January 26, 1931
Nov. 3rd, 2007 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
There are moments when even those without so much as a single psychically active cell remaining in their bodies can know things, and this was one of them. As Ray shivered a little at the sight of poor Gedney's body, its neck frozen stiffly at an unnatural angle, it became abundantly clear: something, he didn't know what, had happened here that was enough to end his obligation to the Old Ones. He gestured to Danforth quickly to pull the tarpaulin back over the corpse. Danforth didn't look right at all- not that anybody could be expected to under the circumstances, but Danforth had the look of a frog about to be pithed. The less he had to deal with, the better; he was only along because he was the only pilot of the three of them, and refused (quite sensibly) to be left all alone with the plane. "Well," Ray said carefully, "unless I'm... really mistaken, it was an accident, at least? I mean, it doesn't look like anything was deliberately-"
"Shut up, Stantz," said Dyer. The old professor's nerves were wound as tight as guitar strings, a side-effect of long listening for the bizarre musical piping mentioned in Lake's report. "We need, I think, to- what was that?"
"What was what?" Ray asked, looking up swiftly; but then he heard it too. Not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response, but a thing too mockingly normal to belong in this subterranean, frozen hell. It was nothing more and nothing less than the perfect, ordinary, everyday raucous squawking of a penguin.
The muffled sound floated from subglacial recesses nearly opposite to the corridor through which they had arrived. Either it led in some way to the surface and the outer world, or some fate too dreadful to believe had led the birds to the subterranean depths in times past; and either way, it was mutually agreed that they had to track it to its source through that world of age-long, uniform lifelessness. The Old Ones seemed unlikely to be of any assistance now. To judge by the art in the caverns above they were too careful, too deliberate, to have abandoned the body without some sign unless there were a very great reason to have done so.
As they picked their way towards what the map and compass seemed to indicate was the basement of a large pyramidal structure, a bulky white shape loomed up ahead of them. Danforth swore and flicked on the second electrical torch. The white, waddling thing was fully six feet high, and for a moment its incalculable appearance clutched at all three men with an unreasoned, primitive dread. Then it turned and sidled off to the left, joining two others of its kind, and all became clear: penguins, the lot of them. Man-sized, and albino and eyeless as many an ancient cave species had come to be, but penguins nonetheless.
Ray lay one arm against the tunnel wall before banging his head on his sleeve. This place was getting to him.
"Shut up, Stantz," said Dyer. The old professor's nerves were wound as tight as guitar strings, a side-effect of long listening for the bizarre musical piping mentioned in Lake's report. "We need, I think, to- what was that?"
"What was what?" Ray asked, looking up swiftly; but then he heard it too. Not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response, but a thing too mockingly normal to belong in this subterranean, frozen hell. It was nothing more and nothing less than the perfect, ordinary, everyday raucous squawking of a penguin.
The muffled sound floated from subglacial recesses nearly opposite to the corridor through which they had arrived. Either it led in some way to the surface and the outer world, or some fate too dreadful to believe had led the birds to the subterranean depths in times past; and either way, it was mutually agreed that they had to track it to its source through that world of age-long, uniform lifelessness. The Old Ones seemed unlikely to be of any assistance now. To judge by the art in the caverns above they were too careful, too deliberate, to have abandoned the body without some sign unless there were a very great reason to have done so.
As they picked their way towards what the map and compass seemed to indicate was the basement of a large pyramidal structure, a bulky white shape loomed up ahead of them. Danforth swore and flicked on the second electrical torch. The white, waddling thing was fully six feet high, and for a moment its incalculable appearance clutched at all three men with an unreasoned, primitive dread. Then it turned and sidled off to the left, joining two others of its kind, and all became clear: penguins, the lot of them. Man-sized, and albino and eyeless as many an ancient cave species had come to be, but penguins nonetheless.
Ray lay one arm against the tunnel wall before banging his head on his sleeve. This place was getting to him.
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:14 pm (UTC)It was the squealing wail of a very distressed penguin coming from roughly a foot above the ground and accompanied by a noise that could only be described as
Tap dancing?
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
And the facehugger had Ray Stantz.
Good thing it wasn't the one from Alien. Just a very very very distressed penguin chick, normal sized and colored normally, his little feet fluttering in the air in a distinctive pattern.
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:17 pm (UTC)"Who- what-"
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:21 pm (UTC)But Ray has another translator. Luckily.
"They're mean and they're scary and they're nasty and they're big and they talk funny and they said they were gonna take me to this thing that they were talking about only it sounded horrible and they're not really penguins even if they are penguins and I don't like them and they have funny eyes and I'm hungry and it's scary and I wanna go home to my Momma!"
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:29 pm (UTC)"Stantz?" says Dyer, carefully beginning to ease out of his crouch. "What's going on? What have you got there?"
"It's a- it's a penguin, Professor, a normal penguin," Ray says, looking away from Mumble for a moment. "I think it's a king penguin chick, in fact. What it's doing here I have no idea."
In multiple senses of the word.
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:38 pm (UTC)And the penguin is clinging and--
Yes, crying.
He's only a little chick, after all, and he's been sent away from his mother and his father, his friends, everything that he's ever known and ever seen and dropped in the middle of a group of strange, giant, scary albino eyeless penguins.
"I w-w-w-w-wanna go hoooooome. I m-m-m-m-miss my M-m-m-momma and my D-d-daddy!"
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:49 pm (UTC)He then looks up and over at the two other men from Miskatonic, who're staring at him incredulously. "I have some experience with dealing with wild animals," he says, thinking of Red.
"Ye-e-e-es," says Dyer. "So it would seem. You're a man of quite a few hidden talents, Dr. Stantz."
There's an implication of something more hidden and unpleasant in Dyer's voice, but Ray chooses to ignore it. Resting his hand on Mumble's head a moment he says, "We need to keep going. We don't know how this little guy got here or what else we might expect."
"I suppose not," says Dyer. "And we owe it to poor Gedney to learn what we can of his abductors- all right, let's get moving.
"Mumble?" Ray says in Penguin again. "We're going to see what we can find down here, and I'm going to see if I can find a door to open that'll take us home."
Antarctica suffers from a severe dearth of doors. The only ones to be found are in the city of the Elder Things.
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Date: 2007-11-03 10:54 pm (UTC)"O-o-o-okay."
And he gives Ray another fluffy hug, not wanting to let go of the one person who's familiar and nice and has eyes.
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:07 pm (UTC)"Of course I am. We can make him the expedition mascot. He's a good luck sign."
"He's the first normal thing we've seen since we came through that tunnel mouth, that's for certain," says Dyer. "What are you going to name him?"
"Mumble," says Ray, after pretending to think for a moment. "He looks like a Mumble."
"Mumble of Miskatonic. Well, that does have a certain ring to it," Dyer says. "All right. Mumble it is."
"Pity we can't get any photographs of him next to the big ones," says Danforth, falling in as they head out. "It'd be a remarkable comparison study, wouldn't it?"
"To say the least," Ray agrees. "Maybe we'll find a dead one later, and you can bring it back to the surface with you."
Danforth's expression brightens at the prospect. It's the only bright thing other than the electric lights as they venture into the long, low, doorless, and peculiarly sculptureless corridor ahead. They pass two more of the albinos on the way down, and several more can be heard ahead when the corridor abruptly opens up. They've entered a great domed space fully a hundred feet in diameter and fifty feet high, with low archways opening around all parts of the circumference but one, and that one yawning cavernously with a black, arched aperture which broke the symmetry of the vault to a height of nearly fifteen feet.
"Uh. Mumble?" Ray says quietly, though like the other men he wants badly to gape. "What was it those penguins were talking about, do you know?"
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:13 pm (UTC)He looks confounded for a moment.
"S'a word I can't say. They had f-funny a-accents. Not Penguin at all. Not like home, anyway."
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:21 pm (UTC)At least it's warm? Warmer, anyway, for all that there are penguin tracks. Dyer and Danforth go so far as to unbutton their heavier garments in the process of making the descent. Several times along the way side corridors are remarked upon, smaller and with a distinct smell that Ray doesn't like at all. About a quarter of a mile down (Ray is carrying Mumble by now), they come across a heap of furs and fabrics. "Lake's camp's stuff," says Dyer grimly. "Best we not look too closely."
Ray nods, but his attention is mostly on the surroundings, and he listens and sniffs for something he doesn't know how to identify.
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:29 pm (UTC)"W-w-w-why are you here? W-why are w-we here?"
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:32 pm (UTC)Since 1906. It's 1931 now.
"If it helps at all, the last time someone else I knew showed up here, she got to go home a week after. So even if I"m stuck here, you won't be here that long."
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:35 pm (UTC)"A-a-actually, I was w-w-wondering why you and all these p-p-people are up here where it's cold and scary and full of bad things?"
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Date: 2007-11-03 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-03 11:59 pm (UTC)"Someone's been here," says Danforth quietly. "Someone's carved this over whatever was here originally. So long ago that we can't even dream of it, but... this is a second wave of work, I think."
"Look at it," Dyer agrees. "It looks like a, a parody, almost... this is a successor-wave. Something strange. Something alien, for all that it looks like the Old Ones' art in form."
Ray is murmuring something to himself too quietly for anyone else to hear. Mumble is the only one with a prayer of understanding it; he's murmuring about sparks and power transmission and feeling the hum at the core. The only thing that stops him, as the alien stench of earlier grows ever stronger, is the sight up ahead of four great barrel-shaped forms, hideously twisted and hellishly torn.
The instant he realizes that he's looking at the mangled bodies of murdered Elder Things Ray claps a hand over Mumble's eyes. "You don't need to see this, kiddo."
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Date: 2007-11-04 12:04 am (UTC)Almost.
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Date: 2007-11-04 12:17 am (UTC)"Danforth! My God, man, what's wrong?" asks Dyer, striding forward.
Ray shivers as Danforth points his flashlight at the corpses. The sight is of something he knows all too well in its substance, though never in the manner of its acquisition. Ray's lived many years with slime of all kinds, natural and unnatural; and in the upper galleries he's seen the Elder Things' primal sculptures, too. All three men had shudderingly admired the way the nameless artist had suggested that hideous slime coating found on certain incomplete and prostrate Old Ones - those whom the frightful Shoggoths had characteristically slain and sucked to a ghastly headlessness in the great war of resubjugation. The headless, newly stinking bodies of the Elder Things are covered with a black, glistening, iridescently reflective slime which clings thickly to every surface.
Alone of the three men present here, Ray has seen such slime before- in the animated continuum, at a meeting of cultists of the dread Great Old Ones, attended not by men alone but also by one of the dread Shoggoths they had summoned forth.
Somewhere in the black and tunneling distance a white mist began in response to Danforth's scream. Or surely it must have done, because it snakes its way into the light now; and the sound of terrified squawking in the farthest abyssal reaches can be heard, ahead of some weird, unholy piping noise of the sort Ray is phenomenally glad he's never stuck around long enough to hear.
"Mumble?" he says, looking down as Dyer and Danforth look at each other.
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Date: 2007-11-04 12:55 am (UTC)"RUN RUN FOR THE LOVE OF THE GREAT GUIN AND ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD RUN. RUN LIKE THE SEAL HIMSELF IS AFTER YOU!!!!!"
He looks up at Ray.
"L-l-least I t-t-think so."
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Date: 2007-11-04 01:02 am (UTC)"Hmm? What?" says Dyer, shaking himself off.
"Run- RUN NOW."
Ray hasn't used that trick of the voice in more than seventy years. He's a little surprised to see that it still works in the face of the paralyzing horror of what's coming, but work it does- Dyer and Danforth bolt, not so much as looking over their shoulders for an instant. He's on their tail immediately after, Mumble clutched close as he can manage. "Whatever happens, Mumble," he says through irregular, panting breaths, "do not let go of me, do you hear? And if you do, don't stop calling for me. I won't leave you behind."
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Date: 2007-11-04 01:09 am (UTC)That's as far as it goes for the penguin.
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Date: 2007-11-04 01:22 am (UTC)"Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" comes the three-note piping, up through the darkness and the mist; the sound wends through the terrified squawking and screaming of the penguins, which by now even Ray understands. Dyer seems almost to hesitate for a moment, but Ray calls out to him, "Keep running! It's not an Old One! Just keep running and don't stop!"
"How- what-" Dyer can't manage the breath to ask the full question. Not and keep running, anyway- and fortunately, running is winning. Doubtless he thinks he'll ask Ray later, but there's no chance of any of them slowing now. But they've come to the great cavern of many openings, and the piping noise is drawing closer, and the blind penguins are running all about them like mad, calling on the Great Guin in their heedless terror.
"South Station Under - Washington Under - Park Street Under-Kendall - Central - Harvard - " That's Danforth, chanting off the names of the stations of the Boston-Cambridge tunnel in a half-hypnotized singsong. It's the only thing he can hold onto now, poor fellow. At this rate he's going to go to pieces, and they have no chance at all if he goes down the wrong tunnel from here in his heedless flight. Ray can see it, and so can Dyer.
Ray stops dead, and turns to face the advancing mist.
"What are you doing, man?" cries Dyer. Ray glances over his shoulder.
"Holding it off," he says. "I hope. Professor, get Danforth out of here. If I don't make it back, Pabodie can have my things. Whatever you do, now or on the planes out, don't look back."
There's something greenly luminescent on the far side of the mist; but here, now, amidst the funk of forty million years and the screaming of multiple species, a swift snap-hiss lights up the fog with the cleanest green fire this place has ever seen. And as Dyer reluctantly grabs Danforth by the shoulder and forces the student to run, words Ray hasn't been able to say all the way through to their end make themselves heard:
"I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer..."
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Date: 2007-11-04 01:29 am (UTC)"R-r-r-ray? P-p-put me down an' c-c-cover your e-e-ears! I h-h-h-have an idea!"
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Date: 2007-11-04 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-04 01:41 am (UTC)And forces it through his voice. His feet don't move, but his beak opens and a noise comes out the likes of which The Likes Of Which that are coming have never heard either.
Somewhere in there is "la la la la la la" but most of it is the kind of noise that you'd describe as "the cats of Hell itself having their tails stepped on by giant screeching cockroaches synthesized through three rocs and a constipated rooster".
Either way, the ice trembles for a moment before the majority of the cave ceiling breaks of and crashes down on top of the Whatever It Is Great Guin I'll Eat All My Fish Even The Tails I Promise Just Don't Make Me Look At It.
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Date: 2007-11-04 01:47 am (UTC)Next to that sound, the indescribable thing vaster than any subway train - a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light - is positively bearable.
As the ceiling starts to come down Ray snatches Mumble up with one hand and starts running again, away from the thing and the ceiling and the cracking and everything else. All these tunnels are connected, though, and though Mumble probably didn't mean it to happen there are cracks making their way into the stone even here. Chunks of stalactite start to drop from above, some behind Ray and Mumble, some ahead.
As one particularly big one falls Ray says, "Hold on!" and switches off his saber long enough to jump over the shattering stone and roll...