course I do, Henry,” I answered. “And I think I understand. I’ve seen how you take care of it, and it’s obvious how crucial it must be to your mission, whatever that turns out to be. Perhaps as we move along, you’d care to tell me about it—but it’s also fine if you don’t want to. First, though, if you don’t mind, could you get my cigarettes and lighter out of the top pocket of my parka?” For I was hugging the case to my chest with both hands, well above the water level. “The water’s very cold and a drag or two may help to warm us—our lungs, anyway. Light one up for yourself and one for me.” And when he had managed that: “Thanks, Henry,” I told him out of the corner of my mouth, before dragging deeply on the scented smoke.
He smoked, too … but remained silent on the subject of the suitcase, and in particular its secret contents.
I thought I knew about that, anyway, but would have preferred to hear it from him. Well, perhaps there was some other way I could talk him into telling me about it. So after we’d waded for another ten or twelve minutes and finished our cigarettes:
“Henry, you asked me a while ago if I had any idea who you are.” I reminded him. “Well not, I don’t, but it might pass some time and keep our minds active—stop them from freezing up—if you’d tell me.”
“Huh!” he answered. “It’s like you want to know everything about me, and I don’t even know your name!”
“It’s Julian,” I told him. “Julian Chalmers. I used to be a teacher and taught the Humanities, Politics and—of all things—Ethics, at a university in the Midland.”
“Of all … all things?” Shivering head to toe, he somehow got the question out. “How do … do you mean, ‘of all things’?”
“Well, they’re pretty different subjects, aren’t they? Sort of jumbled and contradictory? I mean, is there any such thing as the ethics of politics? Or its humanity, for that matter!”
He considered it a while, then said, “Good question. And I might have known the answer once upon a time. But then I would have been talking about—God, it’s c-cold!—about human politicians. And since the actions or mores of human beings don’t really apply any more—”
But there he’d paused, as if thinking it through. And so:
“Go on,” I quickly prompted him, because I was interested. And anyway, I wanted to keep him talking.
“Well, the invaders,” he obliged me, “I mean all of them—from their leaders, the huge tentacle-faced creatures in their crazily-angled manses, to the servitors they brought with them or called up after they got settled here—all the nightmarish flying things, and those shapeless, flapping-rag horrors called hounds—and not least those scaly half-frog, half-fish minions from their deep-sea cities—not one of these species seems to have ever evolved politics, while the very idea of ethics seems as alien to them as they themselves are to us! But on the other hand, if you’re talking human politics, human ethics—”
“I don’t think I was,” I said, then just as quickly let the subject drop as another maintenance ledge came into view on the left. We couldn’t have been happier, the pair of us, to get out of the water and up onto that ledge; and, somewhat surprisingly, we were relieved to discover that a welcoming draft of air from somewhere up ahead was strangely warm!
“Most places underground are like this,” the old man tried to explain it. “When you get down to a certain depth, the temperature is more or less constant. It’s why the Neanderthals lived in caves. It was the same the last time I was here, which I had forgotten about, but this warm air has served to remind me that we’ve reached—”
HYDE PARK CORNER
He let the legend on the brightly-tiled wall across the tracks finish the job for him, precisely and silently.
“So, what do you think?” I asked him, as we moved from the ledge onto the underground station’s platform. “How are we doing, Henry?”
“Not good enough,” he answered. “We should be doing a whole lot better! My fault, I suppose, because I’m not as strong as I used to be. I’m just too frail, too weak, that’s all, and I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s what happens when a man gets old. But that’s OK, and I can afford to push myself one last time. Because this will be the last time, my last effort in the long last night.”
“Hey, you’ve done okay up to now!” I told him. “And if this warm draft keeps up it will soon dry our trousers out. It’s not much, I suppose, but it may help keep our spirits up.”
He glanced at me, if only for a moment conjuring up a thin, sarcastic ghost of a smile, and with an almost pitying shake of his head said: “Well okay, good, fine!—whatever you say, er, Julian?—but now it’s my turn to spell you. So if you’ll just give that case back to me … ”
Not for a moment wanting to upset him, I handed it over and said, “Okay, if you’re sure you can handle it—?”
“I’m sure,” he told me, as we looked around the platform.
Things were nowhere as bad as Knightsbridge; there had been very little damage here, not on the actual platform, and when I looked down at the tracks I could see them glinting dully under no more than twelve or fifteen inches of water. But both of the arched exits were blocked with rubble fallen from above, making my next comment completely redundant:
“It seems there’s no way up, not from here.”
Henry nodded. “Not even if we wanted to surface here, which we don’t. Next up is Green Park, and following that—assuming we get that far—Piccadilly Circus. But Green Park is right on the edge of the water, and—”
“And that’s Deep One territory, right?” I cut in.
He nodded, frowned and narrowed his eyes, and said, “Well yes, I do believe I’ve heard them called that before … ”
“Of course you have,” I replied. “That’s what you called them, back there where they were splashing about in the water behind us.”
Still frowning, he shook his head and slowly said, “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t remember that.” And then with a shrug of his narrow shoulders: “Well, so what? I don’t remember much of anything any more, only what needs to be done … ”
And with one last look around he went on: “We have to get back down into the water. Just when we were drying out, eh? Be glad Green Park’s not far from here, only one stop. But it’s a hell of a junction, or used to be. It seems completely unreal, surreal now—like some kind of weird dream—but there were three lines criss-crossing Green Park in the old days. I still remember that much, at least … ” He gave himself a shake, and finally went on: “Anyway, for all that it’s close to the lake, it was bone dry the last time I was there. Let’s hope nothing has changed. And after Green Park, at about the same distance again, then it’s Piccadilly Circus—the end of the line, as it were. The end for us, anyway.”
His comment was loaded—the last few words definitely—but I ignored it and said, “And is that where we’ll surface?”
Again Henry’s nod. “It’ll make your skin crawl,” he said, and then, matching his comment, shuddered violently—which I didn’t in any way consider a consequence of his damp, clinging trousers—and when he’d controlled his shaking, finally went on,
