Mat Johnson - Pym

“He wants me to go with him,” I translated. “Shit” slipped out next.

“I’ll go.” Jeffree stepped beside me, hand forward. “Carlton Damon Carter and me. Will film it. We’ll bring the footage back.”

The creature, seemingly sensing the meaning of the discussion, let me loose. He looked at me with those eyes. I met them, barely. Long enough to motion over to Mister Adventure Man.

“But let’s get this straight now: it’s called Jeffree’s Tube.”

“Fine,” Captain Jaynes offered. He was already backing up out of there, the others following.

“And we’ll call them Carlton’s Carrions. That has a real ring to it.” Carlton Damon Carter looked up from his lens at this, smiling.

“They’re not birds, Jeffree. And you can’t name everything,” I told him.

“Look, if we go down, we take the risk, then we make the decisions. That’s supposed to be how this deal works, right? Finders keepers. That’s the deal. Whoever goes down there owns this. Movie rights, book rights, TV rights. Action figures. Because I don’t see anybody else stepping up.”

And with that, everybody stopped stepping away. And slowly, one by one, stepped forward.

We all went. Everybody but Garth, who was out of breath and exhausted from the task of carrying his own weight, but he was my boy, so I argued successfully that he should stay above to serve as our lifeline in case we disappeared below. As for the rest of us, down we trudged behind the snowmen, deeper into the subterranean blue, not knowing what awaited us. Down into the ground at the end of the world. †

The beings were fast, the lengths of their gaits alone put us at a disadvantage. Jogging lightly for a bit as the labyrinth of tunnels moved farther down, we struggled for purchase when the surface became steeper. As the angle increased, so did the time these creatures kept their feet to the ground, using the rough ice of the floor to add a skating motion to their stride. The farther down we went, the wetter the ice that surrounded us seemed, glistening in a slow but undeniable melt. This, of course, was the opposite of what I’d expected; it should have been colder the deeper we went away from the sun. But the caves that widened to cathedral heights dripped above us. We were silent, focused on not busting our tails, until we arrived maybe a half hour later at an opening that brought our path to an end, dumping us out into a hollow so fast it took a moment to realize that the blue sky we now saw far above us in the cavernous space was a distant frozen ceiling.

Americans use the description “as big as a football field” as if that is a legitimate form of measurement. But really, what other single unit of measurement is there that’s comparable? The space here seemed to be at least the size of one large sports arena, possibly two, seats and concession stands included. And there were enough creatures present to fill that field’s audience as well. Thousands, tens of thousands, of the humanoids could be seen moving about below us as we stood at the tunnel’s mouth. In an instant, creatures that seemed the greatest rarity in the universe now outnumbered our own group by a legion.

“We are going to be very famous,” Jeffree said, looking around. The sweat on his brow steamed. Carlton Damon Carter, his eyes nearly as wide as his lens, nodded in agreement as his camcorder took in the wonder.

“We are going to be very famous. We are going to be very famous, and very, very rich,” Nathaniel declared as he pulled Angela by her gloved hand over to him. She looked at me, though.

“You said it was true,” she said, dumbfounded. I was struck by the privilege of witnessing this spectacle and the dizzying possibility that my strange obsession might come to fruition. But the way Angela looked at me was the greatest treasure and maybe the whole point.

All around us, the creatures climbed along the walls, drifting upward in lines to the ceiling in hivelike precision. In fact, the hollow itself was just like the inside of a beehive: I could see rows of identical portals covering the walls around us for hundreds of yards in the air, each the entrance to one of many hundreds of rooms, and each room delineated by pockmarked indentations in the ice that served as ladders. The creatures secured a hand or foothold, effortlessly gliding their oversize bodies both down and up the cave’s high walls. Above us, the distant ceiling dripped across the expanse, giving the appearance of soft rain. And as more of the beasts saw us, more of them climbed out of their high-rise caves and slid down the walls to crowd around us.

“This is not good. This is not good at all,” Captain Jaynes said as we were surrounded. It was already too late for complaints, whatever was going to happen had already started. So many faces, so many pale eyes, now staring at us. So much familiarity within the alien. They pointed just like we did. They whispered. I had no idea how genetically connected we all were, but I felt some link must be there — if not as fellow humans, then as fellow primates, or at least as mammals.

As I was guessing at their taxonomy, a male stepped forward, a shriveled specimen in comparison to the stoutness of the rest. This was clearly an elder, his silver beard was fuller, longer than those of the other males. ‡He came directly forward, past the imaginary boundary around us that his tribe had respected, and stopped in front of me. This was odd: the gesture seemed intended to initiate a meeting of leaders, and Captain Jaynes was obviously the elder of our group.

“Tekeli-li,” their chief said to me. The pronunciation was so different from what I had imagined, containing warbles hidden within the word that no tongue groomed on Romance languages could duplicate.

“Tekeli-li,” I responded back to him. This was greeted by a polite nod — I doubt he imagined that I was trying to respond to his greeting — and then a motion to one of the other creatures who stood behind him. The second humanoid looked similar to the one who had taken a bite of Garth’s cake upstairs. §Big and pale, pale and big. But this one was clearly a leader — his paunch of overindulgence poking out like a massive phallus beneath his robe, his face bloated in comparison to those that peeked from behind him. And the nose. In comparison to those of the other monsters who came to gawk at us, this guy’s nose was freakishly massive; gray, long, and lumpy, like poorly packed boudin. The sausage-nosed beast spun off at the old beast’s orders, and then the elder tried to continue.

“Ergg Eyy Ossen Aublatt?” is what the odd old thing said to me. This is as near as I can manage to catch how it sounded to my ears, and the only thing I understood was that it came in the form of a question. I looked over at my captain for guidance. He looked back at me and slowly shook his head. He’d had enough.

“I don’t know who these folks are, I don’t even know what the hell these folks are, but I do know that now we got to get the hell out of this place. We seen enough. Jeffree can stay if he wants,” he barked. I could hear in his voice that it was clearly too much for the old man.

“Agreed,” offered Nathaniel. “We’ve established first contact, and established our respective stakes in intellectual property and other rights of exploitation. Let’s go while we still got the good health that makes money worthwhile.”

“We come in peace,” Jeffree, stepping forward and past me, declared suddenly, Carlton Damon Carter zooming his lens in on the intensity in his partner’s eyes. The elder paid Jeffree no mind, quickly sidestepping him while keeping his glare on me. He looked at me expectantly, as if I was about to give an answer to his burbled question. I felt obliged to comply. Pointing to myself, I said, “Chris Jaynes.” The long beard simply stared at me with an expression of confusion.