So, clearly, did the Outer Ones. Equally clearly, it didn’t occur to Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt that its own interference could magnify the paranoia that hastened oblivion. The few humans that they’d stolen, seeking a lever to reshape the species, might mean death for two billion.
“I don’t know what we’re going to tell their families,” said Barlow.
* * *
We got to Coney Island late.
“Still more people around than I’d like,” said Spector. I peered over the front seat. The rain had tapered off, and a few stragglers wandered the streetside booths. Most of the stalls were dark; others still illuminated spears of cotton candy and funnel cake. Beyond, bulbs delineated the swollen arcs of roller coasters and the Ferris wheel’s great circle. They looked like a vast glowing diagram, summoning the day’s visitors—and now releasing them. The wheel guttered out; the arches faded to retinal sparks.
“Do we want to brazen it out now, and try to avoid anyone noticing we’re headed in the wrong direction?” asked Barlow. “Or wait and hope no one notices us at all?”
“We got in quietly last night,” said Charlie. “Was that really last night? It was much later than this, though. And there were fewer of us.”
“And less noticeable,” added Audrey.
“How long must we wait?” The skin around Grandfather’s gills looked raw and dry. The wind through the driver’s side window, noxious with sugar and meat and rancid oil, drowned the nearness of the ocean.
“Could we find a less-used entrance?” I asked. “Somewhere less busy, or closer to the water?”
“If we go down West Fifth,” said Spector, “we should be able to park near the beach. Hopefully government plates mean the car’ll still be here when we get back.”
We left the revelers trickling into the subway, and made our way to darker streets. We passed a hotel that might almost seem a grand old house, save that awnings and electric signs made it gaudy as any roller coaster. The boardwalk, though, was cool with shadows.
S’vlk, cloaked and masked, crouched to examine the planks. “They’ve destroyed the dunes. The ocean will eat this place soon.” She shifted to gaze up at the nearest coaster, smaller and shoddier than those flanking Stillwell. “That thing is fascinating. How does it work?”
Trumbull helped the elder up. The rag cloak flowed to engulf her grip. “The car wheels interlock with the track. Get them up to the top of the slope, and gravity does the rest—they go around very fast. It’s like riding in a dirigible when you’ve caught the wind.”
“I miss that. The view here wouldn’t be nearly as nice as over the Archives, though.”
Past a row of bathhouses, rickety stairs descended to the beach. I wanted to tear off my shoes and feel the sand shape itself to my skin. But after our last trip, I’d had to pick too many glass shards from my soles.
Sudden tension stretched my spine. I couldn’t say what caused it—some distant echo or change in the angle of the light. I looked around, saw nothing. But whatever it was had startled the elders, too.
“Under the walk, now,” hissed Grandfather. I gave up my own search and did as he bid. “Silent and still.”
We all found spots well away from the lamplight. I knelt, cautious of litter. S’vlk and Grandfather backed into the darkest part of the boardwalk’s underbelly. With their hoods pulled close, they vanished save for a silvery square of S’vlk’s velvet patchwork.
A flashlight played over the sand outside our huddling place. A man’s voice called, “Who’s there?”
Barlow and Spector glanced at each other. Something shifted and they became a pair, longstanding collaboration plain in their twinned stances. Peters frowned and half-rose; Barlow waved him back down.
“FBI,” called Spector. “Sorry to startle you. We’re coming up now with our badges out.” He and Barlow stepped into the flashlight beam. The stairs muffled the staccato thump of their feet.
“What the hell’s the FBI doing here? Don’t tell me you guys give a fuck about these nonsense fish-man rumors?”
Barlow: “What’s this about fish-men? We’re in town trying to track down a couple of missing persons. We got a tip about a body under the boardwalk, but it looks like it’s a bust.”
“Bodies hell. We ain’t had one of those for months.”
Spector: “It was an anonymous tip. They don’t usually come to anything, but we have to check them out.”
“Well, good. You can keep an eye out for my fish monster, and I can go home to Greta.”
Barlow: “I’m glad to help, sir; I’m a family man myself. Do you have a description for this, um, fish person? Aside from looking like a fish, I guess?”
The guard chuckled. “That’s about what I heard. Either some joker dressed up like Solomon Grundy, or more likely our witnesses had a little too much to drink. But this kind of shit scares off crowds and attracts troublemakers.”
Barlow: “If we see anyone dressed like a fish, we’ll run him off for you. And if we don’t, we’ll say we did.”
“You’re a pal. Hope you don’t find any bodies, though. No offense.”
“None taken. We’d rather find our man alive.”
The footsteps and the light retreated. It was longer before Spector and Barlow joined us again.
“Family man?” asked Mary as they approached.
Barlow smiled. “I have a family.” The expression that passed between him and his teammates startled me, so much like something I might share with my confluence. It vanished beneath his usual mask as he turned to the rest of us. “Your friends need to be more discreet. What’s a Solomon Grundy?”
“It’s a comic book character,” said Frances. “Fights Green Lantern—Freddy loves that stuff. I guess he might look a little like Chulzh’th if the light was bad.”
I didn’t like it. Even an unlikely rumor would prompt people to look for the monster. We went on, staying under the walk in case any other guards came along. Both elders strayed toward the water, but checked their steps.
A couple of blocks down, Chulzh’th stepped from behind a pillar. “You’re here. Thank Dagon.”
“We’re well,” said Grandfather. “Merely … blown off course. It was unpleasant, but they let us leave in peace.”
“He means I lost my temper,” said S’vlk. “And we are well, but Aphra is not.”
Chulzh’th beckoned, and with relief I went to kneel at her feet. I closed my eyes, felt her talon graze my forehead in benediction. “Tell me,” she said.
I sat back on my heels. “I will, I promise. But Grandfather and Khur S’vlk need water, and a park guard saw you. He was searching the boardwalk until Mr. Spector and Mr. Barlow chased him off. Did something happen?”
She snorted, less dignified than befit her station. “I misjudged when the throng would abandon the beach, that’s all.” She cast her eyes over our expanded group. “Miss Harris, you’re welcome among us again. And you, then, must be Mr. Barlow and Mr. Peters. Will you greet me?”
Barlow offered his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss…?”
She laughed, flashing needle-sharp teeth, and he did flinch a little. “Cartwright, though it’s been a while since anyone called me that. I’m Acolyte Chulzh’th, but you can use my water name alone if the title disturbs you.”
Peters ducked his head, then with visible effort offered his own hand. “Acolyte.”
She nodded appreciation. “S’vlk, Yringl’phtagn, I don’t hear anyone near. Go wet your gills, then return. Aphra, you’ve delayed long enough. Tell me the dangers of your day, and then I’ll speak to you of my own. I sought a vision; perhaps your story will help me understand it.”
I couldn’t bring myself to respond immediately. Instead, I watched the elders shed their bitter disguises and trot down the beach, shadows thrown long by the city and the waning arc of moon. They dove into the water, and I imagined doing the same. My hand rose unbidden to the side of my neck, where wrinkles and tender skin laid anticipatory outlines.
“Aphra
.”
“I’m sorry, Acolyte. It’s a hard story.”
She laid her hand once more on my forehead. I closed my eyes, focused on the tang of salt. The sea was near enough now to overcome the rot of sand-caked detritus. “The Outer Ones have a device. It shows visions of distant worlds—and of this one. I’ve used it twice, first for politeness and then for negotiation. Both times were misguided. I didn’t understand what the device is capable of. S’vlk says the Outer Ones use it to weaken the connection between mind and body. For us—for me—that weakens the body’s connection with the ocean. I’m not lost yet, but I’m in danger—not only from the device’s direct effects, but because having marked me the Outer Ones may well try to claim me.” I paused for breath. “They may have already claimed Neko. I need your guidance.”
Her fingers curled against my brow, the prick of her talons a welcome reminder that I still lived in the physical world. “Come.”
She led me to the ocean’s edge. The tide lapped in and swept the flat wet sand blessedly clean. At Chulzh’th’s direction I cupped water in my hands, frigid in spite of the day’s heat, and drank. Salt shocked me awake, and the chill lit a line through my throat and belly. I dipped my arms to the elbows; if the FBI agents hadn’t been waiting scant feet away, I’d have stripped and immersed myself entirely. My dulled and distant nerves ached for the water’s touch.
Chulzh’th drank as well. “I’ve always attracted visions,” she said in R’lyehn. “Trying to force them rarely succeeds, but I feared for Yringl’phtagn and S’vlk. This time the ritual worked—I saw something, even if I don’t yet understand it.”
She drew sigils in the sand—or perhaps she was merely fidgeting, for I didn’t recognize the shapes. I waited, as I had with my own story, afraid of what might cause her to hesitate.
“The Great Race understands fully the principles that shape time. With those truths, they travel aeons and see through the eyes of others at will. Archpriest Ngalthr says our visions are a fledgling version of those arts. But we’re a billion years behind what they know. We can’t so much as direct what comes to us. You saw when you worked with Khur Trumbull’s guest how little we truly know of magic. And worse than our primitive arts is our lack of perception. What they sense directly, we must translate for eye and ear and our own limited understanding. I cannot describe to you the frustration I feel, knowing my senses distort every vision before I’m even aware of it. When I first went into the water, I tried to push aside those filters. But without them, the signal devolves into pain. So I must work with moiré reflections of truth.”
She dipped a finger, and sketched sigils around her eyes. “I saw the water full of disembodied wings, diving like whales. They faded and reappeared like octopodes, shifting color. Some were like the wings of the Outer Ones, but there were also wings of every color and form you can imagine, from skates to South Seas parrots. Their edges sliced one another as they passed. Blood fogged the water. Behind the fog, the wings formed ranks, and the blood grew darker. I heard them whisper: ‘We will protect what we love.’
“That was all. It was simple, but it frightened me. The most frightening part was the frustration I spoke of. That whisper I heard, I could tell was radically mistranslated. Their true words were the most important thing in the vision. They would explain the wings’ strife, if only I understood. And the reality of that strife was more complex—and more dangerous—than mere bloodshed.”
She looked at me hopefully, bulging eyes wide. As if I might have some insight that she, with decades’ experience interpreting her own visions, lacked.
In Miskatonic’s library, Caleb had found one of her childhood journals. I remembered the pride she took in her visions when she was still too young to become Ngalthr’s apprentice: she’d struggled for humility and patience. “Talking with the Outer Ones is like that. They speak English with casual fluency. From the words alone, you might guess they were men of the air. But when Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt tells me he wants to save humanity, what does he mean by ‘save’? When Freddy warns me that they disagree passionately over whether and how to intervene, what options do those arguments compass? Spector and his colleagues think some of the Outer Ones’ human ‘friends’ are really captives, while Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt takes talk of ‘captive minds’ as a grave insult.” I caught my breath. “Acolyte, I’m drowning. I’m terrified of what I may have done to myself. I know my life is nothing compared to what’s at stake, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”
I splashed water over my face, giving my useless fears to the sea. My nose and mouth filled with salt. I wanted always to stay this close, smelling and tasting nothing else.
Chulzh’th stroked my neck. “What happens to your mind, your body and soul, is important. The Outer Ones argue over the survival of men of the air, but your fate is our survival. Someone must be the last and youngest of the Chyrlid Ajha. We will live on after that, until the oceans boil. But something will die when we lose our tie to the land. Someday, we will welcome a newcomer to Y’ha-nthlei for the last time. Someday R’lyeh will cease to build new dwellings, will gather its people tight and prepare for the great extinction. If you lose the water, that day comes close.”
I bowed my head. “I seek your guidance. Please.”
“Oh, child. We can’t answer prayers either. What did S’vlk tell you?”
“That any magic stretching the link between mind and body would be dangerous, and that I needed to practice those arts anyway to strengthen the link. And that until I do that, I mustn’t return to seek Neko.”
“I wish the archpriest were here, with his millennia of healing experience. But I’ve seen people injure their minds in other ways, through ill-planned magic, or summonings gone wrong by sheer bad fortune. From what I know, S’vlk is right. You need to stretch, and risk breaking yourself. If you avoid the risk, the break is certain.”
My belly, still cool with salt water, twisted on itself. “I don’t trust my own judgment—how much to risk, how far to go.”
“I’ll chaperone. But first we should deal with our new visitors.”
I would have preferred to stay under the invisible stars, in reach of the water. But our gathering was large enough that a wayward guard or loiterer might see us a long way off. We returned to the dank pylons under the walk.
I heard voices raised, in excitement rather than anger or distress. Mary was waxing enthusiastic, Trumbull exclaiming counterpoint, with occasional notes from male voices.
My grandfather’s descant: “That can’t possibly be how they work.”
“Look,” said Mary. Whatever uncertainty she might have felt in the face of the elders was clearly overcome by interest in the topic at hand. “We know that mind and brain are intrinsically interlinked. Harm to one is harm to the other—my case alone shows that much. The Outer Ones’ captives are our only example of minds surviving for any significant time outside the brain’s lattice. They’ve obviously created some artificial structure that can support minds as well, or nearly as well, as their natural scaffolding.”
“Then each canister would be essentially a body,” said S’vlk. “And need a mind in it to survive—but they keep those things around empty.”
“That’s the other side of it,” said Trumbull. “We’ve seen the people in stasis. They’ve found a way to preserve bodies without embedded minds. Perhaps they do the same thing with the canisters.”
“These Outer Ones may be disturbing, but they have technology decades, probably centuries past ours.” Mary proffered something. After a moment I realized it was one of the skin-masks, hanging shapeless like melted tallow. “We decide what advances are impossible based on what we can do now. But if they can grow human flesh outside a human body, so could we. They could teach us so much.”
“Which brings us to the real question,” said Barlow. “Can we afford to learn from them? When one side has better weapons or medicine, people take advantage of it. In war or at the negotiation table, it’s not hard to guess who’ll come out ahea
d.”
Peters scowled at Barlow. “If there’s one thing worse than trying to trade your beads for rifles without losing your shirt, it’s being the next tribe over.”
Barlow saw Chulzh’th. “Good, you’re back. We need to make sure we don’t trip over each other this time. We can’t afford it.”
Chulzh’th settled among them, cross-legged. “Mr. Peters is right to think about how European settlers treated this continent’s natives. The Outer Ones keep their treaties, in theory. But it can be difficult to discern how they interpret their sworn obligations—nor are they above deliberately misleading language. It might be better, safer, to agree with your human rivals that you’ll both refuse outside aid from greater powers.”
“Humans don’t always keep treaties,” said Peters. “Russkies especially, if they think they’ll get an advantage—and they won’t believe that any power’s bigger than them. Goes against their ‘philosophy.’ They think communism’s the end of history, and they’ll assume the Outer Ones are either ‘comrades’ or inferiors.”
S’vlk paced between pylons. “You might be surprised how easily instinct overcomes philosophy. You were with the meigo all day. Were you thinking much about the philosophical advantages of how you organize your state, or were you thinking about how to protect yourself?”
Spector made a calming gesture, smoothing imagined clay with his palms. “We know too little. How we negotiate with the Outer Ones—and I don’t see how we can avoid it—may be the most important decision anyone will ever make. And whatever knowledge we can gather now is probably the only advantage we’ll have.”
Peters spared a deeper frown for the rest of us. “You want to use your irregulars, of course. I suppose George is right that they know more about the meigo than we do.”
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