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mused, tilting my head back and closing my eyes. "His little torpedo upgrade
was a nice add-on but, let's face it: it doesn't pack half the punch of an
old, World War II torp and he has no targeting system. It's just a convenient
retro-fix so he doesn't have to use theNautilus as a battering ram in a world
of steel ships. It's even too inaccurate for this job. He's dropping bags of
timed explosives from the undercarriage like depth charges! Can you imagine
that? We're using a submarine like a bomber! So, no. I don't think this is
going to do anything but knock out a number of the honor guard. This isn't a
bad thing, mind you. But it really is going to be up to me, now."
I opened my eyes to see her hovering over me. Her dark face, once familiar
and now so young and strange looked down with an expression of even greater
bewilderment. "What can you do? And why aren't you scared any more?"
"I'm going to go inside his mind," I told her. "That's why I'm the one. It's
not the nanos or some special spiritual quality. I have this one gift, this
one knack. That box has been on the bottom of the ocean for millions of years
and its still working, it's still keeping its sleeping astronaut preserved,
protected, safe. It's kept the ocean out but I can get in. I felt it just a
few moments ago and you told me just a few days ago: they leak.They leak!
Well, it's a two-way pipeline and I'm going in. He'll be used to fucking with
other people's heads. I'll bet he's had no practice when it comes to someone
fucking with his."
"You really aren't afraid any more, are you?"
"Sammy? Taking on gods is one thing. Outwitting an ivory-tower intellectual
is another. Give me a few moments to prepare: I'm going in."
The depth charges, as predicted, took out maybe a quarter of the Deep Ones,
injured or scattered another third and pretty much left the field in disarray.
It also bought us some time.
Irena reported that there was an "area of effect" around the sarcophagus in
proximity to some of the blasts, seeming to confirm my force fields theory.
I only dimly heard. I was already fading from my surroundings, slipping
farther away from my body.
In terms of the technique, alone, this would not be like the other mind
melds. Typically, bloodwalking involved a wound or injury providing the entry
point by which I entered my target's mind. It might be anything a cut
finger so long as blood provided the focal point for egress to the body's seat
of higher consciousness: the brain. It wasn't mandatory, only simpler due to
the unique nature of my own body chemistry. I had originally learned the
technique of mentally accessing the target through a chakra point. This,
however, required a lot of focus and concentration and why do it the hard way
when there are simpler shortcuts?
This would be different from either process: we couldn't wound it and I had
no idea what kind of chakras an ET had if any. Instead, I was going to retune
into its broadcast frequency and follow that signal back to the station . . .
As I lay back in the chair and attempted to calm my heart and order my
thoughts I tried not to dwell on the one thing I had lied about.
I was still afraid.
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We are conditioned to distrust, shun, fear, even loath the Other.
Allegiances governmental, cultural, tribal, familial all rely on making
scapegoats of those not like us. We may be better than them or they may be
worse than us. We may demonize them, hold them in contempt, or have very
little regard for them, at all. It's become a ritualized, almost unconscious
process at every level of our indoctrinated existence.
But somewhere back in our atavistic past, out simian ancestors learned to
fear the Other on a much more primal and practical level than the
political/cultural whims for which it is practiced today. Somewhere in our
gibbering hindbrains, we still know in our deepest nightmares, that something
very Other lurks in the dark place, in the shadow, and does not wish us well.
As I began to feel the heaviness of heart settle over me, I murmured to Samm:
"Don't distract me. Don't let anyone disturb me. And don't pay too much
attention if I start to babble . . ."
There it was now.
That creepy sense of foreboding.
That prickling at the back of the neck and the base of the spine.
An oppression of the spirit.
Fear.
The great shadow.
I shivered and opened myself to it.
The last time I had opened myself to the malevolent frequency of Cthulhu's
dreams I had caught only a glimpse, an eye blink really, of what horrors ran
through the cesspool of this alien mind. Now I was wading in, seeking its
currents, finding its flow, and moving toward its source.
Analogies are precarious things. The concept that something is "like" another
is illusionary at best and inconsistent in the main. Water analogies are
frequently utilized because its fluidity is adaptable to so many possible
manifestations. In truth, however, there was little I could liken the
experience to.
I quickly lost my standard points of reference as a welter of shadow images
began to bombard me, all fantastical. With great effort I could sort some of
them into general categories. There were those incomprehensible things,
possibly relating to memories of those places this creature had visited or
from whence it came. And then those vistas that seemed to correspond with this
planet's surface in a Precambrian Age. Glimpses of cities of incomprehensible
architecture and impossible geometries, battles with creatures that seemed as
unlikely as a child's scribblings on colored paper with glue and glitter and
colored macaroni. Colors that belonged to spectrums that even my inhuman eyes
had never perceived dimensions that my mind could not process . . .
And then, finally, horrors that my mind could not digest.
It was not the strangeness and incomprehensibility of form or function that
brought the terror that pushed my mind to the brink of sanity. These past two
years had given me a strong stomach even a predilection for strange forms and
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aspects. No, it was the wanton cruelty, the savage glee that nestled in this
thing's desires to inflict pain and disfigurement upon a world where it had
been held captive for untold eons.
It would be beyond all human comprehension to imagine the horrific
constraints of a twilight imprisonment lasting for millions of years. Human
prisoners share the fellowship of cellmates and socialize over meals and at
various times in the exercise yard and on work details. Even the "lifers" know
there will be an end to their sentence someday.
But for these travelers between the stars something went wrong before the
dinosaurs evolved. They came, they saw, they conquered. When it was time to
go, they locked up the last of their cities, strapped themselves into their
trans-dimensional sarcophagi, set the stasis controls, and waited to wake up
at their next destination.
But something went wrong. The trans-dimensional jump-window opened. And
closed again. Certain craft launched. At least one, in particular, did not.
Sabotage? Malfunction? Whatever the root cause, whatever prevented Dread
Cthulhu from leaving this primitive colony also bound him and other in their
deathless sleep for eons, holding them in the prison of suspended animation
for uncountable realignments of the stars.
Hearts stopped, lungs stilled, limbs held fast, yet their minds raced, raved,
struggled to escape and, in the process, went quite mad.
It was their madness, the raving lunacy, which finally gave them the
cyclopean strength to escape, to burst forth from their coffin-like
life-support chambers and roam about again. Not physically, you understand,
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