“Show the patience she always demands of Grandfather, I hope,” I said. But Chulzh’th was better at preaching patience than practicing it herself.
On the empty train I swayed, and fretted, and begged the gods, for two useless hours.
* * *
There were no guards now outside the Outer One lair—though I assumed the alarms that first warned them of our attention remained in place. Without that initial acknowledgment, the corridors and stairs leading from the facade down to their true abode felt more disturbing. But there was no question of leaving anyone behind this time. They’d be too conspicuous on the street, and no one was willing to wait outside.
Our descent reminded me uncomfortably of sneaking into Miskatonic’s Crowther library: the dim-lit corridors, the oppressive sense of being watched. And worse, the knowledge that something dear to us was caged within. The dingy labyrinth seemed endless.
“Freddy,” whispered Frances, “are you sure we’re supposed to be here?”
At last we reached the indigo-lit room where we’d first met Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt and Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. They, or other Outer Ones, attended their control panels even now. My bones vibrated with the hum of their presence.
“’Scuse me,” said Freddy. “Nnnnnn-gt-vvv came through the outskirts with a couple of guests—do you know where they are?”
The tone of the buzzing shifted, and inhuman harmonics said, “They got here a while ago. They’re in the conversation pit.”
Freddy led us through a doorway into stark white light. The contrast with the shadows of the control room was a shock. I closed my eyes on pain, opened them on serene horror.
Rough-hewn altars thronged the room, arrayed in rows. Actinic spotlights blazed onto their summits. Under the glare of each lay a body, naked. Each appeared human. Each was deathly still. Each bore, on their face, a frozen rictus of terror.
Nothing moved, save for a human in a blue smock examining one of the bodies with a box-like instrument.
He waved at Freddy. “Going out again?”
“Not yet, Rudy. Soon!”
None of the rest of us spoke—despite the technician’s casual manner, the tableau stifled my ability to find words. Neko stretched a hand toward one spotlight, but withdrew before I could chastise her.
Almost anything would have been a relief, after that. The chamber beyond was mercifully dim. A deep emerald glow thrummed from the room’s edges. Shallow steps circled a central depression. Clusters of figures sat, or crouched, on the steps. The room was large, and there was plenty of room for many such groups to find a place; the arrangement appeared casual rather than deliberate. In the slow green pulses, I saw silhouettes of Outer One and human and something else: metal cylinders about half a man’s height and a foot across, etched with unreadable patterns.
Two of the human silhouettes hulked larger than the others, accompanied by an Outer One and two cylinders. I nearly tripped in my haste.
“Grandfather! S’vlk!”
“Granddaughter. There you are.”
My relief at seeing them here and whole overwhelmed me. And yet, something in their posture seemed wrong. “Grandfather, is everything all right?”
“Of course. As you can see, we’re in no danger.” His voice sounded uncharacteristically calm. Impossibly so. Even if he’d forgiven the Outer Ones for their precipitous departure, he’d expect my fear and respond to it.
Beside him, S’vlk sat serene, eyes distant, as I’d often seen her during ritual or scientific reverie—but likewise impossible in the house of those she called enemies. Trumbull knelt beside her. “S’vlk,” she whispered, “are you there?”
A fractional nod was the only response.
“What did you do?” Even as I turned on the Outer One—Nnnnnn-gt-vvv, I hoped—I was aware of being deep in their territory. Of my dependence on their alien mercy. Whatever fight the elders had put up, I couldn’t match; I and all my companions were utterly without meaningful protection.
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv—I assumed, for sanity’s sake—extended a clawed limb. Chitin, mottled with coral-like ridges, glistened unnaturally. The limb oozed ichor dark as the creature’s wings and as impossible to bring into focus. It was all I could do not to recoil.
“They struck me,” it said. “I defended myself, nothing more. They’ll recover their capacity for irrational anger in a few hours. In the meantime they’ll be calm, and capable of seeing us clearly. No harm done, I promise.”
“You call that ‘no harm’?” demanded Trumbull. “You attacked her mind!”
Tendrils rippled toward the professor. “The Yith who once inhabited her brain left permanent scars. So did the one who took yours. What I’ve done is as temporary and harmless as putting on a blindfold—or removing it.”
She sat slowly on the steps, putting down a hand to steady herself. “How do you know these things?”
Laughter trilled from one of the cylinders, high and wild. A voice, well-matched to the laughter, followed: “They’re good at seeing what’s in front of them, of course. So rare in humans! Freddy, are these your family?”
“Yes.” He ran fingers along the cylinder, leaving faint trails of sweat, and watched our reactions with lowered eyelids. “Aphra, meet Shelean.”
“Honored,” I said. I tried to sound sincere, but knew I failed. I wanted to scream, to lash out, to spill more of what passed for Nnnnnn-gt-vvv’s blood. But the freedom of all our minds, and the return of the elders’ wills, depended on our self-control. My eyes watered with suppressed fury and fear.
“Fine conversationalists, aren’t they? Come around here, let me see everyone. There must be more of you.”
The other cylinder spoke—a more genteel baritone with strange echoes behind it. “They’re upset, Shelean; it’s a poor time to judge them. Guests, my name can’t be vocalized, but you can call me Scarlet.”
“What better time to judge someone?” asked Shelean. Her tone grew academic. “It’s under the greatest stress that you learn who to trust, isn’t it? Who’ll turn on you to prove a point, or to feel more in control? Is that you, Aphra of the water? Like your elders, tearing bodies apart out of fear?”
“That is not me,” I said. “And it’s not Grandfather, either. He thought he was under attack, and he fought back.”
Freddy elbowed Shelean’s cylinder. “Maybe not the time for philosophical discussions on the nature of character.”
“Why not talk about it when it’s relevant? But I do want to see the rest of them. No, forget the rest, I want that one—the pretty girl with the blond hair. What’s your name, girl?”
“I’m Audrey Winslow. Pleased to meet you, of course.” She lifted her chin, all fearless insouciance. She hid her true emotions far better than I.
“So very pleased! Turn around, won’t you? Let me look at your ears.”
Audrey obligingly turned her ear to the cylinder. “Shall I dance for you as well? I’ll need a partner if I’m going to waltz.”
“Oh, bravo, no need. And your palms? Oh, I recognize those whorls, I do! Clear as any maker’s mark, even after a few generations.”
Audrey looked, if possible, even more self-controlled. “I don’t believe in palm reading. Whatever you thought you saw, you’re mistaken.”
“Nonsense,” said Shelean. “My sweet Freddy’s not the only one to find lost relatives today. Give us a kiss, cousin! My family made yours, sure as I recognize their signature on your skin.”
I pulled Audrey back and stepped between her and the cylinder. She didn’t resist. Her palm was slick with sweat.
“Relax,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. It sounded like an order. “Shelean’s no danger to you, or your confluence-mate.”
“You didn’t tell me,” I said to Freddy, not daring to look away from the cylinder, “that your lover was a Mad One Under the Earth.”
“I’d much rather you called me K’n-yan,” said Shelean. “Name my family whatever you like—but I’ve gone to so much trouble not to be mad.”
“I didn’t s
ee it was any of your business,” said Freddy. “She’s told me all about her people, and like she said, she’s different. Besides, you didn’t tell me one of your friends was K’n-yan.”
“I’m not,” said Audrey.
“Only a little bit.” Shelean giggled. “Such a pretty cross-breed. Such an interesting experiment. Do your blood-guards work? Those seemed so clever on the drawing board, but I wasn’t sure.”
Audrey’s voice grew cold. “They saved my life. And nearly destroyed me.”
“Isn’t that always the way? You needn’t glare so. I was just my brother’s assistant—I’d almost as little choice as his pet subjects. But I talked him into releasing a couple into the wild, for comparison. I gave your family sun and sky and a place to grow with no magic warping you. Our senior sisters were furious.”
“That’s how we found her,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. “We go even into the K’n-yan caverns, and wait on the edges for those who seek solitude—or who flee the hounds of their law. I told you: We go everywhere. We talk to everyone.”
Shelean: “They’d have warped me for the arena. My aunts didn’t like how my brother ran his experiments at all, and it was so easy to pin the blame on me. Oh Audrey, you’ve no idea how glorious it is to be free of our unstable flesh!”
“I’m doing just fine in my flesh, thanks,” said Audrey. She remained behind me, clutching my hand tight.
“Of course you are—it’s the magic that breaks us, after all. But it breaks the body and the brain, not the mind. When I travel I have no magic at all, and the reason of a child! And now I’ve met one of our freed experiments. Oh, you’re splendid!”
I heard Audrey inhale slowly. Her nails dug into my palms. “Why did you do it? You and your brother?”
“Orders, of course! Study inheritance, find out what makes us K’n-yan and others cattle. But not like we did—going out into the air is far too dangerous, you know. The people of the air are violent and untrustworthy, and plague-ridden besides. But my sweet brother insisted. How else could we know what’s really inherited, and what traits are gifts of where you grow? I was so excited. He never let me come up myself, of course. No adventures for me until I met our wonderful hosts.”
The elders had opinions about the K’n-yan—stronger than mine, for I’d never met one before. Until I’d learned a few months ago what Audrey carried in her blood, the sum of my experience had been stories in books, and a bas-relief panel in the temple of Dagon depicting prisoners beneath the earth that had given me fascinated nightmares as a child. They were a tale of warning: humanity’s third branch, driven mad by their own magical abilities. And dangerous in that madness, for they could transform flesh into stone and stone into flesh at a whim, or dissipate either into nothingness.
Archpriest Ngalthr, when he learned what Audrey was, had gone into a full defensive crouch. The Yith had recoiled. Yet S’vlk and Grandfather watched this exchange incuriously. That frightened me more than Shelean.
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv was capable of excising every reflex I had, every instinct to protect my family. And it counted among its allies someone who, if she were returned to her body, could warp our flesh with a thought. Someone who held a much more natural, if still dangerous, influence over my newfound cousin.
Movement drew my eye and startled my already tense muscles. I squeezed Audrey’s hand. Another Outer One skittered around the rim of the bowl, and flowed down to us in a fall of clicking claws.
“Nnnnnn-gt-vvv, this place reeks of terrified human—what are you doing?”
The answer came in their own language, an incomprehensible oscillation of frequencies.
“Now they’ll be arguing again,” said Scarlet.
From Shelean’s cylinder, a dramatic sigh. “So they will. Cousin, don’t be frightened. Let’s talk more—I want to hear what your family’s been up to! We never got to check on our comparison group, after all. And I can tell you everything about how we made you. We have so much to learn!”
“I don’t want—” said Audrey, and then shook her head. “It would have been good to know about the blood-guards before tripping them. But we’re not your experiments anymore. Whichever ancestor was unlucky enough to meet your brother, it was a long time ago.”
“Oh,” said Shelean, “surely not that long.”
“Do you know when it was?” I asked. Trumbull’s guest had thought it no more than four or five generations; Audrey had been dubious. Perhaps, I thought too late, she would rather not know.
“After all the pale plaguey people showed up. You’re not plaguey, we fixed that. But before they built that cute new building I’ve seen in the city, the one with the spire.”
The Outer Ones paused in their argument. “Shelean has been Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt’s travel-mate for a hundred and thirteen years,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv, “and mine for nearly as long. We don’t know how long she’d been hiding before that, or how recent her transgression—without daylight or seasons, the K’n-yan don’t mark time well.”
“Ah.” From the twitch of Audrey’s fingers, she was matching this to what she knew of her family history, and what she didn’t. Unlike me, she couldn’t call up her ancestors and beg them to fill those gaps.
And what did it mean, that Shelean was family to her? So often I mourned my family lost on land, and the narrow path for our future generations. But I still had the buoyant certainty of my ancestry to draw on—generations of elders living and available for question, and above all trustworthy in their witness of my history. I looked again at Grandfather and S’vlk, wishing for the power to do more than speak politely and wait out their recovery. A word misspoken, and my fragile protection would shatter.
“How long do your people live?” I asked Shelean.
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv answered. “Longer than men of the air, far shorter than those of the water. Almost a thousand years, if their own kind don’t break them first. Which is the safest bet—K’n-yan are even worse than men of the air for turning on each other.”
“What about me?” Audrey finally lost control of her voice; it came out in a rough whisper. She recovered, though, and added in ordinary tones, “But I can’t have inherited that kind of lifespan. The Winslows all age normally—even if Gram is doing all right at eighty-nine. I don’t have any two-hundred-year-old great-great-grandfathers hanging around.”
“The blood-guards might help, now that you’ve used them,” said Shelean. “They’re paying attention now. But we don’t really know how long the hybrids live—we never got to measure.” She sounded petulant. Freddy gave her a worried look, and slipped an arm around the canister.
Neko, who’d been hovering behind us, came forward and touched Audrey’s other arm. “It’s almost dawn. Have any of you slept?”
“Dozed a little on the subway,” said Charlie.
I wished she hadn’t brought it up; my head swam at the reminder of fatigue, but I didn’t want to leave Grandfather and S’vlk unguarded. Given an hour and a place to meditate, I could probably push my body to ignore the two lost nights.
“I have to let Chulzh’th know—” I said, and stopped. I could think of no way to do so, and she could leave no message that would survive Coney Island’s morning crowds. I hoped she knew that, hoped she would understand that my failure to return was not—gods willing—a signal of disaster. It was easy to summon from a distance, but sending any message more complicated than “come now” was beyond my skill. I realized that I’d been silent too long, chasing the problem in circles.
“Those feds will be back later,” said Freddy. “You can sleep here until then. We have beds.” His eyes slid to Frances, begging agreement. She stared at her clasped hands, knuckles taut.
“Here?” Horror seeped past my effort to project calm. I could only think of those altars, blinding lights illuminating nightmare eyes.
But it would be far worse to leave anyone I loved here alone.
CHAPTER 11
The dusty room full of cots was the most ordinary thing I’d seen in the Outer One lai
r, but the incongruity destroyed any suggestion of comfort. The beds seemed a tissue of normalcy, likely to tear under the weight of our resting bodies.
No metaphor, that. On the other side of sleep waited a riot of swamp-scented fungi.
I led Grandfather to one of the cots; he sat at my direction. I knelt beside him. My throat closed every time I looked at him, but I did it anyway.
“The solstice is in two days,” he said. “You should be careful walking alone.”
“I can’t walk alone,” I said. “There’s no place in New York to be alone. It’ll have to wait until another year.”
He rumbled thoughtfully, then focused on one of the cots. “I can’t sleep here,” he commented mildly. “There’s no place to float.”
“Are you tired?” I asked. “Maybe if you just meditate a bit, you can rest.”
“I can sleep standing up,” said S’vlk. She had drifted to the wall. “But not in this body. You have to…” She twined her arms in a way I recognized from Trumbull. The professor gently detangled her limbs.
“We can rest together,” said Trumbull, and pulled her off into a corner. There, she chivvied her cross-legged and spoke to her in low tones. S’vlk leaned against her. They spoke of the Archives, in the rhythm of recollections shared more for the sake of companionship than to bring back specific memories.
Sleep ought to provide escape. Even camp-scarred nightmares might have distracted from my current problems. But I’d sacrificed that solace to my study of dreamwalking.
Ïa, Cthulhu, help me sleep in the shadow of others’ dreams. Teach me patience in the shadow of frustrated desire. Teach me stillness in the shadow of ever-changing threats.
… I saw your city. It is very beautiful. Lord Cthulhu, forgive me my impatience in looking on it so soon.
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