by Adam Roberts
Jhutti shook his head, and tiny droplets of moisture left his beard to float away. ‘They did not give me anything to bring,’ he said. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Billiard-Fanon’s shot wounded my jaw,’ Lebret explained, muffling the words and shaking. ‘I fear the wound has become infected. I must have medicine!’
‘You do look ill,’ Jhutti agreed. ‘And I am sorry for it.’
Voices from the communication slate made it clear that the others were about to leave the airlock and swim across too.
‘I am sure one of the others is bringing the first aid box,’ Jhutti said, unconvincingly.
‘I hope so,’ shuddered Lebret. He took as deep a breath as his tightened airways would allow, and stuck his head back into the water.
Blink, blink, and he saw the whole scene in wavery but discernible fashion. Billiard-Fanon was in front, swimming with strong kicks of his leg and coming straight for the hatch. Behind him was Capot, and behind him Pannier. There was no sign of Castor.
Lebret, looking back at the Plongeur, saw what happened next before anybody; but there was nothing he could do to warn the others. From the rip in the metal flank of the submarine, a shape swam out; and it was followed by another, and then another. Childranha. Even in his feverish state, Lebret immediately understood what had happened. As the Plongeur passed by the second sub oceanic sun, some of the creatures must have gone inside the flooded mess hall. And why not? There was food in there, and Lebret had good cause to know how hungry the beasts were – for protein, and also for oxygen. As the vessel sank away from that sun, and oxygen levels in the surrounding ocean sank to nothing, the childranha would not have been able to leave that little cell of oxygenated water, even if they wanted to.
But they were leaving it now. Lebret tried to signal, waved his arm with the absurd slowness of all underwater motions. That, or the expression of evident terror on his swollen face, alerted the three sailors. They looked round, and saw the monsters speeding towards them. Each reacted in his own way.
Billiard-Fanon smiled. It was unmistakeable. He crossed himself, and resumed his swim. He did not even hurry his motions, as if perfectly confident that God would protect him.
Capot writhed and kicked, wasted energy and time in a panicky wrestle with empty water, and finally struck out as fast as he could for the hatchway. The leading childranha-fish overtook him easily, and sank its fangs into his shin. The young sailor opened his mouth and vomited out a perfect sphere of air; but where his foot had been was only a spreading mess of red liquid coiling through the clear water, and the first childranha was swimming left with a boot in its mouth. A second childranha darted in and bit into end of the severed leg.
Of all of them, Pannier’s reaction was the most rational: he quickly assessed the threat, estimated the distance still to swim and balanced it against the distance back to the airlock, and immediately doubled back. He swum with large, strong thrusts of his legs and his arms and was back at the submarine before the childranha got to him. If he had been able to get the door smoothly open at first go he might have lived; but his fingers fumbled at the catch, and there was a flurry of childranha lurched at him, and then his arm was separate from his body and floating away to the side, trailing flossy strands of blood.
Billiard-Fanon was at the hatch. He pushed past Lebret, and ducked inside, disappearing with a wriggle.
Lebret looked back. Capot kicking and thrashing his arms, stirring up a cloud of dark around him – his own blood – as two childranha worried at his body. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening to Pannier, but certainly he had not made it back inside the submarine.
Somebody was tugging on Lebret’s legs. In the zero-gravity this slight pressure was enough to drag his body down. He slid out of the water and into the air, gasping. ‘Close the hatch, you idiot!’ Billiard-Fanon was yelling. ‘Close it!’
Lebret wanted to say: we’re safe in here, the air burns them. But his throat was so tight with horror he could barely breathe. Jhutti pressed the button, and the hatch closed.
29
THE DEATH OF LEBRET
‘Both dead!’ cried Jhutti. ‘Devoured – both men devoured!’
‘They were tested,’ said Billiard-Fanon, in a strange voice. ‘God tested them, and they were found wanting.’
‘How can you say so?’ demanded Jhutti. ‘How can you possibly say that?’
‘Do not raise your voice at me, M’sieur,’ said Billiard-Fanon, placidly. ‘Did I not also swim through the shoal of devils, like Daniel in the den, like Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego in the fiery furnace? And I am unharmed! I am unharmed!’
All three men were still inside the tunnel.
‘I need penicillin,’ Lebret gasped. A flush of terrible heat was washing through his body. His eyes were streaming, his muscles twitching and trembling. ‘I fear that I have contracted blood poisoning.’
Billiard-Fanon took Lebret’s face between his two hands and looked into his bleary eyes. ‘I did not miss,’ he said. ‘I took aim at your face, right in the middle of your face, and I fired. Yet God has spared you!’
‘I need first aid,’ said Lebret. Helplessness almost overwhelmed him; tears of frustration and pain filled his eyes. As he blinked them away they had the effect of making Billiard-Fanon seem to shimmer and twitch, as if possessed by devils. ‘I am dying,’ he gasped. ‘But penicillin will save me—’
‘God spared you!’ Billiard-Fanon cried. ‘He has a plan for you, my friend. Can you not see his light, glinting in my eyes?’
Lebret could see very little now. He was wheezing heavily, his whole body in a feverish agony. ‘Penicillin,’ he croaked.
‘You have no need of medicine!’ Billiard-Fanon declared, letting go of his face. ‘God has spared you! He will not let you die. You were a wicked man, I know; a traitor and murderer. But God’s grace is available even to the most wicked! If you have repented, in your heart. If you accept Christ. Your faith will cure you.’
Lebret did not have the energy to argue. He was aware of his surroundings only through a veil of pain and fever.
Jhutti carried him down the corridor and into the main chamber; and he heard Billiard-Fanon crying out about devils and monsters and instructed Satan to get behind him – which must have meant he had laid eyes upon Dakkar. Then Lebret slipped into a dream of being flayed, or of sinking into a bath of acid, or some nebulous but horrible Boschian experience of that nature.
Impossible to gauge the passing of time.
Consciousness returned, or a hazy approximation of it, once more; Lebret was aware of Jhutti pressing a soaking piece of cloth to his mouth, to enable him to drink.
‘Monsieur Jhutti,’ he croaked, in a faint voice.
‘Monsieur Lebret,’ returned the scientist. ‘You are still alive, at any rate.’
‘Not for long, I fear!’ He coughed, and shivered, and then managed a smile. ‘It seems stupid for me to survive all I have survived, only to die of a child’s fever like this!’
‘Can death ever be anything except stupid?’ Jhutti wondered.
Lebret lay for a while. The white walls of the chamber hurt his eyes, so he closed them. ‘How is Dakkar?’
‘The monster-man? The hydrocephalic fellow?’
‘He is human, Monsieur, and one of your countrymen too. But he has been … altered.’
‘Billiard-Fanon wanted to kill him,’ Jhutti reported. ‘I think I dissuaded him. He has gone mad, I’m afraid – the ensign, I mean. Religious mania. And anyway, we stand no chance of killing the large-head fellow, now; for I fear he is already dead. He is not breathing, at any rate.’
Lebret twitched and opened his eyes. ‘Dead? A great shame. He was Prince Dakkar, once.’
‘I have heard of him,’ Jhutti said, wonderingly. ‘Although I thought him a fictional creation.’
‘Fictions have been written, based upon him,’ Lebret said. ‘But he is the authentic figure at those fictions’ heart. Or – he was. Did he say nothing? Did he tell y
ou nothing, before he passed?’
‘He said a few things. Most of it was hard to follow. Billiard-Fanon baptised him! Crazy.’
‘What did Dakkar say though? It may be important.’
‘He told us to repair the Plongeur, and go back the way we came. He said we were in terrible danger from the Great Jewel. Whatever that means. Billiard-Fanon told him he was a devil. That was about the extent of our conversational exchange.’
Lebret was silent for a while. He could feel his own blood scraping along his arteries and veins. It was hard to breathe. ‘Is Ghatwala … ?’ he asked.
‘Dead, I’m afraid,’ said Jhutti.
‘And Boucher? What about Le Petomain?’
‘Boucher is still alive; but his mind has gone. I don’t know how long he will last aboard the Plongeur, unattended. As for Le Petomain …’ Jhutti concluded the sentence with a shake of his head.
The two of them were silent for a while. In the corner, a gentle bee-buzz hummed louder, softer. It took Lebret’s hot, muddle brain a while to realise that this noise was Billiard-Fanon snoring.
‘I’m sorry, Amanpreet,’ Lebret whispered, shortly. ‘I’m sorry, truly I am. Ghatwala and I did conspire together. Perhaps we should have trusted you. Dilraj fitted a secondary system to the main machinery of the Plongeur, cunning camouflaged. We used it to direct the vessel down here, without the knowledge or consent of her captain or crew. We could not trust them. Perhaps we should have trusted you. We acted, as we thought, for the greater good.’
Jhutti was leaning as close to Lebret’s mouth as he could. ‘I’m afraid I can only understand some of what you say,’ he said.
‘Beware the Jewel,’ Lebret said, and closed his eyes.
He did not open them again.
Billiard-Fanon woke, declared himself enormously refreshed by his nap, and plunged his head through the bubble of water. ‘I am hungry,’ he announced. ‘Jhutti! Wake up Lebret, there. He promised us food! Let him tell us where the food is.’
‘Monsieur Lebret will never wake again, I fear,’ Jhutti reported.
‘Oh!’ Billiard-Fanon sounded surprised. ‘So he was unworthy, after all! God’s test is severe.’
‘Indeed,’ agreed Jhutti, distantly.
‘Only we two remain. Of the entire crew!’
‘You discount the lieutenant, aboard the Plongeur?’
‘Poor mad Lieutenant Boucher!’ laughed Billiard-Fanon. ‘Shall we use the magic speaking slate to address him? But I cannot think he would welcome our conversation. What would we say? Tell him to swim to us? The devils would devour him.’
‘They did not eat us,’ Jhutti observed.
‘Ah, but God has plans for us,’ Billiard-Fanon said, in a conspiratorial voice. ‘I suggest we search this place. Perhaps Lebret was lying about the food, but then again, perhaps there are hidden drawers and cupboards filled with cakes and ale, eh?’
The two men floated up and down the walls of the chamber. Jhutti moved the bodies of Dakkar and Lebret to one side, as respectfully as he could; Billiard-Fanon occupied himself with slapping and knocking the sides of the room.
‘Nothing!’ he said. ‘What’s this?’ He picked up the tattered remains of Lebret’s diving suit, and shook it. A clutch of grey-white strands spilled out and floated through the air. ‘Snakes!’ Billiard-Fanon yelped, throwing the suit from him. ‘I shall crush their heads, lest they bruise my heel!’
Jhutti caught one of the filaments as it floated towards him, like limp spaghetti. ‘These are no snakes,’ he said, scornfully. ‘I cannot tell what they are – some kind of seaweed, perhaps?’
‘Edible?’ asked Billiard-Fanon, eyeing the spread of spilled strands.
‘Be my guest and try,’ said Jhutti.
But Billiard-Fanon’s attention had already moved on. He returned to the bulge of water, and thrust his head through it. After a while he came back for air.
‘There is another chamber in there,’ he announced. ‘Flooded, of course, but perhaps containing food. You must dive into it, and have a look about.’
‘And I say you must,’ retorted Jhutti. ‘At any rate, I choose not to.’
Lebret eyed him, but did not become angry. ‘God has chosen we two,’ he told him. ‘I do not pretend to know why he chose you, a pagan. But though I am the Holy One, and exalted, even in these impossible depths, yet I do not presume to question His providence. But I do say this: we must get along.’
Jhutti did not reply.
‘At any rate,’ said Billiard-Fanon, having toured the room again. ‘The water is potable. A body can live for a long time on water and no food – Christ managed forty days and forty nights. Perhaps God wishes us to fast, in imitation of Jesus.’
‘I thought God spoke to you directly,’ Jhutti said.
‘He does,’ Billiard-Fanon returned, immediately, his eyes flashing. ‘But he has not communicated with me on this matter. Are they both dead? Lebret, and the big-head monster? I mean, not in a coma, or anything like that?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Jhutti replied. He went over to the bodies, and felt for Lebret’s pulse at his neck. ‘Nothing.’ Conquering his revulsion, he did the same with Dakkar’s neck. ‘Both dead.’
‘Well we must dispose of them, or they shall go bad. Shall we carry the bodies up the corridor, and pitch them topside?’
‘If we do,’ Jhutti noted, ‘then those terrible fish will devour them.’
Billiard-Fanon shook his head. ‘Too terrible. They deserve better. Let us put them out of our sight, into the lower chamber.’
‘But will that not poison our water supply?’
‘We can draw water from above or below,’ Billiard-Fanon noted. ‘This way, although we must drink from above, we can at least ensure those devils do not desecrate their corpses.’
‘What if,’ Jhutti asked, ‘the lower chamber connects directly to open water? What, then, is to stop the devil-fish from swimming round and devouring the corpses anyway?’
‘I had not thought of that,’ Billiard-Fanon conceded. ‘Well, in that case it hardly matters which exit we use to dispose of the bodies. Come! Let us put them both below, and I shall say a prayer.’
The truth was that Jhutti cared little, either way. The succession of bizarre events had worn away his grip on reality as a solid quantity. He helped Billiard-Fanon push first Dakkar and then Lebret through, and kicked them both away. Then, for the sake of cleanness, he rounded up all the loose, dead strands of – of whatever they were. These also he thrust into the lower chamber.
‘Now,’ said Billiard-Fanon. ‘We shall see how God intends to deliver us from this place.’
Jhutti looked at his companion. There was no trust in his look.
30
THE TETRAGRAMMATON
Billiard-Fanon first prayed silently to himself; then he repeated the Lord’s Prayer in a loud voice. Finally he insisted that Jhutti join him. Jhutti declined. ‘My religious beliefs are not yours,’ he noted, in a level voice.
‘All that has been overturned!’ Billiard-Fanon insisted. ‘Surely, after all you have seen down here, having passed through this entire damnable dimension – surely after all that, you don’t cling still to your paganism?’
‘My religion is my own affair,’ Jhutti repeated. ‘But I will say that calling me pagan is offensive.’
‘All offence is dissolved in the Lord Christ!’ replied Billiard-Fanon, with a giggle. ‘Come! I shall teach you the Lord’s prayer, and in reciting it you will prise open your oyster heart.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I insist!’ said Billiard-Fanon. He reached inside his own shirt, and brought out a small oilcloth bag. ‘Here!’
‘Does that bag contain your prayer?’ Jhutti asked.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Billiard-Fanon. Untying the end, he brought out a pistol. ‘Here!’ he cried, joyfully. ‘The staff of Moses! Dry as a bone! Although is that not a strange idiom? For your bones, and mine, are never dry, washed continually by blood and lymph as
they are!’ He weighed in the weapon in his hand, and then pointed it at Jhutti.
Jhutti was almost too exhausted even to be scared. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘Will you shoot me too?’
‘You know I will not hesitate,’ Billiard-Fanon said, smiling strangely. ‘You know I possess the strength of will to pull this trigger, and end your life?’
Jhutti nodded.
‘Then, repeat after me: Our Father, who art in heaven.’
Jhutti looked at the barrel and then at Billiard-Fanon’s gleaming face. He could repeat the words, of course; it would mean nothing. And defiance would serve no nobler purpose. But something in him refused to do as he was instructed. He shook his head.
Billiard-Fanon’s expression hardened. ‘Say the words,’ he ordered. ‘Say them, or displease me. You do not wish to see the displeasure of the Holy One!’
‘I do not wish to see the Holy One at all,’ said Jhutti.
For a moment Billiard-Fanon’s look was that of a hurt child. He dropped the pistol to his side, as if rebuked. But then his eyes narrowed. ‘I shall better be able to worship the almighty Tetragrammaton without you here,’ he announced. ‘JHWH has chosen me, and me alone. That much is clear.’
He raised the gun again, and pulled the trigger. There was a monstrous detonation, ear-hurting. Jhutti flinched. He couldn’t help it. But the bullet did not strike him. There was a faint hum in the air, as if (perhaps) it had scudded close to his ear – although Billiard-Fanon had been aiming at his chest.
Jhutti opened his eyes. A huge shape, geometrically precise, sharp-edged, blue-green in colour, had interposed between himself and Billiard-Fanon. It was a moment before Jhutti understood that it had manifested just in time, and presumably therefore in order, to block the trajectory of the bullet.
‘God, God, God, God!’ howled Billiard-Fanon, throwing the weapon aside. ‘You appear to me! I am the new Moses!’
The shape was a pyramid, comprising four equilateral triangles, each joined to all the others. A voice emerged from the jewel-shape, ‘You are Amanpreet Jhutti?’