The Spawning

by Tim Curran

  It’s all been a terrible lie.

  You never really existed.

  You were appendages of something ancient and dominating that has returned now to take possession of what was rightly theirs in the first place.

  That voice was not his own, yet it was. The voice of the very race itself that was locked up in every man, woman, and child on the planet. It was incapable of lying. It saw the truth and reported it thusly.

  Slim began to cry harder.

  Cry like he hadn’t since he was a kid and had gotten the belt for staying out three hours past curfew and showed up on his parent’s doorstep in a police car. The tears kept coming and coming and coming and–

  “Slim.”

  He jumped, looked around.

  He was alone and he knew it. The door was locked. Nobody could have come in. But that voice . . . it had sounded like April’s voice, clear and shining and perfect like it had been spoken just behind him.

  He whirled around, looking, looking. He ran to the door and opened it. There was no one in the corridor. He shut the door, locked it, leaned his back against it, his heart pounding in his chest.

  “Slimmm.”

  No, not April’s voice at all.

  Something else.

  A wavering, eerie buzzing sound like a grasshopper or a beetle had been pronouncing his name. It made him go hot and cold and then his head spun with dizziness and he slid to the floor, panting. And that’s when he saw his breath frosting from his mouth. The air had dropped fifty or sixty degrees in a matter of moments. It was unbearably cold suddenly and already his extremities were feeling numb.

  “Generators are out,” he said, but knew it was not true.

  And what happened next proved it.

  None of this was station-wide, this was personal, this was directed at him and he knew who and what was doing the directing. The air was absolutely glacial. So cold it was hard to breathe. His fingers were so numb he couldn’t even make a fist. He heard a pounding in the walls and the floor beneath him began to vibrate madly and with such force that he began to move around, planing over it and he couldn’t stop. There was a sudden violent stink like ozone that was so sharp and pervasive he nearly vomited.

  And then–

  A shrill droning sound filled the room with a deafening pitch. It sounded like nothing but the frenzied flapping of wings, huge and leathery wings that belonged to them that were now calling their children home, summoning their stock for the final, ultimate grim harvest.

  The wings grew louder and louder.

  There were knocking sounds in the walls and all those drawings of the aliens and that dead city he had dreamed of were fluttering as if some great, frigid wind were ripping through the room. One by one, they broke free of their tacks and tape and flew in a wild spinning torrent, a tornado of papers that spun and spun like a dust-devil.

  Slim was thrown flat to the floor, but gradually the incredible suction of that whirlwind canceled out his own gravity and he was lifted bodily into the air, held aloft screaming in that vortex of papers and wind and awful gagging odors like formalin and ammonia that burned his throat and squeezed his eyes shut with a flow of tears.

  They were coming.

  He could feel them approaching.

  Coming to take possession of him.

  His papers and drawings flew in a mad cyclone and on the wall, written in bleeding red letters was something he knew he had never written, but perhaps dreamed:

  GOD WILL NOT BE THE ONE THAT CALLS OF THEE

  FOR THEE IS THRICE NAMED BY THE DIVELLS OF OLD

  GATHER IN THEIR NAME AND GIVE UNTO THEM THAT WHICH IS THEIRS

  AND THEIRS ALONE

  Slim screamed his throat raw, but he knew his voice was never heard for he was trapped in stasis, in some black and malevolent vacuum that was not of this reality or the next but a multidimensional hell somewhere in-between that the Old Ones could call up with but a single, searing thought.

  His mind was no longer his own.

  They had now unlocked the dire controls they had implanted in it and it all rose up and swallowed him alive, squeezed the ancestral memories from his deepest, most secret and primal places—

  —he saw the ancient city, rising and machined and cold, a product of the utilitarian hive mind that had designed and erected it. The city, the city, the city. This was where the winged devils took them, his people, his race, through the dark roll of ages... when men were not men but tree-dwelling animals and then apelike things and then proto-humans and finally the time of the reaping... the changing and modifying . . . the cutting and draining and dissecting... beasts to men... minds conscious and vitalized and engineered into great thinking, reasoning brains that were like their own . . . the swarm that gathered and reaped . . . the ancient swarm . . . the communal hive . . . the Wild Hunt–

  The air was filled with a fierce crackling and a flickering charge of energy.

  A headache rose up, throbbing in Slim’s skull and blotting out everything, who he was and who he thought he was. And he saw the wall of his room which faced the darkened compound suddenly glow white-hot and lose all physical reality.

  Something was coming through it.

  Passing right through like smoke through a screen. Something like he had seen under that tarp, but viscidly alive and vital and luminous.

  The winged devil.

  The imprint of which was burned onto the template of every human mind, the nucleus of diabolic horror from the race’s infancy which would later be re-channeled into tales of winged demons and devils and flying night-haunts of every description. This was the inspiration, the most terrifying thing the race had ever known: the image of its god, its master, its maker and enslaver–

  —that great barrel-shaped oblong body with the thick tentacles at its base that it walked upon, the huge membranous wings flaring out, the reaching and coiling tendrils that branched into sticklike feelers. And worse, dear God, worse... those erect stalks atop its head each set with a staring, burning eye like a bleeding ruby–

  Dear Christ, the thousand eyes.

  The million eyes.

  The eyes that knew and owned, that made and enslaved, sowed and reaped and harvested.

  The cosmic lords of the helix, the spiral of life here and on a thousand far-flung worlds.

  And this was what it was like to finally look God in the face.

  11

  EMPEROR ICE CAVE,

  BEARDMORE GLACIER

  GODDAMN WARREN.

  Guy would play X-Box twenty-four/seven if you let him.

  Biggs wasn’t big on video games, thought it was all kid’s stuff, shit for nerds who didn’t have a real life. Fantasy roll-playing and all that. Pretend you were some hardcase with lots of guns blowing away monsters and bad guys. Silly. But he was so bored, he wished he’d picked up on it. He could use the diversion. You could only read so many skin magazines and paperback westerns.

  The Hypertat had an entire DVD library on hard-drive if you were so inclined, but Biggs wasn’t. Everything that came out of Hollywood these days seemed to have the same recycled plot. Kind of stuff that appealed to guys like Warren or your average fourteen-year old boy. Comic book shit. Wizards and dragons, giant robots, high-tech superheroes going after terrorists. The good guys got beat up bad and then came swooping in at the end and kicked ass and made the world safe and everybody lived happily ever after. Same old, same old.

  Biggs tried to read.

  Then he tried to surf the web.

  Lastly, he listened for bored souls out of the other stations.

  Nothing and nothing.

  He got up and paced around, thought about sampling some of the Hypertat’s endless frozen cuisine. No. Nothing sounded good. He couldn’t seem to sit still. Had the craziest feeling that he was waiting for something, something big that was about to happen. Weird. He was agitated inside, restless, nerves on edge. Felt like a kid waiting to open presents or one who was in trouble waiting for his old man to get home and give
him the business.

  He paced.

  He clenched and unclenched his hands.

  Finally, Warren took off his headphones. “You’re getting on my nerves, man,” he said.

  “Yeah? Sorry. Restless or something.”

  “Why don’t you take a walk? Go see what’s cooking below. I’ll watch the radio.”

  “Yeah . . . no, no. I’m not going out there.”

  He went to the window and scraped the frost off it. Bitter cold out there. There were security lights set out at the perimeter of the Hypertats so you could find your way around. More lights marked the passage beyond that led deeper and deeper into the cave. The passage slowly canted down at a forty-five degree angle into the belly of the glacier until it reached the lower level some 300 feet below, an immense ice cavern. That was where Dryden, Stone, Kenneger, and the others worked, exploring the network of ice caverns, drifts, and crevasses, doing the business of glaciology, hydrology, and microbiology.

  Biggs could have went down there, hung around in the Polar Haven they warmed up in and crunched their numbers. Maybe stood around and watched them taking cores. But he would have been in the way and not being scientifically-minded, not much of anything they said made any sense to him.

  Dryden’s boys would just ignore him.

  They’d ramble on about paleoclimatology studies and air-hydrate formation, climatic indicators and ice biogenics. Start tossing around the stats of isotopic, glaciochemical, and stratigraphic properties of bore holes and Eocene permafrost, discuss the joys of subglacial topography and cosmogenic isotopes. They’d get real excited about it, passionate even, start arguing and throwing their hands around like they were debating Sunday’s game.

  No thanks, I can be bored spitless just fine on my own.

  There was always Reese and Paxton, Dryden’s survey engineering team who were mapping out the crevasses and ice drifts for him, but they weren’t much better. Kind of clannish, stuck-up.

  Biggs kept staring out the window into the depths of the Emperor.

  It was one of the largest ice caves ever discovered and the beakers were all worked up about it. He supposed it was impressive. The glow of the security lights out there were absorbed by the ancient ice, making it appear almost luminescent. The walls were set with ridges, flows, and troughs like frozen waves. The ceiling far above hung by literally thousands of icicles, some of them so big they looked like Medieval lances. And all of it that shimmering incandescent blue that practically took your breath away.

  Beautiful, really.

  Breathtaking.

  And Biggs would have thought so, too, had he not been trapped down here in this fucking Hypertat in the funnel of the Emperor itself on the dirty backside of the Beardmore.

  God, no escape. No nothing.

  He stepped away from the window, feeling the throb of a headache in the back of his skull. His nerves were jangling. His hands trembling. His belly was all light and fluttery, felt like he was about to have fucking kittens.

  What the hell was going on?

  What was this about–

  The radio pinged. Incoming.

  Biggs darted over there, hoping maybe it was one of the boys calling from McMurdo or Icefall Station, wanting to hook up for internet poker or something. He slid the headset on, hopeful.

  No dice. Just Dryden calling from the Polar Haven below.

  “Emperor One, this is Emperor Two calling.”

  Dryden had come up with that. Emperor One was the upper team in the Hypertat; Emperor Two was Dryden’s lower team in the Polar Haven. Cute.

  “Emperor One here, Doc. I’m reading you.”

  “Take a message,” Dryden said, sounding practically breathless. “This goes out to NSF McMurdo, Crary Lab. Dr. Galen. Got that?”

  “Got it,” Biggs said, scratching it all down on his notepad. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Dryden paused a minute, like maybe he was trying to catch his breath below. And above, Biggs felt that sense of pending excitement and apprehension take full flower inside him. He didn’t know what was coming, but he had a feeling it was important.

  “Okay,” Dryden said. “Here it is: Perfect specimen located as suspected in ice. Completely intact. Thawing may prove difficult. Coring suggests age of 700,000 years. Repeat: intact specimen, Pleistocene ice. More details to follow. Dryden.”

  “Got it,” Biggs told him.

  “Read it back to me. It’s important.”

  Biggs did, giving Dryden the sort of dry delivery he thrived upon. When he was done, he said, “Hell you find, Doc? What’s down there.”

  “You’ll see soon enough.” He paused. “Send it, Biggs. I want it out right now.”

  “Okay . . . but I got to run it by Commander Beeman, Doc. He’ll have my ass in a frying pan if I don’t. He wants to know what’s going out. Navy regs, sir.”

  On the other end Dryden fumed. “I don’t give a shit want Beeman wants. And I give less of a shit what the fucking Navy wants. This is my project and I’ll cut the orders. He has a problem with that, he can take it up with me personally.”

  “Okay, Doc. You’re the boss.”

  “Damn right I am.”

  The connection was broken.

  Biggs was grinning. Just sowing the seeds of trouble again, that’s all he was doing. Anything to piss off Beeman and drive a wedge between him and the others. Maybe Warren had his video games, but Biggs had his own hobbies. Clearing his throat rather loudly, he called up McMurdo in a voice that was loud and clear and one that was certain to rouse Beeman from his slumber. He told the guy at MacRelay to patch him through to Crary, priority one. Guy wanted to know what it was about and Biggs, just having too much fun now, told him it was a matter of national security.

  The guy got him through fast.

  Galen got on the horn and Biggs repeated the message. Three times. Galen sounded pretty excited like maybe he’d just learned that Megan Fox was keeping his bed warm for him. But that’s the way it was with beakers. They got off on the craziest shit.

  No sooner had Biggs finished his transmission when he felt the cool, efficient shadow of Lieutenant-Commander Beeman fall over him. “What was that all about, mister? Who gave you authorization to send a priority one message without my approval?”

  Biggs spun around in his swivel chair. “Dr. Dryden, Chief. That’s who.”

  “Goddammit, Biggs! How many times do we have to go over this?” Beeman wanted to know. “You don’t send anything out without approval! My approval, you damn idiot!”

  “Yes sir, Lieutenant-Commander Beeman, sir!” Biggs said, snapping to attention. “I told Dr. Dryden that . . . but, well, Chief, he just don’t have any respect for your authority. Personally, sir, I think he thinks you’re a flunky. And a really fucking stupid one at that.”

  Warren wasn’t playing video games now.

  This was better.

  Beeman was really something to see. Guy was like a kaleidoscope, going a dozen different shades of scarlet and purple. He had more colors in his face than a bag of Skittles. Cords snapped tight in his throat. Veins pulsed at his temples. His ears got so red they looked like they might start on fire. Biggs stepped back a bit because he thought the guy’s bulging eyes were going to pop out of his head and hurt someone.

  “YOU LISTEN TO ME, YOU SMART-ASSED, LAZY, INCOMPETENT SHIT!” Beeman shouted. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR CRAP! I’M IN CHARGE HERE AND YOU BETTER START TOEING THE FUCKING LINE OR SO HELP ME I’LL BREAK YOU! NOTHING GOES OUT WITHOUT MY SAY-SO, UNDERSTAND?”

  “Yes sir! I understand just fine, sir!” Biggs said, giving him another limp-wristed salute. “But the problem here, big boss man, is that Dr. Dryden is in charge of this project and I do what he says! And Dryden told me quite specifically that he doesn’t give a shit what you want, even less of one for what the fucking Navy wants! I have nothing but admiration and respect for you, sir, but I’m just following orders! Sir!”

  That was it. That broke it.

  Beeman charged
in before he could even hope of controlling himself. He charged in and shoved Biggs with everything he had, putting him right down on his ass.

  And Biggs thought: That’s it, you stupid jarhead! Now you’ve done it! Now you’ve pissed all over your efficient little record! I’m down and I’ll stay down because, oh boy, you hurt me!

  “Oh! My fucking arm!” he whined, putting on the show. “I think you might have broken it, sir! I’ll have to report this to the NSF. I’m pretty sure physical violence is in complete violation of NSF regulations.” He looked over at Warren who couldn’t seem to remember how to close his mouth. “You saw it, didn’t you, Warren? You witnessed the assault?”

  “Yeah . . . I mean, I guess I did.”

  Beeman looked ready to take it up another notch and break both Biggs’s arms. But he controlled himself this time. “You do that. You report it. And while you’re at it, you just remember that you’re stuck with me until spring and I’ve got ways of making it one long, ugly winter for you.”

  Biggs smiled at him. “I’ll make a note of it, Big Chief. Yes sir, I will. I’m stuck with you until spring and you have ways of making it one long, ugly winter for me. Yes sir, threat duly noted and logged, El Kahuna.”

  Beeman threw on his ECWs before his temper got the best of him and rapidly went out the door into the cold. When it was slammed shut, Biggs was still smiling.

  “You just can’t quit, can you?” Warren said.

  “I won’t quit until that motherfucker has a stroke. Fucking Navy. Fucking push-button jarheads.”

  There was silence for a time as Biggs started thinking about the message he had sent and what it might mean. Something about it all made that anxiety in him rise like boiling milk. His palms were sweating and he almost felt sick to his stomach. That headache began to pound again in his skull.