by Joshi, S. T
Nemo and his companions hurried to Louart’s defense, but they were too slow underwater. The ocean was so incredibly silent. Nemo and one other man had spears; the others carried scimitars. The bubble thing continued to contract around its victim, and a sudden splash of red exploded in Louart’s helmet, filming the faceplate.
Nemo hurled his harpoon, and it glided through the water, sizzling into the amoeboid thing, puncturing several of the spheres before it disappeared into the mass. But the formless creature rearranged itself, extending pseudopods in other directions. By now Louart was surely dead, perhaps even half digested. The other crewman threw his spear, to no effect.
The bubble thing squirmed along and retreated among the empty buildings of the sunken city. Nemo knew that it could have killed the rest of them, but the creature had retaliated only against the one man who had caused damage.
The other men were panicked, and Nemo pointed upward. His four comrades tore off their weights and floated upward to the waiting Nautilus.
Nemo remained in the ancient city, warily looking around. He glanced back toward the tantalizing, armored tomb that he hadn’t had the nerve to explore, then he, too, released his weight belt and swam up to daylight.
* * *
Even without Louart’s body, the Nautilus crew held a solemn funeral for him. Afterward, Harding came to stand in the doorway of the captain’s quarters. “We’ve lost too many crew already, Captain.”
Nemo sat at his small desk, but did not nod. “We would all be dead if we’d stayed at Rurapente. This way, at least we can keep fighting.”
“Fight against what, Captain? A giant squid? Some primordial monster in an ancient city?”
“The world is not a safe place, Mr. Harding, and there are other kinds of wars besides the one we chose. We can either give up, or we can continue our fight. This is a setback, but it is not a defeat.”
Nemo stared at the books on the shelves, ancient Arabic tomes that Caliph Robur had considered essential—military strategy reports and treatises about the use of bladed weapons, instructional manuals on methods of torture (some of which masqueraded as medical texts). But he thought he remembered seeing something….
“When will the repairs be completed?”
His second-in-command stood in cold silence for a moment before answering, “Tomorrow, sir.”
“Then let me read tonight.”
After hours of paging through documents, he found the volume that contained the familiar dot pattern he’d seen on so many of the ruins. It was a thick handwritten book bound in a curious pale leather. The text inside had been penned in a dark brown ink; all the words were scribed in a trembling hand, as if the author were afraid to put into words the nightmarish thoughts that consumed his brain. Necronomicon.
After years as the caliph’s prisoner, Nemo was fluent in Arabic, but this writing seemed to be an odd archaic dialect, written by a man named Abdul al-Hazred. Pages and pages of speculations seemed utter gibberish, something concocted in the hashish houses of Cairo or scrawled by a man dying from a madness plague.
According to the mad Arab, the dot pattern was a sign of the Old Ones, creatures from beyond time and space that had settled Earth soon after its formation, long before any natural life had emerged from the ooze. He saw drawings of the starfish-headed things depicted in statues in both the above-ground ruins and the sunken city. The Necronomicon’s ravings told how the Old Ones had found a way to traverse the airless chasms of open space, how they had created and enslaved a race of shapeless sentient clusters of protoplasm called shoggoths that were their servants, their guardians, their caretakers.
The preposterous imagined history laid out a march of epochal events, how a race of tentacle-faced beings—immense and powerful strangers from beyond the stars—had engaged in a great war against the Old Ones, nearly wiping them out, but the shoggoths and the Old Ones fought back, defeating the octopoid creatures, at least for a time. And the Old Ones had retreated into their cities beneath the sea.
Nemo thought the ruined city on this mysterious island might have been one of those ancient and impressive dwellings of the Old Ones. And the shapeless bubble thing that had attacked Louart—was that a shoggoth?
The bas-relief carved in the doorway of the armored crypt was much like the octopoid race. The Necronomicon named the beings in a word written in blocky letters, as if al-Hazred had dared himself to write the word: CTHULHU.
He closed the book. Rationally speaking, Nemo didn’t believe any of it. And yet in a primitive and easily frightened corner of his mind, he thought he knew the answers.
Mr. Harding delivered the welcome news that repairs were nearly completed and the Nautilus could be under way by nightfall. The crew let out a ragged cheer. After the death of Louart, the oppressive anxiety that hung over the abandoned island and the ruined city had begun to seep into their psyche like mildew in a dank tomb.
Nemo, however, heard the report from his second-in-command as if it were distant background noise. He wasn’t yet finished with this ancient sunken city. The tales from the Necronomicon had inflamed his imagination, caught hold of him like an incurable fever.
If he had read the ravings of the mad Arab in the camp of Rurapente, he would have discounted it all, but after what he had seen, not just the statues and Cyclopean buildings, but the appearance of the murderous—protective?—shoggoth that had killed Louart, he knew it had to be real. And that thing sealed in the armored tomb pulled on him like the inescapable current of the fabled maelstrom off the coast of Norway.
“I’m going back down there, Mr. Harding.” He raised his voice and glanced at his crewmen at their stations on the bridge. “I’d like three volunteers to accompany me—but I won’t require it.” He didn’t speak further, because he didn’t want to be challenged to explain what he was doing or why.
Harding looked skeptical, but he held his tongue. The crew were terrified, knowing what had happened to their comrade, but they were Nemo’s men and they would do anything for him. In the end, he had more volunteers than he needed.
As he suited up, Nemo felt preoccupied, his thoughts focused on what he knew was down there. In his life he had fought pirates, been shipwrecked, crossed Africa in a balloon, fought in the Crimean War, and suffered years of imprisonment under a murderous caliph who wanted to be the master of the world. But he doubted he would ever face anything as nerve-wracking as this. His obsession went beyond fear.
In their weighted underwater suits, the four explorers plunged to the bottom of the cove, shining their galvanic lanterns into the murk. They were all more wary now, seeing movement in every shadow, alert for the golden glow of the lurking shoggoth. The men each carried a spear in one hand and a cutlass in the other, although the previous day’s encounter had shown that such primitive defenses were ineffective against the shoggoth.
This time, Nemo was pulled by an invisible force, like a questing tongue drawn to a broken tooth. He felt a call of that other being whose very image and name exuded awe. Cthulhu. The crypt seemed to contain more power than Nemo would need to win his war against war.
The four galvanic beams shone out, illuminating the arches that led to the squat armored building. The circular walls were like low battlements surrounding the sealed temple—or was it a tomb?—of an elder god.
The other men spread out, holding their spears and cutlasses, on guard for the swarming mass of one of the Old Ones’ guardians. But Nemo faced the graven image of the cosmic creature. This being was different from the builders of the ancient sunken city; it might have caused the destruction of the starfish-headed Old Ones. But if so, why would they build a temple to it here? Why honor Cthulhu with such an impressive and elaborate tomb?
He ran his gloved hands along the complex locking mechanism that sealed the crypt door. The stone components were carefully carved and arranged like a puzzle, a mystic trigger built by minds immeasurably superior to his own.
This mechanism was a problem unlike other engineering
challenges he had faced in Rurapente, but his hands had their instincts. He applied his mind to the problem, sliding the components sideways, then down, then back into a different interlocking configuration. Something seemed to be guiding him. He felt the stone door thrum beneath his fingertips, as if an energy inside were building, awakening.
Next to him, the men scrambled backward, and Nemo turned to see if the shoggoth were coming, but his companions were staring at him, at the temple … at the door cracking open. What seeped out was not a golden glow, but the opposite—an emptiness of light, a shadow that sucked at the beams of their galvanic lamps.
The water grew suddenly colder, penetrating even his thick undersea suit. The stone door spread wider, and darkness boiled out, along with an ominous emerging figure—a titanic looming shape that seemed much too large to have been contained within the structure.
A current blew Nemo backward like a howling storm wind as the crypt burst open, and the enormous thing with baleful eyes and facial tentacles emerged. The statues had conveyed only a hint of the overwhelming cosmic presence of what Abdul al-Hazred had named Cthulhu.
Then Nemo realized what he should have known from the start—that this was not a temple or a tomb … but a prison.
One of his men thrashed in a frantic effort to swim away, but the reawakened Cthulhu turned a horrible maddening gaze upon him—and the man’s struggles immediately ceased. He drifted motionless, struck dead by the mere sight.
The galvanic lamps flashed wildly in all directions as the other two fled. Nemo was stunned and tumbling, trying to reorient himself in the water. He slammed into one of the stone walls and held on for balance. Nemo’s mind couldn’t contain the immensity of the emerging Cthulhu, a being that had been locked away for twenty thousand years or more beneath the sea.
What have I unleashed?
The water around him suddenly glowed, frothing golden as if illuminated by an unknown and insane source of light. Through his faceplate, he saw a roiling blob of bubbles, a conglomeration of translucent spheres that might or might not have been eyes—it was the shoggoth returned to continue its attack.
But the formless thing did not pursue Nemo or his companions; instead, it confronted the horrific elder god. The light in the water continued to grow, and another shoggoth streaked in from a separate part of the city. Then a third—and four more!
The Old Ones may have been long extinct in this isolated city, but they had left these shapeless but somehow faithful creatures to maintain their cursed metropolis. The shoggoths did more than just maintain the buildings, arches, and sunken gardens; they were also here to keep the Cthulhu thing imprisoned.
Nemo and his men tried to find shelter behind the enormous façades, unable to do anything but watch. In their scramble away, they had dropped cutlasses and spears. Nemo’s eyes were so blasted that he could barely see details in the glaring light, the masses of bubbles, the thrashing tentacles, and a defiant roar that vibrated through the fabric of the universe.
The shoggoths swept in and surrounded the powerful, unspeakably evil creature that had emerged from its millennial prison. The formless creatures showed no vengeance toward the Nautilus men, but regarded them as utterly beneath notice.
Nemo and his companions tore away their weighted belts and clawed their way upward, rising toward the distant surface while expecting to be struck dead at any moment.
Below, the battle continued with all the fury of an active undersea volcano. The emerging Cthulhu tore shoggoths to pieces, ripping the masses of bubbles, but the spheres reconverged. The shoggoths were many, and they had been placed there for the sole purpose of guarding this monster. In a hurricane of golden light and swirling pseudopods, they drove the Cthulhu thing back, unable to destroy it—how does one kill a godlike being that has existed since before time?—but at least the shoggoths could contain it. They surrounded the ancient monster in a cocoon embrace, and pushed it back toward the tomb chamber.
Nemo finally broke the surface of the water, and he detached his helmet, gasping. The muffled sounds suddenly grew louder; next to him, the men couldn’t stop screaming. Nemo’s own throat was raw, and he knew he must have been screaming as well.
Careless and terrified, they dropped their helmets into the water and climbed the rungs to fight their way aboard the imagined safety of the Nautilus.
Mr. Harding stood watching them, surprised and alarmed. “Engines are ready to go, Captain, but what—”
Below, the supernatural storm continued to unleash explosions of light and inky shadows. “We must depart immediately!” Nemo said. “Now!”
Harding didn’t argue. Seeing the expressions of absolute terror, not just on the other sailors but on their brave captain as well, the sailors moved more swiftly than they ever had in their lives.
When he spoke, Nemo’s voice was torn and hoarse. “Take us away from this island. Far, far away.”
The repaired engines hummed, and the sub-marine boat lumbered forward, picking up speed. Beneath them, the cove’s deep water looked like a storm of lights and fire, inconceivable colors in a simmering battle that Nemo himself may have triggered … but one in which he could do nothing to fight on either side.
“What was down there, Captain?”
“Nothing I could understand, Mr. Harding.”
The second-in-command gave a small nod, then focused on business, intent on more than cosmic monsters, elder gods, or vanished alien cities. “The Nautilus is in prime condition again, Captain. Engines at full power. Hull integrity, ramming blades, and reinforced bulkheads all check out. We can continue our mission.”
Nemo stared ahead through the dragon’s eye portholes. The Nautilus left the mysterious island behind and cut across the water into dark and uncharted seas. His own war against human hatred and bloodshed was an all-consuming struggle, a war so big that he knew it could never be won … still, the battle had to be fought.
Yet, the war he had just discovered between the Old Ones and Cthulhu was so much vaster, so much more ancient, so much more inconceivable that his own puny struggle against the evils of man seemed laughably trivial in comparison.
But it was his struggle, and it was all Nemo had left. “Yes, Mr. Harding, we will continue our war.” He lowered his voice. “Even if it doesn’t matter to the rest of the universe.”
The Nautilus cruised away from the nightmarish island, toward the normal trade routes, continuing the hunt.
TSATHOGGUA’S BREATH
BRIAN STABLEFORD
IT WAS SOMETIMES SAID THE EASTERN SETTLEMENT THAT ERIK THE Red had called Greenland “Greenland” in order to make its sound a more attractive place than “Iceland,” and thus persuade the initial colonists to settle there; but the truth is that when the Norsemen first lived there, in what the Christians called the tenth century, southern Greenland really was green, the slopes of the ice-free land being covered with birch-forest. That birch-forest was vital to the colony, providing the wood used for constructing houses and the ships that traded with Iceland and Vinland, and for fuel that kept the colonists warm in the long, harsh winters.
Alas, the colonists cut down the birch-woods for precisely those reasons, and grazed sheep on the cleared land, thus preventing trees from growing there again. With the trees gone, the wind began to scour away the topsoil, and the fields became parsimonious, and in the end, no-longer-Greenland became uninhabitable. Then the empire of the ice extended its claws again, as it had before. So, at least, we understand it now—but that was not the way the colonists saw it at the time. Erik Thorvaldsson’s children were Christian converts, and by 1100 the Eastern Settlement had twelve churches and a so-called cathedral, but superstition never died out there and was even mysteriously renewed by whispers that circulated when a particularly glacial wind blew from the north, which the superstitious somehow learned to call “Tsathoggua’s Breath.”
No one knew where the Norsemen first heard the name Tsathoggua, although the calculus of probability suggests that they hea
rd it from the Inuit, who began to take up temporary residence on the island themselves in the eleventh century, and whose nomadic lifestyle was far better suited to the climate than that of the Norsemen once the trees had gone. What the Norsemen’s own tales said, however, once they had been subject to a century’s embroidery, was that Greenland had once been part of a continent named Hyperborea, where human life had thrived for thousands of years in a distant age before the ice first came, and that Tsathoggua had been one of their gods—and was hence, in Christian terms, a demon. Tsathoggua, the tales alleged, had been untroubled by the coming of the ice, because one of the forms he most often adopted was that of a monstrous toad, and he had the ability that many amphibians have of vitrifying their flesh and lying dormant for years in frozen ground—except that Tsathoggua, being a god and no mere natural amphibian, could lie dormant for millennia instead of years and could dream as well as breathe within his prison of ice, and reach out with his dreams to touch the hearts and minds of humans.
As Christians, of course, the Greenlanders thought themselves protected against such intrusions—unlike, for instance, the Inuit—but as every priest knows, not all Christians are good Christians, and the best of all sometimes attract particular attentions from the demons that act on Earth with God’s permission, as tempters of the faithful. Tsathoggua, it was said, was not merely a tempter of humankind but a taunter, who, as a presumed prince of Hell, had ghostly imps under his command, named Voormis. Voormis, it was said, had once been a living species driven to extinction by the humans of Hyperborea, and their unquiet specters still yearned for vengeance.
Whenever children went missing in the diocese of Garoar, therefore, the rumor always flew around that the child had not fallen into a crevasse or been seized by a marauding polar bear, but had been spirited away by a spectral Voormi and taken to Tsathoggua’s icy nest in the utmost depths of the great glacier that tumbled from the central mountains toward the southeastern shore, slowly cascading into the sea between the eastern and western settlements.