“Really?” Sharkey was looking up now, smiling herself. “Sounds like Hayes did a pretty careless thing… but it certainly perked up morale, didn’t it?”
“I would say so. Jesus, everyone’s been wandering around here like a bunch of goddamn zombies. All of them afraid of their own shadows… and now this. Yeah, they needed it. It was a real big boost, kicked them out of their shells. Maybe even gave them the sort of hope they’ve been lacking.” Cutchen laughed. “It certainly gave me a charge. Hayes is like our very own rebel leader now, our own Pancho Villa, our Robin Hood. But you already knew about this, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And did you put him up to it?”
Sharkey shrugged. “I suggested it. Our Mr. Hayes is a very impulsive fellow, you know.”
“Oh, I know. Everyone seems to look to him now, like he’s in charge and not LaHune. I would tend to agree. Hayes is now our spiritual leader.” Cutchen sat down across from her. “LaHune didn’t care for any of it, of course.”
Cutchen explained that LaHune came storming into the community room, demanding to know what Hayes thought he was doing and Hayes told him that he was preserving Gates’ specimens before they rotted away completely. That he’d taken down that wall purely out of scientific concern for the mummies.
“LaHune, of course, started threatening Hayes with all sorts of repercussions.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Hayes then told him to go promptly fuck himself.” Cutchen laughed about this. “As you might expect there was more applause.”
“I imagine so.”
Cutchen sat there for a time watching Sharkey who seemed to be pretty enrapt with what was on her laptop. “Tell you the truth, Elaine, I didn’t just come here to tell you about that, though.”
“No?”
“Nope. For some time now, both you and Hayes have been pulling me into this scenario of yours and I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not seeing the big picture in this conspiracy. I know what I’ve been dreaming about and what I’ve been feeling and the things I’ve seen here… and at Vradaz. But you two have yet to feed me more than scraps. So let’s have it. Tell me everything.”
“Funny you should be asking these things, because I think I’m in a position, finally, where I can tell you. What I’ve been studying here on my laptop are Dr. Gates’ files. I hacked into his system because I had a pretty good feeling that everything he hadn’t told us that day in the community room was locked up on his computer and I was right.” Using her mouse, she scrolled through a few pages. “You see, not only was all of it there, but more. Gates has been sending written reports from his laptop up at the excavation to his desktop here. The last one was dated two days ago…”
“You’re a sneaky devil, Madam.”
“Yes, I am.”
“And? What did you find?”
“Where do I begin?” She sat back in her chair. “What we saw at that Russian camp, Cutchy… how would you classify that business?”
He shrugged. “Ghosts, I guess. Memories locked up in those dead husks like Hayes said. Sensitive minds come into contact with them… or maybe any minds at all… and out pop these memories: noises and apparitions and that sort of business. I never believed in any of that bull before, but I don’t have much of a choice now.”
“You’d call them ghosts?”
“Yes.” He leaned forward. “Unless you have a better term… maybe one that would help me sleep better at night.”
Sharkey shook her head. “I don’t. ‘Ghosts’ will have to do. Because, essentially, that’s what they are. Gates wrote in some detail about psychic manifestations occurring in proximity to the Old Ones. People have been seeing spooks down here a long time, having bad dreams and weird experiences… and I guess you can figure out why. Reflections, are what Gates calls these phenomena, projections from those dead husks, from minds that never truly died in the way we understand death… just waited. Maybe not conscious really or sentient, but dreaming. And what we’re picking up are the ethereal projections of those dead minds… intellects, a mass-consciousness that was so very powerful in life that even death couldn’t crush it. Not completely. Gates isn’t certain about a lot of that… just that those minds are active in a way, not really alive but functioning pretty much on auto like a radio station, broadcasting and broadcasting. Our minds come into contact with them and we pick up those signals, then the trouble starts.”
Cutchen nodded. “I’ll buy that. Makes sense. And maybe as they unthaw, those minds become stronger. Maybe that’s what got to Meiner and St. Ours.”
“They may have been more sensitive to it than others. Same way I think Hayes is. Gates had another theory on that. He thought that maybe those dead minds were being energized not only by us, but amplified by that huge and overpowering central consciousness down in the lake. That the living ones might be acting as sort of a generator.”
“He’s guessing, though.”
“Of course he’s guessing. There’s no way to know.” Sharkey scrolled through a few pages on the screen. “Did Hayes tell you about his experiences? Out in the hut and on the tractor?”
“Yeah. Those minds almost did to him what they did to Meiner and St. Ours,” Cutchen said.
“Did he tell you about his telepathic link with Lind after the events in the hut?” She could see that he hadn’t, so she filled him in on it. “Lind was seeing things millions of years old. A city here at the Pole before the glaciers swallowed the continent. And just before he died, well…”
“Possessed.” Cutchen said the word so she didn’t have to. “That’s what everyone’s saying. That Lind was possessed by those things.”
“Yes, at least what we could call diabolical possession. He manifested all the signs you hear about in those cases… telepathy and telekinesis, that sort of thing. He described to us the original colonization of this world and we were able to smell and feel what he was smelling and feeling. The thick poisonous atmosphere of another world, the heat there, then the freezing cold of deep space.”
“Did Gates confirm that they are alien? I mean we’ve all been tossing the word around, but — “
“Yes, he was certain. You see, he unlocked the code of their writings, their glyphs and bas-reliefs. That ancient city he found, it was scrawled with writings which were essentially a written history of who the Old Ones were, where they came from, what they planned to do… and had done.”
“He unlocked all that? In just a month or so?”
Sharkey nodded. “Yes, because he found something akin to the Rosetta Stone, except this one was a key to their language and symbols. He called it the Dyer Stone after Professor Dyer of the Pabodie Expedition. A soapstone about the size of a tabletop… with it, he was able to translate those writings.”
“And… and what did he find out?”
“There are carvings in those ruins, Cutchy. Ancient maps of our solar system and other systems as well. Dozens and dozens of them. Firm evidence, Gates said, of interplanetary and interstellar travel and this probably before our planet was even cool. Dyer mentioned certain ancient books and legends that hinted at Pluto as the Old Ones’ first outpost in this star system, but according to the maps Gates found, they came here from either Uranus or Neptune… but before that, who can say?”
“Uranus? Neptune?” Cutchen shook his head. “Those are dead worlds, Elaine.”
“Sure, now they are… but what about 500 million years ago? A billion? Maybe that’s why they came here, because they knew their world… Uranus or Neptune… was doomed. And maybe they just came seeking our warm oceans. Gates thinks that they are originally marine organisms, but given their durability, they can adapt themselves to just about any environment. Gates thinks that myths and legends concerning winged demons and flying monsters might be race memories of them, impressions from the dawn of our race that survived in the form of folktale and legend. Regardless, they’ve been here since the beginning. Our beginning and the beginning of all life on this world.”