“And yet he sold the jewellery.” She frowned.
“Because gold is different than books.” Jamieson smiled. “It becomes very personal; the people who buy jewellery wear it, of course, but they also guard it very closely and they don’t keep it on library shelves or places where others might wonder about it. Also, your father was careful not to spread it too thickly. Some here, some there; never too much in any one place. Perhaps at one time he’d reasoned that just like the books he shouldn’t sell the jewellery—but then came the time when he had to.”
“Yet the people of the Esoteric Order weren’t any too careful with it,” she said, questioningly.
“Because they consider Innsmouth their town and safe,” Jamieson answered. “And also because their members rarely betray a trust. Which in turn is because there are penalties for any who do.”
“Penalties?”
“There are laws, Anne. Doesn’t every society have laws?”
Her huge eyes studied his, and Jamieson felt the trust they conveyed... a mutual trust, passing in both directions. And he said, “So is there anything else I should tell you right now?”
“A great many things,” Anne answered, musingly. “It’s just that I’m not quite sure how to ask about them. I have to think things through.” But in the next moment she was alert again:
“You say my father changed his name?”
“Oh yes, as part of the merry chase he’s led us—led me—all these years. But the jewellery did in the end let him down. All winter long, when I’ve been out and about, I’ve been buying it back in the towns around. I have most of it now. As for your father’s name: actually, he wasn’t a White but a Waite, from a long line—a very, very long line—of Innsmouth Waites. One of his ancestors, and mine, sailed with Obed Marsh on the Polynesian trade routes. But as for myself... well, chronologically I’m a lot closer to those old seafarers than poor George was.”
She blinked, shook her head in bewilderment; the first time the old man had seen her caught unawares, which made him smile. And: “You’re a Waite, too?” she said. “But... Jamieson?”
“Well, actually it’s Jamie’s son.” He corrected her. “Jamie Waite’s son, out of old Innsmouth. Have I shocked you? Is it so awful to discover that the kinship you’ve felt is real?”
And after the briefest pause, while once again she studied his face: “No,” she answered, and shook her head. “I think I’ve probably guessed it—some of it—all along. And Geoff, poor Geoff... Why, it would also make you kin to him, and I think he knew it, too! It was in his eyes when he looked at you.”
“Geoff?” The old man’s face fell and he gave a sad shake of his head. “What a pity. But he was a hopeless case who couldn’t ever have developed fully. His gills were rudimentary, useless, unformed, atrophied. Atavisms, throwbacks in bloodlines that we hoped had been successfully conditioned out, still occur occasionally. That poor boy was in one such ‘state’, trapped between his ancestral heritage and his—or his father’s—scientifically engineered or altered genes. And instead of cojoining, the two facets fought.”
“A throwback,” she said, softly. “What a horrible description!”
And the old man shrugged, sighed, and said, “Yes. Yet what else can we call him, the way Geoff was, and the way he looked? But one day, my dear, our ambassadors—our agents—will walk among people and look no different from them, and be completely accepted by them. Until eventually we Deep Ones will be the one race, the true amphibious race which nature always intended. We were the first... why, we came from the sea, the cradle of life itself! Given time, and the land and sea both shall be ours.”
“Ambassadors...” Anne repeated him, letting it all sink in. “But in actual fact agents. Spies and fifth columnists.”
“Our advance guard.” He nodded. “And who knows—you may be one of them? Indeed, that’s my intention.”
She stroked her throat, looked suddenly alarmed. “But Geoff and me, we were of an age, of a blood. And if his—his gills? —those flaps were gills? But...” Again she stroked her throat, searchingly now. Until he caught at her hand.
“Yours are on the inside, like mine. A genetic modification which reproduced itself perfectly in you, just as in me. That’s why your father’s desertion was so disappointing to us, and one of the reasons why I had to track him down: to see how he would spawn, and if he’d spawn true. In your case he did. In Geoff’s, he didn’t.”
“My gills?” Yet again she stroked her throat, and then remembered something. “Ah! My laryngitis! When my throat hurt last December, and you examined me! Two or three aspirins a day was your advice to my mother, and I should gargle four or five times daily with a spoonful of salt dissolved in warm water.”
“You wouldn’t let anyone else see you.” The old man reminded her. “And why was that, I wonder? Why me?”
“Because I didn’t want any other doctor looking at me,” she replied. “I didn’t want anyone else examining me. Just you.”
“Kinship,” he said. “And you made the right choice. But you needn’t worry. Your gills—at present the merest of pink slits at the base of your windpipe—are as perfect as in any foetal or infant land-born Deep One. And they’ll stay that way for... oh, a long time—as long or even longer than mine have stayed that way, and will until I’m ready—when they’ll wear through. For a month or so then they’ll feel tender as their development progresses, with fleshy canals like empty veins that will carry air to your land lungs. At which time you’ll be as much at home in the sea as you are now on dry land. And that will be wonderful, my dear!”
“You want me to... to come with you? To be a... a...?”
“But you already are! There’s a certain faint but distinct odour about you, Anne. Yes, and I have it, too, and so did your half-brother. But you can dilute it with pills we’ve developed, and then dispel it utterly with a dab of special cologne.”
A much longer silence, and again she took his bare forearms in her hands, stroking down from the elbow. His skin felt quite smooth in that direction. But when she stroked upwards from the wrist...
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I am. My skin is like yours... the scales don’t show. They’re fine and pink and golden. But if I’m to come with you, what of my mother? You still haven’t told me what’s wrong with her.”
And now, finally, after all these truths, the old man must tell a lie. He must, because the truth was one she’d never accept—or rather she would—and all faith gone. But there had been no other way. And so:
“Your mother,” the old man hung his head, averted his gaze, started again. “Your mother, your own dear Jilly... I’m afraid she won’t last much longer.” That much at least was the truth.
But Anne’s hand had flown to her mouth, and so he hurriedly continued. “She has CJD, Anne—Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease—the so-called mad cow disease, at a very advanced stage.” (That was another truth, but not the whole truth.)
Anne’s mouth had fallen open. “Does she know?”
“But how can I tell her? And how can you? She may never be herself again. And if or when she were herself, she would only worry about what will become of you. And there’s no way we can tell her about... well, you know what I mean. But Anne, don’t look at me like that, for there’s nothing that can be done for her. There’s no known cure, no hospital can help her. I wanted her to have her time here, with you. And of course I’m here to help in the final stages. That specialist from St. Austell, he agrees with me.”
Finally the girl found her voice. “Then your pills were of no use to her.”
“A placebo.” Now Jamieson lied. “They were sugar pills, to give her some relief by making her think I was helping her.”