“The elders know more than we do. As for my irregulars, it’s clear the Outer Ones find them interesting. Miss Koto is talking with them already, and Miss Marsh and Miss Winslow both have relations among their captives who could be useful sources of a … a perspective that we can make sense of. I’m sorry, Miss Winslow, I know it’s not a pleasant thing to ask.”
Audrey shifted position to look at me sideways. She couldn’t have seen much useful guidance in my face. “It sure as hell isn’t. I wouldn’t count on my ‘cousin’ for any useful perspective. Crazy people who’ve lived underground most of their lives, and only went aboveground to kidnap human test subjects, aren’t too reliable.”
Mary had been rummaging in her briefcase; now she returned with her face set in some decision. “Whoever we talk with, we want to learn more than they do. Use these.” She thrust a small sack into my startled hand. Fine white silk threatened to slip from my fingers. Within, I felt the faintest shiver of magic. I spread it open, half-afraid I’d encounter the sting of her interrogation talismans. But I recognized the inscribed bundles within: I’d last seen one burnt black by Trumbull’s guest’s mental powers.
Shields for our thoughts. Something to stand between my will and Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt’s powers of usurpation. And a token of how much the Outer Ones had unnerved Barlow and Peters, for neither contested the gift.
“Thank you,” I said. Mary passed the rest around. Spector frowned at his and shoved it in his pocket. Was it too heathenish for his comfort, or was it simply the source that worried him?
“We can face them on a more even footing, while we decide how to handle the relationship,” said Barlow. He sighed, letting fatigue slip through. “While we decide whether we can afford to have one.”
“Whatever we do, they won’t go back to ignoring us,” said Charlie. “The U.S. may be small change to them, but they care whether there’s another war coming. They won’t just leave us to our fate. Even if we’d rather they did.”
CHAPTER 16
Frederick Laverne—June 20, 1949:
They’re fighting. I can tell. The buzzing squall churns louder, breaking the harmonies that usually hum through the mine.
Embodied and encircled alike retreat to edges and corners—but not too far. We all want to hear, even if we can’t understand. I set Shelean’s canister down in the refuge we’ve claimed, and curl against the sleek metal.
“Does this happen a lot?” I ask.
“No, it isn’t normal at all.” She sounds worried, and I guess she should. It’s not the first argument I’ve caught since we got back from Yuggoth. She goes on: “This is like bad days in the affection group where I grew up. Only Outer Ones don’t banish people to the entertainment pits when they’re angry. They know how to make up properly.”
I wish she had a body I could hold. “I guess there’s worse things than only having one parent around.”
“Yes—your raiser seems nice, even if she doesn’t like me much. None of them like me. Scary K’n-yan, scary mad girl.”
Across the room, more buzzing voices join the tumult. “You’re not scary.”
“Oh, but I am. If you knew me like I was—Audrey has every reason to be terrified. They’ve let us run a long time, but they keep grudges. They might come any time with their capture wards and brands. You should breed with Aphra Marsh like she asked.”
I scoot back and sit up. “I won’t do that to a girl!”
Giggles from the canister. “You won’t breed with a boy without a lot of help. Or with any of the Outer Ones, even if you can keep track of their genders.”
“You know what I mean! I won’t knock a girl up and then not marry her. And I don’t want to marry Aphra Marsh. If I were going to marry anyone, it’d be you.” I flinch when I say it. I’ve known Shelean less than a month and if I do get to propose, I want to do it properly. But she giggles again.
“Sweet boy. You’re not going to sire babies on me. My body’s too well worked to make children on its own, even if I could go embodied for that long. And you wouldn’t have a very good time covering me, either.” Her voice turns sober. “I’d get distracted.”
I touch her canister below the camera, where her cheek would be if the camera were an eye. “I’d like to kiss you. At least once.”
She laughs. “One of us would like it, anyway. Aphra doesn’t want to marry you either. She’s already got an affection group, with all the sordid little dynamics that implies. But I think they do love each other.”
“I don’t understand. She’s got her brother and her friends. Or is she with Charlie? Getting between them wouldn’t be any better than leaving her pregnant on her own.”
“They’re together, but I don’t think they’re fucking. Did you see how Charlie doesn’t look at Ron? They’re together and don’t want anyone to know. And Audrey doesn’t look at Aphra, because she wants to and she doesn’t want Aphra to know. Aphra might be the sort who doesn’t like sex at all. She isn’t attracted to you, anyway, she just wants to breed.”
“Shelean! You’re not helping.”
“I think you’re beautiful. And you’d make good, strong babies.” She makes the little clicks that mean she’s thinking, so I don’t interrupt. “If you won’t cover her, would you cover Audrey? She has some of my blood in her, so it’d be like you were breeding with me.”
“Shelean…” It comes out as more of a moan. Sometimes I swear she does this stuff just to tweak me. “Shelean, are you trying to distract me?”
“It’s working. And it distracts me, too. I can understand their language, you know. Spend enough time here, and you’ll pick it up too.”
She’s got a century’s head start, of course. “What are they saying?”
“They’re mad about your family coming here. Not at you, though. Mad at the people who thought they could grab so many humans at once and not get noticed. And they’re worried about the government people, whether all the agents your cousin dragged in will make humans more unstable, and what the Outer Ones should do about that. Some of them want to make your visitors go away, and some want to recruit ’em.” Another clicking pause. “I don’t like it when they fight. Let’s talk about sex again. Or philosophy.”
“Right.” She wants distraction, I can give her distraction. It’s a better idea than obsessing over Mom and Dad’s buzzing argument. “We were talking about how best to judge character…”
* * *
The FBI agents left the beach at last. Even without mutual trust, we agreed that we needed to learn more—and that we shouldn’t promise anything to the Outer Ones without consulting each other. None of us were comfortable with that last part, but even Peters agreed it was necessary.
Watching Mary, I realized that she, like Spector, had come to straddle our divide. She’d worked alongside the elders on our rituals, accepted our word on the dangers of her research, and argued for her inventions without assuming our caution cowardly. I almost wished I could ask her for help. I needn’t tell her why I’d used the trapezohedron the second time, or admit my race’s vulnerabilities. I could simply say that the ritual had hurt me, because it had hurt her, too. If there were a better, faster way to heal, she’d find it.
But even if I dared, that would have to wait. She’d already picked her way through the sand leaning on Barlow’s elbow, retrieved her heels at the base of the stairs, and followed him back down the darkened boardwalk. They’d soon be in their cushioned headquarters, comparing filed notes with Outer One reality long into the night.
“It’s time,” Chulzh’th said. My own reluctance told me she was right. Normally I found it impossible to turn away from frightening realities. Danger at my back was far more terrifying. Now something had sapped my urgency, and left me only the animal desire for a safe-seeming place to huddle. I dared not give in.
“Do you want me to come?” asked Charlie. I nodded mutely.
“What about me?” asked Audrey.
“Too many,” said Chulzh’th. “I don’t know this area,
and we’re not properly warded. I did preliminary scouting, though, before seeking my vision, and thought I smelled gaunts.”
Grandfather sighed heavily. “I don’t supposed you’d accept me.”
“We’d shine like R’lyeh in the depths.”
His hands lay heavy on my shoulders. “Ïa Shub-Niggaroth, zh’d Thulig’n’Uhy ich.” May the Mother of All protect you.
As well as She ever does.
The hardest part was clearing space to sleep. Every time I thought I’d gotten the area clear, I found grease-stained cardboard or abandoned sunglasses or a jag of metal digging into my back.
“Maybe closer to the water?” suggested Charlie. “It’s late enough that we probably don’t have to worry about anyone watching.” But the wet sand would leave him shivering even in the summer heat, and likely worsen his knee on the morrow.
S’vlk rose silently and retrieved the cloaks. “These will provide padding, as long as you don’t mind the smell.”
He buried his nose in the velvet. “I’ll cope. Thank you.”
In the lee of the tide, Chulzh’th drew symbols of protection and guidance more complex than those I’d been using. When she was done, they stretched from the bound of the waves’ reach to where drier sand heaped in miniature dunes. Charlie folded the cloaks beneath him, and we lay on the damp slope. Chulzh’th nicked my finger. She drew a sign on my forehead, first in my own blood and then with salt water. She lay back beside us, and began chanting. I joined in. Every word felt off-key as it left my tongue, but at least they were the right words.
Chulzh’th’s well-practiced magic pulled us swift and deep. I knew the truth of the English term: I fell asleep. Fatigued surrender blurred with vertigo.
Chulzh’th and Charlie were the only sleepers close enough to mingle their dreams with mine. I could not be surprised when my vision cleared on a nightmare of parched desert. Birds wheeled in a burning blue sky. Why starlings so often filled Charlie’s dreams I couldn’t say, but they were a comfort. There appeared before me an antique sink, stacked with grime-caked dishes but dry as the desert in which it stood.
“You can ignore that,” said Chulzh’th from behind me. The dishes clinked; when I made the mistake of looking again, there were more of them. “I do. Let me see your threads, both of you.”
I turned, and saw my companions. I tried to ignore the dishes, and the hot grit digging into my bare soles. “I’m sorry, Acolyte. I don’t know how.” Something already felt off, beyond the familiar nightmare. My awareness of time’s passage kept slipping. I could barely sense my body’s pull.
“Child, there’s no shame in being new to the dreamlands. I’ll show you.” She beckoned Charlie closer, turned him so I could see the space between them. The sigils she’d drawn on our foreheads appeared as raised scars, long healed. She traced another, complementary symbol over the first. Her finger left a trail of sparks so that I could more easily see what she made. Charlie blinked hard in reflex.
Then, from his forehead (the image of his forehead, created by his mind in shadowed imitation of the armor it normally wore), she drew a translucent ribbon that trailed into invisibility as it neared her fingers. Poets and alchemists shorthand the link between mind and body as a “silver cord,” but his was grass and emerald green.
“See here,” said Chulzh’th, and I came closer. Charlie peered at the cord awkwardly, a rainbow’s end trying to catch a glimpse of the whole. “Yours frays a little,” she told him, “and is paler than it should be, but the damage from the Outer Ones’ tool is already healing. It stretches easily—you’ll see that more clearly when we dive deeper.”
He nodded, cutting off the gesture abruptly as his ribbon undulated in response.
“Now you.” He backed off, and I positioned myself so that he could learn as well. It was easier if I thought of it that way: just another lesson. But the ribbon she drew forth was palest blue and tattered along the sides. Worse, where Charlie’s had been supple mine lay flat and brittle.
Chulzh’th brushed it with her finger (the image of her finger, created by her mind in shadowed imitation of the tools it normally controlled), frowning. “It still retains a trace of elasticity. But we should be cautious. Stretch slowly, and remind all the parts of yourself that they can be flexible. Are you ready?”
Risk breaking, or break. I nodded.
She drew a new sigil on the ether before us. Ordinarily, making the transition from shallow true dreams to the dreamlands was like pushing through a thick barrier. This time it felt both longer and easier. The desert faded slowly, not only from my sight but from my sense of reality. The starlings wheeled into fog. Part of me reached eagerly into the depths, while another part felt with dread the reluctant stretch of that pale cord, fracturing in tiny cracks that could snap as easily as heal.
From the beach’s edge New York was bright; the spiderweb city was brighter. We stood perhaps a mile or two away—even from there minarets and bridges brushed the sky, each strand limned in dewdrops of light. But where New York blotted the stars to invisibility, this city rose toward a galactic sweep brilliant as midnight in the hills west of Arkham. I turned slowly, mindful of both this place’s dangers and the inner dangers that I’d come to test. For the moment, my cracked cord held.
Behind us lay a wide plain. Rocks and rare spindly trees cast lumpen shadows. Nothing moved, though I heard something that wasn’t a mourning dove: three deep, wistful notes offered into the night.
“What’s in there?” whispered Charlie. I turned back around and, with pupils widened from peering into the plain, saw what I hadn’t before. The low dark ridge between us and the city was riddled with the darker silhouettes of caves.
I inhaled, trying to pick out unfamiliar instruments from a symphony of scents: ozone like incoming thunder, amber resin, warm stone, pine, loamy dirt. All these were natural and pleasant, but something putresced beneath. Out of sight, meat rotted on the bone.
Then I smelled something familiar and unwelcome. Without thinking, I moved toward the cliffs. I should have let Chulzh’th take the lead, and taken the rear myself to protect Charlie, but the trail had a lure of its own. At the ridge’s edge, I found what I’d feared: a patch of the Outer Ones’ fungus, blossoming across the rock face in a luminescent spread. It had not grown into anything like the ward on their mine, but it was here and should not have been.
“Is this another of their hideouts?” asked Charlie.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t see any sign except the fungus. And something doesn’t smell right.”
Cool air spilled from the nearest cave. Unmistakably, that was the source of the rotten smell. Something scraped in the darkness.
Chulzh’th pulled roughly on my shoulder, putting both of us between Charlie and whatever waited inside the cave mouth. A shroud lay over everything past the threshold, though the glint of galaxy and city fell on us plainly as moonlight. Chulzh’th planted her feet wide and bared her talons.
Something squealed, a painful high-pitched mewling that descended into a glibber of unrecognizable language. Chulzh’th exhaled, lowered her claws fractionally, and barked something in what I presumed was the same tongue.
“It must be one of the dreamland’s intelligent species,” I said quietly to Charlie—largely for the comfort of hearing a more familiar language. He’d read the same books I had, and neither of us had ever spoken to such a creature.
“A ghoul, do you think?” he asked.
“It would fit. They’re supposed to be common at crossing points.” I knew there was a warren in Boston, though I’d never seen any sign around Innsmouth. There were many language-using species in Earth’s dreamlands, and a few with whom we had an “understanding”—less than a treaty, enough to avoid violence when we met—but ghouls showed the greatest interest in humans. In several ways.
Chulzh’th backed up a pace, and motioned us to join her. I heard scrabbling against unseen stone, and the ghoul crept out.
It was very nearly human,
but it moved like a wild animal, limbs bent at unlikely angles and tensed to leap or flee at a moment’s notice. It twitched and bared sharp yellow teeth—merely being near us set it on a knife’s edge of fear or hunger. Translucent skin slid over unpadded muscle. It seemed made entirely of wiry sinew and arteries. It’s—his, I thought, though I wasn’t sure what cue I was picking up—his long narrow tongue darted out to lick his lips. He wore a short, kilt-like garment and a necklace of what looked like finger bones. Very small finger bones.
Chulzh’th said something else in the ghoul’s language, then to us in English: “Good, you recognize the species. Have you met them before?”
“No,” I said, “only read about them. And never studied the tongue.”
“Lllugich Rrrriglit Rrrrilahn ee Engahlllsss Prrreel lllubr’til?” she said. It was nearly as hard to pick out words as with the Outer Ones; Ghoulish used more human sounds, but it seemed to roll L’s and R’s in several different ways, all of which sounded nearly identical to me. The intermixed coughs, spits, and clicks seemed likely to hurt my throat.
“English,” said the ghoul. “Yes. Can speak. Polite.” I could understand him easily, though he shortened most of his vowels and sounded as if he were forcing the words around a mouthful of rocks.
“These are my warren-mates,” said Chulzh’th. “Aphra and Charlie. Our warren is the vast sea.”
“Honor to meet.” The ghoul licked his lips again and skittered sideways. “Glabri.” Anglicized, the L and R sounded uncomfortably curtailed. “Warren of shining city and deep stone. Biggest north of Sarnath’s grave pit.”
“We’re honored to meet you as well,” I said. There was something compelling about Glabri as well as off-putting. Or perhaps I was simply relieved to meet a creature whose nervousness I could comprehend. “I hope we’re not trespassing. We don’t intend to stay long.” I realized as I spoke that my internal clock, so carefully cultivated during our practice, had failed. I had no idea how long I’d been dreaming. I assumed Chulzh’th was tracking the length of our stay, but it was unnerving—on my own, I could easily miss the moment when returning to my body became urgent.
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