I wondered if he meant an indigent who had wasted his life, who had contributed little to the world and whom the world would not miss. Nate replied that that was an interesting possibility, although one would have to ensure that the pauper was in reasonably good health and had not destroyed himself too much. If drink had left him with a cirrhotic liver, say, or cardiomyopathy, he would hardly be a prime candidate. He proposed an alternative suggestion: the body of someone who had lost his mind. A madman, a complete raving lunatic, incurably insane, beyond redemption. Asylums were full of those. The body might still be in good condition, even if the psyche was damaged past repair. Essentially it would be a vacant house, waiting for a new tenant to move in and take possession.
I could see the logic in this, but I could also see the flaws. How would one go about gaining the madman’s permission, or more pertinently that of his next of kin? Nate said that sufficient money would grease that particular cog. And what of this hypothetical dying old man? So far, Intercranial Cognition Transference had had one consistent side-effect, namely that the donor was left mindless, almost literally. Remember the parrot?
Nate’s shrugging response was that then nothing had been gained and nothing had been lost. You had one drooling incompetent before; you were left with another one afterwards. The equation was balanced. The sole difference was that a young madman was replaced by an old madman. Some might call that a net gain, since the old madman would be shorter lived than his young counterpart and thus less time, money and effort would be expended upon caring for him.
That was all well and fine, I averred, but there remained one insuperable problem. I had no idea if the procedure would work on a person. The human brain was more complex than its animal equivalents by several orders of magnitude. Who could say if everything contained in its omnireticulum could be relocated successfully, without loss or degradation?
“I’m sure you’re equal to the challenge, Zach,” said Nate.
“Equal to it maybe, but desirous of it?” I replied. “To perform such an operation on a human being… Where would one even find a pair of suitable subjects? How would one square it with the authorities? No, Nate, it cannot be done, for so many reasons.”
Nate was equable. He said he had simply been airing an idea. Call it a thought experiment. Of course if I baulked at the prospect, that was my prerogative. No harm done.
* * *
That night I could not sleep. The Innsmouth Belle was hoved to beside the riverbank, her ropes tethered to stakes driven into the ground. We did not travel after dark. I paced the deck, listening to the susurration of water rippling around the steamer’s hull and the cries of a mockingbird and a whippoorwill who seemed to be arguing with each other from their respective roosts on either side of the river. Similarly a debate was raging in my head. The conversation I had had with Nate was preying upon me. On the one hand, I refused even to countenance what he had been suggesting. It was beyond unethical. It was unconscionable. On the other hand, why not? I imagined how it would be, having the power to offer the human race the option of living past one’s allotted span of years. Life after death – that in effect was the upshot of my procedure. Who would not jump at the chance? Aside from those of a devout religious persuasion, for whom death was just a gateway to eternal paradise, there could surely be no one who would not at least consider it; and even men of faith might think twice. There was scope here for me to make millions, as long as I was careful to take out patents and keep the details of my Conroy’s Solutions a secret so that they could not be replicated by unscrupulous usurpers. Edison would have nothing on me. I could become the greatest scientific pioneer of the age, not to mention the wealthiest. Then would the Conroy name once more be venerated in Boston, and not just in Boston but across the whole of America – the whole of the planet!
As I was taking yet another agitated turn around the deck, I noticed a chink of light under the door of Nate’s cabin. I had assumed I was the only one awake, the hour being well past midnight. It seemed I was not. I decided to go and knock him up, with a view to resuming our discourse. As I approached the door, however, I heard his voice coming from the other side. He was talking to someone, or so I initially thought. As I listened further, however, it became apparent that there was nobody else in the cabin with him. There was only one voice: his.
Yet it sounded like a conversation all the same. Nate would speak, then would come a pause, after which he would speak again. I was put in mind of an actor rehearsing his lines solo, leaving gaps for the other players’ dialogue. I could not make out clearly all that Nate was saying. I caught snatches of sentences, with muffled unintelligible segments in between:
“I am doing everything you ask of me… your obedient servant… R’luhlloig… all that you have promised… you are a mighty leader, R’luhlloig… when the time comes… fulfil your wishes… adversaries… unleash havoc… the winning side…”
That was as much as I could make out after two minutes of listening. The fact that I was eavesdropping on Nate made me uncomfortable, but I could not tear myself away. It was the word “R’luhlloig” that kept me glued to the spot, for it was the same word I had heard my friend mutter while perusing the Necronomicon (and misconstrued as “rolly log”). From the way he was using it, it could only be someone’s name; the name, indeed, of his inaudible interlocutor. For a moment I fancied he had snuck someone aboard the Belle; with a name like R’luhlloig it could be an Indian, I supposed. Perhaps this R’luhlloig had come aboard just tonight, in fulfilment of some prearranged rendezvous. That, however, would not account for Nate’s mention of the name in the university library, back in the fall of the previous year, unless by chance he had been projecting his thoughts forward to the meeting right now. Nor did it explain the submissive note Nate was striking.
I became rather lost in this maze of musing, so much so that I failed to notice a set of rapid footfalls within the cabin until they were right by the door. The next instant, the door was flung open and there stood Nate. A scowl of anger contorted his face, clearing in a trice when he beheld me, although the smile that replaced it was uneasy, a little too narrow to be wholly heartfelt.
“Zach! My stars! Whatever are you doing outside my cabin?”
I tried desperately not to look as though I had been skulking outside the door, listening as my friend held a one-sided conversation with somebody called R’luhlloig. I stuttered out something about not being able to sleep and seeing the light on in his cabin and wondering if he might feel like joining me in a nightcap. Nate looked as though he was weighing up this excuse, evaluating whether or not it held water. I had put enough truth in it to make it viable, I hoped.
“What did you overhear?” Nate said.
“Nothing,” I replied.
“Don’t kid a kidder, Zach. You heard me talking, right? You’ve been standing outside a while, I reckon.”
I stated that I had thought he had company; that was why I had hesitated about making my presence known. I made a show of glancing past him into the cabin and noting that there was nobody else in there, in order to be able to tell him that evidently I had been under a misapprehension.
That was when my eye fell upon the small writing desk that occupied one corner of the cabin. To be precise, it was one drawer of the desk that caught my attention, for it stood partly open and within it sat a familiar object. The object was poking out at an angle, which led me to infer that Nate had hidden it in haste before coming to the door.
This supposition was confirmed by the expression that came over his face as he followed the line of my gaze. Chagrin vied with annoyance. Nevertheless he made the best of it, affecting a nonchalant laugh.
“Ah. Careless of me.”
“Nate, what the heck are you doing with that here?”
The object in question was the Necronomicon. Nate went to the drawer and pulled the book out all the way. There it was in its jet-black binding, the title embossed into the front cover, the letters somehow a darker shade
even than the plain leather around them. I enquired whether it was his own copy, somehow knowing the answer already. Nate’s frank reply was that it was not. The Necronomicon was a fantastically rare publication. There were perhaps only a dozen copies in existence, most of them in the hands of private collectors. English translations such as this one were rarer still. What I was looking at was, of course, the copy held by the library at Miskatonic University.
“You were able to borrow it?”
Nate shook his head, a touch condescendingly. “The Necronomicon is not supposed to leave the premises. I… took it out without permission.”
The obvious question was: why did he need it aboard the Innsmouth Belle? To that, Nate responded with a certain brusqueness. “For reference purposes, of course. Why else?”
I don’t know what prompted me to ask what I asked next. I guess I felt that Nate ought not to be concealing anything from me. I had no secrets from him. I kept him abreast of everything I got up to in the laboratory. That attitude should be reciprocated.
“Who is R’luhlloig?” I said.
Nate’s face contorted. There was disappointment, self-blame, and even what seemed like furtive guilt. It was as though I had accused him of some heinous misdeed and he did not know quite how to react. For one worrisome moment I even thought he might strike me.
Then his features settled, composing themselves into a cool nebulosity. “R’luhlloig, not that it is any of your business, is the name of one of the Outer Gods. It crops up now and then in the Necronomicon. I was studying the book and practising the pronunciation. It is hard to pronounce, is it not? R’luhlloig, R’luhlloig, R’luhlloig. A proper tongue-twister.”
I considered the explanation. It did not completely account for what I had overheard, for I could have sworn that Nate had been addressing this R’luhlloig, not merely trying the name on for size. In the end, I elected to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was Nate, after all. My patron, my colleague, my friend. I chalked it up to eccentricity on his part.
And so the matter was put to bed. We spoke idly for a minute or so further, then I repaired to my cabin. The next morning, it was as if nothing had happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Fort Fredericks
ONWARD WE WENT, EVER UPSTREAM. THE Miskatonic remained a wide, winding thoroughfare, barely frequented. From time to time we might encounter a rowboat, or a lighter, or a cross-river ferry that was little more than a glorified raft. For the most part we had the river to ourselves. The Miskatonic was not a commercial waterway, nothing on a par with the Hudson or the Potomac. It was a thing of sinuous curves and broad sloping banks, somehow strangely lonely and, at twilight, eerie, for the hush that fell over it during that hour was like a breath being held; the setting of the sun ceremonial, akin to a coffin being lowered into the grave.
We were a day’s travel east of Lake Makadewa when we had our first sight of Indians, two of them paddling a dugout canoe. Their attire was less flamboyant than I expected: buckskin tunics and trousers with tasselled fringes, moccasins, long dark hair tied back with bands of beads, but no feather headdresses, no war paint. They stayed their paddles as the Innsmouth Belle chugged by, eyeing us in a blankly neutral manner, projecting neither aggression nor curiosity. If they felt anything at all about the paddle steamer and her crew, they kept it well hidden.
Junior Brenneman, by contrast, was considerably more forthcoming when it came to expressing his sentiments about the Indians. He coughed up a great wad of phlegm and expectorated it loudly and showily over the side of the boat. In case the Indians had not got the message first time around, he repeated the action. He also gesticulated at the Belle, yelling, “Lousy goddamn redskins. This here’s how you get about in the goddamn modern age. You don’t paddle a piece of tree trunk like cavemen.”
As if to undermine his point, the Belle chose that moment to have one of her little fits. Her engine faltered and she started to lose speed. Charley took the wheel while Skipper Brenneman attended to the problem. By the time we were cruising smoothly along again, the Indians and their canoe were well out of sight.
* * *
Junior did not confine his contempt for other races to Indians. He also despised Negroes, which made it tricky for him to be shipmates with Charley. He used racial epithets whenever referring to the man, as often to his face as behind his back, and while I did not find the words offensive per se, the frequency with which he resorted to them became wearisome. Charley himself seemed able to take it on the chin. I asked him once whether he minded how Junior spoke to him. He just shrugged and said, “There’s nothin’ I can do ’bout it, Mr Conroy, so there’s no point me frettin’ ’bout it. I been on the Belle three years now, and in all that time Mr Junior ain’t changed his tune. I don’t listen to it no longer. I figure he don’t hate me. He just wants me to know my place. If he hated me, he’d have done much worse by now than simply call me names. ’Sides, even if I wanted to stand up for myself, his pa’s the captain. Ain’t going to risk upsettin’ the boss.”
One had to admire such forbearance. But Charley’s easy-going character seemed to insulate him from attack like armour. He had a kind of quiet self-possession that I considered hard-won and estimable.
The Miskatonic disgorged us onto Lake Makadewa the next morning, and we put in at the river-mouth settlement of Fort Fredericks to resupply. The place had been a military frontier outpost during colonial times and was still circumvallated by the remnants of a tall wooden stockade. Its inhabitants numbered no more than fifty, comprising three extended families and a handful of solitary fur trappers and outdoorsmen, spread across a score of log cabins. The crew of the Belle were familiar faces to them, and the skipper was able to purchase fresh meat, bread and water for us at a comparatively fair price; complete strangers would have been fleeced.
As I wandered the tiny township, finding it odd but bracing to be able to walk around freely after several days confined to a boat, I observed that the denizens of Fort Fredericks were in dire need of new breeding stock. Everywhere there were signs of genetic limitation, from mild defects such as jug ears and boss eyes to more serious deformities such as a club foot, a hunchback and, in more than one instance, an extra finger. Nobody had taught these people about the dangers of consanguinity and homozygosity. I foresaw only increasing malformation, dwindling health and eventual sterility in their future.
An old woman – seventy if she was a day – waylaid me as I ambled past, plucking my sleeve with a hand as scrawny as a chicken’s foot and offering me a gurning grimace that revealed but two remaining teeth, and both of those clinging on for dear life. I thought she was after money, and delved into my pocket to see if I had a spare nickel or two; I would have paid anything to rid myself of her.
The crone, however, wished merely to talk, and what she had to offer, between wheezy whistling breaths, was some kind of admonition. I cannot recall the precise wording she used, for it all came out pell-mell from her repellent gummy maw, but it amounted to this. She had heard that I and my fellow travellers were traversing the lake to rejoin the Miskatonic on the far side. If we insisted upon doing that, she said, then we must make the crossing in haste and at a single go. For it was the spawning time of year, and Fort Fredericks folk left the lake well alone during that time. No one fished it nor ventured upon it until after the mating frenzy was done and the waters became calm.
Naturally I enquired what creatures were spawning and why this was so hazardous to shipping. The old woman shook her head in a grave manner, as if to elucidate would be to invite disaster. She told me simply to heed what she had said. God willing, our boat would skate across the lake in no time flat and there would be no repercussions.
I reported her ominous maunderings to the skipper, who allowed that he had heard similar things in the past but had discounted them, mainly because he had never had cause to cross the lake before. Fort Fredericks had always been the apogee of his voyages, the point beyond which he had no reason to go. He surm
ised that the spawning the old woman had talked about was the by-product of an annual migration of Atlantic salmon. If they congregated in sufficient numbers, then he supposed their antics might make the lake impassable, since no steamer paddle could plough through a teeming mass of fish. At any rate, with the Belle going at flank speed and encountering no impediment, we should be able to span the lake in a couple of hours. In such a short space of time, what could possibly go wrong?
* * *
Quite a lot, as it happened. For no sooner had we put out from shore than a mist descended. Fort Fredericks, barely five hundred yards behind us, vanished from view, and all became swirling evanescent whiteness. Skipper Brenneman contemplated turning back but decided against it. Lake mists tended to burn off fairly rapidly, he declared.
So, on we went, across water that was as still as glass. “Makadewa” is Algonquin for “black”, and the lake certainly lived up to its name. I had never seen aqueous depths so darkly, unfathomably impenetrable. It was like sailing over pure starless night.
An hour passed, and in the pilothouse the skipper steered confidently onward, consulting his compass every now and then. I wanted to work in the laboratory but felt too discombobulated to concentrate. The crone’s warning echoed in my ears. I took up position at the bow, gazing at the bare few yards of water the mist allowed one to see. Nate joined me, and soon picked up on my apprehension. When he enquired what the matter was, I made some jocular offhand comment about mating salmon.
“Salmon?” he mused. “That’s funny. I’m led to understand that this lake is home to a very different form of aquatic species.”
“You know something, Nate. What have you heard?”
The Cthulhu Casebooks--Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities Page 19
