Christ, a therapist would have had a field day with him and he knew it, yet the certainty of these things remained.
Hayes was having the dreams like everyone else, but it was more than that for him. He had had that thing out in the hut invade his mind and nearly destroy him, but unlike Meiner and St. Ours, he had survived the invasion. Maybe this gave him an edge and maybe some of that telepathy was still cooking in his head. Regardless, he knew there were connections here between all these things and they were the sort you could hang yourself from.
“Getting something,” Sharkey said.
Her laptop beeped, letting her know she had incoming.
Paleodoc: gates here you there elaine?
Sharkey: I’m here. How goes it up there?
Paleodoc: we’re making progress finding out about things that maybe we’d be better off not knowing about but don’t mind me I’m tired
Hayes could just bet that he was. Up there in those ruins with all the dead Old Ones. Jesus, they must’ve been having some kind of dreams up there. It was a wonder they hadn’t cut their own throats by now and maybe some of them had.
Sharkey: Lots of things happening here. I found out from my Russian friend about that abandoned camp. What he knew about it. Apparently, it was a coring outpost and the crew up there got a little shack happy. Started seeing ghosts and killing themselves.
Paleodoc: any survivors?
Sharkey: None that were sane. They flew them out. The station was called Vradaz Outpost and it’s been deserted since the trouble, over twenty years now.
Paleodoc: did he say what the nature of the trouble was?
Sharkey: Just the usual haunted house stuff. Apparitions and sounds. Knockings and rappings. Things of that nature. Is any of that important?
Paleodoc: how did the lake project make out?
Sharkey: The cryobot was a success. Hayes was there when they released the hydrobot. They found a city down there. A gigantic city on the lake bed.
Paleodoc: still there then? I thought it might be
Sharkey: You knew about it?
Paleodoc: I’ve been studying the pictographs up in the city they tell some pretty wild tales if I’m reading them right think I am there was something I interpreted as a mass exodus down into the lake when the glaciers began to move in
Sharkey: Hayes saw them, Dr. Gates, from the hydrobot’s feed. There were hundreds if not thousands of those Old Ones still living down there. They were swarming. They lost contact with the hydrobot about that time.
Paleodoc: yes, I imagine they did
Sharkey: what does it all mean?
Paleodoc: I’m not sure just yet but soon the fact that they’re still alive down there is bad though if I’m reading these gylphs correctly the old ones have plans for us they want to exploit us
Sharkey: Are they terrestrial? Can you tell me that?
Paleodoc: no, I don’t see how they could be there are evidences in the glyphs etchings on the walls of our star system and others I’m reading it to be evidence of interplanetary and possibly interstellar travel I believe these things existed as a race long before our planet cooled I’m guessing if we could visit mars and the outer planets we’d find evidence of their colonization they’ve been with us since the beginning
Sharkey: Can you be more specific about that?
Paleodoc: the winged devils elaine they’ve been with us since the beginning all our tales of winged demons and devils have a single source do you follow
Sharkey: What do they want?
Paleodoc: I can’t be sure but I believe they’ve been waiting many millions of years for us to find them.
Sharkey: Why?
Paleodoc: listen to me elaine these things are dangerous in ways I can’t even tell you I believe they have seeded hundreds of worlds in the galaxy with life and directed the evolution of that life they have an agenda and I believe it is the subjugation of the races they developed
Sharkey: We’ve had two deaths here.
Paleodoc: you’ll have more they will harvest certain minds and crush the others listen to me elaine I think you should get out of there get in the snocat and make for vostok station you are in danger
Sharkey: You had better come down first.
Paleodoc: can’t too much to do up here too many clues to follow up on if I or others return watch us close very close something not right with Holm I think they have his mind now they want mine and yours too elaine get out get out while you can
Sharkey did everything she could do to bring Gates back up, but he was gone. He had gone off-line according to her messenger. Finally, she gave up and shut her computer down and was forced to look at those two dour faces.
Cutchen spoke first. “Well,” he said. “Well . . . either our good Doctor Gates has lost his mind or we’re in terrible danger.”
“I don’t believe he’s lost his mind,” Sharkey said, but would not elaborate on it. “I don’t believe that at all.”
“Neither do I,” Hayes said. He looked over at Cutchen. “I don’t think you do either. What Gates said . . . what he’s been reading from those hieroglyphs or whatever he found in that old city . . . it’s nothing I haven’t suspected or felt. A lot of us have been dreaming crazy shit and feeling worse things, but none of it really made sense. We all maybe connected it up with those mummies out there, but was that because we were sure they were the culprit or because we were scared and we needed a scapegoat, a witch to burn? But now -”
“You left out something,” Cutchen said. “Gates’ little chat the night before he left. People were feeling funny about those fossils of his and Lind’s nervous breakdown, but the things he said to us in the community room were pretty wild. I don’t think there’s a one of us who didn’t come out of that with an inflamed imagination.”
“Sure. I’ll admit to that. But it’s more than imagination, Cutchy, let’s get fucking real here. We didn’t imagine the dreams or Lind’s nervous breakdown or Meiner and St. Ours having their brains boiled to jelly. There’s a common cause for these happenings and it’s right out in Hut Six, like it or not. Because those things are not dead the way we know dead, their minds are still active and maybe that has something to do with the living ones down in the lake, I don’t know, but Gates is right: we’re in terrible danger here. You heard what he said. Those things . . . they’ve been waiting for us down here, they want to use us. They have plans for us.”
“It’s pretty wild shit, Hayes,” was all Cutchen would say and yet, just behind his eyes, you could see an acceptance of it all.
“Sure, it’s the wildest thing in our history, without a doubt.” There was a big NO SMOKING sign on the wall and Hayes lit up anyway, completely carried away by what he was saying and maybe just happy to be letting it all out of his head. “Imagine them, Cutchy. Try and imagine a race like theirs that is so fucking patient they can wait for us millions of years. And so intelligent, they know that sooner or later, we’ll come down here because we have to.”
“How could they know that?”
“You saw what Gates said . . . other worlds, other stars . . . God only knows how many times they’ve watched beings like us evolve until they reached a state where they might be useful to them. No, Gates is right. They knew we’d come. It’s our nature to come down here and they were completely aware of the fact. They’re ancient and they know things we’ll never know. Who knows how many races like ours they’ve cultivated?”
“You make me feel like a potato,” Cutchen said.
“To them, you’re not much more,” Sharkey said.
Hayes didn’t say anything for a time. Maybe he was afraid of what he might say if he opened his mouth. “Rats in a maze, that’s what we are. Just rats running the maze,” he said finally, laughing at something he didn’t seem to find very funny at all. “It’s perfect, isn’t it? We’re trapped down here and they know it. It’s exactly what they wanted. It’s been some time, I think, since they’ve had an ample opportunity to pick away at human minds. But now here we are and here they are. This camp is a great living laboratory and they’ve got months to do whatever it is they want to do.”