K Jeter - Morlock Night

The arguing and general disorder among my captors lessened, and a pair of the Morlocks whom I took to be the highest in rank, due to the abundant decorations and insignia upon their uniforms, fumed their vocalising to me. The whole race of them being of an excitable and unrestrained nature, similar to the natives of Southern Europe in contrast to the more restrained British, the two Morlock officers were so given to gestures of the hand and facial motions that I could nearly divine their meaning from pantomime alone. Beyond this, however, I found myself starting to be able to understand fragments of their speech. The language seemed to be a grossly degenerated sort of pidgin German with infusions of exotic Slav and Oriental tongues with which I was for the most part unfamiliar, all spoken with slobbering labial explosives and harsh guttural stops that sounded like the clearing of mucus from their throats. All in all, a barbaric mode of speech that well fit their bestial nature. Most of it was beyond my comprehension, but l was able to pick up enough to catch their meaning.

The gist of their communication was that the previous pilot had killed himself, as I readily could see, and they were unable to guide their submarine themselves. My suspicions about their having illicitly appropriated the vessel were thus borne out. All of the controls were too small and delicate in their adjustment for their thick fingers to make use of.

Pilotless, they had had the good fortune to capture me. Now they intended to impress me into the empty position, apparently under the belief that I was of the same nature of person as the deceased pilot and not suspecting my true origin from the surface of the Earth. I was unable to tell from their discourse whether their raising of the submarine and capsizing of the little boat had been a fortunate – for them – accident, or a deliberate action clumsily executed. Of the submarine's true history, or that of its late pilot, I was able to learn nothing.

I quickly decided not to attempt to communicate to my captors that I knew not a whit of how to operate the strange vessel. Given the Morlocks' cruel natures, if I had succeeded in telling them this they would most likely have jettisoned me out into the cold underground ocean to drown. No, my one tactical point against their superior numbers and position was that I held no illusions about them while they were severely mistaken about me.

To gain time in which to formulate a strategy, I pantomimed with much holding of my hands over my ears and other gestures that I could not proceed with the piloting of the submarine unless my captors backed away and gave me a little peace and breathing room. So eager were they to be rescued from their hapless floating in the middle of the underground sea that they quickly acquiesced. With a flurry of shouting at each other like a kennel of dogs in an uproar, and mutually exchanged blows, they backed away from me and the banks of controls.

I turned my attention to the rows of wheels, knobs and levers laid out before me, trying to restrain my mind's apprehension about the situation I was in. Adrift in an underground ocean, surrounded by a horde of the cruellest enemies of mankind, with the dead body near of one who had killed himself rather than serve them, and now attempting to pilot a bizarre submarine, the like of which I had never seen – and to what destination? If by some chance I succeeded in steering the vessel to whatever harbour the Morlocks desired, what would they do with me then? Kill me outright, or leave me to the same self-administered fate as the poor soul lying at my feet? More likely I would only manage to expose my ignorance about the submarine and its controls – how long would it be before the sharply watching Morlocks perceived it? Whatever glimmer of hope had led me this far into such a situation now seemed, the more I reflected upon it, utterly extinguished. It was with a dark and leaden heart that I pulled my thoughts from my predicament and studied the submarine's controls.

The curious features I had noticed in the engine room were borne out on the controls as well. The repeated intricate designs of ancient Britain decorated the corners and spaces of the panels, and the spokes of the several wheels were formed into intertwined snake shapes. As I looked closer at the gauges and dials I saw that their calibrations were marked off in runic letters and figures. A certain sadness crept into me at the thought that I would most likely be dead before I ever came to the bottom of this mystery surrounding the vessel's origin – a marvel of advanced technology apparently crafted by ancient Britons.

I could hear the Morlocks growing somewhat restless behind me, so I resolved to make some small experiments with the controls, hoping that I could learn a rough mastery over the vessel from whatever results ensued.

One of the large wheels seemed a good place to begin. I gave the most central of them a quarter turn, and one of the brass rods overhead moved correspondingly. Nothing else happened. Perhaps, I reasoned, the adjustment had been too slight to effect any change upon the submarine. I gave the wheel a full turn and was nearly toppled from my feet as the submarine tilted abruptly to one side. Only by retaining my grasp upon the wheel did I remain upright.

The general hubbub from the Morlocks became more threatening as they disentangled themselves from each other. I hastily turned the wheel back to its original position and the submarine slowly righted itself. At this rate, my value to the Morlocks as a pilot wouldn't last much longer. What I could understand of their comments on my performance was taking on a decidedly hostile tone.

My further attempts with the controls – turning wheels, pulling levers and the like in a frenzy of activity – met with little or confusing results. Either nothing happened when I manipulated one of the controls, or the submarine pitched and swayed in the water to no purpose. Either the Morlocks' neglect of the vessel's mechanisms had rendered most of them useless, or the mysterious corpse at my feet had somehow before his death managed to sabotage the workings.

During all this time I was aware of the MorIocks' patience with me running out. At any moment they might suspect the false colours under which I was running, and fall upon me. Not daring a glance behind me at the grimly muttering chorus, I reached up and pulled the first of an untried series of levers.

Just as with all the others, I thought disgustedly when no apparent result could be perceived. I was about to try something else when I noticed a finger of water inching across the floor toward my feet. The water was emerging from a doorway that opened onto a corridor running toward the front of the submarine. Through the Morlocks' continuous garbled chattering, I could hear the distantly gurgling noise of water splashing against metal.

An odd situation. Apparently the lever opened or shut some aperture that admitted the surrounding water directly into the submarine's interior. Perhaps the tanks that controlled the submarine's rising or descending by taking in or spewing out water had become disordered to allow this. I was about to return the lever to its original position and shut off the water's inflow when, in a flash, my mind leapt to the strategic possibilities contained in the situation. With a decisive motion I pulled the lever down all the way, then did likewise with the similar levers arranged next to it.

This time the results were satisfyingly immediate. Splashing and gurgling sounds echoed from every angle of the submarine. The acrid scent of the sewage-tainted ocean clogged the air as a low wave of dark water pulsed through the open doorways into the pilot room.

No sooner had the noisome flood washed across the feet of the Morlocks than the high-ranking pair, medals and insignia jangling, came rushing up behind me. Both jabbered ferociously at me while one gripped my shoulder in his clammy white hand, spun me around and gestured angrily at the rising water, now past our ankles as it rose.