“‘Damn queer, all these tremors at once!’ he exclaimed. ‘They seem to be getting worse, too.’
“‘I’m beginning to think this whole mountain is queer,’ Skeel said. ‘Tell me, have you two felt anything?’
“We stared at him. We had experienced with increasing strength a sensation so strange that neither Travis nor I had mentioned it. It was a sense of a tangible and powerful force that flooded out over and through us from ahead, a tingling force that had a strange effect upon my will.
“I cannot describe that effect better than by saying that the farther down into the tunnel we went, the more did my own will and personality seem shared or usurped by some will or force utterly alien and different. In other words, that as I went on I was not only Clark Landon but something or a part of something vast and strange, whose will partly replaced Clark Landon’s will in me.
“‘I’ve felt it, yes,’ I told Skeel. ‘But I didn’t know you had. You too, Travis?’
“Travis nodded puzzledly. ‘I’ve felt it also. There must be some centre of radioactive or electrical force down in this mountain and the closer we get to it the more it affects us.’
“‘But what about the tremors?’ Skeel asked. ‘Can we go on in the face of them and this other thing?’
“‘The devil with the tremors,’ said Travis impatiently. ‘There’s something tremendous down inside this mountain and I say we go on, tremors or no tremors.’
“‘What do you think, Landon?’ Skeel asked me. I looked doubtfully from him to Travis.
“‘After all, we’ve been in worse tremors than these,’ I said, ‘and I think Travis is right when he says there must be something tremendous down in this mountain.’
“‘I think there is, myself,’ said Skeel, ‘and I think that with these tremors it’s warning us back!’
“‘Oh, rot!’ said Travis. ‘Are you going to start that silly notion of Noskat’s about earth’s brain being down here?’
“‘No, I’m with you two if you want to go on,’ Skeel said.
“‘Then on it is!’ I said. ‘We can’t go a great deal farther, anyway, for we can’t spend too long a time down here.’
“We resumed our interrupted progress. The tunnel curved on downward, toward the mountain’s heart. The currents of air still rushed down it unceasingly, making me wonder, as we went on, whether what thing of force was down here somehow drew or attracted those air-currents, through this and the other tunnels leading up to the mountain’s sides.
“The tremors were somewhat more violent and it was evident that the whole mountain must be shaking. We moved on without commenting on them, though. It was hard work to keep our footing on the smooth, swaying floor of the tunnel and we were thrown continually against its sides, sometimes with force. But we held to our downward progress, drawn by the mystery we were now sure this mountain held.
“For the strange force that beat upon us from ahead with increasing strength as we went on could only be mysterious and unheard of to our science, so strange it seemed. The sensation as of the impact of a colossal will was stronger and stronger. Can you imagine a will so mighty that mere nearness to it makes one feel its power as tangible force? That is what this alien force inside the mountain felt like to us.
“Skeel’s face was becoming grave and even Travis seemed troubled as we went doubtfully on. The tremors by then had become really terrible, great roarings and shakings that swayed the tunnel’s walls about us. But now so strange was everything, so dazing that vast, enigmatic force that beat stronger upon us from ahead, that we paid small attention.
“We rounded another long curve in the downward-slanting tunnel and saw ghostly, glowing light ahead in it, heard a soft roar of steady sound over the grinding crash of shifting rock. Like puppets drawn by forces outside us, we pressed onward toward the light. As we neared it the impact of strange forces from ahead was almost stunning. There came a great last tremor that almost flung us from our feet. But even Skeel did not mind it, since in the moment it came we had reached the glowing light, had emerged suddenly from the dark tunnel into a great, glowing-lit space.
“We halted in it, stupefied. The tremors stopped altogether at that same moment, but only our subconscious minds registered the fact. We three were gazing across the great cavernous space into which the tunnel opened.
“It seemed in that first stunned glance that this strange cavern must occupy most of the interior of the mountain, so huge was it. It must have been a half-mile in diameter, and was like the interior of a hollow cone.
“The mountain’s dozen tunnels all opened down into it. It was lit by a quivering, glowing light which came from what was beyond doubt the most awesome and stupefying thing that ever man dared to look upon. I cannot, even now, describe to you with one-tenth of its real terrible splendour, the thing that poised at the centre of this cone-like cavern over the rock floor, the thing at which Travis and Skeel and I gazed.
“Can you imagine a great ovoid of pure light, like a huge egg in shape and a hundred feet high, poised upon its smaller end? That was what we three looked upon, a giant ovoid of light or force that towered there at the cone-cavern’s centre, emitting the light that illuminated it and also the enigmatic force that had beat upon us and the soft roar of sound we had heard.
“This ovoid was of all colours, it seemed. Its colours changed with incalculable swiftness like those of a racing cinema film. And those racing tints seemed to reproduce all the colours of the earth.
“The ovoid would flame for an instant with a red like that of devouring volcanic fires, of flowing flame. Then the red would be gone and instead would be a thread of blue, serene as the blue of mountain lakes. The blue would pass into brown like the warm brown of fresh-turned soil, and that in turn into green like that of ocean’s depths or yellow of earth’s fantastic rocks.
“These colours changed and spun and swam in the great ovoid of light constantly, unceasingly. And just as in them seemed represented every natural colour of earth, so in the soft roar of sound that came from the ovoid, there seemed merged and mingled all the natural sounds of earth.
“The crash of avalanches and thunder of slow-moving glaciers were in that roar, and the splitting of tortured rocks. One heard the howl of winds and the caressing whisper of soft breezes, the gurgling of small brooks and the hiss of rain and the smash of hurricanes and tidal waves. That roar of merged sound seemed issuing from a whispering gallery open to all the sounds of earth.
“From the lower end of this huge poised ovoid of light branched scores of great tentacles of light, glowing arms that ran down into the rock floor of the cavern. They did not run into openings in that rock but into the rock itself, interpenetrating it as light interpenetrates glass. Somehow it seemed to me even in that first stunned moment that those light-tentacles branching down from the ovoid were of inconceivable length, that from where it poised here at the frozen top of the earth those arms of force or light penetrated down through all earth’s mighty mass!
“As Travis and Skeel and I gazed now at the mighty ovoid, there shot suddenly from its lower end a new light-tentacle, as though forming suddenly. It darted across the cavern and encircled us three. Its grip was like that of solid steel rather than of glowing light, and with us in its grasp it darted back toward the great ovoid.
“We were held by this tentacle a score of feet from the ovoid. The scene was incredibly weird—the mighty cavern, the huge ovoid of light with its kaleidoscopic colours and roar of merged sounds and downward-branching tentacles, the arm of light that held Travis and Skeel and me in remorseless grip!
“It held us beneath the ovoid as though that immense thing of light from which it branched was contemplating us. And somehow in my mind then I knew without shadow of doubt that the ovoid was contemplating us, was examining and inspecting us by means of strange senses somewhere inside its glowing mass of light, senses having nothing to do with any senses we knew but operating on planes entirely different. Its vast will, mind, beat ou
t on us tangibly.
“Skeel’s cry came thinly to my ears over the soft roar of the towering ovoid. ‘The brain of the earth! The Eskimos were right—it’s the brain of the earth!’
“‘The brain of the earth! The Earth-Brain!’ Travis and I mouthed the cry in stupefaction.
“For somehow we knew, knew absolutely, that it was the brain of the living earth that towered here and that held us, this awful ovoid of light poised in its mountain-chamber at the top of earth. This stupendous intelligence which saw and heard and somehow represented all the colours and sounds existing in its body, the earth! And whose light-tentacles ran down like animating sinews through its great earth-body!
“The Eskimos had been right. Their legends had told truth when they said that this mountain at the frozen top of earth held the brain of earth, and that it cared not how men moved upon its mighty earth-body so long as they approached not that body’s brain, its self!
“For earth was but body to this great brain! And just as microbes move upon a human body without even knowing that it is a living thing and not a great inanimate mass they exist on, so had men moved and lived upon its body, the earth, without ever dreaming that the huge body was animated by a vast kind of life so different from their own that they had deemed it lifeless!
“Men had moved and lived so upon the living earth for ages, generation after generation of tiny parasites upon it, but now three of those parasites in the person of ourselves had had the audacity to approach the earth’s brain, here at earth’s top; had disregarded the Earth-Brain’s warning tremors of uneasiness at our approach and had penetrated despite them to its inmost chamber, here to the Earth-Brain itself that now had seized us and was examining us!
“‘Those tentacles of light!’ Travis was yelling thinly in my ear. ‘They must run down from this Earth-Brain like muscles through all earth!’
“‘Yes—we know now what caused those tremors, what causes earthquakes!’ I cried.
“The light-tentacles drew us closer to the Earth-Brain! Can you picture that scene? The great ovoid of light holding us with one of its tentacles, inspecting us? Yes, the Earth-Brain was examining us as a man might take and examine three tiny parasites or insects whom he had not noticed upon his body until they became too bold!
“And still upon us, through us, beat the Earth-Brain’s will! The impact of that will was tangible, overwhelming. It seemed partly to replace, to usurp, my own will and mind. It seemed that I was not only Clark Landon, but also part of the Earth-Brain that held me. By the strange, unhuman expressions of Travis and Skeel I knew they experienced the same thing.
“I felt a withdrawal of interest from Clark Landon’s petty affairs and viewpoints. My mind seemed to leap beyond his little concerns to infinitely vaster things. And yet I knew somewhere in my consciousness that it was not my own mind that leapt thus, but the mere reflection or echo in my mind of the Earth-Brain holding me.
“How can I tell what I seemed to feel? It was as though for the time I was part of that great Earth-Brain, was thinking as it thought and seeing things as it saw them. It was as though, like it, my mind was cased not in any tiny body of colloids and bones and blood-compounds, but in a vast body endowed with a totally different sort of life. As though my great body was a planet, its stupendous frame of stone and its circulating life-fluid the cataracts of flowing fire in its interior! As though all the multitudes of land and water forms of life that swarmed upon my vast body were as unnoticeable and unimportant to me, intent on my own vast affairs, as microbes to the human upon whose body they live.
“It seemed that I, the Earth-Brain now and not Clark Landon, sat here in this brain-chamber at the top of my earth-body. Poised here, I was as aware of all my great body as a man is of his arms and legs. For down into my earth-body ran the tentacles of light that extended to the uttermost parts of earth, the muscular system by which I moved my earth-body at will.
“I moved one of those mighty muscles of light and the answering movement of my earth-body was a great quake on the other side of earth! Another of my muscles twitched and an avalanche crashed somewhere else on earth! I paid no attention whatever to the verminous tiny things dwelling upon my body, often annihilated in hordes by my earth-body movements.
“And I, the Earth-Brain, and my great earth-body, were not stationary but moving! My great body was racing at awful speed through vast leagues of infinite space! Far off across those immensities of space I was aware of other living earths, other planets, some larger and some smaller than I, but each living in the same vast way as I lived, each with its own great Brain!
“Yes, and from those other living earths there came to me across the void messages, communication. I, Clark Landon, could not even dimly comprehend the nature of that communication which I, the Earth-Brain, carried on. But it was constant and unbroken, a strange speaking of living earth to earth across the void, an exchange of thoughts, of purpose—
“For purpose there was in the way in which I and those other mighty Brains moved our planet-bodies through space. It was not by mere blind chance, haphazardly, that we moved, but consciously, deliberately, carrying out together some vast purposeful design. Circling and moving with superhuman exactness, a colossal, geometrical march of vast living earth-things through space!
“And even as I, Clark Landon, thus seemed to share the superhuman viewpoints and purposes of the Earth-Brain that held us, so did I share dimly its attitude toward ourselves. In one part of my intelligence I was still Clark Landon, held with Travis and Skeel helpless by a thing of mystery and terror. But in another part of my mind I was the Earth-Brain, inspecting these three tiny parasites who had dared penetrate my brain-chamber.
“For I, the Earth-Brain, had never bothered in one way or another with the numberless verminous parasites that dwelt on my earth-body, except that when any had dared approach the mountain at my body’s top that held encased myself, I had warned and driven them back by movements and tremors of my body.
“But these three had not been driven back but had come on with insane temerity until they had penetrated this dwelling-chamber of mine where none of their kind ever had penetrated before. And I, the Earth-Brain, had found their audacity so unprecedented and unexpected that I had grasped these three insect-things, was examining them!
“In so much did I, Clark Landon, share somehow the Earth-Brain’s thoughts as those thoughts beat like tangible force through us. And I was aware, even as Travis and Skeel and I struggled vainly against the light-tentacle’s grip, of the Earth-Brain’s desire to inspect one of us more closely. I was not surprised when another light-tentacle whipped out from its base and grasped Skeel, raised him high in the air close beside the Earth-Brain, Travis and I still held by the first tentacle on the floor.
“Travis and I ceased our struggles, watched in a sort of paralysis of terror as Skeel was raised high beside the Earth-Brain. The glowing light of the great ovoid seemed to beat out through him as the tentacle turned him this way and that like a helpless puppet.
“The Earth-Brain was examining him, I knew, for there still held me that curious duality of mind in which I was at the same time Clark Landon and the Earth-Brain. Even as I, Landon, watched from below my comrade Skeel, I, the Earth-Brain, was inspecting curiously this tiny thing I held and concerning which I was casually interested.
“It was I, the Earth-Brain, who shot forth from myself another light-tentacle to grasp this tiny living thing. And then suddenly with a red crash of horror I was no longer the Earth-Brain at all but was Clark Landon, screaming wildly with Travis and shaking impotent little hands up at the Earth-Brain. For with those two tentacles it had casually torn Skeel’s living body into halves!
“The tentacles held the two torn red things of broken flesh and bone that a moment before had been Herbert Skeel closer to the Earth-Brain’s towering ovoid. The Earth-Brain was inspecting them, as calmly and dispassionately as a man might tear apart an insect and examine its interior structure.
�
�‘Skeel!’ Travis was screaming raggedly over the unceasing soft roar. ‘The thing’s killed Skeel!’
“‘It’s vivisected him!’ I cried. ‘I’ll kill the damned thing—I’ll kill it!’
“I was struggling insanely to reach the automatic in my belt, but held in the light-tentacle’s grasp with Travis, I could not move my arms an inch.
“The Earth-Brain still was examining the broken body of Skeel. The great ovoid’s changing colours still raced and swam, its roar of merged sounds unceasing and its mighty will still flooding tangibly through us and giving us that queer sense of identity with the Earth-Brain. But that sense was overwhelmed in me now by my wild fury at seeing Skeel, the comrade of Travis and myself for so long, slain so terribly before our eyes.
“Travis and I were mouthing wild threats at the towering ovoid. The Earth-Brain paid no more attention to us than might a man to the waving antennae of ants beneath his feet. It broke the halves of Skeel’s body into smaller pieces. After a moment’s inspection it dropped these red fragments, and the two tentacles that had held them shot down towards Travis and me!
“They grasped Travis and swung him up toward the Earth-Brain’s side as Skeel had been swung, to vivisect him as Skeel had been vivisected. The other tentacle of light still held me on the floor. But in the moment Travis had been taken by the two, the grip of it upon me had perforce for an instant loosened, and in that instant I had ripped my pistol from my belt. Now as Travis was raised toward the Earth-Brain I aimed in a flash and fired a stream of steel-jacketed bullets up into the Earth-Brain’s mighty ovoid of light.
“It was in the sheer madness of insane fury that I shot thus into the Earth-Brain, for I had no conscious hope of hurting in the least that terrific thing of tangible light and force in which its intelligence was embodied. But certain it is that even unconsciously I had no expectation of the cataclysmic reactions that took place the instant after my bullets tore into the Earth-Brain’s ovoid of light.
Acolytes of Cthulhu Page 16
