Weird Tales #360. Рэй Брэдбери

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СКАЧАТЬ was as far as he would let me go, and I could tell by the look on his face that it wouldn’t in any case be necessary to finish my question.

      “God damn you, Julian!” he said, as he turned away. “It was hope—desperate, impossible hope!—that’s all. And as for … for poor Dawn … ” But he couldn’t say on and so went staggering away through the sluggish, blackly glinting water, in the eerie light of the swirling shoggoth tissue.

      I gave him a few moments before catching up, and said. “I’m sorry, Henry, but you leave me confused. I know you’re planning some kind of revenge—in whatever form that will take—but if you were really hoping that Dawn and your wife are still alive, mightn’t the violence of any such revenge hurt them, too, not to mention you yourself?”

      Yet again he came to a halt and turned to me. “Of course it would, and will!” He said, “But far better that, a quick, clean death to them—to all of us!—than what they could be suffering; to what Dawn, if not her mother, must be suffering even as we speak!” And before I could say anything more: “Now listen:

      “Did you know that they take young boys, too? Young men, I mean, your age or thereabouts? And since you appear to be good at figuring things out, can you guess what they are used for?”

      “No, not really,” I said, unwilling to disturb him further. “But in any case maybe we should quiet it down now. I think I heard voices—some kind of sounds, anyway—from somewhere up ahead.”

      The old man came to a halt, his eyes focusing as he looked all about, searching for signs on the old blackened walls. And: “Yes,” he whispered, about as quietly as I had suggested. “Your ears are obviously better than mine. We’re only five minutes or so away from Green Park, and that’s one of the worst places for—”

      “—Deep Ones?” I finished it for him, but he only nodded.

      And from then on we stayed silent, creeping like mice, glad that the water level had fallen away to no more than an inch or two. And for the second time Henry entrusted his case to me …

      Ahead of us, the shoggoth light brightened up a little until it was about half as good as dim electric light used to be. But if it had been only half as bright again, that would have suited us just fine and still we wouldn’t have complained—no, not for a moment! And Henry was right: four or five minutes later, Green Park’s platform came into view.

      By then those barking, gutturally grunting “voices” I had heard had faded into distant echoes before ceasing almost entirely. But still there were the sounds of some sort of laborious work going on in that subterranean burrow’s upper reaches. So we didn’t climb up onto the platform but splayed down on the tracks in the shadow of the bull-nosed wall, where we crouched down and kept the lowest possible profile as we traversed the mercifully short length of the station. But halfway across the comparatively open space, suddenly Henry paused to tug nervously on the sleeve of my parka, indicating that I should look at the platform’s flagged floor.

      Still keeping low, but raising my head just enough to scan the length of the platform end to end, I saw what he had seen: the large, damp imprints of webbed feet where the dusty paving flags had been criss-crossed. Then, too, I detected the frowsy smell of weedy deeps and the half-human creatures that dwelled in them.

      Deep Ones! Henry formed the words with his mouth and lips, both silently and needlessly. And: Look! He pointed.

      From the mouths of the entry/exit archways, rubble had been cleared away and heaped to the side. The stairs and one wrecked elevator, visible beyond the arches, were also clear of debris; but from one such entrance a thin stream of water flowed forth, snaking across the platform and over the lip of the bull-noses, before finding its way down into the well and from there, presumably, into unseen channels that were deeper yet. But even in the moments we spent watching it, so the flow quickly increased to a torrent, and at the same time a massed, triumphant shout—a hooting, snorting uproar, even at the distance—sounded from above. But of course we already knew that the engineering going on up there wasn’t the work of entirely human beings …

      And now Henry whispered, “Come, let’s get out of here!”

      Minutes later, and a hundred yards or more into the comparative darkness of the tunnel, finally the old man spoke up again. “We were lucky back there. We’ve been incredibly fortunate!”

      “Oh?” I replied. “Lucky? How come?”

      He looked at me incredulously. “Why, the fact that they had recently gone up out of the station! And that they hadn’t begun to flood the place earlier, like yesterday maybe. For if they’d done that we’d the swimming by now! Surely you know or can guess what they were doing, what they’re doing even now?”

      Trudging along beside him, sloshing through inches of cold, black water, I shrugged. “Well, like you said: they’re flooding the place.”

      “Yes, but why?”

      “Because … because they like the water?”

      Henry offered up a derisive snort, and repeated me sarcastically: “‘Because they like the water’? Is that all? Man, can’t you see? Don’t you understand? They’re terraforming—no, aqua-forming—the Underground system, similar to what we were doing to Mars before those freaks in the Esoteric Order fucked everything up! They’re making the Underground suitable, comfortable, compatible—to themselves, to their loathsome way of life! Now do you see it? This maze, these endless miles of tunnels, stations, and levels; these massive great rabbit-holes—and all of them filled with water! Paradise to the Deep Ones! Subterranean Temples to their master, octopus-headed Bgg’ha, with submarine connections to his twisted tower like a great sunken cobweb!”

      It was an awesome, even awe-inspiring, thought … the entire Underground system filled with water: a vast submarine city where the Deep Ones could spawn and worship their bloated black deity for as long as the Earth continued to roll in its orbit.

      Then for several long minutes we remained silent, Henry and I, as we slopped along under the swirling and ever-brightening glow of shoggoth filth.

      But eventually he said, “Well then, Julian, have you figured it out yet?”

      “Eh? Figured what out?”

      “Why they take young men, of course.”

      “You mean, if not to eat them?”

      “Yes,” he nodded. “If not to eat them. What other use could young men be put to, eh?”

      Deciding to let him tell me, I shook my head. “I’ve no idea, Henry.”

      And beginning to sob again, however quietly, he said, “It’s because young men are sexually potent, Julian. Just like horses in the stud farms, as once were in the old days. That’s what my girl Janet told me. But it’s also why she escaped and came home worn out, dying, and pregnant! The baby—not much more than a fetus, I imagine, poor innocent creature—he or she died with Janet.

      But better that then … than the other. And now … and now … ”

      I nodded and said, “I understand—I think. And now there’s Dawn. Why don’t you tell me about her, if you can?”

      “No,” he shook his head, “you don’t understand! You haven’t thought it through. But I didn’t have to, because I had it from Janet, and I’ll tell you, СКАЧАТЬ