Morlock Night

by KW Jeter

  The water fought against my every motion as I fumbled about blindly in it. My lungs were already aching when my hands at last touched upon the pole to which I had first found myself tied. I drew myself along its length to the now sharply tilting floor and felt about for the cloth bundle that contained Excalibur. I found nothing – the sword had probably slid to the deepest part of the room.

  The blood was roaring in my ears by this time and my lungs hammered with every pulse for air. A deeper blackness than the one surrounding me was welling up behind my eyes. I could search for the sword no longer. Pushing myself away from the floor, I swam toward the room's doorway.

  The nightmare of cold and suffocation had no end – I had lost the doorway. An infinity of dark water without escape stretched in all directions from my blindly groping hands. Like a drowned cat I floated upwards, will-less and limp.

  My face broke into air and hungrily, automatically, my burning lungs drew it in. Consciousness rose from the near corpse of my brain and I lifted my hand to discover the nature of this miracle. Apparently a pocket of air had been caught in one of the room's corners and I had drifted into it.

  I filled my lungs several times over and dived back under the water. This time I swam as far as I could, seeking out the room's lowest point. Wedged between a corner of the engine and a bulkhead I found the bundle and felt Excalibur's length inside of it. With the replenished air starting to burn in my lungs, I kicked myself up through the water and by God's grace found the doorway immediately to hand. An agonizingly long way through the corridor, I at last broke through to the not yet submerged portion of the submarine. The foul air of the sewers that I breathed in seemed to me like the freshest wind that had ever blown.

  The overpowering fear of drowning was gone, but I still had to escape the sinking vessel itself. I clutched Excalibur to my chest and swam to the side of the unlit space I was in. I fumbled my way along the bulkhead until I came to a metal ladder. Praying that it led to an exit, I clambered up.

  My luck still held. I found myself on the sloping topside of the vessel. For a moment my brain, exhausted by my struggling, doubted what my eyes revealed.

  The surface of the underground ocean was lit up by a score of torch-bearing boats forming a large ring about the submarine. The boats were slowly drawing nearer and closing the gaps between each other. I recognised now that sound I had been unable to identify from inside the submarine. It was the rattle of massed gunfire. By the flickering illumination of their torches I could see that the occupants of the boats were men such as I. In the prow of each boat one man stood with a rifle and levelled it repeatedly at his targets in the water. The shots echoed hollowly against the distant confines of the sewers.

  Looking closer about the submarine I now saw the Morlocks' two collapsible boats lying overturned in the water. The figures of the Morlocks themselves were scattered about, most floating face downward, seeping red into the dark water. A few were still thrashing about, trying to escape the hail of gunfire that pocked the water around them. The softer noise of metal entering flesh accompanied the passing over of each of the swimming Morlocks to join his brothers in death.

  Who were these marksmen in the boats? And from where had they come to be down here? As baffling as these mysteries were to me, I was overjoyed to see them, if only to glimpse once more the familiar outlines of human faces. So intent was I upon watching their encircling hunt of the remaining Morlocks that I was reminded of the submarine's sinking only when the water washed across my feet. I hurriedly scrambled to the small section of the vessel that was not yet under the surface of the water and began shouting and beating on the metal of the fin to which I held in order to attract the attention of the men in the boats.

  A bullet clanged upon the fin just over my head to show that I had indeed caught one of their number's eye. More shots followed, ringing upon the submarine's hull around me. They had mistaken me for one of the Morlocks, I realised with a dismayed horror. The noise of their rifle fire drowned out my calls to them. Their torches were still too far away to illumine me as a target, but the accuracy of their shots would soon improve as they rowed closer.

  The boats were approaching from all directions, so that there was no safety on either side of the large fin upon the base of which I huddled. A dark coldness washed against me as this last section of the hull slid under the water. If I clung to the submarine I would drown – if I let go and swam, I would be shot by the hunters in the boats.

  My mind froze between these two grisly choices, but my body clung with animal tenacity to life. The water came across my chest where I had thrust Excalibur inside my shirt. My fingers locked with death-like rigidity to the edge of the fin while my lungs sucked in what would be my life's last few breaths.

  The fastest of the boats came gliding to within a yard of my head as I held it above the water's chill surface. By the light of their torches I saw the gleaming metal barrel of the rifle point down toward me. So it's death by bullet, I thought with unnatural lucidity and closed my eyes as I heard the click of the hammer pulled back.

  "Wait! For God's sake, don't shoot!"

  I heard the voice crying and thought I had gone mad, for it was Tafe's voice. I opened my eyes and saw her in the boat's prow, pushing aside the man with the rifle and reaching for me, just as the submarine lurched beneath me and sank, pulling me with it away from the light and down into the dark and unrelenting cold.

  8

  The Lost Coin World

  "Well, Hocker, we all thought we'd just about lost you that time. How do you feel?"

  My eyes opened wide, letting light and consciousness drain away the last clinging dregs of sleep. For some reason I had been dreaming about a chess game played in a vista of ruins… No matter. The fantasy ebbed, replaced by the even more bizarre reality I was in. I focused on Clagger's kind, ruddy face and nodded. "I'm doing all right," I said, and raised myself on my elbows. I was lying in the middle of a large bed. "Where's Tafe?"

  "Somewhere about here," said Clagger, "getting dry. Or as dry as one can in these clammy regions. You were well under, you know, when Tafe jumped in to fetch you out. Said she had the damnedest time prying your fingers loose from that thing."

  The memory of the submarine and the dark, enclosing water came spilling back into my mind. So I had been spared that death… for what? Another even worse? An overwhelming fatigue swept through my body and my thoughts were paralysed with a deep, foreboding dread of the future and all it might hold. Hope was born in the sunlight upon the Earth's surface; down here in the gloomy bowels of rock and muck it died.

  My dismal meditation was broken by Clagger. "Come on, then," he said. "Put on your clothes and let's be about our business. I fancy there's quite a few questions you'd like to ask. To throw a little light in the darkness, that is to say. What? None at all?" He tossed my clothes – dried and mended by some unknown agency – across the foot of the bed.

  "Just wait a few seconds," I snapped somewhat irritably. "I'll have questions enough for you, though what bloody good the information will do is beyond me at the moment."

  While I dressed I cast an ill-tempered eye over this chamber in which I found myself. It held the aspect of what can only be described as decayed opulence. The bed itself where I had lain recovering a measure of my strength was little more than a sagging heap of brocades and other fancy materials, now tattered and soiled with countless years of use and neglect. The silk covering of the pillows, made thin with wear, was all split and water-stained. Over sections of the dark stone walls were hung heavy embroidered draperies, but these too were rotted away by Time. Their torn centres sagged to the floor like the slack skin of old men.

  Over everything was the inescapable feel of dampness and rot, as though the vapours of the sewers had penetrated through every atom of things down here. My own skin now felt like that, undergoing a sewer-change down into my bones. I shuddered involuntarily as I drew my clothes, really only relatively dry, over my limbs. What awful metamorph
osis would overtake me if I didn't soon return to the surface world's light?

  Clagger was still waiting for me. "What place is this?" I said. "I take it that this is the region to which you meant to guide us, as you show little anxiety about being here." For the moment I laid aside the question of how he and Tafe had escaped drowning in the underground ocean. That was simply another piece of my ignorance to be filled in.

  "This is it indeed." said Clagger, nodding in vigorous assent. "And not many a tosher could have found it, either. For of all of them that have heard of it, only a few would know the way."

  "I'm well convinced of your knowledge." The old sewer hunter's boasting was becoming tiresome to me. "But still… what is this place?" The old man's grey eyebrows arched with the importance of the revelation. "None other," he intoned, "than that known as the Lost Coin World."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Your ignorance is a pity, then, and none the less either for being shared by all those who have never trod the sewers' paths. Even the greenest boy fumbling under the street gratings for a dropped shilling has heard of this place."

  I drew on my boots and stood up. The damp mound of my bed sighed like a gratefully released animal. "Since a certain evening some time ago," I said, "when I first talked with our mutual friend Dr. Ambrose, the appalling extent of my ignorance has regularly been revealed to me. The only other fact with which I've become as well acquainted is the way that anyone who knows anything will go to any length to spin it out into a mystery."

  "Aye, you're right enough about that." He absorbed the comment without any recognition that it could have been directed at him. "It took a fair amount of persistence, I can tell you, to get these people down here to tell me something of themselves. I wasn't just asking out of idle curiosity, either, mind you. It was all for the highest of scientific and historical purposes that I wanted to know."

  "I'm sure of it. What were the results of your, ah, investigating?"

  "Ah, Mr. Hocker, there's as much to tell as would make a man thirsty to relate it all, even in a damp set of environs such as this. So wait a bit and you'll soon enough know all, revealed to you over the best victuals and drink as the folk down here can prepare without the blessing of God's sunlight and the green things that sprout beneath it. They do the best they can, though, as you'll find out for yourself soon enough."

  "'They?'" I echoed. "And who are 'they' who are providing all this?"

  "Tsk, Hocker, hold your questions for a moment. Though I know a great deal, there's others who are fitter to provide you with answers, including the man who first told me all of what I know about this place. So come along now, as they're going about the raising of that submarine that sunk beneath you, and that should prove of interest to us both."

  I stifled my feelings of resentment and followed him out of the chamber. Like all the other mysteries that had preceded it, the current one would apparently have a gradual unfolding as well. If nothing else, all my adventures thus far were providing me with an excellent schooling in the art of patience.

  Down a long corridor we passed, the damp walls of which, like the room in which I had awakened, were lit by crude torches that emitted a cloying, resinous smoke along with their sputtering light. I noted that the torches were mounted in brass fittings that, as with the ornamentation of the machinery aboard the, submarine, were based upon ancient British and Celtic motifs. The elaborate, intertwined designs, despite all the craft that had gone into their making, now seemed oddly funereal, like the devices upon the tombs of a dead race. The sight of them produced in me a feeling of oppression such as I had felt only once before in my life and that was when Ambrose by his powers had transported me to that chilling spectacle of a ruined London, overrun and murdered by the Morlocks at the very end of Time itself, I shuddered, feeling the cold air of the passageway go through my bones and into my soul, then hurried along behind Clagger.

  After many turnings, the corridor at last opened onto a great cavernous space. It was the shore of the underground ocean opposite that from which Tafe, Clagger and I had, set out in the small boat. Its dark, scum-laced waters looked no less foreboding from this side. If anything, it seemed more so, due to my present knowledge of how close I had come to death while crossing it. The still water seeped through the cracks and crumbling ridges of the, ancient masonry that formed its boundary.

  "Hocker!" I turned at the sound of someone calling my name and saw Tafe striding across the shore toward me. She now had once again all the appearance of confidence and strength that she had possessed above ground. It was as if by having faced her most inwardly dreaded doom – death by suffocation in the thick and vile waters of the underground ocean – the fear itself was conquered. The sight of her, albeit still in male disguise, was the brightest torch my faltering spirit could have perceived in these, light-starved depths. How much better, it struck me, to have a woman as your comrade rather than as the fawning admirer and house-slave that so many men of my generation unfortunately insist upon! Surely in the future, if there was to be one, such an improvement in attitude would be universal throughout society.

  At Tafe's side was a strange figure of a man. Obviously he had once been quite tall, but advancing age had bent his reed-like frame so that the weight of his upper torso was almost entirely supported by the staff clutched in one gnarled hand. Wisps of silvery hair trailed back to his shoulders, and his skin, through being long away from the sunlight, had paled to the translucency of the finest waxed parchment. Tafe curbed the length of her stride so that the old man could keep apace with her as they approached us.

  Clagger stepped forward and clasped the old man's free hand in both of his own. "So you thought you had seen the last of me, eh?"

  "Hm, well, in this life perhaps." The voice was surprisingly rich and firm, a young man's baritone rather than the fluting geriatric quaver I had expected. "Though I suppose it's a common failing of old crustaceans like us to think upon the end of things too soon." The affection and respect that flowed between the two men was easy to discern.

  "Hocker," said Clagger, turning and pulling the other figure toward me. "May I present to you Professor Gough Felknap of Edinburgh University?"

  "Late of Edinburgh, I'm afraid," amended the old man. "Late of most people's memories, too, I suppose – however many there are that reach so far back." His red-veined but still clear eyes regarded me.

  "Felknap…" I mused aloud. "Of Edinburgh? I seem to recall… must have been before I was born, though I think, I read of it. Wasn't there a stir about your disappearance? And your hall porter accused of your murder, or something like that?"

  "Ah, yes, poor Weskind. I didn't mean to get the poor fellow in trouble. Managed to get a letter to an old classmate of mine on the Bench and that got the case dropped, but of course by then an unfortunate air of mystery had been created about the whole thing. Most regrettable, really." He shook his head at the memory, then glanced back at me. "And so you're the leader of this little expedition into deep territory, eh?"

  "I could hardly say that," I protested. "I seem to have gone through more of a muddle than anyone else to reach this point."

  "Nonetheless, young man, you bear a heavy responsibility." Felknap's keen eyes studied me closely. "Destiny – with perhaps a little assist from Dr. Ambrose – has called upon you for a great service to your land and queen. It is still Victoria up there, isn't it?"

  "You know that as well as we do," said Clagger chidingly. "Eh… Just making sure. Things tend to get a little… hmmm… confused down here." He laughed and jabbed the edge of his bony elbow into my ribs. "As you've no doubt noticed."

  "Frankly," I said mildly, "I don't have the vaguest notion of where I am or what's going on here. I take it you are acquainted with Dr. Ambrose. You do intend to enlighten me as he would, don't you?"

  "All in good time, all in good time," said Felknap. "A lot for you to absorb, young man, and if there's anything I remember from lecturing at Edinburgh it's not to expound faster than
ears can take it in. Courage, my lad; all things will be explained presently. But do step down this way a bit. I believe they've just about got their grapples down to the submarine, and I want to make certain it comes up all right. Come along, then."

  The three of us, reunited once more, followed Felknap along the crumbling brickwork. "How are you feeling?" asked Tafe.

  "Quite well, thanks," I said. "I suppose I owe a bullet-less brain-pan to you."

  "Forget it. And don't relax just yet. We're not exactly in a safe harbour down here, you know."

  "What do you mean?"

  She looked away, her face set in a grim expression. "Just be careful, all right?"

  "There, see?" Ahead of us, Felknap halted and pointed a thin arm out to a distant point on the water. "They're bringing it up right now."