Latzarel was livid. Edward wasn’t much surprised. “We’ll see!” shouted the professor. “I’ll just use your phone for a moment!”
“Certainly,” said William, assuming that the statement was addressed to him.
But Latzarel returned five minutes later in a doubly bad humor, red enough to explode, cursing science in general as well as the director of the museum of natural history, who had, it seemed, read Spekowsky’s article. He had no faith whatsoever in dinosaur teeth and was indifferent to lands within the Earth — with “scientific quackery,” as he put it. Latzarel could barely speak.
“He’s with them!” cried William, screwing up one eye and glaring at Latzarel through the other.
“I’m half inclined to agree with you,” Latzarel said. He studied his tooth once more and shoved it into his pocket.
“Tomorrow morning then. We’ll get this craft back up to Gaviota. They might be amenable to financing another expedition.” He shook his head grimly, thinking about scientific quackery. Still worked up, he stormed away toward the Land Rover and whirled off in a dust cloud.
William, with a suddenness that astonished his brother-in-law, dropped to his knees behind the truck and scuttled toward the bushes like a crab, smashing his way in among shrimp plants and begonias and heavenly bamboo, then peering out toward the driveway. “I’m not here,” he hissed at Edward.
“Haven’t been for weeks.”
Edward’s puzzlement was quickly gone, for there on the street, moving along slowly and deliberately, was a familiar white van. Edward’s heart sank. He was determined to protect William — at least for the moment. Had Mrs. Pembly seen him? The false mustache wasn’t worth a farthing. It was a beacon, if anything. Edward would tell Frosticos a thing or two. No he wouldn’t. It would give him away, would gain him nothing.
But the van wasn’t stopping. It pulled up to the curb at the Peach house. Edward climbed onto the truck bed and crouched behind the hull of the bell, looking out over the hatchcover.
“They’re not coming here,” he whispered, although he didn’t, strictly speaking, have to, since Frosticos was stepping out of the van along with a white-suited attendant — an Oriental, Edward noticed — a half block away. For one wild moment Edward was certain the attendant was Yamoto, the ex-gardener. But it couldn’t be. This man was too short by far. He’d let himself get carried away. He’d have to watch that. But what in God’s name was Frosticos doing at the Peach house? That certainly wasn’t a matter of paranoia. There was a scrabbling in the bushes behind him as William worked his way down toward the front yard to get a view of the street.
Something dreadfully strange was afoot. William could sense it. He only half understood Edward’s whispered assurances. In fact, his brother-in-law’s whispering sounded to him like so much static lost in a sea of sudden afternoon emptiness. He scraped between a shrimp plant and the wall of the house, breaking off brittle stalks dangling with salmon-colored, vaguely fishy blooms. A dead, curved branch yanked his falser beard from his coat pocket, snapping up and waggling there with the little triangular goatee perched atop it like a toupee on a stick. William watched it bob momentarily, then edged his way along until he could peer out past a stand of orange and green bamboo.
There was an abrupt change of atmosphere. Clouds, unseen in the heavens overhead, passed across the face of the sun, throwing the street into sudden shadow. The breeze fell. Nothing stirred. He heard nothing at all but the dry crackle of leaves and twigs beneath him and the distant droning of a fly. But he felt as if he could hear a voice in the dead air — as if he were breathing the voice, or rather as if his breathing were part of a vast and rhythmic breathing, the ebbing and flowing of an unimagined tide on a sea that was one great sibilant whispering, the combined stirrings of countless tiny voices murmuring together. He strained to hear them, to fathom it, but it was ink, like the ocean at midnight, a vast and watery dark.
The black asphalt street undulated as if it were a river coming to slow life. Dark swirls rippled in its surface. Something lurked below, just brushing up toward shadowed daylight. What was it? William wasn’t sure, but he knew it was there. Leviathan. Dr. Frosticos’ van sat like a white whale atop the river of asphalt, floating there, staring down toward him, watching. What was it waiting for? What were they all waiting for? The street was a river flowing into the east, and below it waited beasts — unidentifiable beasts, nosing up out of subterranean caverns. It seemed to William that the river ran through him, and there trickled into his mind unbidden the words: “Let those curse it who curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning.”
He felt the ground heave beneath him, and he clutched at a stalk of bamboo, snapping it off at a joint. In his hand was a tendril of kelp, limp and wet. He dropped it, fighting for breath. All round him were waterweeds, waving in the currents of a submarine garden: delicate fans of blue-green and purple algae, undulating clumps of eel grass, brown kelp fronds among which grazed limpets and chitons. Crabs scuttled past. Violet tube worms and hydra flowered from the walls of the house.
William was suffocating, drowning. He clutched at the base of a sea fan, tearing it away from its holdfast, the lacy organism disintegrating into pink dust that glinted in the watery rays of the sun and drifted in a cloud, dispersing on the current. William thrashed and kicked, smashing his hand against the house, sweeping brittle sea life adrift. Then, as if in a dream, it occurred to him that he could breathe if he wanted to — that unlike a foolish rat who hadn’t sense enough to exhale a lungful of water, he was entirely capable of it. He relaxed, floating, clutching at seaweed, breathing altogether easily. His exhalations rose above him toward some distant surface, slow wobbling bubbles.
The whole thing struck him as strange, especially the bubbles. And almost as soon as he considered them, they began to burst in little crystal explosions, shattering the sea life around him. Moon snails and blennies, anemones and hermit crabs, periwinkles and starfish — all of them popped out of existence in a rush, and William, loosed from his hold, rose through the water toward sunlight. He blinked awake on the couch in the living room. Edward stood over him, smoking a furious pipe.
William, vaguely surprised to find his trousers dry, sat up. He ran his hands through his hair. “What time is it? How long have I been out?”
“It’s four, You’ve been out about a quarter of an hour. Frosticos is gone. I’m certain he didn’t take Giles with him.”
“I’ve had the most amazing dream,” said William. “I believe it was prophetic.” He held up his hand as if anticipating an argument from Edward, who wasn’t much on prophecy or mysticism of any sort. But Edward, apparently, wasn’t in an arguing mood. ‘This digging machine. What does Giles Peach call it?”
“The Digging Leviathan, if I’m not mistaken. It does somewhat resemble a crocodile. But the whole thing’s a lark as far as I can see. Pinion seems to set some store in it, but the whole idea is an impossibility from first to last: perpetual motion, anti-matter, anti-gravity. It’s a fabrication. Utter lunacy. On Pinion’s part that is. Giles can’t be blamed; he’s only a lad. But Pinion’s gone round the bend. Latzarel thinks so too.”
William eyed his brother-in-law. “You look grim,” he said. “What have you seen?”