May 21st, 1908 - Arkham, Mass.

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There's been a wild flurry of activity at Franklin Place, the boarding house Ray took up residence in back in 1906. Nearly all of it's been on Ray's part. The Franklins, a couple in their fifties, have taken it all in stride. It's not as if the University's engineering professor, Dr. Pabodie, hasn't done equally strange things in his time- and he lives in the same house. In fact, he's assisted Ray in his experiments once or twice before Suzi's arrival.

Suzi's been the topic of discussion between the two men once or twice, if only because Dr. Pabodie was mildly surprised at first that a household that could turn out an engineering mind like Ray's could produce someone as distinctly un-scientific as Suzi. Then he found out about her knack for distance and spatial calculations, and promptly things were much better. (Dr. Pabodie has some odd ideas about genetics.) As for the other residents of the house, Dante Helcimer, the Frenchman down the hall, has never really been anything like well since Suzi's arrival. He's a jumpy sort of fellow who insists on vegetarian meals and leaves the table when the Franklins' cook produces a large roast or other visible, undeniable meat. For some reason, he tends to avoid Ray; Ray hasn't really objected.

All of this takes place when Ray isn't at work at the Library, of course. During those hours Ray's usually found a way to set Suzi up with books from the Library's standard collection. History, English, Languages and the like are on the first floor, but the Law Library's on the third, separated from Ray's office only by a room full of old charts and maps. It's amazing how many of the older books in any of those sections have been in need of repair, so Ray's been getting them for Suzi to read and fix at her leisure while he works.

Today the repairs are finished early, and the books that were done yesterday are ready to be re-shelved. Ray, however, is more or less up to his elbows in an extremely strange Greek illuminated manuscript full of forgotten Orthodox saints and highly unorthodox commentary on the New Testament.

Comments

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It's a person indeed: tall, very thin, with a striking, wide-eyed sort of stare. Her dark hair is cut short, no longer than jaw-length, She has not one but two silk scarves wrapped around her neck.

A nervous gleam creeps into her (they're too far apart, that can't be right) eyes as she considers Suzi- and an oddly interested flare spikes in her nager as she spots Suzi's arms.

She hasn't spoken just yet.

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"Meep!" Suzi says again, shoving her arms behind her back and continuing to stare wide-eyed at the other woman. "I'm part of Ray, that's Mr. Stantz? His household or he's part of mine and really I'm supposed to be here it's alright you didn't see anything did you because really I'm human, I promise, there's nothing wrong and I swear I'm not going to do anything did you know that you zlin like a fish?"

Suzi, on the other hand, takes the gold in panicked speech, "I'm just visiting and I'll be gone as soon as I can leave because this isn't my home so please don't tell anyone if you did see something because I don't want to die and this place doesn't seem really friendly to strange things because of the stuff that Ray was telling me about and I just want to go home and you really do zlin like a fish it's very disconcerting but I won't tell anyone about that either?"

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The woman tilts her head a little bit to one side, then to the other; she hasn't quite got the sort of hypertelorism where that gesture is absolutely necessary to see someone with both eyes, but she's on the way there. She ignores most of Suzi's babbled speech, saying instead, "I don't think I know you. You're not from Innsmouth."

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"I'm not." Suzi says in return, "I'm from Louisiana." and she tugs her sleeves back to her wrists.

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"Oh!" says the woman, her expression and distinctly piscine nager brightening. "Father said the Order was considering establishing itself south of New Orleans. Won't he be pleased to hear!"

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"...Um. Uh. Not, um. Not...this Louisiana? It gets complicated? I am not an octopus." What? Fish woman might make the mistake!

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"No, I wouldn't think so," says the woman absently; she's got her eyes fixed on Suzi, for all that the simultaneous binocular gaze no longer looks as it ought, and one hand is drifting up to the knotted scarves at her neck. "None of us are, of course. Do you mean to say that no one's told you? Your poor mother."

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"...Um." Suzi says, totally lost, "No? She's dead."

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The woman nods, unsurprised. "It happens that way," she says. "Quite often. It must have been terrible for you."

She's undoing the knots without so much as glancing down; she's clearly done this many, many times before, and no longer needs to see what she's doing.

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Suzi is going to flail and cling at and to Ray. A lot. For now, though, she's just watching with something that isn't quite fear, exactly. She's just not willing to trust anything that happens in this world as being A Good Thing.

"Um. Yes. Yes, it really was. So much blood..."

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The woman's smile (she... doesn't appear to have lips, or if she does, they're painted on at best) broadens, and gains almost a sympathetic cast. "There usually is," she says. "It pleases Father Dagon so."

The scarves come away from her neck.

She has gills. Not merely slits, but gills; they expand a moment, ruffling out in the air, and throb-

"My name is Rebecca Marsh," she says quietly, "a priestess of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra."

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"Hajene Suzi Darley ambrov Farris, First Channel in Farris." Suzi says in a voice gone blank with shock. "Um. Pleased to meet you."

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"A pleasure to meet you, I'm sure," says Rebecca. "I-"

There are footfalls coming; she hastily winds her scarves around her neck again. "We'll talk again," she promises in a whisper. "Do take care!"

There's only one entry and exit from the Law Library, so Rebecca slips swiftly past the new arrival- Ray, who's got several more books under his arm. "Suzi, I missed a couple of- uh oh. That's not a good face."

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"...Fish-lady thinks I'm a fish." Suzi informs the second button down on Ray's shirt, from a distance of about half an inch. I'm not a fish, Ray. She is. But I'm not."

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"Fish-lady- uh oh," says Ray, looking over his shoulder. "Oh, boy. Oh, that's not good. Not here. Let's get you some tea and rum, and then I think I'm going to tell Dr. Armitage that you're not feeling well and we need to go back to the boarding house."

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"I'd really, really like that." Suzi agrees, "That was the weirdest...she even makes you zlin normal. For human. Sort of. More like Mother than like her. Can I just have straight rum?"

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"Of course," says Ray, putting an arm around Suzi's shoulder and turning her to walk out of the law library and straight back to his office. "Of course. I'll just give you the flask, and I can either explain the fish lady to you or wait until you've had enough to settle you a bit and then head for home. Either way. Just keep your head down. They get fainters all the time around here."

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Suzi keeps her head down and tucked against Ray's side, thanks. "Explain the fish lady, please. It'll bother me otherwise? Was she going to eat my sanity? I don't have much to lose." Suzi doesn't exactly do pale, but she is managing sickly shade of tan right now.

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Ray nods. "All right," he says. "Come on. Sit down. I'll get you the rum."

It's good rum. Massachusetts lay at the center of that trade for a long time, after all.

"All right," Ray says as he hands the flask over. "It's like this. She wasn't trying to eat your sanity, I can tell you that to start with. She had... other plans. Her people are, um, they're... hybrids. Part human, part fish, exactly as you zlinned. To start with."

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"Oh." Suzi says, frowning, "That's. Um. Weird. But if she wasn't trying to eat my sanity I can deal with it." Also the rum helps. Ray will have to refill his flask when they get back, but the rum helps. "Why did she think I was a fish? She didn't have tentacles."

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"Because her people, well..." Ray sighs. "She's what's called a Deep One. They're part human, part fish, and each one of them changes slowly from an apparent human into something else altogether- a different sort of fishy-human shape, sometimes even froglike. Tentacles aren't usually their thing, but sometimes..."

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Suzi is very quiet for about half the remaining liquid in the flask, then she says firmly, "I am not a fish. I want to go home, Ray. To where there aren't fish people who think I'm going to turn into an octopus."

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"That makes two of us," Ray says. "Which is something I wanted to tell you- I think I've got the machine working. You know the one you and me and Dr. Pabodie've been working on? I'm almost certain that it's ready to use. If the Deep Ones've spotted you, then... well, then I think you need to be the first one through."

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"Alright." Suzi says, nodding firmly, "If it murders me, my funeral stuff is in my office. Deitmar knows where to find it." Untested machine. It could happen. "I'm ready if you are."

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Ray gets up and glances out the office door. There's no one about, and there's no one down below who looks much like they might be a fish-woman; he'll just have to take his chances. "Come on. Let's boogie," he says, reaching for Suzi's hand and heading for the door and the stairs down as fast as he can without looking like someone who doesn't want to be seen.

This sort of flight is a very important thing. Otherwise people notice you.

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Suzi follows, still looking wobbly. She's good at looking wobbly; especially when she's feeling wobbly. Maybe if anyone notices Ray's rush they'll assume she's sick?

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One can hope. Alas, Franklin Place is at the opposite end of the campus from the library, and down another side street. Ray picks up their pace noticeably as they pass the hospital. The last thing he wants right now is a solicitous whitecoat coming out to offer a hand. "Half a block more," he murmurs. "Deep breaths, kiddo."

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Suzi nods and breathes in through the nose and out through the mouth until she's able to walk straighter. "I'll be alright. I will. Thank you, Ray." she gives his hand a squeeze and does her best to look fine.

She looks better, at any rate.

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There are a few odd looks as they pass, but the people involved are loitering about, smoking. (Not that smoking is forbidden in most of the hospital, but certain brands of tobacco are particularly noxious, and their devotees are sent outside as a matter of course.) Ray keeps right on walking, and soon enough they reach the house.

"Please, please, please," Ray mutters under his breath, "don't let anyone see us coming in, don't let anyone see us coming- okay, there's no one in the hall- run for it, Suzi."

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Suzi runs. Suzi is good at running, thank you. Terror gives feet wings. She bounces off a door frame or two on her way, but it doesn't slow her down much at all. "Now what, Ray, where do I go? What now?"

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Ray darts after Suzi, pausing only to pull the door shut behind him as silently as he can. "Get the framework out of the closet," he directs, "while I finish assembling the power couplings and hook it up. Point the side with the green dots towards the outer wall of the house and the end with the yellow dots towards Dante's room. Then come and stand next to me. Do not attempt to look at the mechanism too closely. You should be able to zlin it safely but the visual perception of the framework tends to give even me the creepty crawlies."

This is what happens when, lacking transistors and LEDs, you have to build a doorway based on six-dimensional maths and philotic physics with only the materials you've got on hand or can send for from Europe. There are parts of the doorlike framework that don't quite seem to actually exist if they're just looked at (they're there, but it's a temporal presence, or else a presence routed through dimensions that would give Euclid, Descartes, and Newton twitchy fits). There are coils and circuits and bubbling tubes of gel everywhere, and in a few places there are tracks specifically designed to handle little runnels of free-floating energies that haven't got a name in the science of the current day.

There is also a space squarely in the middle that's shaped exactly like a doorway whose proportions are 1:4:9, and is only a little bit taller than the very top of Ray's head.

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Suzi nods and works primarily with eyes half-slitted so that everything is fuzzy anyway. "Green...outer wall. Yellow...Dante's room..."

And then she gives Ray's hand a squeeze and closes her eyes all the way, "Alright, Ray. I'm ready. I'll be waiting for you to come right after me."

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Ray nods. He's got a stack of notebooks that he's loading into a backpack. "I have to give it five seconds to recharge, but I'll come through right after," he says. "I sort of wish I'd thought to grab more of my work from my office, but Armitage is just going to have to deal with what he finds. Okay, now-"

He plugs the power assembly, which actually bubbles and parps, into a large yellow connector on the right-hand side of the doorway. Then he pulls a black handle down, and there's a tremendous WHRRRRM as the power floods into all of the device's circuits.

A sheen of purple-blue light spills from all the parts of the archway, stretching out across the opening more slowly than any natural light ought to. At first one can still see the far side of the room through it, but as the light grows brighter, nebulous swimmy shapes appear and resolve- first into oddly bulbous, wobbling things that make no sense at all, and then into the shapes of people, places, furniture-

"There we go," says Ray. "That's Milliways. Have you got all your things?"

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"Uh huh." In this case all her things means the clothing she was wearing when she got here, which she's had packed. There isn't any point in waiting, so, "I'll see you soon, Ray. Hurry home."

Then she bolts through the doorway, not waiting for him to answer. He'll be there a few seconds later, right?

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The light ripples, pulses, and brightens, and with a noise like a tiny clap of thunder Suzi is gone. Almost instantly, the light fades.

Ray leans back on his heels, adjusting his grip on his backpack strap. Five, four, three-

On the count of two the light suddenly flares unnaturally bright, cascading in ripples and waves from left to right. The blue component of its shimmer is replaced by an unhealthy green tint, shooting through the curtain of light like a sudden onset of inconceivably complicated roots, or veins. Where it touches the edges of the field the green crawls up onto the mechanism, casting its web over the metal and wood and glass with dizzying speed. The very device itself appears to ripple from the center outward, the air wavering like it had been struck by the heat of some poisonous sun.

Ray has just enough time to think Didn't this happen in the basement at Columbia? and throw up an arm to protect his eyes before the brightness sears through every part of the mechanism. With a horrible ZZZSCHLLURK noise, the web of green light-veins contracts all at once, and the machine falls apart into a million minuscule, unusable pieces.

"Ñìšdù," Ray breathes in Sumerian. "That's not good."