Only the moonlight moved.
Silver, it poured through a narrow stained-glass window high above me. When I saw it I knew the fog was dissipating and soon the light would reach me. It seemed odd that the stained glass had survived. I could not yet make out the design of the glass. Then I felt a strange, uncomfortable prickling. My toes! My feet! My ankles! The moonlight had reached me, was creeping up me. It came streaming through the stained-glass facets, highlighting the shape of a human figure looking down at me; a figure that was flat and transparent yet growing more definite as the cold flood swept closer to my heart, to my eyes and the seat of my intelligence. A slenderly robed figure I saw as the pale fire burned higher through me—then the edge of the full moon swam into my view, shortly to stand behind her, shining through her—and it was Tari who came down before me.
I breathed with a sudden gasp.
My body creaked as I tried to move.
But even as she flooded me with the light and perfume of her ancient ways I sensed another, darker presence behind me, unseen.
“Here lieth Sir Humfrey Gylberte, frozen in his past!” Her voice was sharp. “Humf, get up, now, please, this time come through!”
I creaked and groaned.
“How can stone possibly turn to flesh and blood?”
“Like this,” she said, and lay down on me, kissing me on the lips so that her moonfire snaked all through the rock of me and stirred me to life, to my feet, tottering and dizzy with pins and needles and engorgement of blood. Yet still something lurked behind, and stayed behind, whichever way I turned.
“What’s behind me? There’s something behind me!”
“Never mind that. Come on! The moment will pass!”
The moon was already beginning to slip away from the window. Why not? I thought. What’s to lose? So I left the crypt behind, and followed her through the window, through the gate, but the shadow was still on my tail.
There was an explosion.
I lost all my senses.
When I recovered, there was nothing.
I hung in a void, in emptiness and darkness.
“All is well!” spoke the calming voice within. “Search steadily until you see a point of light. Will yourself towards it”
So I did. I saw the point of light, and willed, and began a drift towards it, and it grew larger, became a flaming wheel in space, the heat of it reaching out through the abyss.
“On the physical plane this being is our sun! Hail Ra, whom you call Raphael!”
I was fascinated by the Glory. I wanted all of it.
“Not too close! Stop! Look about! Do you see those three spheres of lesser light? Mercury… Venus… and our Good Mother Earth! Turn to her now! Let her draw you close!”
It was hard to turn from the sun, but I did. I put my mind to earth, and moved to it, and found an urge for burial and incarnation growing as the world’s gravity pulled more greatly on me, so that soon I was rushing down much too fast.
“Stop again! Stop and think! This is not the physical Earth, but an image of your state. Think before you choose. Who are you? Where are you? When are you? Choose carefully!”
So there above World I stopped with Tari and Shadow, suspended in the sublunary sphere, the beautiful Earth our Mother below me.
She was bathed in sparkling blue light that became an intense violet at the poles, where coronas of energy fountained, streaming and snaking up and down through the layers of her veils, her magnetic aura, that sparkled and danced in space all round and through me. Away to the west, wheeling out of night, the Americas were partly covered by white whirlpools of cloud that broke and shredded apart over the Atlantic, and below me most of Europe was likewise shrouded.
But the island-shape of Britain was remarkably clear, shining like a jewel. I felt both joy and grief when I saw it. Something dark and heavy came over me. Without thinking, I began a downward drift towards it. Even as I did, of a sudden there were hundreds of phantoms floating up to meet me, of all the people I ever knew, and of them all, the Queen was most immediate in my desire. Blind, I sought her so strongly that gardens and misty Hampton Court walks wavered on the edge of form, and I looked eagerly at her face.
I nearly screamed.
She was a hairless and discoloured skull, with no eyes, and black rotten teeth. The unseen shadows had caught me!
Then I fell.
I fell through water, fire, through inside-outness, through four hundred years, through the execution of kings and rebellion of colonies, through the rise of factories and revolutions, through terrible wars and incredible change. I fell through the Vulcan vortex. I knew none of it. I was torn apart.
Then I was one piece and one place again.
It is slightly over fifty-one months since 5:34 a.m., December twenty-seventh, 1983, when I “coincided” with the Sargasso Sea.
In the dream last night I recovered my wits to find myself staring, dazed, into the embers of a fire, in the night, on a cold wooded hillside under the moon and stars.
Sitting the other side of the dying fire, crosslegged and wrapped in a blanket, was a dark, shadowy figure.
For a moment I was confused and fearful, but then I recognised the white halo of her hair, and remembered. Ragged and fugitive in Kentucky, months after our escape, we two alone still alive and free. Dogs had chased us up the hill. We were freezing and had nothing to eat. It was just before we met the rock’n’roll band KRONONUTZ, which changed everything.
“Are you awake?” asked Tari. “Are you here?”
“Yes-s-s,” I agreed doubtfully.
“Then watch. Watch closely.”
She produced a small mirror. It glinted in the moonlight. She flung it up into the night, towards the moon, and as I watched its arc became brilliant, enormous, slicing the night like a blazing knife. An awesome radiance flooded through in the wake of its passage, and I saw a great Hawk flying high in the heavens, and heard a giant voice that thundered: “EVEN THE GODS MUST CHANGE!” Then I saw the shining rainbow bridge described by the arc of the mirror; spanning from earth to heaven to earth through the ages; and I knew I must go up it, which I did, until once again I floated high above the forms of earth through time. Dizzily I looked down and saw a great isle in the Atlantic where the Azores are now, extending to south and west of them. And the isle was and was not, for there was a terrible flash of light invisible to the eyes, and a wind that shivered the very fabric of the bridge even as that island sank and ceased to be. And I saw a twisting, spiralling, ravening phallus of fire thrust violently up at the womb of the future; a thrust that tore many veils, a thrust that demanded reception; a thrust which in fact could not exist unless it was received… which it was, for I saw a finger that pressed a button; I saw a cave opening up that the lightning-flash shot into; a cave that swallowed the fire and completed the business; for as the bridge rocked and we all collapsed and were sucked to the negative pole of 1983 I saw how, for a twelve-thousand-year instant, the path of Distressed Temporal Immigration was not only open but demanded for all us poor fools who happened to be in the right place at the right time, or in the wrong place at the wrong time: look at it how you will. Some say Project Vulcan explains a disputed phenomenon called the Bermuda Triangle: I know not about that; all I know it was a great shock.
Then my dreaming went wild: I was on fire, I plunged, I looked up, I fell through the cold pitted face of the moon, many faces and voices ran together in a great babbling of WHY? WHY? WHY? Until at length, striving to wake out of this chaos, I came face-to-face with the head of a great brass hawk that thundered:
“QUID NON? QUID NON? QUID NON?”
12. Swallowed by Leviathan & the AMA
“Coincided.” That’s the word Norman Ernstein used when at Horsfield he tried to explain what we had done to earn the label of DTIs.
“You coincided with 1983 when we generated the energy-web”
Yes. As a condemned man coincides with his execution, no doubt, or as a falling body coincides with the grou
nd. The Sophists would appreciate the use to which language is put today by these whelps of Faustus who seek to hide what they do even from themselves.
Enough. No ranting. If I start ranting I’m finished. I wish to God I had some whisky. Dreams are one thing, but what happened is another. How can I tell it? Coincided! Blight and Damnation! It is humiliating even to think of it. My pride and understanding have been in shreds ever since that hellish night. But hold straight, Humf! I cannot be dreaming these dreams for nothing. Tari is awake in me, though I cannot tell what she is. Memory? Dream-traveler? Spirit? A split-off part of my own soul? Doctor Jung speaks of the anima. Very good. He restates what was known before. Yet I have seen the Hawk, or a hawk, for three days running, and it is not what she is that matters to me, but whether her advice is good. In my dreaming she speaks of revolution towards a better state. Well, I have my doubts. All this talk of Pattern and Purpose and Progress sounds to me like wishful thinking. How can I believe otherwise since that hellish monster scooped me up out of the weed?
But why not? Quid Non? I am still Gilbert.
During that eternal instant I plunged four hundred years. Of course I knew nothing of that. When the fiery terror released me I knew nothing but darkness and pain. It took me time to remember who I was, and to realise that I was floating, naked, in a calm flat sea, my arms hooked instinctively over a broken spar. I felt as if a giant hand had pulled me apart and only approximately reassembled me. When something slimy brushed me and wrapped itself over my head I gasped and tore weakly at it, and discovered it was weed. For a long time it was dark. At last there was a greyness, but dawn came slow. Feebly I scanned about me. The ocean was weedy and stagnant, and I could not understand. What had happened? Where was the Hind? I saw other splintered timbers afloat. I thought I saw a dead man drifting, his head missing. The grey sky grinned at me like a skull. The light was strange, and the ocean too sullenly flat for the time of year, for the latitude, and for the morning after the wild storm of (as I thought) the night before. And all the weed! The only part I knew of that answered this description was that graveyard called Sargasso. Impossible! The Sargasso was a thousand miles away!
Then it struck me. The cunning man! A power not of Christ and not of this world! My God! I was forsaken! In the grip of black prophesied doom! Why cling to the spar any longer?
But I did. For hours I drifted amid the weed, beneath the ugly sky. Then in my body I felt a trembling, weak at first, that came from the depths below me. Quickly this trembling increased in its strength until I was all a-throb with it, and a swell arose to rock the weed, and then in horror I realised that some giant monster was rising up out of the depths to seize me.
Next I saw the Eye.
It appeared out of the water about fifty yards away, weed-festooned and standing atop a long black stalk. It was staring at me as it emerged, and it was plainly, dreadfully intelligent, and as soon as I saw it I was sure I knew it. The Eye of Leviathan! The Power not of Christ! In a state of awful fear I thrashed away from the spar, meaning to sink and drown before the satanic monster could take me. I could not see the monster’s body through the turgid water, but the shaking throb of its breathing was very close below me as I tried to sink. I felt rather than saw the vast long dark shape as it rose up, and knew religious fear of an intensity I cannot express. The Serpent of Hell! It had me! I bubbled futile prayers to God and Jesus Christ His Son, but to no avail, for suddenly the surface of the sea was churned into huge commotion as first the snout of the beast—upsticking, black, smoothly enormous with its Eye atop the stalk above—broke water only yards from where I struggled helplessly, followed immediately by the entire great length of the giant. It burst up with a great roar and a swoooosh! Before I knew what had happened I was caught full and square on its cold hard carapace. Amid cascading water I was lifted high above the sea, and thrown hard at the snout, fetching up against it with such a thump that had I not been so limp I would have broken bones.
All motion ceased. The throbbing grew muted. There was only a slight rocking. More dead than alive I lay flat on the hide of Leviathan. The hide was hard and smooth, more like manufactured metal than skin of a beast. And it was incomprehensible, for now within inches of my eyes I saw writing on the black hide, writing in well-formed large red letters—and the words were in English!
“WARNING! EXPLOSIVE BOLTS! DO NOT RELEASE UNLESS…”
I could not take it in. I awaked destruction. Soon I heard scrapings and other sounds above me. Slowly, utterly weak, I looked up… and had to fight to accept what my eyes now saw.
Four white monsters with single huge eyes glared down at me from the top of the snout. Only the upper parts of their bodies could be seen, the lower parts seemingly within the snout, as if behind a low wall. I stared aghast. One of the monsters was pointing at me. Its arm seemed the same shape and size as a thick-clad human arm, with bulky fingers at the end. Gloves? Shuddering, breathing in painful gasps, I made myself look more carefully. Could these be men? Men in white garments that covered them completely, with oval glass windows to see through? But what men on earth dressed like this, and rode in such a monstrous vessel? Impossible! I gazed up hopelessly. The one that pointed saw that I watched, and opened its hand, clearly showing me its five gloved fingers. Then it bent away and briefly disappeared before turning back with a white object like a horn which it held up to its glassed-over face. At the same time another of the four aimed a black machine with a gleaming eye in it at me.
I crouched despairingly.
Then the voice erupted.
I’ll never forget it—an echoing blare, like no human voice I had ever heard:
“BE NOT AFRAIDRAIDRAID! WE ARE HUMAN BEINGSEINGSEINGS! WE ARE FRIENDLYENDLYENDLY AMERICANCAN SEAMENEMENEMEN HERE TO HELPELPELP YOU YOU YOU! THIS IS ANUNDERUNDERWATER SHIP CALLED SLOCUMOCUMOCUM! DO NOT BE ALARMEDARMEDARMED BY OUR APPEAREAREARANCE! OUR SUITSUITS ARE PROTECTIONECTIONECTION AGAINST DANGERANGERANGER OF MUTUALUTUAL INFECTIONFECTIONFECTIONIONION…”
This idiot bellow overwhelmed me and proved conclusively that the huge monster was indeed the Serpent of Hell and these manlike creatures its slaves or servant-demons. I cowered against the hard black hide with hands over my eyes until I passed completely out.
When I awoke again, I was captive in the belly of the monster, and the monster was deep under the sea.
I’m a confused man. I went looking for America, and yes, I found it, or it found me. And I found Mad King Faustus on the throne.
The slash of a sword unriddled the Gordian Knot.
So cut clean! Dive in! I have read all about it.
On the nineteenth of November in 1983 the President of the U.S.A. Shocked the world. In Congress he announced “immediate go-ahead of a project to benefit all mankind” Speaking of a “new technique for harnessing natural electromagnetism,” and claiming “the full support of our allies,” he explained that the Project “though in the name of Peace”, had need of “military capability and security” Also he declared that for the success of the project, the U.S.A. “Must temporarily borrow international waters” in the area between 30° to 40° of latitude and 50° to 60° of longitude—an area including the Sargasso Sea. Further he warned all air and sea traffic to stay out of the region, or “run risk of nonintentional destruction for which the U.S. Government, having given due warning, cannot take responsibility”
The riot and outcry was immediate, global, and ineffective. The nay-saying Congressmen were canvassed one-by-one, and King Faustus won the democratic vote. The riot and outcry doubled, in every land against the U.S.A. And in the U.S.A. Against the White House, the Pentagon, and the corporations said to be involved. There were predictions of Armageddon, of World War III, of magnetic pole reversal, and it was commonly assumed that a frightful new weapon was to be tested in this “electromagnetically-anomalous” region. But nobody, anywhere, was surprised! No! Such madness was taken for granted!
“We have needs to be met and by God we’ll meet them!” declared th
e President on the eve of Christmas. “With millions of mouths to be fed we can’t just tiptoe through the tulips!”
Warships laden with secret equipment took up position.
So the moment came. 5.34 am, December twenty-seventh, 1983, Yes, I read about it. There are descriptions of a storm unlike any ever known, of wild lightning that flayed the sea, of an “invisible flash” of fire felt by observers, of a brief but severe fluctuation of the Earth’s magnetic field. There is talk of “success”, of “tremendously valuable gains in scientific knowledge”.
But there is no mention of Distressed Temporal Immigrants, nor of the distress of those who had to deal with us.
Weeks later, during my second “DTI Debriefing,” having been brought to land, I saw the videorecording made of my welcome to the Slocum. I remember it. I was still sure I was in hell. My captors sat me down and tried to make me feel at ease, but relaxation was difficult. Because of the persistent danger of infection I had to wear, as they did, one of their white suits with the glass face.
“Mr. Gilbert, you are about to see the moving pictures we made of you when you came aboard the Slocum. Don’t think it magic: it is simply a development of the camera obscura.”
(They had a “psychohistorian” called Lubick at hand to explain everything to me: the poor fellow was scared to death of me, for I was his dead discipline come to life—and of him, more anon.)
So, I sat rigidly in my white-suit, breathing stale air, gazing at the moving pictures of myself being welcomed aboard.
Fire in the Abyss Page 12