“All set?” asked someone from behind him.
Lee looked over his shoulder and saw Corporal Jones sitting in a wicker chair, his foot braced against a railing while he tilted the chair back against the wall. Without waiting for a reply, Jones fell forward with a thump and
“The hospital’s this way, sir,” he said as he jammed his regulation Stetson on his head and descended the veranda steps. “Oh, and sir,” he said. “I’d keep the hat on if I were you; we’ve had a lot of problems here with guys who didn’t wear them and wound up flat on their backs with heat prostration.
Lee needed no prodding as he stepped into the direct sunlight and hurriedly covered his head. Already, as he and the corporal pulled away from the barracks, the structure assumed connotations of coolness with its open windows, shaded veranda and nearby trees whose branches seemed to wilt in the heat as they drooped and poured over the sloping roof of the building.
But Corporal Jones, unaware of Lee’s regret at leaving the cool protection of the barracks, had proceeded across the unit parade ground and was just entering the forbidding closeness of the surrounding jungle. Lee had to hurry along to catch up to him.
The corporal had stepped from the parade ground onto a neatly maintained trail that passed between a few other buildings before winding through a bit of jungle. Following Jones, Lee was immediately surrounded by the sights and sounds of the tropics: crying birds and exotic plant life including some species of flowers that flourished only in the dank gloom of the rain forest. The sight of hidden beauty excited his interest and he promised himself that as soon as he had the time, he would collect samples. Looking around, he was sure he could identify at least a half dozen new varieties of flora.
“…until we cleared it all out,” Jones was saying. “Altogether, it took nearly three weeks of constant hacking to open even this little trail to the top of the hill. And we still have to keep a regular squad of men on duty every day, working on different stretches of it to keep it clear.”
Lee had not been paying attention to the corporal and now that looked more closely, he could see the shreds of uprooted vegetation that had been cast to the side of the trail, the shoots of new growth already coming up from among the debris.
“The hospital’s been located on the hill?” Lee asked.
“Yes sir,” Jones replied. “Doctor Jonas told the General how malaria and yellow fever are caused by noxious gases that rise from rotted vegetation in these hot tropics and that if the hospital was located on high ground, gentle breezes would keep it cleared of gases. You can imagine the General’s feelings about having to detail hundreds of men not only to clear a trail to the top of the highest hill in the area, but then having to build a good, sturdy building there to boot.”
Lee pictured the General and said, “Yeah, I can imagine his displeasure.” Then, “It’s good to hear that Dr. Jonas has taken every precaution to control the spread of tropical diseases.”
“I won’t deny that, sir,” answered the soldier, “but if you don’t mind my saying so, it hasn’t done much good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean sir, that I don’t know about any official reports or what you’ve been told, but around here, people have been dropping like flies despite the doctor’s precautions.”
“Oh?” Lee had expected a few more deaths than what was reported to the public; standard operating procedure. “How many would you say?”
“At least thirty or thirty-five thousand.”
“Thirty-five thousand!” Lee staggered to a halt, hardly able to believe his own ears. “Are you serious man?”
Jones turned and said, “Dead serious sir. This climate is deadly for white men, and just as murderous for coloreds too. You see, at first, the army and railroad management thought the colored races…Negroes, Indians and Chinamen…would stand up better in this climate than white men. But it’s proven to be just the opposite. As fast as the company can import laborers from abroad, they catch malaria, cholera or old Yellow Jack as quick as you can say it. Why just a week ago, a platoon of fifty recruits pulled in to help patrol the new extension on the line, and today there aren’t but two left alive. It’s said that a man’s died for every tie laid down by the railroad, and at last count, that added up to almost forty thousand.”
Lee stood there in the green tinged half light of the forest, his mind numb. Thirty-five thousand! It was simply inconceivable. And the public back home knew nothing of it! Abruptly he bestirred himself from his involuntary lethargy and determined more than ever to reach the hospital and the doctor in charge as quickly as possible.
The trail up the hill switched back gently to and fro with the contours of the rising slope. It was broad and well kept with a large team of Chinese workmen constantly toiling in shifts keeping it clear. Lee marveled at their ability to work so diligently in the stifling climate. Looking away and up ahead, he saw that he and Jones were very nearly at the hospital and in a few seconds more had reached the front entrance. Jones clambered up the steps ahead of him, his feet clumping hollowly on the wooden planking, and jerked open a screen door that squeaked in protest. Lee followed him and entered the soothing shadow of the veranda that encircled the hospital, thankful to be out of the hot tropical sun. Although Jones moved quickly toward the main doorway, Lee needed a few seconds for his eyes to become accustomed the dim light of the interior of the building. Inside, Jones was already asking for the doctor’s whereabouts.
“Dr. Jonas is in his office, sir,” reported Jones. “Want to follow me?” Without waiting for a reply, the corporal led the way along a short corridor and, stopping only long enough for a quick rap at one of the doors, held it open for Lee.
Inside, Dr. Jonas was just rising from behind his desk, a hand coming up to clasp Lee’s. “Welcome to Colon, Doctor. I heard your passage was more than merely an uneventful one.”
Lee shook the man’s hand firmly. “It sure was. I’m thankful that I’d already contracted malaria once, otherwise I surely would have perished before ever seeing your hospital.”
“That’s all too true I’m afraid,” replied Jonas. “We’ve had more than our share of cases since the railroad project began.”
Lee decided to waste little time in getting to the crux of his interests. “Doctor, I’ve heard that you’ve had a less-than-easy time here yourself. Is it true that you’ve had more than thirty thousand deaths by disease since the beginning of the project?”
Jonas straightened at the blunt question, his eyes seeking out corporal Jones. At last he sighed and said, “It’s true all right. This climate is killing men by the hundreds. But it’s not only that. I’m convinced that the railroad company is the chief culprit, by driving its workers at an inhuman pace. I’ve fought more than once with them over this issue, even to the point of traveling back to New York to see the banks that are paying for it, but all to no avail.” He strolled over to the screened window overlooking the trail as it wound down the face of the hill. “Fighting them is like knocking my head against a stone wall, so I’ve given up to concentrate on trying to save as many people as I can while I’m here. Unfortunately, all my efforts have only amounted to a drop in the bucket.”
There was silence for a moment as Lee pondered his own possible actions after he took over the hospital. Then Jonas spoke up once more, this time with a different quality in his voice.
“One of the good things about being stationed here though, is the unparalleled opportunities for pure research it affords. Why, I’ve been able to accomplish in a year what would take half a lifetime if I had remained in the States. With all the information I’ve gathered here, it’ll be at least ten years before I’m through correlating all the facts and figures.”
Happy to change the subject for the moment to a less somber one, Lee agreed. “Yes, I’ve already determined to begin gathering some of the tropical flowers I’ve seen in the forest. The country around here is a vast unexplored wilderness. A true natural laboratory.”
Excited now with the conversation moving along in a less sensitive direction, Jonas warmed to the subject. “I know what you mean. I’ve had a once in a lifetime opportunity to assemble a complete anthropological collection with specimens from all over the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come and see.”
With that, Jonas led him through a rear door and out into a courtyard area enclosed by the hospital building’s three wings. As his guide stepped aside and gestured vaguely to the open space beyond the screened veranda, Lee stopped short as his eyes fell upon the most fantastic sight he had ever seen. Row upon row of skeletal remains lay neatly across the courtyard. Each skeleton complete in every detail, not a bone out of place or missing. Above each head, a wooden marker had been sunk into the ground with a small sign affixed to it that listed a set of statistics on the physical remains. Lee was stunned with the sheer audacity of it, the sheer tastelessness of the thing.
“What have you got here?” Lee asked, still somewhat stunned at the sight.
Jonas didn’t seem to notice Lee’s discomfiture, replying with an air of pride in his voice. “It’s my museum. My museum of anthropology. In fact, I believe this collection of skeletal remains is the most complete in the Americas, perhaps in the world. Do you know that the company here employs men of every racial type in the world? Aborigines from Australia, Indians from the United States, Negroes from Africa, Chinese from Asia, even some peoples I’ve never heard of! With these remains, I believe I can identify every branch of the human family. An evolution from one to the other so to speak. When I return home, I’ll bring these specimens with me to continue my research.”
“But,” Lee began, gulped, and continued, “these are human beings, man. What of their families?”
Jonas waved a hand. “Think nothing of it, Dr. Lee. I made sure these unfortunates had no families. Or at least, possessed no identification that would indicate such. They were headed for a mass grave meant for such unknowns. But now, having rescued their remains from oblivion, I’ll give them the opportunity to serve science and the world in a way they never had when alive.”
Lee took a hesitant step into the yard and, apparently interpreting the move as a sign of interest, Jonas quickly moved ahead to one the skeletons. “This one here is a rare dwarf type. See the curious deformations in its limbs?”
Lee studied the remains and despite himself, found his scientific curiosity aroused. He was about to take a closer look at the headboard when something else caught his attention. Straightening, he walked over a few rows and looked down at the most peculiar skeleton he had ever seen. “This one…”
Jonas had accompanied him in silence, allowing his collection to speak for itself. “Your professionalism and medical eye impress me doctor,” he said. “This is the most interesting specimen I have in my museum.” He squatted down alongside the skeleton, Lee doing likewise, and pointed with his finger. “Do you see the strange formation of the hands?”
Lee had to nod. “Yes, it seems vaguely icthyic. In fact,” his eye quickly scanned the rest of the skeleton, “the whole body possesses peculiarities one would normally associate with sea life.”
“Exactly.”
“Who was he?”
“All I know is that he belonged to a small tribe of Indians, or at least natives of this area, who inhabit a particular region along the eastern coast of the country. I’ve questioned some of the other Indians and Mestizoes in the area, and all agree that the tribe this fellow belonged to is very peculiar, insular, and that they inspire in outsiders an unexplainable revulsion.” He rose and reached for a small sack that hung from the headboard. “These were some of his belongings. Nothing to identify him of course, but he did carry around the most odd bits and pieces I’ve ever seen.”
Lee held out his hands to receive the objects. Most of them were what he’d expect of a native fisherman: shark’s teeth, bits of bone and rock, shells, and dried vegetation. But one item held his interest. It was a scrap of cured animal hide with very faint markings on it. As he held it out to the light, Jonas noticed his attention.
“There’s some sort of Spanish writing on it, but I can’t make anything out of it.”
“You’re right,” agreed Lee. “It is in Spanish, I can only read a few words. Something about a place…thing…person…named…Clulu I think. And something else relating to it…those who serve, tend or guard the former. The ‘Deep Ones?’ But it’s all so garbled, as if whatever the subject was, it couldn’t be translated accurately into Spanish. Or at least what command of the language the writer had. Hmm, this is funny. There’s a kind of drawing at the conclusion of the message or whatever. It looks like a star or something.” Lee handed the scrap back to Jonas who replaced it with the other things in the sack.
The two men reentered the doctor’s office and somehow the conversation returned to the astonishingly high number of deaths among the workers. “Well, we’ve done everything proper for the prevention of the spread of malaria and so forth, but it just doesn’t seem to have helped. You’ve seen that our beds are all standing freely in pans of water to protect from crawling insects and all our windows and doors are kept wide open for maximum ventilation.”
Lee sighed; he was getting tired. The finish of the long trek this morning, and the visit here this afternoon, had completely winded him. “Doctor,” he said at last, “do you mind if we end our conversation here for today and go on with the hospital review tomorrow? I’m really quite tired.”
“Of course Doctor, how stupid of me. You must be weary after your grueling trip cross country. Go on to your quarters and take a good rest. We’ll continue tomorrow as you say.”
Lee left the hospital more than a little troubled. All these people dying of disease and the doctors really stymied in developing methods to combat them. He was walking half stumblingly down the grade of the road from the hospital when, unbidden, the image of the water pans that the legs of the beds stood in entered his mind; the myriad flying insects that infested them. Mosquitoes. Finally, a vague idea teased at the recesses of his memory. Hadn’t he read of a handful of European physicians, French and British mostly, who suggested the notion that insects carried the hidden germ of the plague? He stopped suddenly. Mosquitoes in particular?
Images of standing water, natural attractions to mosquitoes, played in his brain: the pans at the bed-legs, rain barrels at the corners of the hospital roof, the catch basins about the boles of the young trees in the doctor’s garden. Everywhere, breeding grounds for mosquitoes. He suddenly halted and turned back to the hospital. Without pausing to summon Dr. Jonas, he sped through the first anteroom to the laboratory. Ignoring the physician’s grisly museum, he found a large magnifying glass and a petri dish.
It was the work of seconds to entrap a number of mosquitoes between the two halves of the dish and to train the glass on the captured insects. Looking at the creature more closely, he couldn’t help noticing their unusual size. Of course he was a stranger to these tropics, and it was quite possible that he was simply unfamiliar with this genus; still, he couldn’t help a chill from crawling up his back as he peered into the glass.
Almost as soon as he had his first good look at the creatures, he recoiled in shock, his body instinctively pushing itself away from the laboratory table. Every muscle rigid, he propped himself up against a nearby counter, knuckles white as they gripped the wooden surface. His gaze held the specimen dish where it sat, impossibly placid, on the table before him. Slowly, his pounding heart quieted as he drew the sleeve of his shirt across his feverish brow. His hands trembled as he brought the glass back up for another look, but just the thought of seeing again the sight that had met him when looked the first time, kept him even from approaching the table.
At last, a full quarter of an hour later, he pulled himself together enough for a second look.
Nothing had changed. But through an effort of will, he forced himself to stay and further examine his catch.
Up from the petr
i dish and through the thick lens of the magnifying glass, stared one of the most disturbing sights he had ever witnessed. Although as a physician he’d seen many grisly sights before, not the least of which included the field hospitals during the late war between the states, he felt instinctively that no insect in the animal kingdom would ever claim as members of their genus, the horrors he was now studying.
A multitude of great, bulbous eyes covered what he assumed to be the head of the creature, punctuated by coarse fibers of cilia-like hairs, some of which hung low beneath the “eyes” to lengths ten times that of the others. Other, more rigid-seeming tendrils stuck straight up above like strange antennae. Whereas insects sported an abdomen and thorax, six legs and two wings, these creatures held only the latter in common. And those seemed to flicker in ghostly insubstantiality with an electric-blue light that, now that he was aware of it, crackled audibly in the silent room. But the final horror was the fact that each of the creature’s “legs” terminated in tiny, perfectly formed hands…
He quit looking then and backed away, clenching his eyes shut in a futile attempt to block the vision of the creatures from his mind’s eye. He succeeded in banishing all but a single image. The last detail he’d observed was the one he most wanted to forget, but paradoxically, was the one he knew he would always remember.
He remembered the mere glimpse he’d had of the long tube-like shape that projected obscenely from the creature’s underside to nearly three times the length of its entire body, terminating in a sharp needle that he knew was inserted into the insect’s prey. Just beneath the jointure of the appendage and the body, hung a redly-bloated sack. A sack so heavy, it almost held the creature earthbound, despite the electric power that pulsated in its wings.
Lee dropped the dish on the floor and in a reaction that surprised him with its vehemence, set his heel to it with instinctive abhorrence.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 26
