Burton closed his eyes for a second and steadied his breathing, putting into practice the old Sufi meditation technique. It seemed to help, but only a little. But he noticed something when he opened his eyes again, a slime green plinth in the midst of the machine, and embossed upon its surface was a familiar object. It stood out for him in this swirling sea of alien irregularity like a blazing sun, and he moved toward it.
“Captain Burton,” said Nemo. “What are—”
Burton didn’t heed him. He went up to the plinth and studied what had caught his eye. It was the artifact Elizabeth Marsh had shown him back in the meeting place of the Royal Geographic Society scant weeks ago. Or will show them a hundred thousand years from now. Time travel plays hell with the tenses, he thought with a laugh. He touched it, tracing its lines, startled by how sharp and fresh and new it looked. The grotesque imagery was crisp and clear, the patina shiny. Burton didn’t know why, but he flipped his pistol over in his hands until the grip was facing up. Then he began hitting the artifact, striking it like a cudgel.
“What are you doing?” said Nemo. “Stop.”
“No,” said Elizabeth Marsh. “He has the right idea. Everyone, smash the machine!”
Everyone went to work, hammering, smashing, and shooting at the machine. They had no idea if it would do any good, but they did it anyway. It made as much as sense as anything else in this place, and it took Burton’s mind off the feeling of encroaching dread that threatened to pummel him into insanity.
Their efforts attracted the attention of the Elder Things, who were little match for the guns of Captain Nemo’s men. A section of the machine fell with a bone-shaking clang, and everyone redoubled their efforts. Burton kept smashing at the artifact, the brittle green metal cracking slightly. He struck it a final time, and there was a flash of green light as it came off. He caught it with his free hand. It was warm. An electric shock went through him, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Burton was falling into green depths where thick, swirling things writhed in the gloom. He counted himself lucky that he could not see them fully. He was in a dense, roiling fog, worse than any London pea-souper he had ever experienced. Hideous black shapes heaved up in the distance, inhuman outlines ripe with vague menace. He heard a membranous wing flap, saw a vast tentacle slowly unfurl. A thing made of soap bubbles moved perilously close. A giant pyramid-shaped form shambled past. The fog cleared somewhat, and there, in the distance, atop some grotesque alien throne made of spires of green metal, was the shape he had seen carved into the wall of the Palace of the Machine, vast leathern wings jutting from its back, its head a writhing octopus.
The inhuman god-thing man called Cthulhu glared at Burton with callous, cosmic indifference, filling the explorer with more dread and fear than he had ever felt. He was too afraid to look at it, yet he could not look away. It stared at him as he would an insect, not with cold malice but mild annoyance. Burton understood from the entity’s inhuman gaze that it knew he was no threat to it. There was nothing Burton could say or do that would sway the creature from getting what it wanted. The grotesque things moving around it seemed to be making placating gestures with tentacles, webbed claws, and feelers, and Burton realized they were just as frightened of their alien god as he was.
Then the ground shook, and Burton fell once more. He opened his eyes with a start, looking around. Chunks of green stone were falling to the ground, smashing bits of the machine as it, too, started to come apart and plummet to the chamber floor.
“Burton!” Nemo shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here. Come on!”
Burton looked at his empty left hand. He had been holding something, hadn’t he? Yes. He looked down at the artifact. Their vandalizing of the machine had done something. Scowling, the explorer stabbed at the abhorrently sculpted piece of metal with his boot, cracking the brittle metal. Then he holstered his pistol, turned, and ran with the others.
16. Escape!
The green city crumpled and fell, walls tumbling in on themselves, blasphemous porticos and oddly-dimensioned ramparts collapsed and turned to dust. Neanderthals uttered liquid screams as they died under the crumbling architecture.
Burton, Elizabeth, Herbert, Challenger, Nemo, and his men made a beeline for the coast, where more boats no doubt waited to return them to the relative safety of the Nautilus. The ground fractured around them, dropping stubby cycads into the abyss created. Streaks of glowing red appeared out of the cracks, and Burton’s nose cringed at the sulfur and noxious gases that filled the air.
They made it to the beach unmolested, but the very sea thrashed along with the island’s death throes, tossing Nemo’s wondrous inflatable boats about.
Shouldering their guns, Nemo’s men thrust themselves into the churning water to get control of the boats, grabbing their tethers as if trying to calm frightened horses. Nemo jumped into the nearest boat, followed by Elizabeth and Herbert. Burton and Challenger leaped into a nearby boat and helped Nemo’s men hold it down so enough of them could get on that they could all depart from this place of nightmares.
Burton didn’t remember much of that harrowing ride back to the Nautilus. It all happened so fast. When he climbed inside, Burton thought he would never be so glad to see the machine of wonders once again, and he slapped its firm metal hull to reassure himself that he was inside its comforting confines once more.
Herbert curled into a ball in the observation lounge and gibbered himself to sleep. Nemo brought the Nautilus out more than a hundred miles from the decaying, collapsing island, and watched the rest of its destruction through his periscope, the ocean waters churning as the nightmare of R’lyeh sank beneath the waves. At daybreak, Challenger kicked Herbert awake and Captain Nemo sent him into the bowels of the submarine to use his Time Machine to take them home.
Burton did not bother to watch as they hurtled through the ages, making the journey in his stateroom, lying on his bed with his eyes squeezed shut. He did not need to witness the slow march of Time unfolding in its proper order. He did not need to see the creatures of the deep being born and dying in an eye blink, or the countless generations that would thrive and wane between the ticks of a second. At some point, he fell asleep and dreamed of groggy green depths where things that were not men pondered man’s existence and plotted against him.
He awoke to a knock on the door. Burton got up, knuckling grit from his eyes, and opened it.
“We’re back,” said Challenger. His eyes were half-mad and watery, and Burton couldn’t decide if the boisterous zoologist had always looked like that.
“There’s no sign of undersea upheaval,” Challenger continued. “The sea floor is as calm as a mill pond. Whatever we did, we stopped R’lyeh from returning to the surface in our own time.”
Burton nodded. “Or we just postponed its arrival,” he murmured.
Challenger started to say something in rebuttal, then thought better of it. “Nemo has already set course for England. “We’re going home, old son.” He clapped Burton hard on the shoulders with both hands, a devil-may-care grin on his lips, before departing. Burton watched him go—not stopping at his stateroom but continuing onward toward Nemo’s amazing museum—and closed the door.