Steam Submarine Zelf

by Robert Denethon

  ~

  Zev said, “Is it her?”

  Evans said, “Yes. Yes. I - I think it is.”

  The sailors looked at Evans quizzically, but neither Zev nor Evans elucidated.

  Interloup Ten - Into the Darkness and Then...

  Wolf Lady.

  It was dark and cold in the refrigerator - had she been human she would have died - but wolves are winter animals, they live out in the snow, with their own fur coats for warmth.

  For a while she lay there thinking, watching her warm breath puff out like clouds of steam. It was no wonder she was in this situation. She ought to have seen it coming. She should have been more careful, after all, she knew what was going on here.

  This world was a bad place.

  Of all the worlds to get stuck in, this one was the worst. As the Welfing saying goes, Y ætaiya lyfrahothryn di'Ia Sed chwl, æthülgweld trwyn holl mwnm M’Haiechdwl.

  Where Leviathan doth dwell, there be every kind of hell.

  If she got out of this - when she got out of this - she was going to do everything she could to make sure she could out of this world. This Ing-Gland.

  The world the humans call Ultima Thule was no First Den, that’s for sure, but it was a much safer place for her kind. It was the kind of place she could deal with, the kind of place where she might be able to anticipate problems.

  Then she started shivering.

  The temperature must be a long way below zero, colder than she’d thought. She couldn’t just pretend that this was just the same as a mild winter’s day. She would have to adjust. She could hibernate, but if they were too long about opening the door again, she would be done for. If they didn’t return before the end of the lunar month - if the New Moon came while she was still stuck in here - then she really didn’t think much of her chances.

  She went into hibernation and waited for the door to open again.

  It is a strange, fitful sleep, the sleep of hibernation, a sleep of ghostly dreams seen through half-wakeful eyes.

  They arrived, just in time, a day or two before the end of the month.

  They weren’t trying to be quiet when they came to open up again.

  They hadn’t expected the person to survive.

  Harry’s voice said, “What’s the time Bob?”

  Bob’s voice said, “About twenty minutes past five. What the bleeding heck ‘ave you got your camera for, Harry?”

  “I’m going to take a picture of the body, ain’t I, Bob?That’ll be something to show the grandchildren, wouldn’ it? A bleedin’ dead body.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Harry, you’ve got rocks in your head. This whole thing is a bleedin’ fiasco. Oh, Harry, stop right there! Don’t put your fingerprints on the doorhandle, you dunderhead! We want the only set of fingerprints to be the ones of the person in there, you fool.”

  “I’ve got cold feet, Bob.”

  “You’ve got cold feet now?”

  “Well - it’s a bit scary actually - I didn’t realise.”

  Bob sighed deeply. Harry was a twit. He wouldn’t know a sensible thought if it hit him in the face.

  Bob sighed, “Harry, what do you want to do now, then?”

  “You do the door, Bob, and I’ll er... come in after you and take the picture.”

  “Oh, er, right, Harry. You want me to go in first.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

  “Yeh. Right. You go first, mate. Yer a good pal, you are.”

  She heard one of them bump the handle open on the other side - she presumed he wasn’t using his hands - it sounded like an elbow or forearm.

  She was ready when the door creaked open.

  She leapt into action at the first sign of light. Bob, the one who had opened the door, had the full mass of the iron door with the force and velocity of her impact behind it thrust at him. He was thrown some distance through the air, slammed onto his back on the boat’s wood floor, slid further backwards and hit his head rather sharply on the bulkhead.

  She doubted whether he would wake up for a while.

  She stopped for a moment on the other side to take stock of her situation, but unfortunately Harry was standing there with his camera.

  She was rather surprised that he was actually ready to take the picture, in fact, she hadn’t assumed he would be, after overhearing their conversation - she judged him to be a few inches short of a plank, so to speak - and Harry looked just as surprised as she was to be taking the picture. But the flash of the camera went off, and she cursed and leapt up, already running on four legs.

  Then she was out, over the edge of the ship and away.

  She was running through the dockyards. It was dark, in the early morning - the moon was a mere sliver, in the last phase, almost new, and the sky was beginning to brighten with the first rays of dawn. There were storm clouds brewing over the sea.

  She knew that she was probably safe now, but she ran as swiftly as the wind anyhow.

  That was a close call.

  She didn’t think that fellow Harry would be smart enough to ring the police or run after her, and his friend Bob was almost certainly unconscious, after that conk on the head.

  By the time they did anything, or the New Moon arrived, she would already be back in the safety of her submarine. But she moved to another berth, just to be safe.

  Interloup Eleven - Noble Wolf

  Zev.

  Zev and Evans took turns walking along the piers every day and night, looking for her. During the day the amnesiac boy joined them on their strolls, but at night he stayed in one of the hotels rooms Evans had paid for with Bureau funds, reading the newspaper or listening to the radiogram. They were good hotel rooms.

  George had gone back into town, back to working as a taxi driver for the general public.

  It was the third or fourth night after we arrived that Zev saw her. The boy was in bed, and Evans had a meeting with someone at the tavern across the road. They found out about it from Zev afterwards.

  Zev was walking along the pier on the Salthouse Dock when he suddenly had the sense that he was being watched.

  He looked up and saw a face, almost glowing, illumined by the pale silvern moonlight.

  At first he thought it was his own reflexion in the water that he was seeing, that it was that time, the time of not-being-him, but then even as he watched her watching him he noticed something in the corner of his eye - on the horizon - the moon - it was in the second quarter - the mistress of the night sky was more than half-full, growing, burgeoning, yes, but very far from full.

  She stood across the water in the shadow of one of the pillars of the Salthouse Dock building, staring at him, but the moonlight fell across her white-and-grey furred face. The stars were behind her, around her moonlit face. She was motionless, quiet, she had the stillness of a predator, and her eyes watched him, neither blinking nor moving.

  Her eyes captured him more certainly than a hawk catches a mouse.

  He watched her, the same quiet stillness descending upon him. He could not have looked away even if the earth and the stars and the very moon herself had fallen into oblivion around him.

  A strange feeling of familiarity filled his soul, as though he knew everything already, everything that was to come. As though he knew her already, and everything that she would mean to him. Was this what destiny felt like?

  It was the vision he had had. She had a heart full of wisdom - he already knew that. And there, he had seen her, with her face surrounded by the stars.

  And then suddenly, as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone.

  He wanted to follow her, to track her scent, but he didn’t know how to, or perhaps he didn’t really trust himself to become the other part of himself.

  He knew that she was a noble wolf. He was not so sure that he was. When the full moon shone above him, he changed, but he knew of himself that he was not a wolf’s wolf, but still too much of a human wolf.

  He had always hated the ch
ange when it came.

  For the first time in his life he wished he could change. He wished he could make himself change. He thought of the feeling of wolfishness, the smell of his own fur, the ecstasy of the hunt and the pleasure of howling forlornly at the round, pale-fire moon, the visceral joy of a world of a million distinct odors, a contrapuntal sensuality of smell, each scent overwhelming and completely individual in its quiddity.

  He had thought he was a monster. But he wasn’t. Just a wolf.

  Then he glimpsed the face of a wolf looking up at him - for a moment his heart leapt - had she come to him? He looked down - his own eyes looked back, his own fur-face reflected in the water, and he was disappointed, then strangely exhilarated.

  He had changed. He had become the Other Self. For the first time in his life he had wanted to, and it had happened.

  He was sitting by the side of the water as a wolf on his haunches, and he liked it.

  He panted for a moment in the pleasure of being.

  He leapt up and loped up along the pier, ran to where she had been and picked up her scent.

  Her beauty - her physical beauty - was nothing compared to the beauty of her musky odor - the ecstatic loveliness of the mingled perfumes of her wolfish body. Strange how the pleasant and sharp odours go together, he thought, or felt, for every single scent on her formed a higher harmony, her fur the main aroma, her sweet breath the counter-aroma, her sweat and urine and body odours like the theme of the symphony, and all the tiny moments wherein her paws had touched the ground, like quavers and delicate semiquavers dancing alongside.

  Combined with the smell of fresh grey woolen and cotten fabric - the cape and hood she was wearing - her clothing - also carried her mingled scents.

  He looked up. A wolf that wore clothes. He felt a funny thought-feeling - the fairytale was true, yet in reverse - there was a wolf who liked wearing clothes, but she was a good wolf.

  Indeed, he knew just from smelling her that she was good. Not evil. True of heart. No liar. Her noble character was in every atom of her chemistry. She would not kill for pleasure - only to eat.

  It seemed strange to him that she existed in this world. She did not belong to this broken, sad world, the world of insane asylums and wars and sickness and death. He knew somewhere in his bones that she came from another, better world.

  As he loped along following her scents a happiness he could have never imagined before this moment was making his steps lighter and relaxed than they had ever been, in his wolf form or his human form. Across the dock, under the looming shadow of the massive Customs House, across another three docks, past the Princes Dock.

  Then her scent simply stopped, as though she had disappeared into thin air.

  Water.

  Somehow she had crossed the water. Was he going to swim to her? But where was she now? He sniffed around for her scent.

  Frantically he went right round the Quay, but he couldn’t find it again. A thought-feeling of terrible loss filled him. Would he ever see her again?

  The night seemed lonelier and more desolate than any night had ever been before, even when he had been confined to Bedlam and all the crazy people had been talking to themselves and moaning dreadfully all night long and keeping him awake.

  But the moon emerged from behind a cloud and the thought of the sight of her fur face under the silver moonlight, her golden eyes watching him in quiet stillness, and a deeper, more resonant part of him seemed to be saying that she belonged to him and he belonged to her.

  He looked up. The stars twinkled, as though they were telling him not to lose hope. The moon seemed to be smiling.

  A whisper in his heart told him she was the one for him, the one he would marry.

  The wolf-lady.

  I will hope for the good that I do not see, he said to himself, remembering a philosopher’s phrase he had once read.

  He smiled in delight at the thought of her, at the thought of her musk-fur-urine-sweat-fabric-pawprint-true-of-heart odor.

  Something moved, caught his eye.

  He looked in the water. He was human again, but... Naked. He had left his clothes behind. And if anyone was watching; God! If she was hiding somewhere around here, watching...

  Damn it, utterly embarrassing! He leapt away into the shadows and tried to make his way back across the docks without being seen.

  Alpha of Alphas have mercy.

  He didn’t have a clue that they were there - his mind was so full of everything else, her, that he didn’t even notice the stench of them before they were upon him.

  They came out of the shadows with nets and fists and truncheons, and he bowed down under a savage litany of blows and fell into the darkness.

  Interloup Twelve - Captive Held

  Wolf Lady.

  She saw the man-wolf on the pier, looking for something, or someone, by the light of the half-round moon.

  Then his eyes looked up at her and she was completely captivated.

  And suddenly he was wolf no more, but human, but his eyes were still kind and true and his stance was silent and still. And an honest lopiness about the way he stood reminded her of the way of a wolf.

  And he was upwind of her, and there was a musky honesty to his scent - all the fragrant wolf odours about him mingled with the strange human smell, a veritable panorama of smells.

  This was definitely worth a second look.

  And she could never have considered any human form as prepossessing or attractive before, but with him there was an elegant, solid, strong, lupine quality to his form and bearing and a strange, bent, broken, wolfish good humour in his eyes, despite the suffering that she saw there. She hadn’t realised that suffering in this world could make someone so good.

  She couldn’t help feeling drawn to him.

  The very depths of the waters of the well of her soul were being stirred.

  It was the strangest thing of all - that in this world, that was not her own, she had found something - someone - who seemed so familiar, so much a part of her.

  The future sends echoes back into the past, she thought to herself. If something stirs us deeply, in the future, stirs us to the depths of our soul, we find our soul stirred in the present as well. Dreams are like this - indeed, everything that happens affects both future and past.

  But the things of the heart affect us the most of all, and these are the bricks of destiny, the foundation stones of our lives.

  His reflection mingled with the reflection of the moon in the water.

  The reverie lasted for what seemed like a long time, but practical thoughts always intrude on such moments. Could this man be a friend of Evans? She had come out of the submarine to see if Evans was here, looking for her.

  And she mustn’t stay.

  She had seen other men on the docks, on the other side of Customs House.

  It wasn’t safe here tonight. She must not stay. What if they were looking for her?

  She had stayed here too long already and practically speaking she didn’t know if that man was a friend of Evans - he might indeed be her destiny - but yet at this moment she didn’t know what to do - what she might have to do with him - what might have to occur yet for this destiny to happen.

  There was a sound in one of the docks. Footsteps.

  She had to leave right now.

  She leapt into the shadows and away, past Customs House, behind pillars, underneath the roofs and eaves, and through the darkest enshadowed places, watching always for the men. She heard them talking opposite the Corn Exchange.

  Slipping away she sprinted wolf-like, straight for the place where the steam submarine was docked, leapt across the water onto the deck of the submarine, slipped through the hatch, closed it, and leapt down into the command room and immediately began filling the tanks, something she could do without starting the engine (it was all a matter of stored energy). She sank to a keel depth of about eleven feet, which meant that the top of the submarine was underwater.

>   She raised the uperscope. At the edge of the field of vision she glimpsed movement and swivelled the handles around - he was approaching - in the form of a wolf. She examined the uperscope for a moment - was something wrong with it? - then realised that even if the mirrors were fogged it would not make her see a wolf.

  She knew it was him because the wolf moved like the man. It was the man’s spirit that moved the wolf, making him lope in light, easy, relaxed steps, as though they both danced the same dance.

  She had never heard of such a thing. Are such things even possible for humans?

  The man-wolf sniffed the air and looked around. Then he closed his eyes, as though a blissful thought had taken hold of him, and she watched him change. The wolf’s body lengthened and stood up, limb and paw changing to arm and hand, fur receding into pale skin, muzzle shrinking to nose.

  He was naked.

  She moved the lever for the objective lens, enlarging the image without changing the focus. The man stood there, completely naked, and she regarded him curiously. She had never seen one of the man-things naked before.

  Fascinating.

  Had he seen the uperscope watching him? There was something wrong with his face - it was turning red in the pale moonlight. She had no idea why. Had he taken ill? In a sudden movement he fled away, like a deer that had seen a wolf. She didn’t like the analogy but it was the first one that came to mind.

  She started the engine again and wrenched the submarine up to a depth of six feet, leapt through the corridors, up the ladder and up the hatch.

  He was gone.

  She closed the hatch quickly and leapt across the water to the dock again, and found his scent. She followed his scent.

  Ahead she heard the sound of someone being beaten. She could smell whose blood it was - she knew that it was him being beaten.

  She growled furiously and leapt at the crowd of men that was beating him.

  Interloup Thirteen - Things Seen & Unseen

  The Amnesiac Young Man.

  I woke up to hear someone banging on the door. I got out of bed and opened the door - it was Evans.

  “Zev disappeared last night.”

  I asked, “What happened?”

  “He didn’t return from the docks. I’m worried about him...” Evans rubbed his hand over his chin. “I found his clothes, lad. It probably means he transformed...”

  “Transformed? What does that mean?”

  “Lad, I have some things to explain to you. Get your clothes on and come down to breakfast, and we’ll have a chat. You probably ought to know the whole bailiwick.”

  The whole bailiwick - it was an expression I knew - everything, the whole lot. I threw my clothes on hastily - this was what I had been waiting for! The one thing I needed most of all - to know what was going on.

  It can’t have taken any more than two minutes for me to be sitting at the table in the hotel restaurant downstairs waiting for Evans.

  He emerged several minutes later, and breakfast - scrambled eggs and large, fat sausages - arrived at the same time. Evans had ordered it earlier.

  “I work for Special Branch, but I am a actually scientist, lad, a physicist - my specialty is the æther, multidimensional geometry, all that. You may not know that there are four dimensions in this space-time continuum, as Professor Einsteisen pointed out (following Reimannien’s theory), but there are actually other, further dimensions at right-angles to these four, spatially speaking. (The dimensions of time have negative coefficients in the equations, as time is not another dimension of space; and then we have the ætheric time coefficient describing the time dilation effect between different universes, which is inherently unpredictable, because it is a function of an insoluble periodic equation… Let me add, this explanation is only accurate to a degree possible using plain language.) Do you catch my drift?”

  I shook my head. “No, not at all.”

  Evans said, “Ahem. Let me try again. These visions you’ve been having, splyders, a strange place, elves, trolls; they are memories of a real place, lad. These realms were known in the past. There has been traffic between our universe and the others, but in the past the people back then called the other realms fairyland, or the world of the gods, or Hades, or they thought they were seeing ghosts or spirits or visions.

  “Now lend me your attention - when something travels from there to here it causes a certain energy to be released, akin to X-Rays or Gamma Rays - a type of radiation, a vibration in the electro-magnetic æther. Now, lad, as I said I am a scientist, a physicist, something of an engineer; you see, I made a machine that can detect incursions from that place into our own world, and vice versa, by detecting the energy when it is released, or rather, the inverse energy. I have three of these machines placed at equidistant locations around London - when an incursion occurs the energy signature is detected and by collating the strength and exact timing of those signatures I can work out where and when the incursion occurred, to within an accuracy of five or six feet, anyhow, anywhere on the surface of the earth.

  “These lines of electromagnetic force I have called ley lines, in deference to popular superstition of the past. (Either a superstition or alternatively the term was a complete invention of Alfred Watkins) London has a great many ley lines; it may explain the mysterious richness of this place and the many paranormal anecdotes in her history. As the saying goes, London is a roost for every ghost.

  “Of course that explains why I was on that London street so soon after you appeared; I had detected an energy release signature in an alleyway and I was looking for whatever it was that had gotten through.

  “We sought after you all day and half the night, but we could not find you. Some others were looking for you too - you may have encountered them. The next morning I came out looking for you again. When you almost strode out in front of the traffic I rescued you and I immediately realised from the distinctly Victorian cut of your clothes, and from the fact that you didn’t seem to know where you were or who you were, or even of the dangers of cars and the perils of modern roads, that you were almost certainly not from this realm.

  “Initially I wanted to tell you everything that was going on but then I realised you couldn’t remember anything at all and I suddenly doubted whether that would be wise. If it was some traumatic experience that had caused your memory loss (I happen to have read the works of Doctor Freud) immediately confronting your psyche with the facts of the matter might have had a deletirious effect on you; it might have damaged an already fragile mental state irreparably. So I resolved to wait, to let you familiarise you slowly with the facts of the matter, in order that your memory might have a chance to heal on its own.

  “But you didn’t trust me. You thought I was going to incarcerate you in a mental institution and so you fled.

  “Well, insofar as that goes, we are both familiar with the facts of your own story since then. So let me tell you the parts you don’t know, which is my own story, and that of Zev’s and this wolf-lady we have been seeking.

  “Where to begin? Not sure. I’ll begin with this, lad - I know of at least two other people who have come from these other worlds that I am talking of. One is this wolf-lady. I contacted her soon after she passed over into our universe. She has the bridge between the worlds in her possession - she travels in a vehicle that has the ability to cross to the other worlds if and only when the conditions are favourable. She wishes to cross the branches again and my machines may hold the key to doing that - for it appears the part of her vehicle that detects the ley lines may be damaged.

  “In her own world, incidentally, they do not speak our language - that also appears to be the world you have come from - so how you came to know English I do not know. Trogthen is the main language of that world.

  “And the other person is Zev. The energy that accompanied his arrival resonated at a different frequency - I think he came from a world very much like our own, but it was a different world from hers, and yours. But Zev knows the T
rogthen tongue - he has travelled to your world too.

  “And you should know this too - Zev is a werewolf. On the night of the full moon he turns into a wolf - he’s not dangerous, mind you, don’t worry about him. Those legends about werewolves being killers are legends - he keeps his faculties intact when it happens.”

  I said, “Why didn’t he mention this?”

  Evans answered, “It’s a bit of a sore point with him, not something he wants to talk about. That’s why he was in the asylum. The doctors thought his monthly distress was a sign of madness, so they sedated him, but the drugs stopped the transformations from occurring. So the real cause of his malady was hidden from them. Until the Psychiatric Services caught up with him, Zev was managing quite well. He had a basement where he would confine himself when the transformation was occurring; he was living a good life, really, fitting in quite well.

  “It took me months to find him in Bedlam. Initially I thought he had left our universe or been abducted by our enemies. It really was like looking for a needle in a smoke-stack.

  “It wasn’t until one of my colleagues suggested checking the mental asylums that I found him.

  “Zev and I have decided to work together; he wishes to return to his world. Having you here, someone who comes from Ultima Thule, is an aid in detecting the potential gateways. To put it in layman’s terms, the energy of the other realm lingers about you, and using my machine I can detect the place and time where the ley lines are resonant. I can create a gateway to travel to the same world you came from; except, of course, that I haven’t managed to make a machine that can travel between the worlds yet, and that’s why I need the wolf-lady. She can help me and I can help her.

  “And not to overextend a point - people - wolf-ladies and humans - are not the only things that cross over. I have evidence that a griffin may have crossed to our world too, at some point, recently, but he seems to be gone now. And other things too, at various times, have slipped through, that I haven’t been able to detect with my machine. But some of those that have crossed over are our enemies. They are trying to kill us - they do not like us to know that they are here.

  “The Ultima Thuleans are always yapping at our hindquarters - we may not have much time - we must do everything we can to get to the other realm. I have a feeling that our enemies know that we are planning on doing this - perhaps they are trying to prevent us from doing something we don’t even know we are going to do...”

  It was a lot to take in, and I didn’t know if I believed the last part. But while I understood why Zev or the wolf-lady might want to travel back to the worlds they came from, I felt I did not really understand Evans’ role in all of this.

  “But why do you want to travel to the other worlds?” I asked him.

  “Ah. That’s classified. I can only tell you a little. As you probably have already guessed I am an employee of His Majesty’s government. You may have heard me talk about the Bureau - my employer - a clandestine agency. I am simply an employee - I don’t participate in the policy discussions - I merely implement the policies - so I can’t tell you more than what I have just said.”

  I was a little perturbed - his reticence made me angry - he was avoiding the issue and I thought I had a right to know that much at least. I gritted my teeth and said, “But, Mister Evans, you’re asking me to trust you, and I don’t even know anything about your motives or reasons for wanting me to be involved.”

  He rolled his eyes, took out a pipe from his pocket and stuffed it full of tobacco, then lit it and began puffing.

  Finally he took the pipe out and tapped it in the ashtray to get out the used tobacco, and looked at me squarely.

  He sighed deeply and said, “Alright. As the saying goes, you’ve got to roll with the punch bowl. I think you can see that the government might have an interest in realms that intersect our own - countries, nations, from which there is no sea or distance separating us - places from which people can travel directly into Britain without having first to reach our shores by boat or dirigible or airplane and pass through customs. Indeed, these people may be our enemies and it seems important to the government that we know who they are. Well, I have said more than I should, but since you brought up the issue of trust I think it a point of honour that you should know. At least, I can justify it in my report that way...”

  Using my fork I moved the rest of my scrambled eggs around on my plate, looked up at him and said, “What do we do?”

  “Well... The wolf-lady - Zelfa or Zelf is her name I believe- was going to park her vehicle - her submarine - at the Salthouse Dock. But she moved it - something went wrong and she moved docks to avoid discovery. That’s why we have been watching the Salthouse Dock, lad - I thought that if she was going to try to make contact with us again that she would go to the Salthouse. The thing is, though, now that you’re here I can use your energy signature to find her. The energy of that world is still be strong on you, because of the amount of time you spent there. I have to take your energy signature, though.”

  “So what does that entail?” I asked. “How do you take my energy signature? It’s not like a blood test is it? I hope there isn’t an injection. I hate injections.” I had of course only had one injection, when I was a captive of the female Doctor, but Evans had explained to me what an injection was, afterwards, when the whole story came out.

  Evans continued, “My colleagues in the government are bringing all my equipment up from London even as we speak. They should be here in - ah -,” he looked at his watch, “-about half an hour. Don’t worry, the process is painless. It is a little - ah - uncomfortable though - we have to put you inside the ætheric signature detector - it is a sort of - ah - a large tube. But the process doesn’t hurt at all - you’ll just have to lie still in there for a little while.”

  Interloup Fourteen - Faun Supremacists

  Zev.

  Water splashed his face. He woke up, emerging from the darkness - the beating seemed to be only moments ago, but he opened his eyes to find that he was in a completely different place - inside a tall, gloomy brick building, with the dark figure of a man standing in front of him, silhouetted against a dusty ray of light that was descending from a window somewhere above him.

  Zev looked more carefully, for the legs of the man seemed strangely... furry.

  For a moment he thought he might be one of his kind, a werewolf, but then he saw that he had the legs of a goat.

  What were those things called?

  Fauns.

  The man was a faun.

  He tried to move his arms and legs but were fastened onto something - he peered down and saw that it was a chair. His arms were tied up with canvas belts that were fastened with some sort of buckle - they looked like they might be used by removalists.

  And Zev was still naked. Everything ached. There were bruises and caked blood on his arms and legs.

  He looked to his right. The wolf-lady was tied up to another chair next to him. She had also been beaten and there was blood on her fur. Her clothes were lying on the floor nearby, her red cape and cloak, and trousers and a shirt.

  A white-hot rage began to burn inside Zev - they had no right to do this to her!

  The faun standing in front of him said, “Who are you?”

  Zev snapped, “I am Zev Solomon. Now, you can tell me who you are.”

  The faun said, “Speak with respect,” and hit him across the cheek with the back of his hand.

  Zev said, “Got your goat, have I?”

  The faun roared with anger, thrust out two cloven hooves and pommelled Zev in the chest.

  Zev’s chair scraped and bumped backwards on the brick floor at least four feet then tottered to a rest. A dreadful aching pain began to radiate across Zev’s chest.

  The faun leapt up to him and spat in his face, then pulled his chair back to where it was, right next to the wolf lady and shouted, “How do you know Evans? Why are you collaborating with these human who listen to the Leviathan’s v
oice?”

  Zev replied, “Evans got me out of Bedlam.” Zev said Bedlam in such a mockingly savage tone of voice that the wolf-lady guffawed. The faun hit her across the cheek, just as he had hit Zev.

  Zev felt his ire rising.

  The thought came to him that he might be able to change into a wolf, despite being restrained. The canvas belt did not seem terribly tight on his hands - perhaps once they were paws he could slip them through.

  For only the second time in his life Zev willed himself to change. He imagined the world of the wolf, where everything was more vivid, where colour and detail was experienced through the olfactory sense.

  A fist slammed into his face. “What d’you think you’re doing?” Zev spat out blood, and what he thought might have been part of a tooth. He hadn’t changed, he was still human. A sense of despair and panic made his breath come in short gasps.

  The faun hit the wolf-lady again, and it made Zev’s anger burn again.

  “You’re real brave, aren’t you, goat? Hitting a female. A really brave baaar-barian.”

  “Pah. She’s not a female. She’s a wolf-bitch who collaborates with humans. She is Lyfrahothrin MudoChelechw, Leviathan-friend.” said the faun.

  Zev cried, “You’re nothing but a yellow livered coward!” cried Zev, and the faun hit him.

  The Wolf-Lady said angrily, “Shut up, Zevsolomon! I can take care of myself.”

  Zev said, “Call me Zev.”

  The faun said, “Shut up Zev. She can take care of herself,” and hit her again.

  Zev roared with anger, and realised that the sound had come out as a howl. He looked down. The restraints on his arms were loose now - he pulled his front paws free. He leapt forwards but his legs were still restrained, and he fell flat on his face.

  “That’s interesting,” said the faun.

  Zev strained his neck towards the faun’s leg and snapped his jaws together on one of the faun’s cloven hoofs and pulled. He felt a satisfying crunch and heard the tendon on the faun’s heel snap. The faun cried out, tumbled over and began swearing coldly and efficiently. He looked up at Zev from the floor with narrowed, hate-filled eyes and said, “That’s going to cost you.”

  A door opened. Three more fauns walked in. They were carrying an electrical device - it had electrodes on it and a transformer of some sort. It looked like something that they could use to administer electrocutions.

  Oh, El preserve us. Zev’s form changed; he shrank back to his human self.

  They lifted him up and fastened his arms again, then attached the electrodes to the bottom of his heels.

  Interloup Fifteen - Trying to Find Where Zev has Been

  The Amnesiac Young Man.

  A Bedford van arrived outside the hotel about fifteen minutes later.

  The driver, a stocky fellow I had not met before who had a fish-and-chip shop face, functional and working class, opened the passenger door for Evans and me.

  “Hop in Evans! So you’ve got the lad. Get in, hurry! The warehouse is only two minutes away. The boys have already put up the detectors.”

  We got in.

  The van bumped along the streets and we were there in five minutes.

  The driver hopped out and opened the warehouse door.

  The rear doors opened and two men leapt out. They began carrying the machine into the warehouse. Evans was supervising, barking, “Put that there,” and, “Watch that, it’s delicate, this way up!,” etcetera.

  We went in.

  In the corner, next to a cabinet, there was a desk with some sort of device upon it with lots of buttons and dials, and the machine was being assembled in the middle.

  There was a great many parts, wires to plug in, valves and lightbulbs to screw in, and things to bolt together. Nevertheless they assembled it quickly.

  It was a large cylinder with parts jutting out everywhere. There was a large metal piece around it, on some sort of rails, with coils of wire around what might have been electrical motors.

  Evans pointed and said to me, “Get into the middle of that thingamahickey.”

  I crawled into the cylinder. There was a flat bed, of some smooth, hard substance, a lead alloy perhaps, so I laid myself down on it and waited.

  Chug, chug, chug, the diesel generator coughed along, the largest metal piece scraped into position and the whole thing clunked and grinded and clattered like a truck with a defective engine.

  After a very long time, the machine finally clunked to a stop. Evans said, “Come out now,” so out I clambered.

  Evans held a long piece of photographic paper onto which a series of squiggles and lines had been exposed, with the end of the paper still attached to the machine. He tore it off.

  He examined it.

  Waving it around, he said, “This tells us everything. There are resonances at 23.502, 22.761 and 39.142.”

  “Megacycles per second?” I said. During the trip from London to Liverpool, Evans had explained radio to me in great detail.

  Evans said, “No. These figures are multiplied by ten to the power of thirty cycles per second. There currently exists no prefix for a number that high. Providing that the Wolf-Lady and Zev are both still within the city surrounds of Liverpool I think I should be able to pick up their ætheric signatures.” He wrote down the numbers. “Take these numbers. Go!”

  The driver and the other two men left quickly, and the sound of the van receded.

  Evans said, “Now we have a cup of tea. And we wait.”

  As he sipped his tea, Evans said, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book short enough to suit me.”

  About twenty minutes later the van screeched to a stop. The three men ran in. One of them gave Evans three rectangular cards with holes punched in them.

  Evans quickly ran over to the desk and wrote down a series of figures, then attacked the machine with great ferocity, punching keys and pressing buttons with an insane intensity.

  The driver turned to me and whispered, “Comptometer. A machine for calculating figures. Takes a good deal of skill to operate, it does.”

  The Comptometer whirred and clicked and finally Evans wrote down a series of figures. He stood up and said, “Here we are! Latitude, 53 degrees, 24 minutes, 6 seconds. And Longitude, minus 2 degrees, 59 minutes, and 5 seconds.”

  The driver took out a map and laid it out on the table. Evans found a place on the map and pointed to it and said, “The ætheric signal was very strong. They are both there. Argyle Street! It’s only a block away. Take your guns. On the quadruple!”

  Evans opened the cabinet and each man took a gun.

  He barked at me in a tone of command, “Stay here!” A feeling of panic stabbed me in the pit of my stomach which must have shown on my face, for Evans said reluctantly, “Oh, alright then, come along, but you must stay in the van.”

  I ran out and leapt into the back of the van with Evans’ two helpers, and Evans sat in the front next to the driver. The van screeched off, and the ride was short but very bumpy.

  The two men opened the rear of the van and leapt out.

  I heard Evans and the driver get out as well, and I heard four sets of footsteps running, and the warehouse door being kicked in, then nothing. No gunshots, no shouting, nothing at all.

  I waited for a very long time.

  It must have been fifteen minutes, I began counting seconds, working out how long.

  I figured half an hour.

  Forty five minutes.

  An hour.

  I tried to be patient, I really did.

  I wanted to do what Evans had told me to do.

  But I couldn’t wait any longer. Such apprehension - it is a cruel fate to suffer so - the suspense was killing me.

  I put my head out of the back of the van, looking around to see if I could see anything.

  There was the open door of the warehouse, but inside the warehouse was nothing but darkness.

  I looked around in the van for
a weapon. I could find nothing except for an open-ended spanner a foot and a half in length. I picked it up - it wasn’t too heavy for me to swing - I could at least deliver a decent bump on the head with it.

  There was still no sound coming from the warehouse.

  What if Evans and his cronies had been captured?

  They had been carrying guns and I had nothing but a metal spanner in my hand.

  What could I do that they hadn’t? I would be... disobeying orders. I would be risking my life as well. It wouldn’t be cowardly to stay here a little longer - just wise - but I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t remember anything specific about my upbringing, but somewhere deep inside me I felt that to desert my friends, to abandon people who had helped me when I was in need, was against everything I had been brought up to believe in.

  Ellulianæ aiohiCwa, what shall I do?

  I waited longer. They still hadn’t come out.

  After all this time waiting I could only conclude that Evans and his friends had been disabled before they had even reached the interior of the warehouse.

  Well, I wasn’t going to go through the front door - that would simply be stupid.

  The warehouse was connected on both sides to other buildings without a gap. I followed the wall around the building on the right looking for another door or an open window, or some other way in.

  At the corner of the street was a wooden gate. I pushed it open and went through. I found myself in a brick courtyard with a single stall stable, a watering trough and some hay. There was no horse in the stable.

  I looked at the building whose rear opened onto the courtyard and saw a sign in the window - ‘POLICE’ - it was the local police station! I dropped the spanner on the ground, thinking they might get the wrong impression if I ran in there carrying a potential weapon.

  I ran up the steps, through the door and found myself in a corridor. I ran through. The corridor opened out into the reception area.

  There was a policeman sitting at a desk.

  I said, “Constable! Constable! I just saw four men with guns run into that building next door!”

  “Oh lad, you don’t expect me to believe that do you? This is a quiet industrial suburb and nothing much ever happens here.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  “Come on lad, let it up. Why aren’t you in school, anyway? Shouldn’t be out and about today.”

  “I’m with a friend of my family - I was helping him with something. His name is Evans.” I almost told him Evans was a secret agent, but I thought that might be stretching the bounds of credibility to breaking point.

  “Look lad, we’re taking you in for truancy. You ought to be in school right now.” He stood up and stepped out from behind the desk, and grabbed my shoulder very firmly. I could no longer move my upper body - he had me.

  So I kicked him in a very sensitive place. He bent over with a great groan and I began running as fast as I could.

  “STOP HIM!” cried the policeman. “STOP that boy! He just kicked me in the bollocks! Get him!”

  I was already down the corridor and out the back door.

  I picked up the spanner as I went along. I sprinted at the wall of the warehouse.

  There was a window about my height there. I smashed it with the spanner, cleared the broken glass from the windowsill and hauled myself up and over it, and into the warehouse.

  There were five policemen following closely at my heels. The first, the one I had kicked, put his hand over the windowsill. I made a quick purview of my surroundings - there were four men in the corner, gathered around two naked prisoners - one I recognised as Zev and the other I realised must be Zelfa, the Wolf-Lady.

  Wait a moment - I suddenly realised they weren’t men - they had hair on their legs - they had the legs of goats. I retched. It seemed unnatural. It was very, very wrong.

  I had no memories of people like this in Ultima Thule.

  There were bales of hay across to the side. I ran over behind the hay bales and hid, just as the first policeman fell clumsily through the window.

  From my hiding place, in quite a panic now, I looked around for any sign of Evans and the other four men. They simply weren’t there.

  The four fauns had turned around. They saw the five policemen tumbling clumsily into the warehouse. They ran towards them and leapt at them, cloven hooves first. The policemen were trying to clamber away backwards and pull out their truncheons at the same time. The fauns were quick, so very quick! Two of the policemen were knocked unconscious in no time at all.

  Suddenly a cry came from the next level in the warehouse. Evans and the three men leapt down from the platform, onto the bales of hay and threw themselves down at the fauns.

  Evans grabbed two of them as he fell and conked their heads together. They swooned and dropped to the ground, unconscious. The other two were whirling around, kicking and scratching at Evans’ helpers and the two remaining policemen, one of whom was the fellow I had kicked.

  Two of Evans’ helpers went down and so did the other policeman. Those fauns were fast! But Evans pulled out his revolver and shot one of the fauns in the ankle.

  The other surrendered immediately. But then something grabbed my arm and I felt a metal barrel being poked into my neck.

  “Stop right there!” said the voice belonging to my attacker. “Stop or I’ll kill this man-kid!”

  I looked up at the owner of the voice - another faun. He was holding me firmly but wasn’t moving very fast, indeed, he was almost stumbling, and I soon saw why. He had a broken or sprained ankle with a pattern of wounds upon his foot that looked like teeth - a wolf bite, perhaps.

  I still had the spanner in my hand. I wrenched myself away from him and hit him in the other foot with the spanner, as hard as I possibly could.

  He cried out and dropped the gun. I kicked it away, behind the hay bales.

  “You stop or I’ll shoot,” said Evans, holding his gun at the head of the other conscious faun, his prisoner. “He’s not human you know - according to the law of this land it’s not murder.”

  Evans’ faun said, “Of course it’s murder - we are Nyashallyamae. Even in this, the realm of the Leviathan, you have laws.”

  “There is no law like that here. It is only murder in this world if the victim is human.” I thought Evans might be pushing his case a little farther than it would go, but the faun threatening me obviously didn’t believe so. He held his hands up, palms open in the universal gesture of surrender. One of the policemen came over immediately and put handcuffs on him and escorted him out to the front of the building, then presumably to the lockup to get charged.

  The police took Evans’ faun away as well. Evans took off his coat and put it around the Wolf-Lady.

  One of the policeman was staring at her face quizzically, but Evans just said, “Costume party. Very good costumes. Don’t try and take those hoofs off the fauns, though - ahem... they’re stuck on too tightly - my fellows will take care of that - could be technology there that we could use,” and then showed his Bureau badge and shooed the police away, while one of his men brought in a pair of blankets from the car and wrapped them around the Wolf-Lady and Zev.

  They were both injured; the Wolf-Lady’s injuries were mostly superficial, a lot of bruises, but Zev’s were more serious. Evans said he thought Zev had some bad electrical burns and possibly broken ribs. An ambulance arrived within minutes for Zev, but the Wolf-Lady went in the van with me, two of the three men and Evans.

  Evans’ third man had a serious concussion and went off in another ambulance.

  Interloup Sixteen - Wolf-Lady

  Wolf-Lady.

  Evans paid for a hotel room, and the Wolf-Lady slept in a very comfortable bed for about thirty hours. When she had awakened and was ready for company he had told her to knock on the wall - his room was the next one along - so she did.

  Evans knocked on her door promptly. She answered the door with her hood over her face, in c
ase there might be anyone out in the corridor.

  Evans said, “I’m inviting the others in here for a meeting, if that’s alright with you.”

  She nodded. Evans gestured.

  Evans said, “The lad is still asleep. He will be here soon.”

  Zev and the driver appeared at the door.

  Evans said, “Zev healed quickly. Two days ago he was in intensive care and it was touch and go whether he’d make it. But now, he’s up and about.”

  Zev said, “In pain, though.”

  Zev’s eyes were immediately drawn to the Wolf-Lady - she gazed at him as he came in - she couldn’t seem to help it.

  Evans didn’t even seem to notice, but the Wolf-Lady saw that the driver’s left eyebrow was raised slightly and he was looking at Zev; perhaps he had seen it.

  The Wolf-Lady lowered her eyes and examined the carpet. She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself. Zev and the driver sat down at the small square table, then the Wolf-Lady. Evans sat down last, after bringing out a briefcase and laying it open on the table.

  “I think the time has come to make some plans,” said Evans. “We each have a purpose in this matter, something we want to accomplish, Now is the time to lay our mah-jong tiles on the table, so to speak, and see if we can’t come to some mutually beneficial arrangement. By the way, Zev, meet Zelf.”

  Zev said, “We have met already,” his eyes met hers.

  She wasn’t sure if he was smiling - his expression reminded Zelf strangely of the Mona Lisa - a painting in the Louvre in Paris. Zelf nodded at him, though, her golden eyes regarding him steadily.

  He continued staring back at her.

  “Well,” said Evans, “Torture in a warehouse is hardly a good first meeting.”

  Zelf shook her muzzle and said, “Before that. I saw him standing on the wharf.”

  Zev turned red and looked away.

  The driver looked at them both with even more interest than before. Evans looked at him and raised both eyebrows - that was significant - then continued with, “Oh, yes, that’s right; this is Jonas, our driver for this little project. He also happens to be a munitions expert and something of a zoologist as well.”

  Jonas said modestly, “Only an amateur zoologist I’m afraid. But I am a genuine munitionist, though.”

  Evans rolled his eyes and explained, “Jonas is quite ridiculously humble. He is practically a card-carrying genius at munitions, actually. Though we do not have academic rankings, if he was at a university he would be a Professor specialising in munitions research. A very intelligent fellow. And dependable and his ah... life philosophy is not too closed-minded, shall we say... There are many in the Bureau I would not trust to cope very well with the um... realities of our situation. Other worlds and all that.”

  Zev said, “Look, Evans, I have a question - what were those fauns? Why did they abduct us? What do they want?”

  Evans said, “Faun supremacists. They are (possibly) the enemies of our enemies in Ultima Thule, the elves. The faun supremacists wish to gain control of the technology that can open the gate between worlds, so that they can invade England and have a base from which to attack the elven rulers of Ultima Thule. That is why they were after Zelf - they want her submarine.”

  Zelf said, “I am glad we have finally been able to set up our meeting, Evans. I had doubts about the ability of your technology to detect ætheric vibrations, but I see now that it can detect even tiny amounts. Ahem... I would not have thought the technology you could develop would be capable of finding anyone from the tiny amount of ætheric vibration a person makes.”

  Evans smiled a peculiar half-smile, clearly he had reservations about accepting such a back-handed compliment. He said, “Well, Zelf, it’s all to do with calibration, really. With these high frequencies, when the equipment is set for the correct range the results simply jump out of the ætheric background hum. Or to put it in simpler terms, we were very lucky you were both still in Liverpool, and together. But when it comes to finding what I like to call ley lines - their radiation signature really is much larger, easier to find - ”

  Zelf said, “What are you suggesting, Evans?”

  Evans tapped his fingernails on the table as he said, “Let me install my detectors in your submarine. Take us with you - me, Zev, the lad. I can find the places where the ley lines are strongest, the places where portals are easier to make, and we can make doorways to the other world. In your submarine, you are able to make a portal. We can travel with you. It enables you to travel home, it gives us the unique opportunity to see the reality of what’s out there - your world - spy on the other side, so to speak.”

  Zelf said, “You want to use my ship to spy on my world?” She had doubts about whether she would be helping him do that.

  Evans said, “Come, now - we know that you have as many arguments with the elven rulers of Ultima Thule as we do.”

  Zelf frowned. “The world you call Ultima Thule is not my world. It is just one of many worlds on the World Tree, Hilhaglyl Glüdzæ. I am not sure that our interests will always coincide, human.”

  Evans said, “Well - then we need some sort of pact - a contract, of sorts…”

  Zelf said, “I think I’d like an assurance from you that you will not act without my agreement while you are on my ship, Mister Evans.”

  Evans said, “...so you are asking for a power of veto over our actions while we are in your ship, Zelf? You want me to submit all my actions to the authority of a foreigner? One who is not even from this earth? I am afraid that I may not be able to do that, given my prior commitment to His Majesty, and His Majesty’s Special Branch.”

  Zelf shook her head. “Well, Mister Evans, it would seem we have no agreement, then.”

  Evans paced around the table, pursing his lips.

  He said, “It’s a simple matter, Zelf. I have given a vow to serve King and country. In all conscience I am not sure I can agree to giving you a power of veto over my actions. There must be some other way...”

  Zelf said, “It is also very simple to me. I am the captain of my submarine. Anyone who is on my ship is subject to my orders. Cope with that, human, or do not agree to come.”

  Zev said, “I suppose I can agree...”

  Evans snapped, “Zev! That really is not very helpful.”

  Jonas said, “It only seems fair, Evans, after all, it is her ship. Look, ah... Zelf,” he seemed uncomfortable talking to her, talking to an animal; that’s how he saw her, she thought to herself, watching him squirm in discomfort. “Wolf-Lady - ah - Zelf, how about if we agree that if we disobey your orders, you can leave us behind? You know - that’s what they did years ago, i’n’t it? Pirates, Navy, walk the plank, leave ‘em behind on a desert island, all that sort of thing.”

  Zev said, “After all, we will be guests on her submarine, if she accepts us as her travelling companions... Come, now, Evans, surely you are a proper gentleman - a gentleman must accept hospitality in the spirit it is given.”

  Zelf was very pleased with this speech, and she revealed one of her rear canines to Zev and growled her approval.

  Evans sighed.

  “Well, it looks as though I am outvoted. Alright, Zelf. I agree, in principle to submit my um... important decisions to you. You may throw me off your ship if I fail to inform you of something you consider important.”

  “You are hedging a little, Mister Evans, but I suppose I should expect that from a spy. I will accept your vow, on my terms.”

  She reached her paw forward but Evans withdrew his hand and said, “Just a moment, Zelf, there’s one more thing. I want your agreement that you will bring Jonas and me back afterwards as well. Back here to England.”

  Zelf thought for a moment. To come back here was not in her plans, not in the least. But if she didn’t agree to this she wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  She had to leave this world. It was worth agreeing to Evans’ bargain to make that possible.

  Zelf said, “Alrigh
t, Evans. I agree to take you, the boy Troy and this fellow Jonas to Ultima Thule and bring you back again to Ing-Gland, if we can find an Ætheric Portal. You agree to provide the Ætheric Detectors. And you submit any important decisions to me for approval; if at any stage you fail to do so, I may throw you off the submarine.”

  And paw shook hand.

  The journey could go ahead.