The Elder Ice: A Harry Stubbs Adventure

by Hambling, David

  Harcourt's eyes widened.

  “By God,” he said. “My ring!”

  “Your ring? Like the lamp, the ownership is open to debate. I rather think your brother would say you stole it from him. I borrowed it from Shackleton’s estate.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “It is enough that it is in the room. What matters is that it will allow us to approach the lamp more safely.”

  Harcourt's eyes fixed on that ring for a long moment; somehow he tore his gaze off it and assumed his former manner. “That changes everything,” he said. He opened a drawer on his desk. I jumped up, fearing he was going for a weapon, but he merely smiled and produced an object wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. “I believe this is what you’ve come for.”

  Round Nine: The Slave of the Lamp

  He unwrapped it carefully. To my eyes, it looked just like a green starfish. A perfect five-pointed star the colour of corroded brass, covered in irregular pits, which he passed over to Mrs Crawford.

  A powerful sense of presence I had experienced in the summerhouse returned, as though another person had entered the room. The others seemed unaware of it.

  “A star made of green stone,” she said. “Exactly how he described it. Three years I’ve been looking for this.”

  “Twenty years it's taken me.”

  She put on her spectacles. “It's covered in tiny dots, in groups of five. Little pits, and nubs. And they keep changing.”

  “Like ticker tape in Braille,” said Harcourt. “Stock market prices, or weather reports, or cricket scores.”

  “Very lovely,” said Connell. “But while you two are spinning your fairy tales, me and your man Stubbs here want our money. Remember what you promised me.”

  Harcourt took a key from his watch chain and removed a substantial leather wallet from a locked drawer. He carelessly pulled out a huge bundle of notes and threw them down. “Eighteen hundred pounds, the last time I counted.” He yanked some gold sovereigns from his pocket and tossed them down with so much force that one rolled from the table. “There, that's all I have in the world. I don’t need it now. The two of you can share it out between you and go. We have business to do.”

  I’d never seen more money in one place, even in a bank. The big white notes made quite a pile. I attempted to calculate what it would be in months or years of salary but failed. Harcourt was a better gambler, or a less honest one, than I had thought.

  “They're mad as hatters,” Connell said mildly to me, stuffing a pile of folded notes in his back pockets and proffering the other half.

  “I'm not going until I see the finish of this.”

  “Please yourself.”

  When I made no move to take the money, he changed tack. Even Connell, the shrewd, sharp-eyed criminal, the calculating man who took nobody's word, must have been a little taken by the thought of the Arabian Nights’ treasures, or as Mellors put it, the leprechauns’ gold at the end of the rainbow.

  He knew about the dead men, and the risk that the thing might blow up in our faces. But by the very token of those deaths, some power must have been at work. A power that might make him far richer than a paltry few hundred pounds in banknotes.

  “Sure, and I'll stay a little longer,” he said. “Just to see if the horse runs, as the man said.”

  “You shall see.” Harcourt rose from his chair and took up the pointer. He swished it in the air theatrically as he came around the desk. “Indeed you shall.”

  Mrs Crawford handed the star back to him. Harcourt placed it on the floor in the middle of the room and the four of us stood around it. Mrs Crawford was entranced, but I was on my guard. I sensed, as a boxer can, that he had made a false move. Misdirection was afoot, but I was too slow to see what it was. Harcourt passed the wand over the star. I watched his moves closely. The tip of the wand inscribed a five-pointed shape, as though he was drawing a pentagram in the air.

  Black sparkles filled the air. At this point in theatre, there is a flash and a bang, and the genie appears in a cloud of smoke through a hidden trapdoor. The original story described the genie emerging in a cloud of smoke from the lamp. Neither was a faithful representation, but they were close.

  The sparkles became larger, expanding like soap bubbles black and shiny as coal, fusing together into a single column of dark foam. Quite suddenly, the foam took on shape and the surface melted into a continuous, seamless skin.

  A grey shadow rather than an object, but a shadow with three dimensions, filled the space between us. It was not a projection but a solid thing that cast a shadow by the electric light. If smoke was condensed and solidified, you could call it smoke, but it was like nothing I ever saw.

  It moved, and I saw with a shock that it was a living thing.

  “Behold,” said Harcourt with grim pride. “The genie of the lamp.”

  Connell crossed himself.

  “Don't make any sudden moves,” said Harcourt. “Even with the ring, it might become hostile.”

  The best way I can describe it is to say it was like a big, thick tree stump the size of a barrel. After a second, branches emerged from it with leaves like palms, others long and bare, waving as if in a wind. It did not have a real head with identifiable features, but what might be seaweed crowned it. The colour of it was wrong, like a black-and-white photograph of a thing rather than the thing itself. The surface or skin was not like bark or scales but reminded me of lumpy pig’s liver.

  That bare description fails to convey the horror of its sudden appearance. It was as obscene as a lump of glistening excrement on a silk cushion, as obscene as waking to find a giant slug oozing over your pillow. For an instant, I almost bolted from the room. But I could look at it differently, sort of push it away from my mind. If I viewed it not as a living thing but just as a tree stump with branches that twisted and curled in the wind, it was not so strange and unnatural as all that. It resembled Dr Evans’ tardigrades, but only slightly. I might add also that I had the impression of the smell of the sea; not the actual smell, you understand, but the impression of it.

  “The colouring is peculiar.” Harcourt spoke in an odd, breathless tone as though barely keeping himself in check. I knew then that he was half-crazed, but I did not know what to do. “I believe their eyes see a different spectrum to ours, so the reproduction is imperfect.”

  “My… goodness…” was all Mrs Crawford could say. She was captivated, but she held up the ring like a shield in front of her. Connell seemed paralysed by the sight of it. Harcourt was strangely exultant.

  A rich, alien music, like underwater birdsong, filled the room. It seemed to come from the walls. Harcourt took up the penny whistle from the desk and played a simple tune of several notes.

  The music sounded again, exactly the same trilling birdsong.

  “The whistle is inspired, but you do not quite have the correct grammar,” said Mrs Crawford. “Still, I think we can work our way through and claim the slave of the sound.”

  In the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Ali Baba’s brother dies because he does not pronounce the magic words “Open Sesame.” Words are very important for commanding genies. Suppose you find the wonderful lamp, and you can compel the genie to offer you your three wishes. But suppose the genie has been in the lamp not since the days of Solomon the Wise but for fifty thousand years, when no human language existed. What language would it ask you in, and how could you reply? A language of music and waving gesture unknown to anyone alive. But perhaps scholars could piece some of it together, and perhaps two of the most astute scholars of that lost language were here.

  Mrs Crawford whistled three notes, two long and one short.

  The stump shuffled around, apparently looking for which of us had addressed it. It scrutinized each of us in turn, and I shuddered as those branches, too much like tentacles, waved towards me. The attention was too much for Connell. As soon as it faced him, he bolted and ran for the door.

  The thing jerked and hissed like escaping steam under high p
ressure. I watched in horror as it separated Connell's head from his body in mid-stride. There was no blade, not even a flash of light, just that sharp sound. The flesh seemed to part of its own accord, seething and splitting as if cut by an invisible scimitar. Connell's headless, lifeless body crumpled to the floor.

  The thing hesitated then shuffled on, aiming itself at me. Mrs Crawford made to whistle, but no sound came out. Without warning Harcourt seized the clasp knife from the desk, unfolded the longest blade, and stabbed Mrs Crawford in the chest. He plunged the blade in as far as it would go and twisted. Mrs Crawford’s mouth opened in silent horror. She brought her hand up and he took it, feeling for the finger with the ring.

  I acted without thinking, leaping to Mrs Crawford’s defence and grappling with Harcourt. I'm no wrestler, but I know well the arts of physical restraint. He was an athletic man once, but I had thirty years’ youth and four stones weight on him, and my training regime is unbroken. I held his forearms, but his strength was a phenomenon. My attempts to take him in a wrestling hold were fruitless.

  “I must have the ring,” spat Harcourt, struggling in my hands.

  Mrs Crawford was lying where she fell, the knife still in her breast. The shadow-genie lurched at the edge of my vision.

  “Murderer,” I cried.

  Suddenly Harcourt's hands were at my throat, and though his fingers could barely encircle my neck, his grip was crushingly powerful. I never knew a man so strong. Something huge and dark loomed beside us; I jerked away, more from revulsion than a fighter’s impulse. There was an awful hissing like an enraged tomcat, and the pressure on my throat vanished.

  Harcourt held up his two arms, hands neatly severed at the wrist, the ends cauterised, in front of his face. I could only stare in fascination.

  “I must have the ring,” he said again. He crouched down to paw at Mrs Crawford’s body with his handless stumps.

  I backed away until I felt the desk behind me.

  Harcourt looked up at the thing towering over him. He held Mrs Crawford’s hand between his stumps. “I am a Harcourt, and I have the ring,” he said, wildly triumphant. “You cannot harm me!”

  It flicked a branch in an odd gesture, and I looked away as that terrible steam-blast sounded again. The hollow thud of something hard on the wooden floor followed it.

  The shadow-shape moved to face me, though it did not have a face. It was just the two of us now. My paralysis broken, I dropped into a fighting stance. I was weaving left and then right, ducking low. I suppose most people would have made a break for it, but I've never been a running man. Harry Stubbs doesn't turn his back on danger.

  We shuffled around each other. I was working on instinct. You can think too much in the rings and tie yourself in knots. You just have to trust your gut feelings and get in there with all you can. That was one of those times.

  My opponent, more awkward than any human boxer was, moved with geriatric awkwardness, like a seal or other sea-creature on land. When it stopped moving, I bobbed low, correctly anticipating the hissing guillotine noise that followed a moment later. The blow did not connect, and I danced away.

  Like a boxer, it aimed its blows at the head, or more exactly the neck, so lively movement could make it miss its aim. A boxer, if he is any better than poor Mickey, quickly learns to adapt his punches to the opponent and anticipate dodges. I could only hope this thing would not recalibrate itself too quickly. If it simply changed its aim to my body, it might split me down the middle as easily as my father halves chickens with a cleaver.

  You cannot win a fight with footwork and dodging, however expert. I needed to close and land some punches. Normally, I would have taken any opening, but I confess my opponent’s inhuman physiognomy daunted me. The signs that would trigger my attack—a lowered guard, a head left unprotected—were absent. Also, the thing was a solid mass, and that surface looked hard. Punching a tree trunk full force with an ungloved fist would be an error. That crowning mass of waving seaweed might be a weak spot, but it might be no more than the hair on a human head.

  I feinted a step to the left and went right then forward. I had resolved to think of the thing as a punch bag and try a short combination of high and low blows against what might be the head and the body.

  It was not as solid as a tree, nor as yielding as a bag or a human being. I sensed I had hit a great solid mass, but somehow it did not offer proper resistance and my arm snapped out to full reach as I punched right through it. I jumped back instinctively. I was hitting something both there and not there at the same time, the illusion of substance rather than the genuine article. An illusion cannot stop a fist. Fine black powder that dissolved like snow coated my hand.

  Inevitably, I had laid myself open to a counterpunch. I ignored the rules of balance and guard, pushing off sideways from the desk as hissing filled the room. A whirling blade brushed my face, but that was all.

  I almost tripped over Harcourt’s body. I steadied myself on his chair then continued the movement and whipped the chair up, tossing it at the shadow shape while capering off to the side. The chair passed through it as through a ghost or a shadow. It stirred like smoke, but the gap reformed with black foaming. The genie showed no sign even of noticing, let alone discomposure from my attack.

  When one plan of action fails, you must not despair but formulate another. That I learned from Sir Ernest. I did not stop moving but danced this way and that, searching for something that might help me. The ring on Mrs Crawford’s finger might be a charm against it, but I feared I would be dead long before I could retrieve it—if I could even wear it, as my fingers were so much larger than hers.

  I was looking for Harcourt’s wand with some thought that I could dispel the thing by a reversal of the actions he had carried out. Instead, I saw the ice axe, and it brought an idea. That was more in my line than magic tricks, if only I could get to it and use it to effect.

  The prospect of certain death was a powerful tonic. I bounded, zigzagging across the room, more Nijinsky than Dempsey, and that vicious fizzling sound erupted again. Its aim was improving. In spite of my desperate evasions, the leather thong holding the axe parted inches from my fingers, and I snatched it out of the air.

  The genie, or whatever the shadow-thing would be properly termed, was invulnerable to any physical assault. But perhaps it depended somewhat on the green star, the “lamp” that housed and perhaps sustained it. I directed my attention to that. As to whether something that had endured a million years in the Antarctic would be susceptible to human agency, I did not know. But as Sergeant Eagleton would say, “Just hit him as hard as you can, Gunner Stubbs; he’s only human”—though of course in this case, that hardly applied.

  I ducked low, moving from side to side. The thing loomed in front of me like a clot of shadows blocking my way. With a cry, I ran right through it, raised the ice axe, and with a powerful double-handed blow brought its point down on the green star. It was a bold move, and perhaps the spirit of Sir Ernest rewarded my boldness. An inch on either side and I should have missed entirely, but the steel point landed squarely on the centre of the star as momentum carried me forward and over it. I rolled and struck the desk, expecting each instant to hear that hiss again, scanning to see where the shadow thing was.

  It was gone as abruptly as it had come.

  A faint green haze surrounded the ice axe embedded deep in the floorboards. There was no other sign of the green stone, save for a faint star-shaped imprint in the floor where it had been driven in before it burst. The only sound was my heavy breathing as I clambered to my feet.

  “Bravo,” said Mrs Crawford in a faint voice. She was lying where she had fallen. Blood had spread around her like a dark rug.

  “I'll fetch a doctor.”

  “Please—don't leave me.”

  I kneeled awkwardly next to her. She reached out, and I took her hand. It was cold.

  “I am so sorry. To have put you to so much trouble. Harcourt was much worse than I thought. Madder. Mad enough
to try to wake Them. Thank God you averted that.”

  “Those things you and he were saying. Were they true?”

  “Mostly.” She swallowed. “I'm afraid I deceived you again. False promises of riches... I am glad you survived after all.” She swallowed again with more difficulty. “Please don't cry now. I've done bad things. This is—poetic justice.” She looked up at the ceiling. I thought she was not going to speak again, but she was composing herself for a final statement. The words, when they came, were a whisper. “You did very well, Mr Stubbs. Thank you.”

  Then I was left all alone. Alone, kneeling in blood, with the dead around me.

  Epilogue

  And that is the story of how Harry Stubbs claimed victory in what was, by any measure, the most unusual bout he ever contested. I was not as unscathed as I thought. Arthur Renville pointed out that I had lost half an ear, sliced off as clean as you like, with a furrow I had never even felt ploughed in my temple.

  Of course, I called on Arthur to help pick up the pieces. Who else would know what to do? He was angry at first, but the pile of cash on Harcourt’s desk helped smooth matters over. He listened to my story, and by the end he had his feet up on the desk and was smoking one of Harcourt’s cigars. He was satisfied the whole affair was over and things could return to normal. His verdict was that Connell and Harcourt would not be missed, and it seems he was right. I cannot say how much of my story he believed.

  As for Mrs Crawford, or whatever her real name was, nobody came looking for her either. The woman I saw in the office was just a role she put on and took off as easily as I remove my bowler hat. But I don’t suppose I’d ever have had any answers from her, even if she had lived.

  Things did carry on as normal. The world is still the same. But my understanding of what is normal has changed. Before, I thought I understood everything. But now the world is too much for me, now I have seen how much I never understood at all and never will. Once I thought Shackleton was a hero. Now I see he was a hero and a fool, and a hero again, and six other things besides.