Morlock Night (15 page)

  If my captors had been garrulous before, they were positively babbling now. As the water rose over our shins the whole troop of them engaged in a vocal uproar like the baying of panic-stricken animals. At some point in the general bedlam the consensus was apparently reached among them to abandon the submarine rather than to go down with it. With hurried rushing back and forth, colliding with each other, shouting dreadful gibberish imprecations at each knocking of heads as they splashed backwards into the rising water they sought to implement their plan of escape.

  From some locker in the rear of the submarine a pair of small collapsible boats and a number of leather vests with large, balloon-like air bladders sewn into them were produced. The Morlocks scrambled for the latter, two or more often tugging at one vest until one managed to wrest it from his fellows, though at last all the brutes had managed to don them.

  The collapsible boats were opened and set up, and rushed by all hands toward the ladder that led to an overhead hatchway. All the Morlocks scrabbled to be nearest the boats, as there was quite obviously not enough spaces in them for all, and those left over would have to take their chances on bobbing in the underground ocean supported solely by their air-filled vests. After much futile hoisting, straining, and dropping back into the water, it was discovered that the boats were too large when opened up to go through the hatchway. With the boats folded back into their original shape they tried again. This time they succeeded in pushing them up through the exit, and clambered after as packed together as a swarm of bees. I shouted after the last ones and rattled the chain connected to the banks of the submarine's controls. Through piteous gestures and sounds I implored them to release me. The last pair of Morlocks laughed scornfully at me and climbed after their fellows, leaving me to a death by drowning. Most likely they felt I deserved it due to my poor piloting of the submarine.

  As soon as they had all vanished from the chamber, I stepped away from the controls and the corpse that the Morlocks had mistakenly re-shackled to the apparatus. For a second I let my expression dissolve into a frankly gloating smile of self-approval.

  Thus far my hastily conceived plan had worked better than I could have hoped. Above my head, through the open hatchway, I could hear the Morlocks launching their two little boats into the underground ocean, the clamour of their struggle to gain places in the boats, and the splashing about of those who had already chosen or been forced to land in the water itself. I had been left sole master of the submarine. Though partially flooded, it remained buoyant enough to remain floating. Surely I could find means of remedying enough of its malfunctions in order for it to convey me to some safe landing. What I would do from that point on I left for the future and its chances to decide. I turned back to the controls in order to halt the inflowing water. Sharp, percussive noises that I couldn't quite identify sounded from outside the vessel, but I had no time to puzzle over them.

  The levers were beyond my power to move. I tugged in growing desperation at them, losing my footing in the now waist-high water and hampered by the hobbled corpse washing against me in a grisly manner, but the controls remained stuck in their new positions. Either the controls or the mechanisms they operated had been frozen in place by the water pouring into the submarine.

  My mind racing like a rat caught in a rain barrel, I saw that I too would have to follow the Morlocks and abandon the vessel. Perhaps I could yet swim to safety. I slogged through the chill, fetid water that was flooding the chamber and was halfway up the ladder that led to the open hatchway when I realised that the cloth-wrapped Excalibur was still somewhere in the engine room where I had originally been bound. If the precious weapon sank with the submarine to the well-nigh bottomless depths of this dark ocean, then all would be lost. There would be no point in my even escaping with my life, except to share in my fellow Mankind's eventual doom.

  I lowered myself back into the water and halfswam through it toward the opening of the corridor that ran back to the engine room. The current pressing against my chest made my progress maddeningly slow. I was only a matter of several yards down the passageway when the submarine's interior went pitch dark, and the vessel itself began to tilt. The back section, made heavier by the weight of the engine, was pulling the submarine into a vertical position as it sank. How would I manage to find Excalibur in an unlit and submerged space filled with strange machinery? By now the brass control rods were close enough overhead for me to use in pulling myself down the corridor. Every panicking nerve in my body pulled me the other way, back toward air and light. I felt the passage tighten about me as I descended into its stifling depths.

  The way seemed endless and I began to doubt my memory of the passage's length. The water at last reached the top of the downward sloping space, and I was forced to take a deep breath and pull myself under with one hand on the brass rods. With my other hand I found the top of the engine room's doorway a yard or so farther along the submerged corridor. I let go of the reds and swam down into the lightless chamber.

  The water fought against my every motion as I fumbled about blindly in it. My lungs were already aching when my hands at last touched upon the pole to which I had first found myself tied. I drew myself along its length to the now sharply tilting floor and felt about for the cloth bundle that contained Excalibur. I found nothing – the sword had probably slid to the deepest part of the room.

  The blood was roaring in my ears by this time and my lungs hammered with every pulse for air. A deeper blackness than the one surrounding me was welling up behind my eyes. I could search for the sword no longer. Pushing myself away from the floor, I swam toward the room's doorway.

  The nightmare of cold and suffocation had no end – I had lost the doorway. An infinity of dark water without escape stretched in all directions from my blindly groping hands. Like a drowned cat I floated upwards, will-less and limp.

  My face broke into air and hungrily, automatically, my burning lungs drew it in. Consciousness rose from the near corpse of my brain and I lifted my hand to discover the nature of this miracle. Apparently a pocket of air had been caught in one of the room's corners and I had drifted into it.

  I filled my lungs several times over and dived back under the water. This time I swam as far as I could, seeking out the room's lowest point. Wedged between a corner of the engine and a bulkhead I found the bundle and felt Excalibur's length inside of it. With the replenished air starting to burn in my lungs, I kicked myself up through the water and by God's grace found the doorway immediately to hand. An agonizingly long way through the corridor, I at last broke through to the not yet submerged portion of the submarine. The foul air of the sewers that I breathed in seemed to me like the freshest wind that had ever blown.

  The overpowering fear of drowning was gone, but I still had to escape the sinking vessel itself. I clutched Excalibur to my chest and swam to the side of the unlit space I was in. I fumbled my way along the bulkhead until I came to a metal ladder. Praying that it led to an exit, I clambered up.

  My luck still held. I found myself on the sloping topside of the vessel. For a moment my brain, exhausted by my struggling, doubted what my eyes revealed.

  The surface of the underground ocean was lit up by a score of torch-bearing boats forming a large ring about the submarine. The boats were slowly drawing nearer and closing the gaps between each other. I recognised now that sound I had been unable to identify from inside the submarine. It was the rattle of massed gunfire. By the flickering illumination of their torches I could see that the occupants of the boats were men such as I. In the prow of each boat one man stood with a rifle and levelled it repeatedly at his targets in the water. The shots echoed hollowly against the distant confines of the sewers.

  Looking closer about the submarine I now saw the Morlocks' two collapsible boats lying overturned in the water. The figures of the Morlocks themselves were scattered about, most floating face downward, seeping red into the dark water. A few were still thrashing about, trying to escape the hail of gunfire that pocked the water around them. The softer noise of metal entering flesh accompanied the passing over of each of the swimming Morlocks to join his brothers in death.

  Who were these marksmen in the boats? And from where had they come to be down here? As baffling as these mysteries were to me, I was overjoyed to see them, if only to glimpse once more the familiar outlines of human faces. So intent was I upon watching their encircling hunt of the remaining Morlocks that I was reminded of the submarine's sinking only when the water washed across my feet. I hurriedly scrambled to the small section of the vessel that was not yet under the surface of the water and began shouting and beating on the metal of the fin to which I held in order to attract the attention of the men in the boats.

  A bullet clanged upon the fin just over my head to show that I had indeed caught one of their number's eye. More shots followed, ringing upon the submarine's hull around me. They had mistaken me for one of the Morlocks, I realised with a dismayed horror. The noise of their rifle fire drowned out my calls to them. Their torches were still too far away to illumine me as a target, but the accuracy of their shots would soon improve as they rowed closer.

  The boats were approaching from all directions, so that there was no safety on either side of the large fin upon the base of which I huddled. A dark coldness washed against me as this last section of the hull slid under the water. If I clung to the submarine I would drown – if I let go and swam, I would be shot by the hunters in the boats.

  My mind froze between these two grisly choices, but my body clung with animal tenacity to life. The water came across my chest where I had thrust Excalibur inside my shirt. My fingers locked with death-like rigidity to the edge of the fin while my lungs sucked in what would be my life's last few breaths.

  The fastest of the boats came gliding to within a yard of my head as I held it above the water's chill surface. By the light of their torches I saw the gleaming metal barrel of the rifle point down toward me.
So it's death by bullet
, I thought with unnatural lucidity and closed my eyes as I heard the click of the hammer pulled back.

  "Wait! For God's sake, don't shoot!"

  I heard the voice crying and thought I had gone mad, for it was Tafe's voice. I opened my eyes and saw her in the boat's prow, pushing aside the man with the rifle and reaching for me, just as the submarine lurched beneath me and sank, pulling me with it away from the light and down into the dark and unrelenting cold.

 
 

 
 

"Well, Hocker, we all thought we'd just about lost you that time. How do you feel?"

  My eyes opened wide, letting light and consciousness drain away the last clinging dregs of sleep. For some reason I had been dreaming about a chess game played in a vista of ruins… No matter. The fantasy ebbed, replaced by the even more bizarre reality I was in. I focused on Clagger's kind, ruddy face and nodded. "I'm doing all right," I said, and raised myself on my elbows. I was lying in the middle of a large bed. "Where's Tafe?"

  "Somewhere about here," said Clagger, "getting dry. Or as dry as one can in these clammy regions. You were well under, you know, when Tafe jumped in to fetch you out. Said she had the damnedest time prying your fingers loose from that thing."

  The memory of the submarine and the dark, enclosing water came spilling back into my mind. So I had been spared that death… for what? Another even worse? An overwhelming fatigue swept through my body and my thoughts were paralysed with a deep, foreboding dread of the future and all it might hold. Hope was born in the sunlight upon the Earth's surface; down here in the gloomy bowels of rock and muck it died.

  My dismal meditation was broken by Clagger. "Come on, then," he said. "Put on your clothes and let's be about our business. I fancy there's quite a few questions you'd like to ask. To throw a little light in the darkness, that is to say. What? None at all?" He tossed my clothes – dried and mended by some unknown agency – across the foot of the bed.

  "Just wait a few seconds," I snapped somewhat irritably. "I'll have questions enough for you, though what bloody good the information will do is beyond me at the moment."

  While I dressed I cast an ill-tempered eye over this chamber in which I found myself. It held the aspect of what can only be described as decayed opulence. The bed itself where I had lain recovering a measure of my strength was little more than a sagging heap of brocades and other fancy materials, now tattered and soiled with countless years of use and neglect. The silk covering of the pillows, made thin with wear, was all split and water-stained. Over sections of the dark stone walls were hung heavy embroidered draperies, but these too were rotted away by Time. Their torn centres sagged to the floor like the slack skin of old men.

  Over everything was the inescapable feel of dampness and rot, as though the vapours of the sewers had penetrated through every atom of things down here. My own skin now felt like that, undergoing a sewer-change down into my bones. I shuddered involuntarily as I drew my clothes, really only relatively dry, over my limbs. What awful metamorphosis would overtake me if I didn't soon return to the surface world's light?

  Clagger was still waiting for me. "What place is this?" I said. "I take it that this is the region to which you meant to guide us, as you show little anxiety about being here." For the moment I laid aside the question of how he and Tafe had escaped drowning in the underground ocean. That was simply another piece of my ignorance to be filled in.