“Go on,” I quickly prompted him, because I was interested. And anyway I wanted to keep him talking.
“Well, the invaders,” he obliged me, “and I mean all of them—from their leaders, the huge, tentacle-faced creatures in their crazily-angled manses, to the servitors they brought with them or called up after they got settled here—all the nightmarish flying things, and those shapeless, flapping-rag horrors called Hounds, and not least those scaly half-frog, half-fish minions from their deep-sea cities—not one of these species seems to have ever evolved politics, while the very idea of ethics might seem as alien to them as they themselves seem to us! But on the other hand, if you’re talking human politics, human ethics—”
“I don’t think I was,” I said, quickly dropping the subject as another maintenance ledge came into view on the left.
We couldn’t have been happier, the pair of us, to get out of the water and onto that ledge. And more than mildly surprised, we were relieved to discover that a welcoming draft of air from somewhere up ahead was strangely warm!
“Most places underground are like this,” the old man tried to explain it. “When you get down to a certain depth the temperature is more or less constant. It’s why the Neanderthals lived in caves. It was the same the last time I was here, which I had forgotten about, but this warm air has served to remind me that we’ve reached—”
HYDE PARK CORNER
He had let the legend on the brightly tiled wall across the tracks finish the job for him, precisely and silently.
“So, what do you think?” I asked him, as we moved from the ledge onto the Underground station’s platform. “How are we doing, Henry?”
“Not good enough,” he answered. “We should be doing a whole lot better! My fault, I suppose, because I’m not as strong as I used to be. I’m just too frail, too weak, that’s all, and I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s what happens when a man gets old. But that’s okay, and I can afford to push myself one last time. Because this will be the last time; my last effort in the long last night.”
“Hey, you’ve done okay up to now!” I told him. “And if this warm draft keeps up it will soon dry out our trousers. That’s not much, I suppose, but it may help keep our spirits up.”
He glanced at me, if only for a moment conjuring up a thin, sarcastic ghost of a smile, and with an almost pitying shake of his head said: “Well okay, good, fine!—whatever you say, er, Julian?—but right now it’s my turn to spell you. So if you’ll just give that case back to me…”
Not for a moment wanting to upset him, I handed it over and said, “Okay, if you’re sure you can handle it—?”
“I’m sure,” he replied, as we looked around the platform. And when I looked down at the tracks I could see them glinting dully under no more than twelve or fifteen inches of water. But both of the arched exits were blocked with rubble fallen from above, making my next comment completely redundant:
“It appears there’s no way up, not from here.”
Henry nodded. “Not even if we wanted or needed one, which we don’t. Next up is Green Park, and following that—assuming we get that far—Piccadilly Circus. But Green Park is right on the edge of the water, and—”
“And that’s Deep Ones territory, right?” I cut in.
He nodded, frowned and narrowed his eyes, and said, “Well yes, I do believe I’ve heard them called that before…”
“Of course you have,” I replied. “That’s what you called them, back there where they were splashing about in the water behind us.”
Still frowning, he shook his head and slowly said, “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t remember that.” And then with a shrug of his narrow shoulders: “Well, so what? I don’t remember much of anything any more, only what needs to be done…”
And with one last look around he went on: “We have to get back down into the water. Just when we were drying out, eh? Be glad Green Park’s not far from here, only one stop. But it’s a hell of a junction, or used to be. It seems completely unreal, even surreal now—like some kind of weird dream—but there were three Tube lines criss-crossing Green Park in the old days. I still remember that much at least…” He gave himself a shake, and continued: “Anyway, for all that it’s close to the lake, it was bone-dry the last time I was there. Let’s hope nothing has changed. And after Green Park, at about the same distance again, then it’s Piccadilly Circus—the end of the line, as it were. The end for us, anyway.”
His comment was loaded—the last few words, definitely—but I ignored it and said, “And is that where we’ll surface?”
Again Henry’s nod. “It’ll make your skin crawl!” he said. And matching his words, he shuddered violently; which I didn’t in any way consider a consequence of his damp, clinging trousers. Then, when he’d controlled his shaking, he continued: “But yes, we’ll surface there, right up Bgg’ha’s jacksy, or as close as anyone would ever want to get to it!”
I waited until we were moving steadily forward again, in water that came up just inches short of our knees, and then said, “Henry, you say our skins will be made to crawl. But is there any special reason for that—or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You shouldn’t ask.” He shook his head.
“But I’m asking anyway.” Which was just natural curiosity on my part, I suppose. And whatever, I wanted the old man’s take on it; because we all see things, experience things, differently.
“As you will,” he said with a shrug, and went on: “Piccadilly Circus as was is lying crushed at the roots of Bgg’ha’s house. That great junction, once standing so close to the heart of a city, is now in the dark basement of the Twisted Tower, that vast heap of wreckage where he or it lords it over his minions—and over his human captives, his ‘cattle’.”
“His cattle…” I mused, because that thought or simile was still reasonably new to me. At least I had never heard it expressed that way before coming across Henry.
“As I may have told you before,” the old man said, “that’s all they are: food for Bgg’ha’s table, fodder for his stable.”
We were moving faster now, under an arched ceiling that was aglow, seemingly alive with luminous, swirling Shoggoth exhaust. And the closer we drew to Henry’s goal or target, the more voluble he was becoming.
“Do you know why I’m here?” he suddenly burst out. “I think you do—or rather, you think you do!”
Nodding, I said: “But haven’t we already decided that? It’s revenge, isn’t it? For your wife?”
“For my whole family!” he corrected me. And the catch, that half-sob, was back in his voice. “My poor wife, yes, of course—but also for my girls, my daughters! And my eldest, Janet—my God, how brave! I would never have suspected it of her, but she was braver than me. Inspiring, is how I’ve come to think of it: that my Janet was able to escape like that, and somehow managed to crawl back home again. But she did, she came home to me, and then… then she died! Not yet twenty years old, and gone like that.
“She died of horror and loathing—because of what had been done to her—but never of shame, for she had fought it all the way. And it’s mainly because… because of what Janet told me had happened to her that I’ve kept coming here. It’s why I’m here now: for Janet, yes, but also for her younger sister, Dawn, and for their mother; and for all the other females who’ve been taken—and who are still there, maybe alive even now in that Twisted Tower!”
“Still alive?” I repeated him. “You mean, maybe they’re not just fodder after all?” At which I could have bitten through my tongue as it dawned on me that it was probably very cruel of me to keep questioning him like this. But too late for that now.