by Anthology
Gideon didn’t reply immediately, and for a moment or two I thought he hadn’t understood. But then he said: “Not many people got the look any more. Some don’ show it ’til they’re older, but I don’ see much sign of it comin’ thru in anyone I see. Ain’t no Marshes or Waites any more, and the only Eliots”—he paused to look at Ann—“are distant cousins o’ the ones that settled here in the old days.”
“But there are a few others, besides yourself, who show some of the signs, aren’t there?” Ann put in.
“A few,” Gideon admitted.
“And they’d co-operate with Dr. Stevenson—if you asked them to.”
“Mebbe,” he said. He seemed moodily thoughtful, as though something in the conversation had disturbed him. “But it’s too late to do us any good, ain’t it, Doc?”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant. He meant that whatever understanding I might glean from my researches would only be of theoretical value. I wouldn’t be able to help the Innsmouthers look normal.
It was, in any case, extremely unlikely that my work would lead to anything which could qualify as a “cure” for those afflicted with the Innsmouth stigmata, but there was really no longer any need for that. The Innsmouthers had taken care of the problem themselves. I remembered what I’d said about gross malformations being eliminated from the gene-pool by natural selection, and realized that I’d used the word “natural” in a rather euphemistic way—as many people do nowadays. The selective pressure would work both ways: the incomers who’d re-colonized Innsmouth after the war would have been just as reluctant to marry people who had the Innsmouth look as people who had the Innsmouth look would have been to pass it on to their children.
Gideon Sargent was certainly not the only looker who’d never married, and I was sure that he wouldn’t have, even if there’d been a girl who looked like he did.
“I’m sorry, Gideon,” I said. “It’s a cruel irony that your ancestors had to suffer the burden of ignorance and superstition because genetics didn’t exist, and that now genetics does exist, there’s not much left for you to gain from a specific analysis of your condition. But let’s not underestimate the value of understanding, Gabriel. It was because your forefathers lacked a true understanding that they felt compelled to invent the Esoteric Order of Dagon, to fill the vacuum of their ignorance and to maintain the pretence that there was something to be proud of in Innsmouth’s plight. And that’s why stories like the ones Zadok Allen used to tell gained such currency— because they provided a kind of excuse for it all. I’m truly sorry that I’m too late to serve your purposes, Gideon—I only hope that I’m not too late to serve mine. Will you help me?”
He looked at me with those big saucery eyes, so uncannily frightening in their innocence.
“Is there anythin’ y’can do, Doc?” he asked. “Not about the bones, nor the eyes—I know we’re stuck wi’ them. But the dreams, Doc—can y’do anythin’ about the dreams?”
I looked sideways at Ann, uncertainly. There had been something in her book about dreams, I recalled, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it. It hadn’t seemed to be part of the problem, as seen from a biochemist’s point of view. Obviously Gideon saw things differently; to him they were the very heart of the problem, and it was because of them that he’d consented to hear me out.
“Everybody has dreams, Gideon,” said Ann. “They don’t mean anything.”
He turned round to stare at her, in that same appalling fashion. “Do you have dreams, Miss Ann?” he asked, with seemingly tender concern.
Ann didn’t answer, so I stepped into the breach again. “Tell me about the dreams, Gideon,” I said. “I don’t really know how they fit in.”
He looked back at me, obviously surprised that I didn’t know everything. After all, I was a doctor, wasn’t I? I was the gene-wizard who knew what people were made of.
“All of us who got the look are dreamers,” he said, in a painstakingly didactic fashion. “Taint the bones an’ the eyes as kills us in the end—’tis the dreams that call us out to the reef an’ bid us dive into the pit. Not many’s as strong as me, Doc—I know I got the look as bad as any, an’ had it all the time from bein’ a kid, but us Sargents was allus less superstitious than the likes o’ the Marshes, even if Obed’s kin did have all the money ’fore it passed to Ned Eliot. My granpa ran the first motor-bus out o’here, tryin’ to keep us connected to Arkham after the branch-line from Rowley was abandoned. It’s the ones that change goes mad, Doc—they’re the ones as starts believin’.”
“Believing what, Gideon?” I asked, quietly.
“Believin’ as the dreams is true…believin’ in Dagon an’ Cthulhu an’ Pth’thya-l’yi…believin’ as how they c’n breathe through their gills’n dive all the way to the bottom of the ocean to Y’hanthlei…believin’ in the Deep Ones. That’s what happens to the people wi’ the look, Doc. Natural selection—ain’t that what y’called it?”
I licked my lips. “Everyone with the look has these dreams?” I queried. If it were true, I realized, it might make the Innsmouth enigma more interesting. Physical malformation was one thing, but specific associated psychotropic effects was quite another. I was tempted to explain to Gideon that one of the other great unsolved questions about the way the genes worked was how they affected mind and behavior via the chemistry of the brain, but that would have meant taking the discussion out into deeper water than he could be expected to handle. There was, of course, a simpler and more probable explanation for the dreams, but, in confrontation with Gideon’s quiet intensity, I couldn’t help but wonder whether there might be something more profound here.
“The dreams allus go wi’ the look,” he insisted. “I had ’em all my life. Real horrors, sometimes—unearthly. Can’t describe ’em, but take my word for it, Doc, you don’ ever want to meet ’em. I’m way past carin’ about the look, Doc, but if you could do summin ’bout the dreams…I’ll dig up the others f’r ye. Every last one.”
It would mean widening the tests, I knew, but I could see that it might be worth it. If the dreams were significant, at the biochemical level, I could have something really hot. Not a Nobel Prize, but a real reputation-maker. The implications of discovering a whole new class of hallucinogens were so awesome that I had difficulty pulling myself back down to earth. First catch your hare, I reminded myself, carefully.
“I can’t make any promises, Gideon,” I told him, trying hard to give the impression that I was being overly modest. “It’s not easy to locate abnormal DNA, let alone map it and figure out exactly what it’s doing. And I have to say that I have my reservations about the possibility of finding a simple answer, which might lend itself to some kind of straightforward treatment. But I’ll do the best I can to find an explanation of the dreams, and, once we have an explanation, we’ll be able to see what might be done to banish them. If you can get these people to agree to my taking blood and tissue-samples, I’ll certainly do what I can.”
“I c’n do it,” he promised me. Then he stood up, obviously having said what he came to say, and heard what he’d hoped to hear. I put out my hand to shake his, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he said: “Walk me to the shore, will y’Doc?”
I was almost as surprised by this as Ann was, but I agreed. As we went out, I told her that I’d be back in half an hour.
At first, we walked down the hill in silence. I began to wonder whether he really had anything to say to me, as I’d assumed, or whether it was just some curious whim that had inspired him to ask me to go with him. When we were within sight of the seafront, though, he suddenly said: “You known Miss Ann a long time?”
“Sixteen years,” I told him, figuring that it wasn’t worth wasting time on an explanation of the fact that we hadn’t communicated at all for twelve-and-a-half out of the last thirteen.
“You marry her,” he said, as though it were the most natural instruction in the world for one stranger to give another. “Take her to Manchester—or back to England, even better. Innsm�
��th’s a bad place f’r them as owns it, even if they ain’t got the look. Don’ leave it to y’r kids…will it to the state or summin. I know you think I’m crazy, Doc, you bein’ an educated man ’n’ all, but I know Innsm’th—I got it in th’ bones, th’ blood an’ th’ dreams. Taint worth it. Take her away, Doc. Please.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but he’d timed his speech to preclude that possibility. We were now in one of the narrow waterfront streets which had survived the great fire, and he was already pausing before one of the shabby hovels, opening the door.
“Can’t invite y’in,” he said, tersely. “Taint convenient. G’night, Doc.”
Before I could say a single word, the door closed in my face.
* * * *
Gideon was as good as his word. He knew where to find the remaining Innsmouthers who had the look, and he knew how to bully or cajole them into seeing me. A few he persuaded to come to the hotel; the rest I was permitted to visit in their homes—where some of them had been virtual prisoners for thirty years and more.
It took me a week to gather up my first set of samples and take them back to Manchester. Two weeks after that, I returned with more equipment, and took a further set of tissue specimens, some from the people I’d already seen, others—for the sake of comparison—from their unafflicted kinfolk. I threw myself into the project with great enthusiasm, despite that I still had a good deal of routine work to do, both as a research worker and in connection with my teaching. I made what passes in my business for rapid headway, but it wasn’t rapid enough for the people of Innsmouth—not that there was ever any real possibility of making good my promise to find a way to banish their evil dreams.
Three months after our first meeting Gideon Sargent died in a freak storm, which blew up unexpectedly while he was fishing. His boat was smashed up on Devil Reef, and what was left of it was later recovered—including Gideon’s body. The inquest confirmed that he had died of a broken neck, and that the rest of his many injuries had been inflicted after death while the boat was tossed about on and around the reef.
Gideon was the first of my sample to die, but he wasn’t the last. As the year crept on I lost four more, all of whom died in their beds of very ordinary causes—not entirely surprisingly, given that two were in their eighties and the others in their seventies.
There were, of course, a few unpleasant whispers, which said (arguing post hoc, ergo propter hoc, as rumors often do) that my taking the tissue samples had somehow weakened or over-excited the people who died, but Gideon had done some sterling work in persuading the victims of the look that it was in their interests to cooperate with me, and none of the others shut me out.
I had no one left whose appearance was as remarkable as Gideon’s. Most of the survivors in my experimental sample showed only partial stigmata of an underdeveloped kind—but they all reported suffering from the dreams now and again, and they all found the dreams sufficiently horrific to want to be rid of them if they could. They kept asking me about the possibility of a cure, but I could only evade the question, as I always had.
While I was traveling back and forth from Innsmouth on a regular basis I naturally saw a lot of Ann, and was happy to do so. We were both too shy to be overly intrusive in questioning one another, but as time went by I began to understand how lonely and isolated she felt in Innsmouth, and how rosy her memories of university in England now seemed. I saw why she had taken the trouble to write to me when she learned that I had joined the faculty at Manchester, and, in time, I came to believe that she wanted to put our relationship on a more formal and permanent basis—but when I eventually plucked up enough courage to ask her to marry me, she turned me down.
She must have known how hurt I was, and what a blow to my fragile pride I had suffered, because she tried to let me down very gently—but it didn’t help much.
“I’m really very sorry, David,” she told me, “but I can’t do it. In a way, I’d like to, very much—I feel so lonely sometimes. But I can’t leave Innsmouth now. I can’t even go to Manchester, let alone back to England, and I know you won’t stay in the States forever.”
“That’s just an excuse,” I contended, in martyred fashion. “I know you own a great deal of real estate here, but you admit that it’s mostly worthless, and you could still collect the rents—the world is full of absentee landlords.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s…something I can’t explain.”
“It’s because you’re an Eliot, isn’t it?” I asked, resentfully. “You feel that you can’t marry for the same reasons that Gideon Sargent felt that he couldn’t. You don’t have a trace of the Innsmouth look about you, but you have the dreams, don’t you? You nearly admitted as much to Gideon, that night when he came to the hotel.”
“Yes,” she said, faintly. “I have the dreams. But I’m not like those poor old mad people who locked themselves away until you came. I know that you won’t find a cure for them, even if you can find an explanation. I understand well enough what can come of your research and what can’t.”
“I’m not sure that you do,” I told her. “In fact, I’m not sure that you understand your own condition. Given that you don’t have a trace of the look, and given that you’re not directly descended from any of the Eliots of Innsmouth, what makes you think that your nightmares are anything more than just that: nightmares? As you said to Gideon when he raised the issue, everyone has dreams. Even I have dreams.” In the circumstances, I nearly said had, but that would have been too obvious a whine.
“You’re a biochemist,” she said. “You think that the physical malformation is the real issue, and that the dreams are peripheral. Innsmouthers don’t see it that way—for them, the dreams are the most important thing, and they’ve always seen the look as an effect rather than a cause. I’m an Innsmouther too.”
“But you’re a educated woman! You may be a historian, but you know enough science to know what the Innsmouth look really is. It’s a genetic disorder.”
“I know that the Esoteric Order of Dagon’s beliefs and Obed Marsh’s adventures in the South Seas are just myths,” she agreed. “They’re stories concocted, as you said to Gideon, to explain and excuse an inexplicable affliction caused by defective genes. But it might as easily have been the Eliots who imported those genes as anyone else, and they might easily have been in the family for many generations—England used to have its inbred populations too, you know. I know that you only took tissue-samples from me for what you called purposes of comparison, but I’ve been expecting all along that you would come to me and tell me that you’d found the rogue gene responsible for the Innsmouth look, and that I have it too.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, plaintively. “It really doesn’t matter. We could still get married.”
“It matters to me,” she said. “And we can’t.”
* * * *
I suppose that incident with Ann should have redoubled my determination to trace the DNA-complex that was responsible for the Innsmouth syndrome, in order to enable me to prove to her that she wasn’t afflicted, and that her dreams were only dreams. In fact, it didn’t; I was hurt by her rejection, and depressed. I continued to work as hard as I ever had, but I found it increasingly difficult to go to Innsmouth, to stay in the hotel where she lived, and to walk through the streets which she owned.
I began to look for someone else to soothe my emotional bruises, while Ann and I drifted steadily apart. We were no longer good friends in any real sense, though we kept up some kind of a pretense whenever we met.
In the meantime, the members of my experimental sample continued to die. I lost three more in the second year, and it became even more obvious that whatever I discovered wasn’t going to be of any practical import to the people whose DNA I was looking at. In a way, it didn’t matter that much to the program—the DNA that Gideon and all the rest had provided still existed, carefully frozen and stored away. The project was still healthy, still making headway.
In the th
ird year, I finally found what I was looking for: an inversion on the seventh chromosome, which had trapped seven genes, including three oddballs. In homozygotes like Gideon, the genes paired up and were expressed in the normal way; in heterozygotes, like most of my sample—including all of the survivors—the chromosomes could only pair up if one of them became looped around, stopping several of the genes from functioning. I didn’t know what all of the genes did, or how—but my biochemical analyses had given me a partial answer.
I drove to Innsmouth the next day, in order to tell Ann the news. Although our relationship had soured and fallen apart, I still owed her as much of an explanation as I could now give.
“Do you know what Haeckel’s law is?” I asked her, while we walked beside the Manuxet, past the place where the Marsh refinery had once been located.
“Sure,” she said. “I read up on the whole thing, you know, after we got involved. Haeckel’s law says that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny—that the embryo, in developing, goes through a series of stages which preserve a kind of memory of the evolutionary history of an organism. It’s been discredited, except as a very loose metaphor. I always thought that the Innsmouth look might turn out to have something to do with the fact that the human embryo goes through a stage where it develops gills.”
“Only the ghosts of gills,” I told her. “You see, the same embryonic structures that produce gills in fish produce different structures in other organisms; it’s called homology. Conventional thinking, muddied by the fact that we don’t really understand the business of blueprinting for physical structure, supposes that when natural selection works to alter a structure into its homologue—as when the fins of certain fish were modified by degrees into the legs of amphibians, for instance, or the forelimbs of certain lizards became the wings of birds—the blueprint genes for the new structure replace the blueprint genes for the old. But that’s not the only way it could happen. It may be that the new genes arise at different loci from the old ones, and that the old ones are simply switched off. Because they aren’t expressed any more in mature organisms they’re no longer subject to eliminative natural selection, so they aren’t lost, and even though they’re bound to be corrupted by the accumulation of random mutations—which similarly aren’t subject to elimination by natural selection—they remain within the bodies of descendant species for millions of years. If so, they may sometimes be expressed, if there’s a genetic accident of some kind that prevents their being switched off in a particular organism.”
