Jim Baen's Universe

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Illustrated by Barb Jernigan

A moment ago escape from the gut-wrenching passage of the churnel had seemed a vast relief. Like the back gas pressure from a mixture of sauerkraut and peas escaping, to be blamed on the dog . . . the moment was wondrous . . . and temporary. Like discovering it wasn’t gas escaping. And that the yellow submersible was not just an illusion of passage. It was haunting us.

From his very dignified position on hands and knees Steven Speairs looked at me. “This is all your fucking fault, Guptill.”

“Usually is. Somehow.” I didn’t feel I was in any position to argue. That had been the submersible we’d seen, I’d swear. And this was either a very infamous hotel in Mozambique or something as like it as Oliver Thambo International Airport is like Johannesburg International Airport or is like Jan Smuts International Airport (The three are so alike that I have often thought I was in one when I was really in the other. It’s almost as if some thirteen-year-old had perpetrated one of those . . . you know, really hilarious little practical jokes of sign switching, so satisfying to tiny minds. I’ve long suspected, on seeing the wrong signs in the right places that the three places are merely the gates to mutually exclusive universes. I’ve also long suspected pigeons of being inter-dimensional travelers, ever since I realized the pigeon poop piles on the signs were the one thing that never changed about them, no matter what name appeared on them.) In short: I had a horrible feeling that we were the unwitting victims just such a practical joke.

Stephen rolled over and lay on his back, groaning. And the large white-shirted and neatly bow-tied gentleman looking down on us, looked suitably unimpressed. He was big enough for the task he looked like he was about to undertake—tossing these rejects from iron cage of his elevator (yes, it was that vintage elevator) out into the street and balmy night air without as much as a Dos M to protect them from malarial mosquitoes. One of the many oddities about Mozambique is that besides having survived Bob Dylan singing about it and having had twenty years of civil war which left 90% of the country in ruins and 99% of its industry toast, is that the local beer—Dos M—pronounced ‘doish’—is both good and relatively cheap. It’s a light lager, which you may rightly say is an abomination—in England. In the tropics its a fairly good idea. Cold, crisp and bitter, good for replacing fluids, or providing fluids to need replacing later. One day someone will explain to my satisfaction how it evolved in bollock-freezing Northern Europe. It’s going to cost you a lot mind-numbing stuff to do that, because there is not one ounce of common sense in it.

The large gentleman confirmed my worst suspicions by greeting us in a very frosty tone.

“What does he mean ‘bomb dear’? Is this an evacuation? Bloody hell,” asked Speairs, trying to sit up and failing. “I’ve turned into a military parade. Bits of me keep passing out.”

It was funny when Douglas Adams said it. But now it felt too close to reality. “It’s Portuguese. Means ‘good day.’”

“We’re in the wrong pub, said Stephen with one of those flights of genius that could just make a man famous. Get him a Nobel prize. “Must be somewhere down towards Croydon.“

”Just a little further south, gentlemen. Just a little further south,” said the newcomer on the scene, a sleek-looking bloke who might have been related to Drako Malfoy. Well, maybe it was the sinister air. Or the fact that he had a beer and we didn’t. That’s always a sign of lurking evil, or at least of someone who likes to see others suffer. “It’s all right, Luis. They’re with me. Or will be.”

It occurred to me then that the elevator was not, in fact, a broom closet. I’m very quick witted about that sort of thing. Observant too. And it didn’t smell of ammonia. Why this should be important I was not entirely sure. There was a faint whiff of seafood, but that is the norm, along with the smell of the frying of it, in any establishment in Moz. It’s not a good scent when you’re feeling more than a little queasy.

“Let me introduce myself,” said Draco’s relation. “Dann Douglas.” And then the magic words that transformed him from sinister messenger to angel of redemption. “You all look in need of beer.”

Stephen Speairs got to his feet. “That, and knowing what the hell I am doing here?”

“Ah,” said Dann. “I believe the word ‘shanghaied’ applies best. Dos M?”

It added a certain attractiveness to the term "shanghaied."

Speairs looked suspicious and asked warily. “What in hell is ‘doish ‘em’? Do I have to hit someone . . . or tip them?

“Neither. It’s the name of the local beer,” I explained.

“Real Ale?” Stephen brightened perceptibly.

“Fat chance. You’re not in bloody England now.” (A statement that I was to later regret, as Stephen somehow concluded that as the locals had neither Scots nor Irish accents, he had to be in Wales, and that the Portuguese being spoken was in fact, Welsh. It was perfectly good logic accompanied by the singing from the nightclub on the premises. The soprano singer was doing a Portuguese version of "Don’t cry for me, Argentina," which I daresay sounded like "Land of Our Fathers" from a Welsh men's choir to Stephen. I suspect that he put the fact that most of them were black down to coal mining.)

I let myself follow the beer-piper to the lounge-bar. “I still want to know how and why we’re here,” I said, showing that not all sense had left my brain via my kidneys.

“And you’re going to have to tell me what that submarine was doing in the churnel, Dexter,” said Stephen.

“About fifteen miles per hour,” I said. Very sharp for the amount of drinking we’d done, but it could be that the trips through the churnel had leached some of the alcohol from my brain.

“It has to be something to do with you,” Speairs said, showing true mental acumen.

“We weren’t even in the country when it happened,” I informed him firmly. True. We’d been in international waters.

“Fascinating,” said our self-volunteered host, collecting a bundle of frosty beer bottles from the bar. Very civilized this being shanghaied was . . . so far. I had a feeling it might degenerate rapidly, and that I’d best drink while I was able. I knew, even if Stephen hadn’t figured it out, that I was in foreign land without the benefits of a passport, a return ticket, a grasp of the language beyond "Dos M" and "good day." It seemed like a good idea to be sweetness and light to our host right now. Anyway. A beer is a good reason for that.

“So what were you doing in international waters with a submarine?” he asked

“I wasn’t,” I said sticking to the party line.

“Was it a yellow submarine?” asked Dann.

“Mostly,” I admitted.

“Aha. I wondered why you’d been snagged from the churnel and off into the Viagron of the upper hall. You’ve been involved in the octopussy’s garden.” He did not sound as if this was a good thing have been involved in.

“Not even in the sun, mate.” I’m of a vintage to recognize Beatles references. “ There must be some kind of mistake.”

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafn Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn,” Dann intoned.

I wondered what he was on about. Was he choking. “What? Sorry, I didn’t quite get that?”

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafn Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.” he repeated, almost reverently.

“Sorry. I don’t speak Portuguese,” I admitted.

“I think it is Welsh, actually," Stephen Speairs said knowledgably. “They speak it a lot in these parts.”

Dann looked faintly amused. “Have you heard it before?”

“No,” I admitted. Thought about it. “Well, maybe. It sounded a bit like that. From a Traffic Officer in Umtata. But he was drunk and I think he had problems with his dentures.”

His eyes narrowed. “Was he a tall man with small white beard? You had a narrow escape.”

“Yeah. We barely had enough money for the fine,” I said, thinking back. It was pay or jail there—and Umtata jail was not an experience you wanted, by all reports.

“Thabo. We know him well. He is from the Ostracoderm Equalization league. Their agents are everywhere. He must have detected the aura about you.” Dann sat down at a table in almost deserted lounge-bar. “You’d better tell me all about the yellow submarine.”

I drank some beer. I wasn’t being asked. I was being told, in no uncertain terms. And Kevin wasn’t here to stop me. “I’ll need more beer,” I said.

Dann snapped his fingers. A waiter in crisp whites came across to us. This was Mozambique, not South London. “Six more,” he said.

That sounded reasonable, for a start, anyway. “It wasn’t a submarine. It was a submersible. A little job.”

“A little yellow job, not a little brown job,” said Stephen helpfully. “And why was that chasing us through the churnel tunnels?”

“I honestly have no idea.” I gestured at Dann. “But I think he might know.”

“I do. But I also do not think I am yet ready to explain it to you. Not until I have heard the story. All I will say is it is a known side-effect of the Viagron. Our method of moving through space and time.”

Stephen took a long pull on his beer. “Story time,” he said, looking at me. He was big guy, even if he’d let himself go a bit.

“What do you know about fish?” I asked, by way of giving myself time to think.

Dann smiled the smile of a fox dreaming of unguarded and wide open chicken processing units. “Let us assume, nothing.”

“Well,” I said, getting into lecturing mode, “Then the story has to start a fair way back. Four hundred million years, in the Devonian era . . .”

“Vigintillions of years ago,” said Stephen with the deep satisfaction of someone who has been saving a word for years and has finally had the chance to use it.

“What?” I asked with a suitable air of puzzlement. I had give him that opening. I’d been there myself. Do you know how few opportunities you get to use "sesquipedalian" in day-to-day conversation? I noticed our host looked as if the tasty-smelling wide-open chicken-processing unit’s doors had just started to move of their own accord, after he was inside. That was odd. What was wrong with Vigintillions?

Stephen beamed. “Vigintillions of years, Dexter. 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 . . . and so on. Sixty-three noughts. I read it in a short story, and had to look it up.”

“Seems a few noughts too many,” I said.

“Lovecraft was a little prone to exaggerate a trifle,” said our host. “He was mathematically challenged.”

“Ah yes! Lovecraft,” Stephen nodded. “That’s where I came across the . . . Fingluey stuff you said earlier. I knew I’d encountered it before.”

“Ph’nglui . . . well, anyway, back to your story, sir,” said Dann.

I’m always uncomfortable when someone calls me "sir." My knighthood seems to have been delayed for some reason. The invitation to visit the Queen seems to have been lost in the post or something. Actually I never had much time for that antiquated stuff. The only people who call you "sir" would like to spit in your eye. But Dann Douglas was providing the beer . . . and I had a feeling that getting out of here was going to be difficult without him. “Well, the story centers about a fish called the coelacanth that’s been around virtually unchanged since the Devonian. Damn near a vigintillion years back.

“Think of the size of the beast by now,” said Stephen, with a suitable "confirming urban myth" smile. “They keep growing, eh?”

I shook my head. “I meant the lobe-finned fishes as a group. Not some four hundred million year old fish. All we have from then is fossils.”

“What sort of bait do you use for those?” Speairs asked, determined to keep me off my stride.

I had years of practice of dealing with this sort of heckling. Science is rotten with it. “Minced paleontologist in a cornmeal porridge base. But they don’t fight much, and they’re terrible eating.”

“I’ll give them a miss then,” said Speairs, generously.

“Anyway, the lobe-finned fishes appeared to have disappeared from the fossil record about seventy million years ago, and were assumed to be extinct,” I said, assuming my best oratorical pose, waving an empty bottle for emphasis. A full one was thrust at me, proving you can never be too emphatic.

Our host smiled. “They became more civilized about burying . . . or should I say ‘disposal,’ of their dead. Therefore no fossils.”

I raised my eyebrows. Next he’d be explaining how Coelacanths were really the secret masters of the universe, and how they left signs for us on Nazca plains. You get all sorts of theories about fish. “Or the only ones that survived were in deep water, not an easy place to search for fossils,” I said dryly.

He smiled. “It is possible. But two hundred and thirty million years is a long time for no form of evolution to have happened. And there were big changes in sea levels.”

“Whatever,” I shrugged. There was no point in getting into arguments about fossils. The simple truth is fossilization mostly doesn’t happen. Most remains are destroyed by the natural ravages of time, bacteria, and small scavengers. “Anyway, they were assumed extinct until back in 1938 they caught one . . .”

“But they lacked sufficient evidence to hold onto it,” explained Stephen.

I ignored this interruption. “A trawler off East London . . .”

“Not Sarth Lunnun? Sheila Rowen will be offended. And that’s a mistake,” said Stephen. “She has serious tattoos.”

“East London is a town on east coast of South Africa. Nowhere near Sheila’s haunts.”

“Trust me. Sheila’s influence is everywhere. Even Cardiff.”

“This is a bit farther afield than Cardiff,” I said. I been to Cardiff once. By accident. I think. It was all a bit vague, which, from the bits I do remember, was a good thing.

“Cardiff is on another planet,” said Stephen firmly

“Moving along," I said firmly before being distracted into the possibility of aliens in South Wales. Given our experiences there, it's a real possibility, and they may even have something to do with fish. “They now had a living fossil, which paleontologists found very awkward.”

“There is always quickset cement,” said Steven. “It wouldn’t have been living for long.”

I didn’t admit that I had first-hand experience of the process of trying to preserve large fish. People get twitchy when you describe the process. One the things they never tell you about the biological sciences in all those career guidance pamphlets is that practical experience in funeral trade may be valuable. For some things a good stock of ancient Egyptian embalmers tools is more precious than rubies—as you discover when dealing with the imperfect penetration of formalin into parts of the gut cavity. I hear they don’t allow formalin these days, because of the carcinogenic effects. We always believed that was why museum staff always looked well-preserved. “They’re very oily. And extremely slimy. Not good candidates for the process—anyway, they set out to try and catch some more of them. To prove they weren’t extinct.”

Dann pulled a wry face. “In the perfectly good logic that if they weren’t extinct they could make them become extinct. Rather like turn of last century zoos frantically bidding for thylacines.”

“The point that conservationists are the greatest threat to rare species has been made,” I admitted. “But to be fair if you’re going to conserve something you need to know something about it. In the case of deepwater fish that’s tricky. Besides swim-bladder problems, most fish have this distressing habit of dying when you take an inch of vertebrae out to thin section for age and growth research. It’s a sort of an ‘in order to save that fish we have to destroy it’ situation.”

Stephen shook his head. “You blokes have the strangest ideas. Imagine if people in business or politics did that. You’d ruin their day.”

“Make mine, though,” I said. “Well, see they did find more of these fish. In the Comoros Islands, and occasionally in the Mozambique channel. The Comorans catch them for food.”

Dann steepled his fingers. “Oddly, the country has a very nasty history. Coup de etats more frequent than underwear changes. It’s a nice place for a working beach holiday, and small enough to not require much effort to gather data, so several eminent sociologists have studied it. Various commentators claim to make informed comments . . . yet the situation there has never been ascribed to its diet.”

“You are what you eat. That’s why I avoid fruit and nuts,” said Stephen, drinking some more liquid bread.

I guess he must be, by his own definition, a cereal killer. Or at least a serial liquid passer. I felt a pressing need for that myself, actually. So I got up in search of the gents while Stephen held forth on diet, and pernicious effects of raw vegetables. I hadn’t known they caused scurvy. With Stephen it was hard to tell just whether he really believed something, or whether he was trying to see how much he could get you to swallow that he believed in.

Seeing as the trough (none of these "individual" urinals here in the wilds of Africa. According to one of my plumber buddies in the dark continent, they’re for men who sit down when they wee. It’s amazing how many people in Europe and America I’ve seen not using them properly) was awash with a noxious shoe-eating tide, threatening to overflow the raised step and take over the hotel if not the world, I took up residence in one of the throne closets. For some reason they used to make the doors to these end about seven inches above ground. Maybe so the lavatory attendant (back in the days when there was one), could see if there were feet in the "occupied" ones. Or how many pairs of feet. This place was still like that.

“Psst!” hissed someone from the next closet.

“I’m not yet, but I plan to be. It’s the only way to get through this,” I said.

“Psst! Beware the tentacles . . . NYARLHOTEP!! Agh . . . glll . . .” gargled the voice from the next cubicle.

That was Mozambique for you. Some of the vin ordinaire come from Portugal by sea—a month or two of hot rolling and bouncing about, of something that was not out of the first press anyway. Mix that with a plate of elderly fried squid and you too can be yelling "Nyarlhotep" at the great white tuba. I flushed and left the convenience. The poor bloke’s feet were sticking out under the door. I would avoid the food in this place.

Dann was holding forth, perhaps in defense against Speairs inventive streak. “. . . cabbages have collective intelligence. Like bees, but different. And Acacia trees practice chemical warfare on grazers based on pheromonal communications between trees.”

“I’d have said ‘. . . and the pudding,’” I informed them, sitting down a helping myself to the rapidly diminishing supply of full bottles, “if I hadn’t read about the acacias myself. Biochemical signaling between plants does exist. So vegetarians really are cruel to innocent veggies, boiling them alive or eating them raw. There has to be a humane way of killing them.”

“Killing vegetarians?” asked Dann quizzically.

“Purely to defend plants. And all the micro-organisms they brutalize. I actually meant the vegetables,” I explained, to Speairs’ obvious regret.

Stephen finished his beer and dropped a butt into the bottle. It hissed. “It does put a whole new meaning on ‘I talk to the trees but they don’t listen to me,’” he said.

A while, and several more rounds of beers, later the subject dragged itself back to the yellow submersible and the search for coelacanths. “We have actually found a closer hangout than going all the way to the Comoros.”

“Or Sulawesi,” said Dann who supposedly knew nothing about fish, and the recent discovery of Coelacanths there in a fish-market.

“Might be a different species,” I said dismissing inferior foreign Coelacanths. “Anyway, Kevin and I might possibly have part of the scientific support team for the first attempt to see them in life. Along with a pompous ass of a self-important . . . distinguished foreign scientist from . . . uh, North America.”

“You don’t have to be so coy,” said Dann, laughing a little.

“Trust me. If my buddy Kev knew I had said this much, I’d be a dead man walking. Anyway, that’s scientist-speak. You need to keep it vague or you might have to prove it.”

“Add a few lawyers into the mixture and you could be saying anything,” grinned Stephen.

I had had my brushes with them. My ex was one. “Yeah, but that’s because of the texture of lawyers. Mix them with anything and they make it go lumpy.”

“It’s their livers,” said Stephen, “Speaking purely hypothetically you might possibly have been in the vague vicinity of this attempt to look at sealy-whatsits. How big are these things by the way? Worth catching?”

“If your interest is in weight, yes,” I admitted. “They’ll go about a hundred fifty pounds, maybe bigger, which you have to haul up from really, really deep . . . if that’s your idea of fun. If it’s game fish you’re after I recommend you try something else. You could always just drop a lead weight or two and haul those instead, for the same feel. And we had to be a little closer than just the vague vicinity, because the water off the sides of the ship was quite deep and the shore was far off. We had to be on the scene. Well, within fifty yards of it, seeing as our distinguished foreign scientist’s pride and joy little yellow two-man submersible was parked next to the mid-ship deck winch. I think part of the problem was we all wanted to play with it. It had a lot of neat external tools, lights etc. The inside really called for someone of a slight build.”

“Like you,” said Dann.

I choked on my beer. That was a bit too close to the truth for comfort. “Well, yes. Now that you mention it. I did . . . hypothetically