geometry,” he answered, limping as fast as he could back down the rubble canyon where we’d met, then turning into a lesser side-street canyon. And panting, he explained: “They say that where the hounds come from—Tindalos or somewhere—something?—there are only angles. Their universe is made of angles that let them slip through space and they can do the same here. But London has lost most of its angles now; and with the buildings reduced or rounded and jumbled heaps of debris, the hounds have trouble finding their way around. And whether you believe in Him or not, you may thank God for that!”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, certain that he told the truth. “But where are we going?”
“Where I intended to be going anyway,” he replied. “But you most probably won’t want to—for which I don’t blame you—and anyway we’re already there.”
“Where?” I said, looking left, right, everywhere and seeing nothing but heaped bricks and shadowy darkness.
“Here,” he answered, and ducked into the gloom of a partly caved-in iron and brick archway. And assisted by a rusted metal handrail, we made our way down tiled steps littered with rubble fallen from the ceiling, lying there under a layer of dust that thinned out a little the deeper we went.
Where are we?” I asked him after a while. “I mean, what is this place?” My questions echoed while the gloom deepened until I could barely see.
“Used to be an old entrance of the tube system,” he told me. “This one didn’t have elevators, just steps, and they must have closed it down a hundred years ago. But when these alien things were rioting through the city, causing earthquakes and wrecking everything, all of the destruction must have cracked it open.”
“You seen to know all about it,” I said, as I became aware that the light was improving; either that or my eyes were growing accustomed to the dark.
The old man nodded. “I saw a dusty old plaque down here one time, not long after I found this place. A sort of memorial, it said that the last time this part of the underground system was used was during the Second World War—as a shelter. It was too deep down here for the bombs to do any damage. As for now, it’s still safer than most other places, at least where those hounds are concerned, because it’s too round.”
“Too round?”
“It’s a hole in the earth deep underground,” he replied impatiently. “It’s a tunnel—a tube—as round as a wormhole!”
“Ah! I said. I see. It doesn’t have any angles!
“Not too many, no.”
But it does have light, and it’s getting brighter.”
We passed under another dusty archway, and were suddenly on the level: a railway platform, of course. The light was neither daylight or electric; dim and unstable it came and went, fluctuating.
“This filth isn’t light as you know it,” the old man said. “It’s shoggoth tissue, bioluminescence, probably waste elements, or shit to you! It leaks down like liquid from the wet places. Unlike the hideous things that produce it, however, those god-awful shoggoths, it’s harmless. Just look at it up there on the ceiling.”
I looked, if only to satisfy his urging, at a sort of glowing mist that swirled and pulsed as it spilled along the tiled, vaulted ceiling. Gathering and dispersing, it seemed tenuous as breath on a freezing cold day. And:
“Shoggoth tissue?” I repeated the old fellow. “Alien stuff, right? But how is it you know all this? And I still don’t even know why you’re here. One thing I do know—I think—is that you’re going the wrong way.”
For he had got down from the platform and was striking out along the old rusted tracks that my sense of direction told me were heading –
“Northeast!” he said, as if reading my mind. “And I warned you that you wouldn’t be safe coming with me. In fact, if I were you I’d follow the rails going the other way, south; and sooner or later, somewhere or other, I’m sure you’ll find a way out.”
“But I’m not at all sure!” I replied, jumping down from the platform and hurrying to catch up. “Also, it’s like I said: you seem to understand just about everything that goes on here, and you’re obviously a survivor. As for myself, I’d like to survive, too!”
That stopped him dead in his tracks. “A survivor, you say? I was, yes—but no more. My entire family is no more! So what the hell am I doing trying to stay alive, eh? I’m sick to death of trying, and there’s only one reason I haven’t done away with myself!” And that catch was back in his voice, that almost sob.
But he controlled it, then swung his small, heavy, battered old suitcase from left to right and changed hands—groaning as he stretched and flexed the strained muscles in his left arm—before swinging the suitcase back again and visibly tightening his grip on its leather handle.
“You should let me carry it,” I told him, as we began walking again. “At least let me spell you. What’s in it, anyway? All your worldly possessions? It looks heavy enough.”
“Don’t you worry about this suitcase!” he at once snapped, turning his narrow-eyed look on me as his right hand fell once again to the butt of the weapon on his hip. “And I still think you should turn around and head south while you still can—if only … if only for my stupid peace of mind!— ” (As quickly as that he softened up) “—because I can’t help feeling guilty that it’s my fault you’re here! And the deeper we get into the Bgg’ha Zone, the more likely it is you won’t get out again!”
“Don’t you go feeling guilty about me,” I told him evenly. “I’ll take my chances, like I always have. But you? What about you?”
He didn’t answer, just turned away and carried on walking.
“Or maybe you’re a volunteer—” I hazarded a guess, though by now it was becoming more than a guess “—like that first one who went in and came out screaming? Is that it, Henry? Are you some kind of volunteer, too?” He made no answer, remained silent as I followed on close behind him.
And feeling frustrated in my own right, I goaded him more yet: “I mean, do you even know what you’re doing, Henry, going headlong into the Bgg’ha Zone like this?”
Once again he stopped and turned to me … almost turned on me! “Yes,” he half-growled, half-sobbed, as he pushed his wrinkled old face close to mine. “I do know what I’m doing. And no, I’m not some kind of volunteer. What I’m doing—anything I do—is for myself. You want to know how come I know so much about what happened around here, and to the planet in general? That’s because I was here, pretty much in the middle of it; the middle of one of the centres, anyway. And you’ve probably never heard of them, but there was this crazy bunch … the Esoteric Order, or some such … they had their own religion, if you could call it that, their own church where they gathered; and their bibles were these cursed, moldy old volumes of black magic and weird alien spells and formulas that should have been destroyed back in the dark ages. Why, I even heard it said that. … ” But there he paused, cocking his head on one side and listening for something.
“What is it?” I asked him. Because all I could hear was the slow but regular drip, drip, drip of seeping water.
Then, with a start, a sudden jerk of his head, the
