The Digging Leviathan

by James P. Blaylock

  “Good at it?” William snorted with quick laughter. “Not half as good as I am. I’ll teach the lot of them. You surprise me, Edward.”

  William, apparently satisfied with his plan for trimming the hibiscus, sat down in a green, vastly overstuffed chair, and sipped his coffee, peering thoughtfully into the unlit grate. He looked up suddenly at his brother-in-law. “Do you mean to say that even with the skeleton hand and Professor Latzarel’s fish you don’t see the shape of things? And Peach’s letters from Windermere? What dark secrets …” He stopped and squinted over his coffee, groping around on the table for his pipe. “Do you recall,” he asked, “that second meeting of the Blake Society? The night when that idiot from the university lectured at us about fish imagery in Romantic literature. What was his name? Something preposterous. An obvious lie. Spanner, was it? Ashbless went mad that night. Remember?”

  “Well,” Edward replied, “there was some debate. But he hardly went mad. And the gentleman’s name was Benner, Steerforth Benner. But he wasn’t the one who delivered the lecture. It was Brendan Doyle who spoke. Benner wasn’t any older than Giles and Jim.”

  “Doyle was it? Cocky little twit. Expert on Romantic poets! Expert on any number of things I don’t doubt. I half suspect it was him who left that memento under the elm.” William gestured broadly at the back yard.

  “He was windy,” Edward said, shrugging. “But he wasn’t all that bad. I rather liked him.”

  William gave him a look that seemed to imply that in certain matters, Edward was a child. “Ashbless went for him that night, though. Blew his top. Told him he’d tweak his nose, do you remember? Just because of some historical discrepancy. Ashbless is the peculiar one. Believe anything you like about this Doyle, about the filthy Pemblys for that matter, but watch Ashbless. That’s my advice to you.” And William poked his pipestem in Edward’s direction as a gesture of finality.

  “I’ve suspected Ashbless since I met him,” William continued, settling comfortably into his machinations. “Anyone who would purposely assume the name of a dead poet, just to add some sham value to his own scribbling, isn’t to be trusted. Not an inch. I won’t insist he’s not good. He’s certainly the best of the Cahuenga poets. But he’s fishy as a chowder. He reminds me of the King in Huckleberry Finn. I keep expecting him to take his hat off and announce, ‘I am the late dauphin.’”

  Edward was heating up and about to set in to defend Ashbless when William leaped up and darted across to his post by the drapes. Beyond the fence, Mrs. Pembly, her hair in curlers and dressed in a half-wit’s idea of an Oriental robe, poked among the weeds of her back yard. A big, scabrous Doberman Pinscher trailed along behind her. “She’s up to something,” said William. “For my money she throws that beast over the wall after dark to defecate on our lawn. There’s villainy afoot here.”

  Mrs. Pembly paused for a moment, peering up into the branches of the elm. “I’ve got it!” cried William, waving his left hand meaningfully. “It’s a simple business. Did they think they could fool me?”

  Edward could see that things were going awry. “What have you got?” he asked.

  “A block and tackle. They hoist that damned beast over the wall with a block and tackle, wait for him to commit his disgusting crimes, then jerk him back again like some sort of filthy marionette.”

  Before Edward could respond, William was through the back door. He hauled out a shovel from the tool shed, scooped up the offending debris, and sent it soaring across the top of the fence into the Pembly weeds. Mrs. Pembly flattened herself against the garage wail, clasping the lapels of her nightgown together with both hands when she saw who it was that threatened her. She seemed unable to speak.

  “Here are your cudgels!” cried William, flinging the spade to the ground triumphantly, and assuming, of course, that Mrs. Pembly had fully understood the transaction. He dusted his hands theatrically, turned, and strode into the house where Edward scratched his head, waiting for the storm to break. But nothing happened. William was apparently victorious. In the course of the morning he trimmed the obscuring hibiscus and spent a solid two hours arranging the drapes and the living room furniture in such a way that, when he stood at the window, a casual observer would take him for a floor lamp. He even went so far as to make Edward stroll back and forth across the rear yard with an air of affected nonchalance while he stood on one leg like a flamingo and perched a broad, conical, bamboo shade on his head in the fashion of a pole lamp or a coolie. Edward had known it would be bad from the moment he saw William creeping across the yard on all fours, but that it would escalate so quickly and thoroughly was a frightening surprise. What was of immediate necessity was to involve his poor brother in intellectual pursuits, to get his mind off imagined threats. There was Jim to think of. It was hard enough on him that his father had gone round the bend. He should be shielded from obvious lunacy. Somehow he’d have to talk William into removing the bottle caps he had clipped to his shirt with their own cork washers. That sort of thing was painful, to be sure. “There’s a meeting of the Society tomorrow night,” he said to William after the lampshade incident.

  “The Blake Society?”

  “The Newtonians,” said Edward. “Right here. Some of your old Mends will be here.”

  “Squires?”

  “Yes indeed. He’s working on modifications for the diving bell—something he calls an absolute gyro. It’s a steadying mechanism, I believe, although I’m not much of an engineer myself. Latzarel is planning a voyage into the pool off Palos Verdes sometime next month.”

  “Good old Squires,” William said. “I’ve got some ideas I’d like to try out on him. I’ve been reading Einstein, and have a plot for a first-rate story. Hard science, too. Rock hard. That’s why I think Squires is the man to try it on.” William scratched the end of his nose. “Is the maze room intact?”

  “Of course,” said Edward.

  “Then I’ll just put in a few hours.” William shoved fresh tobacco into his pipe, lit it, and stood up puffing. “Mice all dead?”

  “No,” said Edward. “I’ve got a new lot. All white. Absolutely innocent. And there’s three that just gave birth.”

  “Grand!” cried William, elated. “I’m going to put some of the litter in with that big bufo morinus. If we keep him full of horsemeat maybe he’ll leave them alone long enough for them to imprint. We’ll be halfway home then.”

  ‘The bufo died two months ago. But there’s an axolotl as big as a rabbit out there that will work just as well.”

  William nodded, caught up in the spirit of science. ‘That will do nicely,” he said. “Very nicely. External gills too. Very pretty items. How is Giles Peach these days, by the way?”

  “Amazing. He’s onto something big, I think. John Pinion has an eye on him.”

  But Edward was sorry he’d said it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “Pinion!” William gasped. “Pinion can keep his filthy hands off Giles Peach! Peach is ours!”

  “Of course,” said Edward. “Of course. I’ve said as much. Damn Pinion.” And finally William, wearing a leather apron, went out the back door, muttering to himself. He got about halfway to the maze shed, stopped, turned, shoved back in, and shouted something incoherent into the kitchen. All Edward could make out were the words “Pinion” and “travesty,” but he let the matter slide and didn’t ask for clarification.

  Chapter 3

  The Newtonian Society met every month, more often if an excuse could be found. Two years back it had been called the Blake Society and had met to discuss literary matters. William Hastings, at the time, hadn’t yet turned the corner; he was merely an eccentric professor of Romantic literature at Eagle Rock University who possessed an amazing library and who had, one Sunday afternoon, run out of shelf space in the living room, and so had pressed the refrigerator into use, shoving a copy of Herodotus and The White Oaks of Jalna, for some inexplicable reason, in among jars of salad peppers and pickle relish.

  The Newtonian Society was formed
after William Hastings’ disappearance into what Oscar Pallcheck cheerfully referred to as “the hatch.” Literature was abandoned for science—specifically for the investigation of Professor Latzarel’s theories. On the Saturday evening following William Hastings’ surprise arrival, then, Giles Peach and his friend Jim hurried down the sidewalk toward Jim’s home, anxious to attend the meeting and especially to hear Latzarel’s opinions on the little tidepool hand.

  Professor Latzarel’s vehicle—Jim couldn’t think of a better word for it—ground to a halt at the curb just as the two of them drew up to the house. It was an old Land Rover station wagon, a tremendous square thing that appeared from almost every angle to be built entirely of wood—wood covered in a coat of gray dust like the sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh that had sat in the desert for a dozen centuries until, perhaps by osmosis, the wood itself had begun to metamorphose into dust. A day would come, Jim was certain of it, when the machine, wheezing along one of the interlacing highways of the southwest desert, would complete the transmutation and crumble into a quick heap to be blown across the sands by a wind devil spawned by the sudden cessation of motion. The driver of a pursuing automobile, not quite believing in the existence of the unlikely machine in the first place, would see the distant shiver of its decay through the shimmering desert heat and would call it a mirage, not noticing the receding back of the pith-helmeted Professor Latzarel carrying a butterfly net, disappearing beyond a clump of Joshua trees. Jim would have given anything to own such a car.

  Professor Latzarel, in fact, must have been packed for an outing, for there, strapped to the enormous rear bumper, was a quiver of old ghost-town picks and shovels, and one of those canvas water bags that perpetually leak and yet are never empty. Inside were a half dozen topographic maps and what must have been a mile of hemp cordage.

  Latzarel himself was a fierce, weedy-looking man who took everything very seriously and who couldn’t be bothered to comb his hair. His coat complemented his car. He rushed past Jim, nodding obliquely, then caught sight of Giles Peach. He stopped and shook Giles’ hand, fabricating something to say. He clearly couldn’t keep his eyes off Giles’ gills, which were almost hidden by a turtleneck sweater. “Have you seen Dr. Pinion?” he asked suddenly, raising one eyebrow. Gill replied that he had, just yesterday.

  “Ah,” replied Latzarel, nodding his head. “Did he have anything interesting to say?”

  “No, sir. He wanted to know about the digging machine.”

  “Ah,” said Latzarel again. “That would be the subterranean prospector? Edward has told me a good bit about it. I’d like to have a look at it myself, if I might.”

  Giles didn’t reply. He half nodded, but showed no enthusiasm, a strange thing for Giles, who was normally full of his inventions. Jim could see that Professor Latzarel was disappointed, but that he hesitated to be obviously so. The three of them clumped up the steps and into the house, which by then was full of talk and tobacco smoke and glasses of port. Jim was relieved to see his father talking animatedly to Roycroft Squires. He half feared, as he always did, that just beyond the veil of the present some eccentricity lay waiting. That his father might at any moment slide off the thin edge of sanity, and that his uncle would dash for the telephone and a van would come screaming down the road. Oscar Pallcheck liked to call them the “white coat boys” and laughed at the idea of gigantic butterfly nets and shepherd’s crooks. Jim generally laughed along guiltily. But now that his father was home, he couldn’t see the joke. He couldn’t, in fact, develop any considered opinions about his father at all. His thoughts were limited by a misty wall beyond which his mind wouldn’t venture. He had determined that the same wall existed within the mind of his father, that they were products of the same foggy uncertainty. He wondered how often his father traveled back to the day Jim’s mother died in the autumn hills above Los Angeles.

  They had gone picnicking in Griffith Park—Jim, his father and mother. Uncle Edward had elected to stay home and, as he put it, whack about in the garage. It was his mother’s idea that they pack a picnic lunch, hike around in the hills—green from early rains—and then catch the late afternoon program at the planetarium.

  They found a grassy knoll beneath a clump of nearly leafless oaks and ate sandwiches. Jim’s mother talked about the kitchen curtains and about the attention Uncle Edward had been paying to Velma Peach, Giles’ mother. Jim could remember the conversation almost word for word, even though at the time he was indifferent to kitchen curtains and couldn’t at all see why anyone would develop an interest in Velma Peach, or in anybody’s mother, for that matter. Now, two years later, the faded kitchen curtains were tangled in his memory with his mother’s face, one of them calling up the other without fail.

  After lunch he and his father trudged around through the chaparral and up this and that little trail, filling a paper bag with useable refuse. They hadn’t any notion of cleaning the place up, but were looking for treasures—for odds and ends of mechanical debris to add to the bucket in Gill’s garage. Nine-tenths of the collection that afternoon consisted of bottle caps of the sort lined with little cork washers that could be pried out and used for remarkable purposes. It was possible, for instance, to clamp a bottle cap to a shirt by separating the washer from the cap, then reinserting it with a layer of shirt in between. On that Saturday in the park William Hastings went wild for the idea, and by the time both of them had had enough treasure hunting each sported fifteen or twenty bottle cap insignias like campaigners at a political convention in support of soft drinks.

  Jim’s mother would roll her eyes in feigned uncertainty, as if both of them might belong in a padded room for getting up to such tricks. She would agree after their continued insistence to wear one herself, at least until they arrived at the planetarium.

  So Jim and his father, their collecting at an end, set out merrily down the trail toward where Jim’s mother, having complained of an unidentifiable ache, was resting and reading her book—Balzac, Jim recalled, which she read in French. The two came bursting up, emblazoned with bottle caps, and found her asleep. At least Jim supposed she was asleep. He set out to make a racket—whistling, shouting to his father who wasn’t ten feet behind, and commenting aloud about the outstanding collection in the sack. He rummaged in it and found the skeleton of a bladeless clasp knife, the bone shell of the handle having broken away from one rusty side.

  For some reason his father never made the mistake of assuming her to be asleep. Perhaps it was the position in which she lay. The next half hour seemed to Jim a sort of numb stage play in which his father, for ten grim minutes, worked to revive her, then sat beside her for another twenty, staring blankly into the twisted branches of the leafless oak against which Jim stood.

  Finally two rangers summoned from the Park Service by passing hikers carried his mother on a stretcher to-a waiting ambulance and away to Metropolitan Hospital where she was pronounced dead. Jim and his father were met there by Uncle Edward. Jim could picture every dreary, white and chromium moment of the two or three hours he spent at the hospital. Two years later they seemed to mean nothing at all to him, to be completely removed from any memories of his mother. He knew little of the workings of the human heart, and it was inexplicable that hers should have stopped like a clock that had wound down. When the three of them drove silently and wearily home that night, Jim and his father were still dotted with bottle caps. His uncle hadn’t enough sense of humor left in him to ask about them. Jim could see, two years later at the meeting of the Newtonians, that his father still wore two of the caps affixed to his shirt—a White Rock cream soda and a Nehi Orange. He wished guiltily and sadly that his father would button his coat.

  But William Hastings was for once oblivious to that fateful afternoon in the park—something that had pursued him through the two years since—and was carrying on about a story he intended to write. Roycroft Squires nodded and squinted and messed with his pipe, shoving a big wad of curly black tobacco into the enormous bowl carved into
the head of an armadillo, and tamped it down first with his thumb and then with the business end of a sixteen-penny nail.

  “As I understand it,” said William, puffing on his own pipe, “relativity is a fairly simple business. But I have an angle on it that will knock you out.”

  Squires nodded, ready to be knocked out.

  “Now, as an object approaches the speed of light,” said William, hunching forward and poking his pipestem in Squires’ direction, “its mass increases proportionately, which is to say it simply gets bigger and bigger. Swells like a balloon, if you follow. And that’s what restricts one from traveling at light speed—there isn’t enough universe to hold us.”

  Squires began to say something, to protest, perhaps, but hadn’t gotten two words out when William, swept away in a deluge of science and art, broke in on him with another revelation. “And as we approach light speed, mind you, we fall into what the physicists call a straight line loop. Everything in the end, you see, is circular—the passing of the seasons, the four ages of man, the transmutation of base metals into gold, the cycle of evolution, time and space. It’s all one; you’ve read Fibinocci’s discussion of the whorl of seeds in a sunflower and the circular spray of stars in revolving nebulae?”

  The question was rhetorical. William didn’t wait for an answer. “Parallel lines,” he continued, “meet in space. A straight line leading out into the infinite catches its own tail like a mythological oceanic serpent. The mistake, you see, made by men of science, is to remain blind to certain mysteries, certain connections. They suppose that a forest glade illuminated by sunlight is the same forest glade at midnight, lit by moonbeams. You and I know they’re wrong.”

  Squires could see his point. He nodded.

  ‘The rays of the moon, you see, are alive with reflected emanations that are absent in the light of day. All of this, I’m telling you, is of vast importance. In my story an astronaut launches out in his ship, bound for Alpha Centauri. He settles back, watching the approaching stars through a great circular convex window as if he sees the universe in globe, and the stars, as the poem has it, are herring fish. Or rather as if he himself is in a fishbowl and the stars and planets whirling in space are eyes watching him as he hurtles among them. His craft accelerates toward light speed. He swells, moderately at first, then preposterously. His ship becomes bulbous, voluminous. He’s a grinning moon man, a cloud being, but of course he’s oblivious to it. His ship fills the void. And there ahead, just as the ship closes in on the approaching stars and those behind are on the edge of winking out, of abandoning the race, there ahead of him he sees an unbelievable sight: a glowing ship sailing in through deep space, colossal, wide as half the sky, a carnival of glowing lights, inflated with speed. He draws up behind it, wondering, an odd chill in the recesses of his brain. And through the bowl of glass atop the wonderful ship ahead, he can see the head and shoulders of an inflated giant, a grotesque, puffy-cheeked god, soaring through the avenues of space along the of the Milky Way. And in one blind rush, one last moment of icy clarity, he knows who it is he pursues!”