The Digging Leviathan (12 page)

“Aquatic,” William said.

‘That’s right. In a nut. I don’t understand it at all.”

“Neither do I.” William fumbled in his pocket for his own tobacco pouch. “I’ll just have a dab of port with this pipe. Join me?”

“Please,” said Edward.

“I’m beginning to see things clearly,” said William when both of them had settled into their chairs and were sipping at their port. Edward grimaced inwardly, as he did whenever William made such pronouncements. This time it was a halfhearted grimace, however, a grimace tempered by his own remembrance of Frosticos’ van, admittedly glimpsed through the distorting arc of one of the porthole windows after Edward had climbed into the diving bell so as to spy more securely on the doctor. It had, for an imponderable second, seemed to him to be a great fish, or the ghost of a great fish, lazing on the surface of a dark sea. He hadn’t been able to shake the vision out of his eyes. And for a long moment he was certain that the diving bell was settling into the blackness of a great oceanic trench, sounding toward unfathomable depths. But the hallucination passed, and there was William, tossing himself through
the shrimp plants, hashing up bamboo, flailing against the wall of the house.

“You know I’ve an interest in physics,” said William, breaking into Edward’s reverie.

“What?” said Edward, startled. “Oh, quite. The fat man in the rocket and all. Did you write the story yet?”

“Yes, in fact I did. I sent it off to
Analog
. It’s just their meat, I believe. But that’s immaterial. What I’m talking about here isn’t fiction.” William shook his head in quick little jerks to emphasize his point. He peered into the bowl of his pipe, then jabbed the stem in Edward’s direction. “This leviathan. I don’t like it. Not a bit. I’m half convinced it will be the end of everything. Can you imagine the pressures built up within the interior of the Earth?”

Edward widened his eyes appropriately, but admitted to himself that he couldn’t. “Pressures? How about the polar openings?”

“What polar openings? Have you seen them? Has Pinion? For my money the polar openings are suboceanic, like your tidepool. No, sir. There’s pressure enough in there to blow this planet to kingdom come. I’m certain of it.” He tamped for a bit at his pipe, then inspected the sediment on the bottom of his glass. “I had a very strange dream not a week back. A dream, I say. Not like what happened this afternoon. That was no dream. I’m sure of it now. But as I say, a week ago I had an odd one. Giles Peach figured in it, as did his machine—his mechanical mole. It burrowed into the Earth—I haven’t any idea who drove it; it wasn’t Peach—somewhere in the desert. Near Palm Springs, I believe it was. Any number of people on hand. It was like a circus. Banners waving, trumpets blowing—like the grand opening of the Tower of Babel. That’s how it struck me. Giles Peach stood on a sort of platform above the hole, watching his device eat its way into the Earth, straight down toward the hollow core. He had the most amazing suit on. A clatch of dignitaries, mostly fat ones, clustered around him waving ribbons and clamoring to make speeches. But the lot of them fell silent when the mole approached its destination.

“The Earth heaved and there was a distant muffled explosion somewhere far below. Giles Peach peeked over the railing, staring into the open shaft. He dropped a stone the size of an egg into it like a boy might drop a rock into a well to judge its
depth. A blast of wind whooshed out, carrying on it the very stone Giles had let fall, and the stone struck him in the forehead ….”

“It did?” asked Edward incredulously. “You dreamed this?”

“Yes,” William uttered, half put out at the interruption. “But that’s the least of it. There followed on the wind, on this vast exhalation of pressure, a rush of extinct beasts—mastodons, stegasauri, triceratops—that rained down onto the desert floor as if they’d come back to the surface to claim a lost land.”

“What happened to Peach?” asked Edward.

“Dead as a mackerel,” said William. “It was the stone that did it. What do you think?”

“I suppose the stone could have killed him,” said Edward, pondering. “If it hit him hard enough, anyway.”

“Not that. What do you think about the dream. I’m certain it’s prophetic.”

Edward blinked at him. “Undeniably. At least it seems so to me. I’m not much on prophecy, of course. But this has that sort of ring to it. There’s no getting round it. Yes.” He fiddled with his port glass, spilling a purple dollop down his shirt front. “Damn it,” he cried, jumping up. The damage was done, however, so he sat back down. “Sounds like the core of a fairly substantial story to me, eh? A hollow Earth story.”!

‘This is no story. That’s what I’m telling you. I’ve been convinced that Peach is the key here. Ashbless is convinced too. You mark my words. And then that dream. It haunts me. I’d have written it off, but here comes Frosticos, messing about at the Peach house. What was
he
up to? We
must
know.”

“I intend to find out. I’ll drop in on Velma Peach tomorrow morning. If nothing else, I’m going to warn her against Frosticos. He’s up to no good.” Edward was struck immediately by the peculiarity of his last statement, by the certainty that some time in the future, the near future, Frosticos would set out to i round up William. He’d do something about it this time. He wondered idly at William’s several escapes, at Frosticos’ am-I bivalent attitude toward them. It was a confusing business and it grew more curious by the day.

“I’ll just pop into the study and write some of this down,” I said William, standing up. “Perhaps you’re right about the short story. There’s too much in the dream not to use it.”

Edward agreed with him, deciding as he did so that he was ravenously hungry and would waste no time in lighting the barbecue. But he sat in his chair, lost in thought, for a half hour or so before finally getting up to have a go at dinner. He determined to talk to Velma Peach. He had to know what had gone wrong with Giles.

It was nearly two in the afternoon when Edward and Professor Latzarel returned from Gaviota. William was busy in the maze _ shed, working with renewed vigor—with a freshened sense of the importance of his mission. The problem with science, he hadn’t any doubt, was its lack of imagination. It chased rats back and forth with a pair of calipers—shoved hoses down their mouths and filled their lungs with water. Science hadn’t any patience. Domesticity, that was the answer. The act of domestication is the act of civilizing. If he were to write a thesis he’d call it “Civilization Theory.” It would supplant Darwin. All beasts lean toward civility. Evolutionary development edged in that direction. Man pursued it. Dogs and cats sought it out. Even rats preferred life in the neighborhood to life in the wild. There was a great truth in it—one he intended to reveal. He yanked the sleeve of a little doll’s vest over the tiny arm of a mouse. The beast gave it an approving look, sniffing at it. Trousers would be difficult—impossible, perhaps, without alterations. Custom tailoring was necessary to do the job right. But the vest, for openers at least, would accomplish a great deal. William whistled a tune. He hadn’t been so happy in months. There was nothing like a man’s work.

The axolotl was a horse of a different color. It was almost too mucky to mess about with, and it had an antipathy toward hats and coats and only a grudging acceptance of a pair of pants that fit like shorts after a broad hiatus was made in the seat to accommodate the amphibian’s tail. William emptied a little
cardboard box full of doll clothes onto the desk top, searching for a hat. But all he could find was a little beret of sorts, the type of thing a Frenchman might wear. Better to do without entirely.

The sight of the clothed beasts slowed Edward down considerably when he pushed in through the door, but he was struck with the impossibility of the whole thing and decided to take the long view. He smiled at William. “What ho?”

“Hah!” said William, adjusting a mouse coat. Take a look at this. I’m onto something new. There’s no doubt about it. Our problem all along is that we assumed we were moving backward from the mammalian to the amphibian ages. Devolution. Well it’s not as simple as that. Even the most mundane of the beasts are complex affairs. There’s nothing simple about a mouse. It has certain tendencies that we’ve failed to take into account; and one, the way I see it, is its natural tendency toward civilization—gentility. On a reduced scale, of course. This isn’t all my grand idea, mind you. I’ve been reading Shakespeare. The Elizabethans were aware of the innate ability of animals to sense impending chaos. The Chinese, as I understand it, use pigs and cows to sniff out earthquakes—they’re unaccountably perturbed by anything that threatens their sense of order, their natural inclination toward domesticity and civilized behavior. So what do we do, I asked myself. We hasten the process, that’s what. Civilize the things. And I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts we see some advances. Some cooperation. Help me pull this coat onto the axolotl, will you? I can’t get a grip on him with one hand.”

Edward waylaid the axolotl, pinning him down while William worked at the coat. “What about the water?” Edward asked. “I don’t mean to question your theory—in fact it’s perfectly sound as far as I can see—but won’t all of this finery lose some of its civilizing effect when it’s water-soaked?”

William gave his brother-in-law a look that seemed to imply that Edward was a child when it came to understanding civilization theory. He shook his head. “You overestimate the beasts, Edward. You’ve interpreted the theory too broadly. Science often falls into such a trap—finding a single nugget and anticipating an entire vein. The tendency toward civilization in these beasts doesn’t stretch so far as that. Although I’m certain they’ll respond to the influences of proper dress, I doubt
entirely that they’ll understand the difference in correctness of fashion. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” said Edward, “I believe I do. You’ve certainly thought this through.” He cleared his throat, then noticed that within the cages, the door to which stood ajar, were half a dozen mice in various states of dress, milling around and eyeing each other. One was reducing his topcoat to shreds and making a bed out of it in the corner. Edward had never seen William so serious or so elated. There was nothing wrong with elation, he told himself.

A slamming car door out on the street heralded the arrival of William Ashbless, his white hair awry about his ears. His shin cracked into the bumper of his car as he edged around it on his way toward the driveway, and he shouted at the bumper, kicking it for good measure before hastening toward the garage, waving what appeared to be a photograph.

William glanced up at the banging and shouting, was unimpressed, and went back to manipulating his clothed beasts. Ashbless burst in, jabbering excitedly, then abruptly fell mute when he saw the objects of William’s attention. He was silent for only a few seconds, however, before it dawned on him that there was nothing particularly surprising in William’s behavior. He waved his photograph at Edward.

“Benner,” he said. “You remember young Steerforth Benner. Self-satisfied little snake, but useful. Well, I found out he’s working part-time for the county coroner, mucking out the crematorium or something. So I gave him a call, and look what he came up with.”

He handled Edward a black and white photo of a corpse—the corpse of Oscar Pallcheck, dredged out of the tar pits. Edward was astonished. The photo was unbelievable. He turned it over and glanced at the back side as if expecting to find a disclaimer, then peered closely at the front, holding it in the sunlight that slanted in through the window. It was apparent that something had been done to Oscar’s neck. At first it seemed as if there were the indentations of fingers—as if he’d been strangled very neatly and symmetrically. Edward hauled out a magnifying glass. The marks were open—bloodless slits. And Oscar’s head, as the
Times
had promised, was hairless and had an odd, triangular shape. His eyes, surprisingly, were open. The expression in them was peculiarly familiar.

“William!” Edward cried, poking his brother-in-law in the small of the back. William looked up, feigning surprise, as if he’d been so lost in his work that he was unaware of the poet’s arrival. “Look closely at this. Do you know him?”

William fingered the photo, blinked, and sat down hard into the swivel chair at the desk. He took his pipe out of his pocket with a shaking hand. “Of course,” he said. “It’s Narbondo’s merman.”

‘It’s Oscar Pallcheck,” said Edward.

“Which Narbondo?” asked Ashbless, puzzled.

“There’s only one that amounts to anything among the scientific arts,” Edward said, pulling down the correct volume of Narbondo’s
Gilled Beasts
. He flipped to the drawing of the Sargasso Sea merman, and there, staring up out of the page, was an amphibian caricature of the dead Oscar Pallcheck, a sort of toad man in trousers.

No one spoke. Edward laid the photo alongside the drawing. The likeness was astonishing. “Narbondo, is it?” asked Ashbless.

‘That’s right,” Edward responded.

Ashbless pulled down the first volume of the work, opened it to the frontispiece, and studied a detailed woodcut of the face of Dr. Narbondo. “He was a son of a bitch. A megalomaniac. He lived at Windermere for years. Did some foul things to sheep. He hated everyone. Threatened at one time to poison the oceans and kill the entire Earth just to get revenge on the scientists in the Academy.”

“Did he?” said William facetiously. “Relative of yours?”

“He was a distant cousin of Wordsworth. Almost no one knows that though. He couldn’t abide Wordsworth’s friends. All too fey for his tastes. He was an explorer. An adventurer. Disappeared into Borneo on some hair-brained adventure involving orangutans. He had certain serums which he claimed allowed for the breeding of unlike beasts—hippos and serpents, fish and birds—and was harried out of England, finally, as a vivisectionist. He was the basis for Dr. Moreau in Wells’ novel. Supposedly he surfaced in China years later searching for a fabled longevity serum involving fish, but that was close to a hundred years ago.” Ashbless fell suddenly silent, as if he’d said more than he’d wanted to and men caught himself.