Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute jc-3-1

by Jonathan L. Howard

  Cabal already had his bag open and his notes folder out. ‘Oriab Island is not small, and the ruins might be anywhere. We need more exact information before investing effort in going there.’

  ‘The ruins are on the banks of Lake Yath,’ said Corde, a little smugly. He leaned back in his chair, and took a decent draught from his flagon of beer before elaborating. ‘I got talking to some sailors . . .’

  ‘What you do in your own time . . .’ muttered Cabal.

  ‘. . . and they said Oriab Island was the place to go. Not because there’s much likelihood of the Animus being there, but because in the ruins by Lake Yath lives a hermit. He will speak to one person a year, and will answer one question that they ask. It doesn’t matter what it is, he will always know the answer.’

  The others considered this. ‘How do we know that nobody has already asked him this year?’ said Shadrach.

  ‘Because,’ said Corde, with a wily grin, ‘nobody has asked him a question for at least two years, and the person who asked on that occasion died shortly afterwards from his wounds.’

  Bose’s eyes had gone very large. ‘Wounds?’ he asked tremulously.

  ‘There is something in those ruins that doesn’t like strangers,’ explained Corde. ‘That’s the scuttlebutt, anyway.’ He took up his flagon and raised it to Shadrach, whose expression of moral outrage indicated that he thought ‘scuttlebutt’ was some act of frightful sordidness.

  ‘We shall have to book passage, then,’ said Bose. ‘Ah. How do we do that? I assume that we cannot simply walk into a shipping agent’s and buy tickets in the same way that we travelled to America.’

  Shadrach took the opportunity to demonstrate his utility and, in so doing, distract himself from theorising as to exactly what scuttlebuttery consisted of. ‘I know the very man. I made his acquaintance last night. Captain Lochery, owner, master and commander of the Edge of Dusk. A galleon.’ He settled back to bask in the plaudits.

  ‘Galleon’ was putting it a little strongly. The party had proceeded down to the stout, oaken wharves, where stout, oaken ships waited at anchor, quite possibly crewed by stout, oaken sailors because, after all, this was the Dreamlands. Almost the only thing at the docks that was not stout and oaken was the Edge of Dusk, a ship that had probably looked like it had seen better days right from the hour it was launched. It was not a galleon, that was clear to all of them, but it was Corde who correctly identified it as a cog, an earlier and smaller form of ship. As a galleon is to a cog, a cog is to a small toy with a sail that one splashes around in the bath to amuse oneself when one is either very young or an admiral. It was something of a disappointment, but Cabal pointed out that a true galleon, one looking like a refugee from a Spanish plate fleet, would have been greatly surplus to their requirements and to their budget. The Edge of Dusk was not pretty, but she was small, and on closer inspection bore an air of competence and functionality about her that Cabal, for one, preferred to her romantic neighbours, their sails blowing like the ruffled shirt of a hero in a novel for spinsters.

  Captain Lochery himself was on deck as they approached the ship. He positively grinned with delight when he saw Shadrach and bounded down the gangplank to meet them.

  ‘Master Shadrach!’ he cried, grasping Shadrach’s hand in both of his and pumping it firmly. For Shadrach, who was used to handshakes with all the vigour of a cucumber sandwich left out in the rain, this was a surprise, and all he could manage were a couple of ‘Oh!’s and ‘Ah!’s in response.

  Lochery, who outmatched his vaguely Scottish name with an accent that would have made Robert Burns sound English by comparison, was introduced to Shadrach’s companions and was polite and friendly with them all. When he reached Cabal, however, his mood faltered. He took in Cabal’s clothing, and said, ‘You’ll be a strong-minded one, that’s plain enough. This place will be a trial to you, no doubt.’

  Cabal remembered the witch’s reference to a trial, but decided that he was not so foolish as to see meaning where there was only coincidence. ‘It has been noted before now, yes. Thank you.’

  Lochery shook his head. ‘No, son, you don’t understand. The Dreamlands were built by dreamers, and dreamers are what they expect. Like a body fights an infection, this world will fight you.’

  Cabal’s lips thinned. ‘Then I shall fight back.’

  Lochery laughed, a fatalistic laugh of the sort reserved for gladiators, soldiers on suicide missions, and explorers leaving tents who ‘may be some time’. ‘I like your pluck, Master Cabal, but this is a world you’re talking about. You can fight it, but you will lose.’

  Cabal looked around him. ‘I have no sense of the Dreamlands going to war with me, Captain. Do you? No black clouds, water spouts or monsters come to destroy me. I feel no more threatened than I might on Brighton beach.’ He spat into the water for punctuation. ‘Heaven forfend.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be anything like that,’ said Lochery. ‘But I’ve seen men like yourself come here, and one of two things always happens.’ He leaned closer and spoke in a hushed tone. ‘The Dreamlands either destroy ’em, or absorb ’em. I’d buck up your ideas and try to fit in if you don’t want the ’Lands to do it for you. For an example, I went to sleep in the wrong opium den. Well, wrong in one sense. I don’t know what they’d mixed their stuff with but it brought me here. I guess it killed me too. My old body, that is. No goin’ back for old Cap’n Lochery. But, as you see, I fitted in. You should try to do the same, sir, or things won’t go so well for you.’ Seeing Cabal’s expression he raised his hands in conciliation. ‘Not a threat, son. Just a friendly warning.’

  ‘Do you always hand out metaphysical advice to your passengers?’ asked Cabal, growing a little heated.

  ‘Only those that looks as if they need it,’ said Lochery, with infuriating good humour. ‘And, for the truth, you’re not passengers yet. No negotiations have been made, no bargain has been struck.’

  Shadrach held up a handful of gold from his purse and said, ‘Passage for we four to Oriab Island, Captain Lochery.’

  Lochery’s grin widened. ‘And now they have, and now it has.’ He stepped to one side and bowed them to the gangplank. ‘Step lively, gentlemen. The tide turns soon, and then we’ll be away to Baharna, capital city and – ’tis no secret – the only city on Oriab Island. The only one standing, at least.’

  It was their second experience of nautical travel on the expedition so far, but taking passage upon a form of ship that had been obsolete for the best part of six centuries was a very different matter from eight days aboard a modern steam liner. In the first instance, the Edge of Dusk was small, barely fifty tons, and lacked the comforts that Messrs Shadrach and Bose, in particular, had enjoyed so much while crossing the Atlantic. To be precise, the Edge of Dusk lacked any and all comforts, including privacy. The vessel’s single toilet was a cubbyhole in the rear quarterdeck with a piece of cloth held across the entrance by two nails. Inside was a bench with a hole and the ocean ten feet below. This, Captain Lochery proudly believed, was the very cutting edge of hygiene technology. Indeed, in high seas, it doubled as a bidet. This intelligence Shadrach and Bose received in a pallid silence, while Corde laughed, and Cabal looked at the horizon in the direction of Oriab Island.

  They would be expected to sleep in hammocks along with the crew – as captain, Lochery had a small closet aft that he called his ‘cabin’ – and during the day were expected to stay at the rail and therefore out of the way as much as possible. Shadrach had suggested that, since they were paying passengers, seats upon the quarterdeck might not be unreasonable, but had quickly learned that, to a sailor, this was deeply unreasonable. Instead they had grudgingly been given permission to sit on barrels on the foredeck with the proviso that they get out of the way immediately if ordered by any member of the crew. Going from ordering stewards around to being ordered around by any passing sailor was a great humiliation for Shadrach in particular, and he spent much of the first two days of the trip standing by the bowsprit, stony-faced a
nd uncommunicative, to the extent that the crew started calling him ‘the spare figurehead’ behind his back.

  The time between standing at the bowsprit he passed much as the others did; swinging unhappily in a hammock, putting off visits to the frightful cubbyhole as long as possible, and being gloriously and violently sick on a regular basis. During the Atlantic passage, they had all suffered some sea-sickness for the first day or so, but had quickly overcome it and had mistakenly come to the conclusion that this was all the time necessary to find one’s sea-legs. Compared to the steam liner, however, the Edge of Dusk was like spending every hour of every day being blindfolded and lobbed at short, random intervals on to a trampoline. The horizon wantonly flung itself around at peculiar angles and the contents of their stomachs followed it faithfully, even while their inner ears told them that everything else was lying, and ‘downwards’ was actually this way. The crew found the sight of their passengers leaning over the rails hugely amusing in the absence of any other form of entertainment, although they quickly got a sense that it was unwise to laugh at Cabal. He never seemed particularly stricken, barking up his breakfast in a perfunctory way as if he had planned to do so all along, then strolling over to the water-butt and taking a mouthful from the scoop to rinse his mouth before spitting it out over the rail to follow his bacon and biscuit. None of the crew had ever seen a man vomit in a dignified manner, and it worried them in an disquietingly undefined fashion.

  There was some commotion on the third day when the lookout sighted a sea serpent about a league off the port bow. Cabal barely felt it necessary to use his telescope to examine it; the creature was vast, a mile long and thicker than the Edge of Dusk was tall. They watched it swim by in a series of undulating humps that barely disturbed the waters, the sun glistening off the slick grey scales, unaware or uncaring of the tiny ship that sailed so near.

  Corde noticed the captain watching it, his arms crossed and a ruminative expression on his face. His calmness did much to still Corde’s own nerves at being so close to such a giant, and he said, ‘I gather such creatures do not attack ships, Captain?’

  Lochery looked sideways at Corde, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, aye? And what makes you say that, Master Corde?’

  Corde laughed. ‘Why, your unconcerned attitude, of course. You do not look like a man who suspects imminent death.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Lochery, returning his attention to the diminishing serpent, now beginning a descent back into its native depths. ‘Well, you see, if we had been in its path, it would have devoured the ship whole. They can do that, you know, and we would not have been able to do a thing to stop it.’

  ‘What?’ Corde’s sang-froid fractured abruptly. ‘We were in danger the whole time? How could you be so calm, man?’

  ‘I repeat, we would not have been able to do a thing to stop it. If we are to die, Master Corde, we can at least die well.’

  Ten days, the trip took altogether, and the majority were much like one another. Once, when the ocean grew shallow over a submarine plateau, Corde excitedly pointed out that he could see a sunken city clearly beneath the waves. Lochery was unhappy to hear it and put a greater press upon the sails, the sooner to be clear. Nor was Cabal delighted by this remarkable sight, refusing even to look at it, instead pacing up and down the deck, muttering about how greatly he resented the loss of his pistol.

  Everyone was relieved when, on the early evening of the tenth day, the lookout called, ‘Land, ho!’ and shortly thereafter Oriab Island crept over the easterly horizon. There was sufficient light to study the architecture as the Edge of Dusk glided between two lighthouses to rival the Pharos on either side of Baharna harbour, and approached the quayside before lowering her sails and sculling in the last few yards. Sailors leaped easily to the quay and, within a minute, were tying her off to the bollards. After such a long and occasionally harrowing journey, the sense of anticlimax was intense.

  ‘Well,’ said Bose, as they gathered their few items of luggage bought in Hlanith, ‘that was an adventure in itself. Sea serpents and sunken cities! Tell me, Captain, is this journey always so exciting?’

  Lochery considered for a moment. ‘No pirates this time,’ he said, shrugged, and then bade his passengers a good evening before turning his attention to unloading cargo.

  Baharna was a very different city from Hlanith, even larger (in their experience to date, the Dreamlands didn’t seem to do small – except for ships) and seemed to owe less to Earth in its architecture. Or at least, as Cabal commented, to any surviving architecture known on Earth. The city was terraced, but in such a way as to make the ranks of Hlanith seem very modest indeed. The streets of Baharna rose and fell steeply and, as a result, were frequently stepped. The visitors guessed that loads were carried on the sharply zigzagging roads that ran across the terraced levels, but people still managed to ride up and down the interstitial stepped highways by an unexpected method.

  ‘Oh, I say,’ said Bose. ‘That chap’s riding a zebra.’

  It seemed that the zebras of the Dreamlands, or at least the zebras of Oriab, were far more biddable creatures than their terrestrial counterparts. A smiling trader in an orange silken robe, saluted them with something similar but not exactly a salaam gesture, and rode by on his patient and sanguine zebra, laden with panniers.

  They watched him pass and then watched him ride off down the stepped road towards the quays. The observation grew to a slightly irritating length until it was halted by Cabal’s curt, ‘Oh, hallelujah. We have seen a man on a zebra and may now die content.’ He stalked off up the hill, looking for an inn the captain had told them of, and did not deign to make sure the others were keeping up.

  As he walked, and they pursued him in a desultory we-were-going-this-way-in-any-event sort of way, he looked up at the huge archways that bent upon the highways of the city, archways upon which stood more buildings of the same dark purplish porphyry from which much of the city seemed to be built. It gave an impression of great solidity and great age. Cabal knew that an igneous stone like porphyry was difficult to cut; the ancient Egyptians had certainly made heavy weather of it, loathing the stuff for its hardness but loving it for its colour, finish and resistance to the elements. Or so the mummy of a master architect had once told him during a not entirely legal experiment at a respected science academy held long after normal hours. In fact, the virtues of building materials were all that ancient worthy had been prepared to talk about, probably because the rest of his brain was in a canopic jar somewhere.

  The vast quantities of the stuff in evidence here, however, raised the question of just how large a quarry would have to be opened in the side of a nearby volcano to supply such gargantuan – indeed, Cyclopean – loads of the distinctive rock. Cabal considered the hypothesis that if all the porphyry were to be dumped neatly back into the quarries it would produce a good-sized hill after filling the holes. In short, that most had never been mined but dreamed into existence, long, long ago by men or things like men. The hard stone had been chosen because it reasonably matched the environment, but mainly because it emanated permanence, and permanence in the land of sleep is better than gold in the world of wakefulness. Cabal’s chosen profession meant that he must perforce dabble frequently in history and folklore and the misty hinterland between them. Over time, he had developed a sense of what was likely and what was not, which historical theories were probably true, and which were bunkum. To this sense, the Dreamlands stank of bunkum, a rank, musty smell like old sacking. Real history was unromantic, steeped in greed and blood and abject eye-rolling stupidity. An endless parade of putative Ozymandiases marching off to glory before snapping off at the ankles in the depths of the desert: that was human history. Every now and then there would be the pretence of civilisation, but soon enough the restless, hateful, atavistic hearts of humanity would tear down the towers and slide back into barbarism, squealing with glee. Decadence loves the taste of blood, even though it is poison.

  The Dreamlands had none of that. The t
own squares had statues to poets and artists, philosophers and writers, not generals and statesmen. Cabal had heard of no wars or even border squabbles in living memory. Oh, there were tales of great wars and toppled states, but these all dwelled in the distant past. When an Ozymandian empire fell here, it was explicitly for the convenience of any passing Shelley looking for a subject for a sonnet.

  Yet, Cabal concurred, the Dreamlands should have had all the necessary ingredients for conflict and anarchy. There were fat merchants with vast wealth, so money was important here, and where there was money there were jealousy and violence. There were pirates, mercenaries, marines and soldiers. There were kingdoms that chafed under ancient enmities with other races and neighbours. All the elements were here, so why did no spark start a conflagration?

  Perhaps, he concluded, wars could only start here for aesthetic reasons. Tawdry little land grabs simply didn’t happen because they were revolting and wrong. Noble crusades and heroic ventures, on the other hand, were romantic and right. Perhaps, Cabal thought, when he had more leisure he might try his hand at starting a conflict here, just for purposes of scientific enquiry. The Trojan model looked simple and effective. He made a mental note to foment a war at some point, and returned his attention to finding the inn.

  It took another twenty minutes to locate the place, ten of which were spent in a small square, the centre of which was a compact but beautiful garden, arranged around a statue of a middle-aged man of patrician features, dressed in a toga. The statue was of striking craftsmanship, but the reason for the pause there was because all of the party – Cabal included – were astounded to discover that they were able, at some curious subconscious level, to hear the statue think. Several people were gathered around, sitting on the pale wood benches that bordered the square, in poses of deep concentration, ‘listening’ to the thoughts and occasionally nodding in slow comprehension.