“Yes, Chantal.”
“But there are only three grenades left, understand? It can only be fired three more times.”
“Only three.”
“That’s right. If we get back I’ll try to bring you more rounds, so never throw away the tube, but for now only three. So I need to teach your best hunter how to shoot it. Who should learn?”
“Bidge will learn.”
“Bidge, there aren’t enough rounds to practice with. If the arachnid ships come again, every round needs to hit. I need your best hunter.”
“Bidge good hunter. Bidge have good eyes, best eyes. What Bidge can see, her arrow hits.”
“You’re sure?”
“Chantal,” Bidge brooded for a moment, lowering her eyes, hunting the right words in a half-learned tongue. “Matthew explains to us, in Providence each woman take a man of her own. That not work here, not good here. To make strongest babies, each woman goes with many men.”
“I understand that,” Chantal said. And she did, actually. If a woman took the seed of several men, there was a good chance the seed of the strongest, healthiest man would impregnate her. That’s why even back home a woman, opting for marriage with a safe and stable but unexciting bean-counter, sometimes felt an irresistible urge to try and get herself knocked up by some wild man of a rodeo cowboy just before her wedding. It would increase genetic diversity in her brood, and that firstborn child would often have some desirable traits. Someone had even written a book about it, called Sperm Wars.
“To Pthang, that sound selfish. Here, if a man refuse to share his seed, a woman is hurt. She wonder, ‘Am I so ugly?’ But Bidge understand, Providence people have their ways.”
“Yes, we do.”
“So Bidge not fuck with Matthew, even though he would make good babies.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Matthew older, but smart. He make smart babies, good hunters.”
“I think so, too.”
“Chantal carry Matthew’s baby?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That good. That make Bidge happy.”
“It makes me happy, too, Bidge.”
“Chantal:” The pause again. “Big tits not keep Bidge from being good hunter. Bidge good hunter, good warrior, not afraid. Bidge can learn the RPG. Big tits not get in the way.”
“OK, Bidge. You’re right. I apologize. I shouldn’t judge you based on your tits.”
Bidge nodded.
“You saw how I fired it before?”
“Yes.”
“The warhead goes here, you push it in till it clicks. Hear that?”
“Yes.”
“Your trigger finger here, straight. See? Do not put your finger in the guard until you’re ready to fire.”
“The guard?”
“Here. Only put your finger in the guard when you’re ready to pull the trigger, to shoot. Till then, it goes straight along here.”
“Not till ready.”
“Right. And you make sure there’s no one behind you. See, the exhaust gases come out here, very hot. If anyone is standing behind you, they’re fried like a chicken.”
“No one stands behind.”
“You look to make sure no one is standing behind.”
“Always look.”
“Good.”
PART FIVE
“When you see the real thing you wonder, ‘My God, how do they keep the lid on this stuff?’ It is raging right next door. Modern epistemological methods are just not prepared for dealing with chattering, elf-infested spaces. We have a word for those spaces — we call them ‘schizophrenia’ and slam the door. But these dimensions have been with us ten thousand times longer than Freud. Other societies have come to terms with them. Because of accidents of botany and history, European culture has been away from the psychedelic dimensions awhile. We have forgotten the dimension of the tyrptamines and psilocybin since at least the burning of Eleusis.”
Terence McKenna, interview with Will Noffke in the Winter, 1989 issue of “Revision,” from “The Archaic Revival.”
“I believe that psychedelic research is not a peripheral historical backwater. Psychedelics are not a breakthrough primarily directed at the neurotic or the mentally ill. They are literally ‘the new world.’ Land has been sighted in hyperspace. We now have four or five hundred years of exploration ahead of us.… I believe that the psychedelic experience was the light at the beginning of history. That this is actually THE thing; that we have not reached a sufficient level of analytical sophistication to discern the force that pushed the animal mind onto the human stage. It is a process that, once it is set into motion, will not end. It is as though these botanical hallucinogens were exohormones, message-bearing chemicals shed by Gaia to control the development of the historical process in the catalytic trigger species that is introducing change to the planet.… This is also true of Albert Hofmann’s discovery about Eleusis; this may ultimately have a greater impact than the discovery of LSD itself. It is a discovery of a skeleton in the closet. There are skeletons in the closet of human origins and of the origin of religion. I would wager that these skeletons are all plant psychedelics. If we can come to terms with them, we can begin to understand the shape of the human future.”
Terence McKenna, talk given at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California in the fall of 1984 at a gathering of the Association for the Responsible Use of Psychedelics.
“The early approach with psychedelics was the correct one. This is the notion that intelligent, thoughtful people should take psychedelics and try and understand what’s going on. Not groups of prisoners, not graduate students, but mature, intelligent people need to share their experiences. It’s too early for a science. What we need now are the diaries of explorers. We need many diaries of many explorers so we can start to get a feeling for the territory.”
Terence McKenna, interview with Will Noffke in the Winter, 1989 issue of “Revision,” from “The Archaic Revival.”
“Who is doing research with the hallucinogens? Very few, I am afraid.… There is a small body of work … using animal behavior.… Unfortunately, a lot of this work is geared toward the negative. This is sometimes a direct consequence of its being funded by agencies that are invested in painting a dark picture of the hallucinogens.… This is most evident in the current palaver on the neurotoxicity of Ecstasy (or MDMA). Everything in the scientific literature is funded by the government and is directed toward serotonin neurotoxicity. No human work is reported, nor is it even possible that it can be done.… Virtually none. In off-the-record (underground) research, there is a scatter of it around the world, but almost nothing is talked about openly, for reasons that are completely obvious. I hear about some of it in private correspondence, but I know of no way in which it can be made part of the public’s knowledge. Up until the passage of the Analog Drug Bill, I felt quite comfortable about publishing my own findings from human research, but now I have to completely re-evaluate the manner in which I can talk about my findings. In case you’re unaware of the wording of the Analog Drug Bill, it’s worth a little emphasis to show how effectively it was designed to stop research in this area.… Note that … the grammatically monstrous term ‘substantially similar’ is in no wise defined. And once an analog is defined, it becomes a felony to use it in humans.”
Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, private correspondence, 1988
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The four Pthang teen-age paddlers were divided between the two roomy, high-prowed bark canoes, meaning Chantal and Matthew in one craft and Skeezix in the other — Skeezix guarding the ample supply of food the Pthang had sent along with them — had little to do but lean back against the thwarts and enjoy a pleasant summer morning on the bay.
Old Henry Annesley, while insisting he was glad to have finally had some news from home, also offered some private parting advice against opening the interdimensional floodgates too wide. Matthew had agreed wholeheartedly.
Bidge had somehow refrained from humpi
ng Matthew goodbye in public, though it had been a close thing.
Skeezix had to be warned to keep his weight on the interior wooden braces of the canoe. No one was sure the material was actually birch bark — who knew if there were actual birch trees here? — but whatever kind of bark it was, bark canoes might be light and maneuverable, but their skins were not designed to bear much weight or take much punishment.
The heavily wooded river — they had to duck their heads under overhanging branches on a couple of occasions — wound eastward through a shallow, brackish cove full of turtles and a few small alluvial sand islands to deliver them into the bay.
Old Henry Annesley had warned them the Pthang were not a seafaring people. They used the bark canoes for fishing, netting birds and harvesting wild grains along the river, and would venture out along the shores of the bay in good weather, but they had no taste for the deeper waters to the south. He’d had no trouble finding volunteers to carry them northward toward the head of the bay on a one-day journey — particularly given the widespread feelings of gratitude toward Chantal and Skeezix for their help in the latest battle against the arachnids — though he mentioned there might be some concern about the deep channel between Warwick Point and Patience Island.
There was a rocky island just off the river mouth where gulls squawked and some seals honked as they fought for the best basking spots in the sun.
“Seals,” Matthew noted, with evident distaste.
“You don’t like seals?” Chantal asked.
“They’re OK if they’re not defecating directly on your porch or dock. People who take cute seal pictures never mention the stench. But if it’s up to me, I’m going to hope we don’t see any more, today.”
“Matthew! You just have no appreciation for the variety of nature’s bounty.”
“If you say so.”
Now their helmsmen steered the canoes sharply north along the shore, then angled northeast to skirt Quonset Point, where they clung especially close to shore. The first half of their journey then continued due north, keeping the land close on their left, which Chantal insisted on calling their “port beam.”
Their passage was quiet enough that they occasionally spooked small shoreline creatures or families of ducks who erupted in explosions of wing-beating to make good their escape. The bay wasn’t exactly millpond calm — a broad and windy estuary fed by several rivers from the north and flooded by a race of twice-daily ocean tides channeling up from the south was hardly ever that — but the gentle waves, driven by a mild westerly, didn’t seem to give the paddlers much trouble.
Once they passed the outflow of another slow-moving river, though — old Henry had called it the Potowomut — the consultation between the two navigators in the sterns of the canoes grew a bit more forceful, with one of the lads pointing off to the right, the other straight ahead.
The nature of the discussion was fairly obvious. Greenwich Bay was opening to their left. Staying close to shore around the entire inside arc of the bay would add miles to the route — leaving the paddlers with less energy for the return leg, as well as with fewer hours of daylight. The short route led due east from here — a quick mile-and-a-half across open water to where Warwick Point could be seen jutting down from the north, creating the narrow passage inside Patience Island. Once around the point their route would lie northward again, straight up the Providence River
“Are they really that concerned about a mile of open water?” Chantal asked
“They say there’s deep water off that point,” Matthew reported. “Old Henry mentioned a fifty-foot channel. It’s not the open water itself so much as that deep passage. And even if my eyes aren’t what they used to be, I think I see more seals on that island.”
“You do,” Skeezix confirmed.
“Seals, again?” Chantal asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think the seals are going to hurt us.”
“No,” Matthew agreed, though he still looked unhappy.
“But we’ve got to round the point either way, right?”
The same logic apparently won the day among the Pthang, as the two craft now angled sharply to starboard. The bow paddlers pulled some stumpy five-foot masts from the bottoms of each craft, unfurled some modest triangular reed sails, and stepped the masts in special frames just forward of the midship thwarts. A simple boom held each sail straight out to the side, and Matthew and Skeezix were instructed by hand signals to hold coarse woven ropes which would keep them there, enhancing their speed by whatever tail wind the sails could capture.
Aiming directly for the tip of Warwick Point, all four paddlers now assumed grim expressions and began digging for more speed. Chantal admired the flexing of the teen-age paddlers’ well-developed back and shoulder muscles, but any attempt to inspire a measure of jealousy in Matthew was fruitless — he was oblivious. They’d passed a few exposed rocks at mid-passage and had actually closed at least two-thirds of the distance to the point — the bottom gradually dropping away beneath them — when they picked up a group of three Atlantic dolphins, leaping and diving in time with the paddlers and holding position in the modest bow waves the two sleek little craft were throwing off to their left.
Everyone smiled at the dolphins.
Then the stern paddler in the right-hand craft said something in a low voice, and all three of their remaining Pthang companions turned their heads away from the dolphins, to the waters just to their right.
“What the hell is that?” Chantal asked.
“Just what it looks like,” Matthew replied, as they all watched the gray triangular fin slicing the water off to starboard. The fin was as tall as Skeezix, if Skeezix had wanted to stand up, which he most certainly did not. “Shark.”
“Shark?” Skeezix asked. “It looks like a submarine. And what’s that thing following behind it, moving back and forth?”
“That’s its tail,” Matthew replied.
“Its tail?”
That meant the shark was about twice the length of their 12-foot canoes.
“But it eats, like, plankton, right?” asked Skeezix, a bit nervously.
“It eats whatever it wants,” Matthew replied. “But it’s a deep-water critter, by nature. The only reason it would be drawn into waters this shallow would be for a nice luncheon buffet of something the right size.”
“Great white?” Chantal asked, in a voice that would have seemed surprisingly calm, if it were anyone but Chantal.
“Maybe. It’s a little small for a megalodon. They could go 50 or 60 feet.”
The paddlers, still pushing their shoulders into it to maintain as much speed as possible, grimly gave the creature its name in Pthang.
“Tooth,” Skeezix translated. “They’re calling it ‘Big Tooth.’”
“In Greek, Megalodon,” Matthew said.
The torpedo-like gray form seemed to be having no trouble matching their speed, the side-to-side motion of its forceful tail enabling it to cruise along just below the surface some thirty yards to the right of the starboard canoe — the one in which Skeezix rode.
It was a stout, beefy creature, weighing many tons. Skeezix was right — it raised its own bow wave, like a submarine running just below the surface.
“That’s why you were worried about the seals,” Chantal said.
“Everybody has to eat something, and big sharks love seals. I believe that may be the ‘sea monster off Hope Island’ we’ve all been hearing so much about. Though in our case, I’m afraid it’s more than just a ghostly apparition.”
“I’m afraid you may not have long to remind me about my previous enthusiasm for the variety of nature’s bounty.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, babe.”
Chantal had calmly unfastened the lid of her aluminum case. She now started methodically assembling her .50-cal.
“I hate to see you put that thing to your shoulder again,” Matthew said.
“And I hate to see that thing bite one of these canoes in half,” she repli
ed.
The dolphins had disappeared. Now, higher in the sky, three good-sized leather-winged pterodactyls were circling, gradually giving up altitude as they descended for a closer look at the developing chase. They looked to be about the size of single-man gliders.
“I don’t suppose those buzzards eat shark?” Skeezix asked.
“More likely they’re hoping to pick up some nice scraps that our new friend leaves behind,” Matthew replied.
The four Pthang were puffing, wasting no breath on talk but still driving directly for the point as fast as they could,
Now the shark dived, crossing beneath both canoes and then back again, actually brushing against the canoe that carried Skeezix as it came back toward the surface.
“What’s he doing?” Skeezix asked, none too calm, grasping both sides of the craft with whitened knuckles as it rocked from side to side.
“Checking to see if the canoes will bite back.”
“Which we will,” Chantal said, slamming her magazine home into her shoulder weapon. “If anything happens to me, dear, I’m sure you know how to work the bolt on this thing. Just get your body as low as you can, so the recoil doesn’t spill the canoe or throw you overboard. She do kick a bit.”
As she talked she slid her hips down till she was almost flat on her side in the canoe bottom, just her head and the rifle above the level of the gunwale, looking for a chance to get in a head shot should the massive beast draw away and then swing in on a more perpendicular course to sink its teeth into its birch-bark prey.
They were less than a quarter-mile from the point, now. The paddlers’ breathing was growing more ragged. The length of four football fields, now three football fields. The beast couldn’t swim in water as shallow as the canoe could handle. If only they could close the point.
Sure enough, the big creature angled away from them now, then turned and began accelerating back toward them, at an angle that would allow it to sink its teeth into the middle of the nearest craft. Skeezix, reluctant to scamper around and upset the craft’s balance even if he was currently cast in the role of banana in today’s banana split, just stared at the monster coming toward him. It raised its head partly out of the water now, the head alone as big as a double-door refrigerator, throwing a much bigger bow wave than the canoes. Scenes you saw in movies couldn’t possibly prepare you for the shock of the sheer size of the thing — a monster out of the half-remembered nightmares of the race. If one of those things ever got ahold of you, kicking and yelling were going to be about as useful as a cockroach turning to fight a shoe.
The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) Page 23
