Hive

Sharkey: I’m here. How goes it up there?

Paleodoc: we’re making progress finding out about things that maybe we’d be better off not knowing about but don’t mind me I’m tired

Hayes could just bet that he was. Up there in those ruins with all the dead Old Ones. Jesus, they must’ve been having some kind of dreams up there. It was a wonder they hadn’t cut their own throats by now and maybe some of them had.

Sharkey: Lots of things happening here. I found out from my Russian friend about that abandoned camp. What he knew about it. Apparently, it was a coring outpost and the crew up there got a little shack happy. Started seeing ghosts and killing themselves.

Paleodoc: any survivors?

Sharkey: None that were sane. They flew them out. The station was called Vradaz Outpost and it’s been deserted since the trouble, over twenty years now.

Paleodoc: did he say what the nature of the trouble was?

Sharkey: Just the usual haunted house stuff. Apparitions and sounds. Knockings and rappings. Things of that nature. Is any of that important?

Paleodoc: how did the lake project make out?

Sharkey: The cryobot was a success. Hayes was there when they released the hydrobot. They found a city down there. A gigantic city on the lake bed.

Paleodoc: still there then? I thought it might be

Sharkey: You knew about it?

Paleodoc: I’ve been studying the pictographs up in the city they tell some pretty wild tales if I’m reading them right think I am there was something I interpreted as a mass exodus down into the lake when the glaciers began to move in

Sharkey: Hayes saw them, Dr. Gates, from the hydrobot’s feed. There were hundreds if not thousands of those Old Ones still living down there. They were swarming. They lost contact with the hydrobot about that time.

Paleodoc: yes, I imagine they did

Sharkey: what does it all mean?

Paleodoc: I’m not sure just yet but soon the fact that they’re still alive down there is bad though if I’m reading these gylphs correctly the old ones have plans for us they want to exploit us

Sharkey: Are they terrestrial? Can you tell me that?

Paleodoc: no, I don’t see how they could be there are evidences in the glyphs etchings on the walls of our star system and others I’m reading it to be evidence of interplanetary and possibly interstellar travel I believe these things existed as a race long before our planet cooled I’m guessing if we could visit mars and the outer planets we’d find evidence of their colonization they’ve been with us since the beginning

Sharkey: Can you be more specific about that?

Paleodoc: the winged devils elaine they’ve been with us since the beginning all our tales of winged demons and devils have a single source do you follow

Sharkey: What do they want?

Paleodoc: I can’t be sure but I believe they’ve been waiting many millions of years for us to find them.

Sharkey: Why?

Paleodoc: listen to me elaine these things are dangerous in ways I can’t even tell you I believe they have seeded hundreds of worlds in the galaxy with life and directed the evolution of that life they have an agenda and I believe it is the subjugation of the races they developed

Sharkey: We’ve had two deaths here.

Paleodoc: you’ll have more they will harvest certain minds and crush the others listen to me elaine I think you should get out of there get in the snocat and make for vostok station you are in danger

Sharkey: You had better come down first.

Paleodoc: can’t too much to do up here too many clues to follow up on if I or others return watch us close very close something not right with Holm I think they have his mind now they want mine and yours too elaine get out get out while you can

Sharkey did everything she could do to bring Gates back up, but he was gone. He had gone off-line according to her messenger. Finally, she gave up and shut her computer down and was forced to look at those two dour faces.

Cutchen spoke first. “Well,” he said. “Well . . . either our good Doctor Gates has lost his mind or we’re in terrible danger.”

“I don’t believe he’s lost his mind,” Sharkey said, but would not elaborate on it. “I don’t believe that at all.”

“Neither do I,” Hayes said. He looked over at Cutchen. “I don’t think you do either. What Gates said . . . what he’s been reading from those hieroglyphs or whatever he found in that old city . . . it’s nothing I haven’t suspected or felt. A lot of us have been dreaming crazy shit and feeling worse things, but none of it really made sense. We all maybe connected it up with those mummies out there, but was that because we were sure they were the culprit or because we were scared and we needed a scapegoat, a witch to burn? But now -”

“You left out something,” Cutchen said. “Gates’ little chat the night before he left. People were feeling funny about those fossils of his and Lind’s nervous breakdown, but the things he said to us in the community room were pretty wild. I don’t think there’s a one of us who didn’t come out of that with an inflamed imagination.”