled at me. I struck back in all directions, landing a few blows on their soft, clammy faces, until my weakened arms were at last forced behind me and tied with another section of rope. Gasping for air, with a spinning world roaring dizzily through my head, I felt myself dragged toward the submarine's hatchway.

  7

  Problems of Navigation

  I came to, trussed up and tossed against a bulkhead. I had never gone completely unconscious, but the choking and rough handling from the Morlocks had quite dazed me. My body, if not all of my mind, remembered clearly being dropped down the hatchway ladder like a sack of potatoes. And then there had been much shouting and arguing in the Morlocks' harsh tongue, and their pale, brutish faces swimming through the black veil of blood that covered my eyes, peering at me, then disappearing again.

  My head cleared a bit more as I shook it. Upon investigation I found that my back was to a large brass pipe that ran up to the submarine's curved roof, and that my hands were knotted securely behind me on the other side of the pipe. I experienced a brief flash of panic when I realised that the sword Excalibur was no longer strapped to my back. My fears were quickly assuaged, however, when I glanced about and saw the cloth-wrapped bundle, now sodden and stained from the underground ocean, lying a few feet away from me. The Morlocks had not troubled themselves to unwrap it to see what was inside.

  The compartment in which I lay bound appeared to be the submarine's engine
room. Several yards away was a maze of pipes and shafts, some covered with black grease, some glowing red with heat, all twisting and intertwined about the great cylindrical mass of the main boiler, from whose various gauges and apertures gouts of steam hissed out as though a covey of dragons had housed themselves in it. Long brass rods for the purpose of controlling the engine's valves and other parts were connected to the machinery by intricate systems of gears and chains, then led through metal rings on the ceiling toward the other end of the vessel.

  At one time the submarine must have been a marvel of engineering such as no nation on the Earth's surface had ever possessed. Now, though, it was in a sorry state of neglect and abuse. The metal, where not covered with grease and dirt was all pitted and corroded. Several of the brass controlling rods were bent or stuck tight in the rusted metal rings that held them. The glass faces of the gauges on the engine were shattered or smeared over with grease, and the escaping steam from the engine fully indicated its leaky condition.

  From all this, I surmised that the submarine was not originally the property of the Morlocks, that they had in fact come into possession of it by foul means, and were using it for their base purposes without thought of properly caring for it. Like most plunderers they took a general delight in seeing the goods of others degraded and trampled beneath their muddy boots.

  To whom then had the submarine belonged? In the cunning of its mechanical design it was far advanced of anything produced above ground, yet as I studied it I noticed some curious anomalies. Various panels and corners of the machinery were decorated with engraved lines that formed the complex curved patterns employed by the ancient Celtic artisans of the British Isles' distant past! I had studied ancient artefacts, and considered myself something of an amateur archaeologist, and I easily recognised the intricate knot motifs and stylised designs – yet here they were not applied to brooches and dagger handles, but to a complicated technological device.

  A puzzle, indeed. Surely no ancient Britons had ever had the knowledge or resources to build such a craft as this submarine. Who then had?

  My mind's probing of this knot was interrupted by the sound of the Morlocks' voices. I heard them coming toward the chamber where I was bound, still arguing volubly among themselves. A group of them burst through the engine room's doorway and surrounded me where I sat tied to the brass pole.

  I was a good deal more gently treated by them this time. One of them pulled me to my feet, untied my hands, pushed me away from the pole, then retied the knot behind me again. Their jabbering, excited debate continued as they pushed me through the door.

  This was my first chance for a close observation of the enemies of Mankind. The pale, clammy skin of their faces and hands was even more loathsome up close than at a distance, and the white flaxen hair that ran from their brows down along their necks was an additional sepulchral note. One was reminded unnervingly of those stillborn foetuses kept in jars of spirits at medical colleges, with their dead, translucent flesh.

  My captors were dressed in dark brown military uniforms with various symbols of rank sewn to their sleeves. Any semblance of command or respect for their officers was lost, though, as they shouted and struck each other on the chest and shoulders to reinforce their point with a mutual barbarity. Round lenses of dark blue glass covered their eyes, and if these glasses were jostled from their position on anyone Morlock's face, his great goggling eyes screwed up tight with pain from the submarine's illumination until they were once again covered.

  Through the submarine's central corridor they hurried me forward until we arrived at the pilot chamber where all the overhead brass control rods terminated. Here they were connected to banks of levers and knobbed wheels that served to adjust the various workings of the engine. Other groups of brass rods ran off in other directions. These I assumed were to control the submarine's fins and other steering devices. A system of lenses and mirrors provided the means of observing what lay outside the hull from many different angles – this, I surmised, was how the Morlocks had detected me clinging to the exterior of their craft.

  But the most astonishing thing contained in the pilot room was not part of the vessel's equipment at all. Slumped down at the base of the banks of controls was a crumpled, motionless body. Upon my entrance under guard into the chamber I at first took the figure to be a heap of discarded laundry, then a sleeping, drunk, or otherwise insensible Morlock. As my accompanying troop brought me near to it, I saw the upturned face and realised that it was in fact a dead human being.

  The cause of the man's demise was quickly apparent. He had been shackled by one ankle to a heavy metal chain that was in turn fastened to the front of the controls. Through long, diligent effort the man had evidently managed to sharpen a link of the chain against the rough textured floor, until the link had acquired a cutting edge equal to that of a knife. He had then employed it on his wrists. The floor around the corpse was stained with his dried blood.

  Another mystery – whence had come this human pilot who had preferred death to the continued guidance of the Morlocks' submarine? I had little time to ponder the question, though, as they roughly pushed me forward to the post where the corpse lay. With a maximum amount of jostling and arguing the Morlocks proceeded to unlock the metal circlet around the corpse's ankle, and transfer it to my leg.

  So careless were they in not dragging away the body of their former pilot, and so fractious in their conduct toward each other, stopping every few seconds in the re-shackling process in order to hurl imprecations and minor blows against each other, that when they were done all they had managed to accomplish was to place the shackle back upon the dead man's ankle, believing it to be mine. Their handicapped eyesight prevented them from noticing their error, and naturally I did nothing to reveal the condition to them, even arranging my position next to the body so as to conceal the true state. Whatever the ensuing events were to be, I preferred to face them in as unhindered a fashion as possible.

  The arguing and general disorder among my captors lessened, and a pair of the Morlocks whom I took to be the highest in rank, due to the abundant decorations and insignia upon their uniforms, fumed their vocalising to me. The whole race of them being of an excitable and unrestrained nature, similar to the natives of Southern Europe in contrast to the more restrained British, the two Morlock officers were so given to gestures of the hand and facial motions that I could nearly divine their meaning from pantomime alone. Beyond this, however, I found myself starting to be able to understand fragments of their speech. The language seemed to be a grossly degenerated sort of pidgin German with infusions of exotic Slav and Oriental tongues with which I was for the most part unfamiliar, all spoken with slobbering labial explosives and harsh guttural stops that sounded like the clearing of mucus from their throats. All in all, a barbaric mode of speech that well fit their bestial nature. Most of it was beyond my comprehension, but l was able to pick up enough to catch their meaning.

  The gist of their communication was that the previous pilot had killed himself, as I readily could see, and they were unable to guide their submarine themselves. My suspicions about their having illicitly appropriated the vessel were thus borne out. All of the controls were too small and delicate in their adjustment for their thick fingers to make use of.

  Pilotless, they had had the good fortune to capture me. Now they intended to impress me into the empty position, apparently under the belief that I was of the same nature of person as the deceased pilot and not suspecting my true origin from the surface of the Earth. I was unable to tell from their discourse whether their raising of the submarine and capsizing of the little boat had been a fortunate – for them – accident, or a deliberate action clumsily executed. Of the submarine's true history, or that of its late pilot, I was able to learn nothing.

  I quickly decided not to attempt to communicate to my captors that I knew not a whit of how to operate the strange vessel. Given the Morlocks' cruel natures, if I had succeeded in telling them this they would mo
st likely have jettisoned me out into the cold underground ocean to drown. No, my one tactical point against their superior numbers and position was that I held no illusions about them while they were severely mistaken about me.

  To gain time in which to formulate a strategy, I pantomimed with much holding of my hands over my ears and other gestures that I could not proceed with the piloting of the submarine unless my captors backed away and gave me a little peace and breathing room. So eager were they to be rescued from their hapless floating in the middle of the underground sea that they quickly acquiesced. With a flurry of shouting at each other like a kennel of dogs in an uproar, and mutually exchanged blows, they backed away from me and the banks of controls.

  I turned my attention to the rows of wheels, knobs and levers laid out before me, trying to restrain my mind's apprehension about the situation I was in. Adrift in an underground ocean, surrounded by a horde of the cruellest enemies of mankind, with the dead body near of one who had killed himself rather than serve them, and now attempting to pilot a bizarre submarine, the like of which I had never seen – and to what destination? If by some chance I succeeded in steering the vessel to whatever harbour the Morlocks desired, what would they do with me then? Kill me outright, or leave me to the same self-administered fate as the poor soul lying at my feet? More likely I would only manage to expose my ignorance about the submarine and its controls – how long would it be before the sharply watching Morlocks perceived it? Whatever glimmer of hope had led me this far into such a situation now seemed, the more I reflected upon it, utterly extinguished. It was with a dark and leaden heart that I pulled my thoughts from my predicament and studied the submarine's controls.

  The curious features I had noticed in the engine room were borne out on the controls as well. The repeated intricate designs of ancient Britain decorated the corners and spaces of the panels, and the spokes of the several wheels were formed into intertwined snake shapes. As I looked closer at the gauges and dials I saw that their calibrations were marked off in runic letters and figures. A certain sadness crept into me at the thought that I would most likely be dead before I ever came to the bottom of this mystery surrounding the vessel's origin – a marvel of advanced technology apparently crafted by ancient Britons.