Charles Sheffield - The Amazing Dr. Darwin

“Can’t do it.” Pole laughed. “Wish I could. I’m all ready for a full military funeral, by the sound of it. I can hear the fife and drum now, ready to play me out. They’re whispering away there, inside my head. Let me lie down, and have some peace. I never warranted a military band for my exit, even if it’s only a ghostly one.”

“Hush, Jacob. Save your strength. Here, rest all your weight on me.” Darwin bent to take Pole’s arm across his shoulder, supported him about the waist, and began to move forward again. His mood was somber. Pole needed medical attention—promptly—or death would soon succeed delirium.

Twenty seconds later, Darwin stopped dead, mouth gaping and eyes staring into the darkness. He was beginning to hear it, too—a faint, fluting tone, thin and ethereal, punctuated by the harsh deeper tone of drums. He turned his head, seeking some direction for the sound, but it was too echoing and diffuse.

“Jacob—can you tell me where it seems to be coming from?”

The reply was muttered and unintelligible. Pole, his body fevered and shaken with ague, was not fully conscious. Darwin had no choice but to go forward again, feeling his way along the damp, slick walls with their occasional timber support beams. Little by little, the sound was growing. It was a primitive, energetic music, shrill panpipes backed by a taut, rhythmic drumbeat. At last Darwin also became aware of a faint reddish light, flickering far along the tunnel. He laid Pole’s semiconscious body gently on the rocky floor. Then, light-footed for a man of his bulk, he walked silently toward the source of the light.

The man-made tunnel he was in emerged suddenly into a natural chimney in the rock, twenty yards across and of indefinite height. It narrowed as it went up and up, as far as the eye could follow. Twenty feet above, on the opposite side from Darwin, a broad, flat ledge projected from the chimney wall.

Darwin stepped clear of the tunnel and looked up. Two fires, fuelled with wood and peat, burned on the ledge and lit the chimney with an orange-red glow. Spreading columns of smoke, rising in a slight updraft, showed that the cleft in the rock served as a chimney in the other sense. Behind the fires, a group of dark figures moved on the ledge to the wild music that echoed from the sheer walls of rock.

Darwin watched in fascination the misshapen forms that provided a grotesque backdrop to the smoky, flickering fires. There was a curious sense of regularity, of hypnotic ritual, in their ordered movements. A man less firmly rooted in rational convictions would have seen the fiends of Hell, capering with diabolic intent, but Darwin looked on with an analytical eye. He longed for a closer view of an anatomy so oddly distorted from the familiar human form.

The dancers, squat and shaggy, averaged no more than four feet in height. They were long-bodied and long-armed, and naked except for skirts and headdresses. But their movements, seen through the curtain of smoke and firelight, were graceful and well coordinated. The musicians, set back beyond the range of the firelight, played on and the silent dance continued.

Darwin watched, until the urgency of the situation again bore in on him. Jacob had to have warmth and proper care. The dancers might be ferocious aggressors, even cannibals; but whatever they were, they had fire. Almost certainly, they would also have warm food and drink, and a place to rest. There was no choice—and, deep inside, there was also the old, overwhelming curiosity.

Darwin walked forward until he was about twenty feet from the base of the ledge. He planted his feet solidly, legs apart, tilted his head back and shouted up to the dancers.

“It’s no good, Anna. Not a sign of them.” Richard Thaxton slumped on the stone bench in the front yard, haggard and weary. “They must have gone up, into the Helm. There’s not a thing we can do for them until it lifts.”

Anna Thaxton looked at her husband with a worried frown. His face was pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Love, you did all you could. If they got lost on the fell, they’d be sensible enough to stay in one place until the Helm moves off the highlands. Where did you find the lantern—in the same place as I saw it last night?”

“The same place exactly. There.” Thaxton pointed a long arm at the slope of Cross Fell. “The trouble is, that’s right where the Helm begins. We couldn’t see much of anything. I think it’s thicker now than it was last night.”

He stood up wearily and began to walk toward the house. His steps were heavy and dragging on the cobbled yard. “I’m all in. Let me get a hot bath and a few hours sleep, and if the fell clears by evening we’ll go up again. Damn this weather.” He rubbed his hand over his shoulder. “It leaches a man’s bones to chalk.”

Anna watched her husband go inside, then she stooped and began collecting the packages of food and medicine that Richard in his weariness had dropped carelessly to the floor. As she rose, arms full, she found a small figure by her side.

“What is it, Jimmy?” The deformed lad had been leaning by the wall of the house, silent as always, listening to their conversation.

He tugged at her sleeve, then pointed to the fell. As usual he was lightly dressed, but he seemed quite unaware of the cold and the light drizzle. His eyes were full of urgent meaning.

“You heard what Mr. Thaxton said to me?” asked Anna. Jimmy nodded. Again he tugged at her arm, pulling her toward the fell. Then he puffed out his cheeks and hunched his misshapen head down on his shoulders. Anna laughed. Despite Jimmy’s grotesque appearance, he had somehow managed a credible impersonation of Erasmus Darwin.

“And you think you know where Dr. Darwin is?” said Anna.

The lad nodded once more, and tapped his chest. Again, he pointed to Cross Fell. Anna hesitated, looking back at the house. After the long climb and a frantic four-hour search, Richard was already exhausted. It would serve no purpose to interrupt his rest.

“Let me go inside and write a note for Mr. Thaxton,” she said. “Here, you take the food and medicine. We may need them.” She handed the packages to Jimmy. “And I’ll go and get warm clothing for both of us from the house. How about Colonel Pole?”

Jimmy smiled. He drew himself up to his full height of three feet nine inches. Anna laughed aloud. The size and build were wrong, but the angular set of the head and the slightly trembling hands were without question Jacob Pole.

“Give me five minutes,” she said. “Then you can lead the way. I hope you are right— and I hope we are in time.”

At Darwin’s hail, the dancers froze. In a few seconds, pipe and drum fell silent. There was a moment of suspense, while the tableau on the ledge held a frieze of demons against the dark background of the cave wall. Then the scene melted to wild confusion. The dancers milled about, most hurrying back beyond the range of the firelight, a few others creeping forward to the edge to gaze on the unkempt figure below.

“Do you understand me?” called Darwin.

There was no reply. He cursed softly. How to ask for help, when a common language was lacking? After a few moments he turned, went rapidly back into the tunnel, and felt his way to where Jacob Pole lay. Lifting him gently, he went back to the fire-lit chamber and stood there silently, the body of his unconscious friend cradled in his arms.

There was a long pause. At last, one of the fiends came to the very edge of the ledge and stared intently at the two men. After a second of inspection he turned and clucked gently to his companions. Three of them hurried away into the darkness. When they returned, they bore a long coil of rope which they cast over the edge of the ledge. The first fiend clucked again. He swung himself over the edge and climbed nimbly down, prehensile toes gripping the rope.