It had taken place at 3:30 a.m.
Ripples in the Ether
As usual, I heard Challenger several seconds before I saw him.
“Get a quote from the old man,” McGuire had said at our editorial meeting that morning. “You’ll need to beef it out a good bit before we can run it … it’s far too thin, even for an August edition.”
McGuire hadn’t believed there was a story in it at all, just a “silly season” tale of something in the sky over Glasgow. “The citizens of that city have a reputation for exaggeration, especially when there might be a drink in it for them,” he said. But he couldn’t deny his own eyes. There was a picture; blurred and out of focus, but a picture nonetheless.
So here I was, standing on Challenger’s doorstep, and already knowing what my old traveling companion would say on seeing the photograph. I knocked again, but still didn’t get an answer. Inside the house, Challenger was railing against something. I could hear him clearly, even through the thick door.
“Ten shillings a year, that bloody license costs. You would think for that money they might check their facts first.”
There was an almighty crash, followed by what sounded to me like a bellow of pain. I put my shoulder to the door twice before it gave, and forced my way in, only to find Challenger standing in his study amid the wreckage of a Pye two-valve radio set. He jumped up and down on it, crushing valves and woodwork alike into little more than glass and splinters.
“Ten shillings, you say?” I said, trying to sound casual. “I think you’ll find it’s more like ten pounds for a new one of those.”
Challenger finally took notice of my presence. “Malone? What in blazes are you doing here?”
I motioned at the remains of the radio set. “I might ask you the same thing, old chap.”
He smiled wryly. “Dashed broadcasters can’t even get a Latin name right. Chapman-Andrews has found fossilized dinosaur eggs in Mongolia—fine examples of Protoceratops. Damned radio said they were Prototeratops.”
I laughed. “And your poor set deserved what it got, did it?”
Challenger kicked the debris into a corner and immediately forgot about it. “Bloody waste of time, anyway. Who wants to listen to voices in the ether all day?”
He motioned me to a chair by the fire. We got pipes going and blew smoke at each other for a spell while I tried to find a way to broach the subject at hand. In the end I settled for just passing him the photograph.
His reaction was exactly as I had expected.
“It’s obviously fake,” he said, and went to pass it back when something in the picture caught his eye. “Where was this taken?”
“Somewhere up on the Firth of Clyde,” I said. “There’s a bit of a flap on. Some say it’s a new weapon the Germans are testing.”
Challenger grunted. “Bally Germans don’t have the money to be testing anything for some years yet,” he said. “The war saw to that. And it’s no more than a water drop on the camera lens, any fool can see that.”
“In that case, there are a lot of fools in Glasgow,” I replied. “For we have no fewer than twenty eyewitness accounts as to the photograph’s veracity.”
He grunted again at that, then started to pay closer attention when I mentioned the plant die-off in Arrochar and Milngavie.
“Flattened and burned, you say?”
I nodded. “More like toasted, according to all of the accounts.”
He went white. “It’s not the Kew situation all over again?”
Thankfully I was able to put his mind at rest, on that score at least. “No. There are no parasols, no spores. This is something else entirely.”
I went on to give some description of what the witnesses were reporting; strange lights in the sky, ruined crops, and even weirder accounts of fairies from the Hebrides singing in the night. By now Challenger was only halfway paying attention to me. He had a map out, and was marking off points as I mentioned the incidents. Then, with a ruler and a pencil, he starting trying to join the dots, obviously looking for a pattern.
Equally obviously, this proved fruitless and resulted merely in a random pattern of lines drawn in a heavy hand on the map. He snapped the ruler in two and threw the bits into the same corner as the remains of his radio set.
“This won’t do, Malone,” he said, bristling with indignation. “This won’t do at all. There’s something going on here, and I can’t put my finger on it yet. There’s nothing else for it. We’ll just have to go and see for ourselves. How’s your expense account?”
And so it was that we settled in a first-class carriage later that same afternoon, making for Glasgow Central. Challenger’s booming sermon on the evils of public radio had already cleared two old ladies from the compartment and sent them scurrying into the next carriage for some peace and quiet, leaving me to study the old chap while the rant continued.
It had been ten years and more since our adventure in the Amazon, but time had been kinder to Challenger than it had to me. He had wrinkles around the eyes now when he laughed, and some gray at the temples and in his beard, but they only served to give him an air of distinguished statesmanship. His broad shoulders had not yet started to slump, and voice was as strident and booming as it had ever been. It was only when talk turned to his wife’s illness that I saw the older man he would be in years to come.
“They say there is still hope,” he said, his voice suddenly soft, almost tremulous. “And that is what I cling to. But I do not know what I will do should she be taken from me.”
That was all he would say, and it was the closest to intimacy that he’d allowed himself to come with me for some time. Now he seemed almost embarrassed by it. He covered it in bluster and more pronouncements on the perils of mass broadcast radio. I let him say his piece while studying once again the photograph that had started us on this journey.
It looked innocuous enough. Yes, it did indeed look like little more than a water droplet on the lens, one that was teardrop-shaped and just about to start to dribble down the glass. But the observers on the ground had been photographed pointing at the appropriate spot in the sky, and several had found the experience frightening enough to report it to the authorities. If it was a hoax, it was a dashed large one involving doctors, policemen and dockhands alike.
“Do you remember Penge?” I said softly.
Challenger nodded.
“That’s what I was thinking too. Maybe they’re back for another look. But let’s wait until we have more facts before we start to jump to erroneous conclusions.”
Challenger and I had already resolved to visit the site where the picture was taken, on the south coast of the river Clyde, just where the river widened into the Firth proper. On arrival in Glasgow, I expected Challenger to be champing at the bit to get going, but, not for the first time, he surprised me.
“What kind of reporter are you, anyway?” he said with a wide grin as we checked in to the Central Hotel. “Everybody in this city knows exactly where to go to get the latest information on anything whatsoever. Meet me back down here in half an hour and we’ll see what we can do about your further education.”
A quick wash and a shave later, and I arrived back in the lobby in time to meet Challenger. He gripped me hard at the shoulder, reminding me, lest I had forgotten, that he had the strength of a bull, and half-dragged me across the busy thoroughfare outside the railway station and down a narrow alleyway that I would not have entered of my own free will.
“Welcome to the house of knowledge,” Challenger said, and it was only then I spotted the pub sign. A large brass horseshoe hung over an old oak door. Opening the door let out noise, smoke, and the unmistakable smell of strong beer. Challenger strode in as if he owned the place.
Indeed, it seemed he was known, for the barman greeted him warmly. “Nice to see you back, Professor. What’ll it be … beer or the cratur?”
“Best make it beer. For now,” Challenger said, and his booming laugh rang around the room. I had a flagon of dark brown
ale thrust into my hand. I took it to a corner table and sipped at it while watching in amazement as Challenger worked the room.
Some of the customers, especially the older men, seemed to know Challenger well, and he in turn seemed to know their names, even enough to inquire after their families. At the same time he asked about anything strange in town, and collected a variety of stories. The bar was too noisy for me to catch any more than snippets, but I saw him pass coins, and even a pound note, across the table on several occasions. He had a large smile on his face when he joined me with a fresh beer for each of us.
“The bait is in the trap,” he said and drained a large gulp of beer. “It seems your story is larger than we imagined, for the weird has become commonplace around here in recent days.”
I laughed. “I should get you a job at the paper. You’re a natural.”
He laughed back. “Only in here. It’s an old haunt from years back and they know me well.”
“I have noticed. I did not know you’d even been to Glasgow before.”
The laugh this time was loud enough to stop all conversation in the bar. “Been? I was born just down the coast from here, studied theory in Edinburgh, but studied life itself in this very bar.”
A cry went up for a song and again Challenger amazed me by standing up and, at the top of his voice, starting to sing. Contrary as ever, he gave the Scots in the bar a perfect rendition of “Men of Harlech,” to which everyone joined in with gusto. Flagons were bashed on tables, feet were stamped in time and Challenger’s grin grew ever wider as he came to a rousing climax and the customers roared in appreciation.
His smile stayed as, once the bar settled somewhat, a small man came over and passed him a note. Challenger took his old map from his jacket and spread it out on the table. On reading the note he started marking points with a pencil.
“There have been another three reports today,” he said. “Strange lights over water and plants dying off. This is all connected, and there is a method in it. I’m sure of it.” He banged his fist on the table in frustration. “But the pattern still eludes me.”
I was about to call it a night and suggest that we retire to be better prepared for a trip down the coast in the morning, and indeed, Challenger seemed close to agreement. But that all changed when a red-faced and breathless boy arrived at a rush.
“Dad, it’s the sky,” he said. “The sky’s singing. And it’s on fire!”
Most of the bar’s customers merely laughed and went back to their drinking, but Challenger was already on his feet and I had to hurry to catch him as he stepped outside.
It was not just the sky that seemed afire. The whole alleyway was bathed in a red glow, shimmering like oil on a hot skillet. Looking up past the tall canyon made by the adjoining buildings, I saw that the sky itself was full of dancing clouds in bright yellow and orange.
And yes, they were indeed singing.
At first it sounded like an atonal choir trying to be heard in a strong wind. It seemed to come in pulses, fading in and out at irregular intervals. I started to point that out to Challenger, but he pushed me aside brusquely.
“Hush, man. I’m counting.”
He began to make notes on the back of his map and I knew better than to interrupt him again. He only looked up as the light from above started to dim, the shifting clouds moving away in a southerly direction.
“Quick, lad,” he said, and laughed again. “Your story is getting away.”
He took off down the alley, following the direction the cloud was taking. As he seemed to know where he was going, I followed, feeling the beer swill around in an otherwise-empty stomach as he led me apace through a warren of narrow streets, the buildings blackened with soot and the cobbles slippery underfoot from a recent shower. We crossed two busy thoroughfares but were not bothered by either pedestrians or tram-cars; the whole city seemed to have come to a standstill, looking skyward.
The singing seemed to come from every direction and none at all, and it had become louder, taking on an almost hollow echo that reminded me of nothing less than a monastic chant such as you might hear in one of the old cathedral cities in the quiet evening air. It felt almost peaceful.
If Challenger was feeling any such peace, he did not show it. His sights were set to the south, where the color concentration in the cloud seemed brightest.
“I see it, Malone. Hurry, man. We’re catching it!”
I followed his shambling bulk through more alleyways, then into a ruck of bystanders that he brushed aside with all the grace of a charging bull. But even he came to a shocked stop at the view that awaited us.
We had arrived at the riverside.
A crowd some five deep, lined the whole length of the north shore, and every one of them stared at a spot in the center of the river. A red mist hung over and around a tall, suspended footbridge, and it was from here that the singing emanated. The mist itself seemed almost solid, yet continuously shifting and swirling as if driven by some internal churning. But its overall shape exactly matched something I’d seen before—a teardrop just about to start its dribble down a window.
Challenger’s pause had only been momentary. He had already pushed his way to the front of the crowd and seemed intent on heading closer to the footbridge. The strange singing increased in volume again, and I felt it like a vibration in the pit of my stomach, as if I stood too close to someone playing only the deepest bass notes on a large church organ. I had to force down sudden nausea as I made my through the crowd toward Challenger.
He had stopped again, some twenty yards shy of the footbridge, and was once more taking notes, marking the rhythm and counting beats between tones. I noted with some dismay that he was bleeding from his left ear, and even as I spotted it I felt something give in my nasal passages and tasted blood as it dripped through to my lips.
“Come away, man,” I said as I reached him, and put a hand on his shoulder. At that very same moment the singing reached a concussive crescendo, a vibration that shook the very fiber of my being and threatened to knock me down into blackness. My vision dimmed so that even now I am not completely sure of what I saw next, but it seemed to me that the red haze started to pulse, almost as if it were breathing. It rose, gracefully as a balloon on a still day, and drifted silently off into the night trailing smoky tendrils in its wake. It left behind a smoldering ruin of buckled girders and split wood—all that remained of what had once been the footbridge.
It was only later, as I lay abed in my hotel room trying to quiet the buzzing in my head that I remembered what the haze had resembled as it floated off—a giant jellyfish, swimming in a clear sea, heading for the depths.
Challenger was not to give me any chance to sleep off the headache that the damned singing had brought on. He banged on my room door just as the first dim sunlight showed through the thick curtains, and came in without being asked.
“I have it, Malone,” he said, waving a sheaf of papers in my face as I rose, slightly groggy, from bed. While I washed and dressed he explained it to me—or at least he tried to. I was still befuddled and understood barely a half of what he said—something to do with mathematics, Fibonacci and a universal rhythmic messaging system. He sighed in loud exasperation as, after finishing my ablutions, I expressed continued bemusement.
“Look,” he said, in exactly the same tone he might use to explain something to a five-year-old. “It’s really very simple when you see it.”
Once again he took out his old map and spread it on the table. It had been scrawled all over with straight lines in black pencil.
“I’ve seen that already,” I said, shaking my head. “I still can’t make head nor tail of it.”
“Ah, but you haven’t seen this,” Challenger replied. He took a pencil from his pocket and started to draw freehand in a circular motion, connecting all the dots that made up reports of strange happenings. He stood back and waved with a flourish, as if he were a magician revealing a trick.
I looked down. There was now a larg
e spiral marked on the map, its outermost reach being in the Inner Hebrides, with the line converging down to a central spot somewhere out on the northern banks of the Firth of Clyde.
“It’s a descending Fibonacci series producing a Golden Spiral,” Challenger said proudly, as if that explained anything. “And that infernal chanting followed the same descending sequence. I should have seen it sooner.”
Half an hour later, after a quick breakfast of weak tea and stale toast, he was still trying to explain the how of the thing as we boarded the train for Helensburgh—the spot on the map where the spiral curled in to an end.
“I knew already that there was some kind of pattern,” Challenger said as we got our pipes lit. “I just didn’t see it until I looked over the notes I took during last night’s activities. The Fibonacci series is one of the most famous equations in mathematics. It defines a sequence of numbers made by adding together the previous two numbers in the sequence, and goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, et cetera.”
It must have been obvious to Challenger that I was still somewhat confused.
“Look, take my word for it, Malone. These occurrences, whatever they are, follow one of nature’s most primal sequences. And, as with all mathematical sequences, once you know the formula, you can predict what will happen next. Or, in our particular case, where it will happen next.”
He unfolded the map again and pointed at points on it, staring with the one in the Hebrides. “This one is one hundred and forty-four. Not miles or feet—it’s a gross of the units used by the thing—each being somewhere around five hundred yards, at a guess.”
He pointed at another, well to the south toward the port of Campbelltown.
“This one denotes fifty-five. See how they spiral inward?” He traced the line with a finger. “The intervals between the happenings all follow the same pattern, in ever-decreasing units of time. And judging by last night’s visitation at the bridge, we are now fast approaching the end game. If I am right, then Helensburgh will be the focus of the last four visits, denoting the last four points of the series, 3,2,1, and 1 again. The fifth from the end should be happening sometime before we get off the train,” he said casually. “And if my calculations are right, it will be in our immediate proximity, about a mile from the station.”
Professor Challenger: The Kew Growths and Other Stories Page 14
