The Amazing Dr. Darwin

by Charles Sheffield

  Darwin grinned, intoxicated by the clear air of the fells. “Of course. The mention of treasure had nothing to do with it, did it? You came only to look after me.”

  “Hmph. Well, I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that. Damn it all, Erasmus, you know me. I’ve dived for pearls off the eastern Spice Islands; I’ve hunted over half the Americas for El Dorado; I’ve scrabbled after rubies in Persia and Baluchistan; and I’ve dug for diamonds all the way from Ceylon to Samarkand. And what have I got out of it? A permanent sunburn, a bum that’s been bitten by all the fleas in Asia, and a steady dose of malaria three times a year. But I could no more resist coming here, when I heard Thaxton talk about Odirex’s treasure, than you could stop… philosophizing.”

  Darwin laughed aloud. “Ah, you’re missing the point, Jacob. Look out there.” He waved a brawny arm at the Tees valley, ascending with the river before them. “There’s a whole treasure right here, for the taking. If I knew how to use them, there are plants for a whole new medical pharmacopeia, waiting for our use. I’m a botanist, and I can’t even name half of them. Hey, Mr. Thaxton.” He leaned farther out of the coach, looking up to the driver’s seat above and in front of him.

  Richard Thaxton leaned perilously over the edge of the coach. “Yes, Dr. Darwin?”

  “I’m seeing a hundred plants here that don’t grow in the lowlands. If I describe them to you, can you arrange to get me samples of each?”

  “Easily. But I should warn you, there are many others that you will not even see from the coach. Look.” He stopped the carriage, swung easily down, and went off to a mossy patch a few yards to one side. When he came back, bareheaded, dark hair blowing in the breeze, he carried a small plant with broad leaves and a number of pale green tendrils with blunt, sticky ends. “There’s one for your collection. Did you ever see or hear of anything like this?”

  Darwin looked at it closely, smelled it, broke off a small piece of a leaf and chewed it thoughtfully. “Aye. I’ve not seen it for years, but I think I know what it is. Butterwort, isn’t it? It rings a change on the usual order of things—animals eat plants, but this plant eats animals, or at least insects.”

  “That’s right.” Thaxton smiled. “Good thing it’s only a few inches high. Imagine it ten feet tall, and you’d really have a ‘Treasure of Odirex’ that could have scared away the Romans.”

  “Good God.” Jacob Pole was aghast. “You don’t really think that there could be such a thing, do you—up on Cross Fell?”

  “Of course not. It would have been found long ago—there are shepherds up there every day, you know. They’d have found it.”

  “Unless it found them,” said Pole gloomily. He retreated even farther into his greatcoat, Thaxton climbed back into the driver’s seat and they went on their way. The great expanse of the winter fells was spreading about them, a rolling sea of copper, sooty black and silver-grey. The land lay bleak, already in the grip of winter. At last, after three more hours of steady climbing, they came to Milburn. Thaxton leaned far over again, to shout into the interior of the coach. “Two more miles, and we’ll be home.”

  The village of Milburn was small and windswept, a cluster of stone houses around the church and central common. Thaxton’s coach seemed too big, out of scale with the mean buildings of the community. At the cross-roads that led away to the neighboring village of Newbiggin, Thaxton halted the carriage and pointed to the great mass of Cross Fell, lying to the northeast. Darwin looked at it with interest, and even Jacob Pole, drawn by the sight of his potential treasure-ground, ventured out of his huddle of coats and shawls.

  After a couple of minutes of silent inspection of the bleak prospect, rising crest upon crest to the distant, hidden summit, Thaxton shook the reins to drive on.

  “Wait—don’t go yet!” Darwin’s sudden cry halted Thaxton just as he was about to start the coach forward.

  “What is it, Dr. Darwin? Is something the matter?”

  Darwin did not reply. Instead, he opened the carriage door, and despite his bulk swung easily to the ground. He walked rapidly across the common, to where a boy about ten years old was sitting by a stone milestone. The lad was deformed of feature, with a broad, flattened skull and deep-set eyes. He was lightly dressed in the cast-off rags of an adult, and he did not seem to feel the cold despite the biting breeze.

  The child started up at Darwin’s approach, but did not run away. He was less than four feet tall, heavy chested and bowlegged. Darwin stood before him and looked at him with a professional eye.

  “What is it, Erasmus?” Jacob Pole had dismounted also and come hurrying after. “What’s his disease?”

  Darwin had placed a gentle hand on the boy’s head and was slowly turning it from side to side. The child, puzzled but reassured by Darwin’s calm manner and soft touch, permitted the examination without speaking.

  “It is not disease, Jacob.” Darwin shook his head thoughtfully. “At first I thought it must be, but the lad is quite healthy. Never in my medical experience have I seen such a peculiar physiognomy. Look at the strange bone structure of the skull, and the curious regression of the jaw. And see that odd curve, in the relation of the thoracic and cervical vertebrae.” Darwin puffed out his full lips, and ran a gentle finger over the child’s lumpy forehead. “Tell me, my boy, how old are you?”

  The child did not reply. He looked at Darwin with soft, intelligent eyes, and made a strange, strangled noise high in his throat.

  “You’ll get no reply from Jimmy,” said Thaxton, who had followed behind the other two men. “He’s mute—bright enough, and he’ll follow any instructions. But he can’t speak.”

  Darwin nodded, and ran his hand lightly over the boy’s throat and larynx. “Yes, there’s something odd about the structure here, too. The hyoid bone is malformed, and the thyroid prominence is absent. Tell me, Mr. Thaxton, are the boy’s parents from these parts of Cumbria?” Darwin smiled encouragingly at the lad, though his own lack of front teeth made that more frightening than reassuring. A piece of silver, pressed into the small hand, was more successful. The boy smiled back tentatively, and pointed upwards toward the fell.

  “See, he understands you very well,” said Thaxton. “His mother is up on Dufton Fell, he says.” He turned away, drawing the other two men after him, before he continued in a low voice. “Jimmy’s a sad case. His mother’s a shepherdess, daft Molly Metcalf. She’s a poor lass who doesn’t have much in the way of wits. Just bright enough to tend the sheep, up on Dufton Fell and Cross Fell.”

  “And the father?” asked Darwin.

  “God only knows. Some vagrant. Anyway, Jimmy’s not much to look at, but his brain is all right. He’ll never be much more than a dwarf, I fear, but there will always be work for him here in the village. He’s trustworthy and obedient, and we’ve all grown used to the way he looks.”

  “He’s certainly no beauty though,” said Jacob Pole. “That’s a strange deformity. You know what he reminds me of? When I was in the Spice Islands, there was a creature that the Dutch called the Orange-Lord, or Orang-Laut, or some such name. It lived in the deep forest, and it was very shy; but I once saw a body that the natives brought in. The skull and bone structure reminded me of your Jimmy.”

  “It’s a long way from the Spice Islands to Cross Fell, Colonel,” said Thaxton. “And you can guess what Anna has been saying—that daft Molly was impregnated by a fiend of the fell, some diabolical incubus, and Jimmy is the devilish result. What do you think of that, Dr. Darwin?”

  Erasmus Darwin had been listening absentmindedly, from time to time turning back for another look at the boy. “I don’t know what to think yet, Mr. Thaxton,” he finally replied. “But I can assure you of one thing. The only way that a human woman bears children is from impregnation by a human male. Your wife’s chatter about an incubus is unscientific piffle.”

  “Impregnation is not always necessary, Doctor. Are you not forgetting the virgin birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ?”

  “Don’t get him started on
that,” said Jacob Pole hastily, “or we’ll be here all day. You may not know it, Mr. Thaxton, but this is Erasmus Darwin, the doctor, the inventor, the philosopher, the poet, the everything—except the Christian.”

  Thaxton smiled. “I had heard as much, to tell the truth, from Dr. Warren. ‘If you are wise,’ he said, ‘you will not dispute religion with Dr. Darwin. If you are wiser yet, you will not dispute anything with him.’ ”

  The men climbed back into the coach and drove slowly on through Milburn, to Thaxton’s house north of the village. Before they went inside the big stone-built structure, they again took a long look at Cross Fell, rising vast to the northeast.

  “It’s clear today,” said Thaxton. “That means that the Helm won’t be on the fell, and Anna won’t be seeing or hearing anything tonight. Dr. Darwin, I don’t know what your diagnosis will be, but I swear to God that the next twenty-four hours will be the hardest for me of any that I can remember. Come in, now, and welcome to Heartsease.”

  Darwin did not speak, but he patted the other man sympathetically on the shoulder with a firm hand. They walked together to the front door of the house.

  * * *

  “They are taking an awfully long time.” Richard Thaxton rose from his seat by the fire and began to pace the study, looking now and again at the ceiling.

  “As they should be,” said Jacob Pole reassuringly. “Richard, sit down and relax. I know Erasmus, and I’ve seen him work many times in the past. He has the greatest power of observation and invention of any man I ever met. He sees disease where others can see nothing—in the way a man walks, or talks, or stands, or even lies. And he is supremely thorough, and in the event of dire need, supremely innovative. I owe to him the lives of my wife, Elizabeth, and my daughter Emily. He will come down when he is satisfied, not before.”

  Thaxton did not reply. He stood at the window, looking out at the inscrutable bulk of Cross Fell. A strong northeast wind, harsh and gusting, bent the leafless boughs of the fruit trees in the kitchen garden outside the study window, and swirled around the isolated house.

  “See up there,” he said at last. “The Helm is growing. In another two hours the top of the fell will be invisible.”

  Pole rose also and joined him by the window. At the top of the fell, a solid bank of rolling cloud was forming, unmoved by the strengthening wind. As they watched, it grew and thickened, shrouding the higher slopes and slowly moving lower.

  “Will it be there tonight?” asked Pole.

  “Until dawn. Guarding the treasure. God, I’m beginning to talk like Anna. It’s catching me, too.”

  “Has there ever been any real treasure on the fell? Gold, or silver?”

  “I don’t know. Lead, there surely is. It has been mined since Roman times, and there are mine workings all over this area. As for gold, I have heard much talk of it, but talk is easy. I have never seen nuggets, or even dust.”

  Jacob Pole rubbed his hands together. “That’s meat and drink to me, Richard. Fiends or no fiends, there’s nothing I’d like better than to spend a few days prospecting around Cross Fell. I’ve travelled a lot farther than this, to places a good deal more inhospitable, on much less evidence. Yes, and I’ve fought off a fair number of fiends, too—human ones.”

  “And you have found gold?”

  Pole grimaced. “Pox on it, you would ask me that. Never, not a pinch big enough to cover a whore’s modesty. But luck can change any time. This may be it.”

  Richard Thaxton pushed his fingers through his black, bushy hair, and smiled at Jacob Pole indulgently. “I’ve often wondered what would take a man to the top of Cross Fell in midwinter. I think I’ve found out. One thing I’ll wager, you’ll not get Dr. Darwin to go with you. He’s carrying a bit too much weight for that sort of enterprise.”

  As he spoke, they heard the clump of footsteps on the stairs above them. Thaxton at once fell silent and his manner became tense and somber. When Erasmus Darwin entered, Thaxton raised his eyebrows questioningly but did not speak.

  “Sane as I am,” said Darwin at once, smiling. “And a good deal saner than Jacob.”

  “—or than you, Richard,” added Anna Thaxton, coming in lightly behind Darwin. She was a thin, dark-haired woman, with high cheekbones and sparkling grey eyes. She crossed the room and put her arms around her husband. “As soon as Dr. Darwin had convinced himself that I was sane, he confessed to me that he was not really here to test me for a consumptive condition, but to determine my mental state. Now”—she smiled smugly—“he wants to do some tests on you, my love.”

  Richard Thaxton pressed his wife to him as though he meant to crack her ribs. Then her final words penetrated, and he looked at her in astonishment.

  “Me! You’re joking. I’ve seen no fiends.”

  “Exactly,” said Darwin. He moved over to the table by the study window, where an array of food dishes had been laid out. “You saw nothing. For the past hour, I have been testing your wife’s sight and hearing. Both are phenomenally acute, especially at low levels. Now I want to know about yours.”

  “But others were present when Anna saw her fiends. Surely we are not all blind and deaf.”

  “Certainly, all are not. But Anna tells me that when she saw and heard her mysteries on Cross Fell, it was night and you alone were with her upstairs. You saw and heard nothing. Then when you brought others, they also saw and heard nothing. But they came from lighted rooms downstairs. It takes many minutes for human eyes to acquire their full night vision—and it is hard for a room full of people, no matter how they try, to remain fully silent. So, I say again, how good are your eyes and ears?”

  “I tell you, they are excellent!” exclaimed Thaxton.

  “And I tell you, they are indifferently good!” replied Anna Thaxton. “Who cannot tell a rook from a blackbird at thirty paces, or count the sheep on Cross Fell?”

  They still held each other close, arguing across each other’s shoulder. Darwin looked on with amusement, quietly but systematically helping himself to fruit, clotted cream, Stilton cheese and West Indian sweetmeats from the side table. “Come, Mr. Thaxton,” he said at last. “Surely you are not more prepared to believe that your wife is mad, than believe yourself a little myopic? Shortsightedness is no crime.”

  Thaxton shrugged. “All right. All right.” He held his wife at arms’ length, his hands on her shoulders. “Anna, I’ve never won an argument with you yet, and if Dr. Darwin is on your side I may as well surrender early. Do your tests. But if you are right, what does that mean?”

  Darwin munched on a candied quince, and rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. “Why, then we no longer have a medical problem, but something much more intriguing and pleasant. You see, it means that Anna is really seeing something up on Cross Fell, when the Helm sits on the upland. And that is most interesting to me—be it fiends, fairies, hobgoblins, or simple human skullduggery. Come, my equipment for the tests is upstairs. It will take about an hour, and we should be finished well before dinner.”

  As they left, Jacob Pole went again to the window. The Helm had grown. It stood now like a great, grey animal, crouching at the top of Cross Fell and menacing the nearer lowlands. Pole sighed.

  “Human skullduggery?” he said to Anna Thaxton. “I hope not. I’ll take fiends, goblins and all—if the Treasure of Odirex is up there with them. Better ghouls and gold together, than neither one.”

  * * *

  “Tonight? You must be joking!”

  “And why not tonight, Mr. Thaxton? The Helm sits on the fell, the night is clear, and the moon is rising. What better time for Anna’s nocturnal visitants?”

  Richard Thaxton looked with concern at Darwin’s bulk, uncertain how to phrase his thought. “Do you think it wise, for a man your age—”

  “—forty-six,” said Darwin.

  “—your age, to undergo exertion on the fell, at night? You are not so young, and the effort will be great. You are not—lissom; and it—”

  “I’m fat,” said Darwin. �
�I regard that as healthy. Good food wards off disease. This world has a simple rule: eat or be eaten. I am not thin, and less agile than a younger man, but I have a sound constitution, and no ailment but a persistent gout. Jacob and I will have no problem.”

  “Colonel Pole also?”

  “Try and stop him. Right, Jacob? He’s been lusting to get up on that fell, ever since he heard the magic word ‘treasure,’ back in Lichfield. Like a youth, ready to mount his first—er—horse.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” said Anna Thaxton. She smiled at Darwin. “And thank you, Doctor, for tempering your simile for a lady’s ears. Now, if your mind is set on Cross Fell tonight, you will need provisions. What should they be?”

  Darwin bowed his head, and smiled his ruined smile. “I have always observed, Mrs. Thaxton, that in practical decision-making, men cannot compare with women. We will need food, shielded lamps, warm blankets, and tinder and flint.”

  “No weapons, or crucifix?” asked Richard Thaxton.

  “Weapons, on Cross Fell at night, would offer more danger to us than to anyone else. As for the crucifix, it has been my experience that it has great influence—on those who are already convinced of its powers. Now, where on the fell should we take up our position?”

  “If you are going,” said Thaxton suddenly, “then I will go with you. I could not let you wander the fell, alone.”

  “No. You must stay here. I do not think that we will need help, but if I am wrong we rely on you to summon and lead it. Remain here with Anna. We will signal you—three lantern flashes from us will be a call for help, four a sign that all is well. Now, where should we position ourselves? Out of sight, but close to the lights you saw.”

  “Come to the window,” said Anna Thaxton. “See where the spur juts out, like the beak of an eagle? That is your best waiting point. The lights show close there, when the fiends of the fell appear. They return there, before dawn. You will not be able to see the actual point of their appearance from the spur. Keep a watch on our bedroom. I will show a light there if the fiends appear. When that happens, skirt the spur, following westward. After a quarter of a mile or so the lights on the fell should be visible to you.”