Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

As already more than hinted, I thought I might know 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 had 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 might be,” I reminded him. “Well no, I don’t. But it might pass some time and keep our minds active—stop them from freezing up—if you’d care to 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 was a teacher and taught the Humanities, some Politics and—of all things—Ethics, at a university in the Midlands.”

“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. But since the actions and mores of humanity no longer apply—”

At which he had 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, “and 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 might seem as alien to them as they themselves seem to us! But on the other hand, if you’re talking human politics, human ethics—”

“I don’t think I was,” I said, quickly dropping the subject 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 onto that ledge. And more than mildly surprised, 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 had 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 okay, 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 out our trousers. That’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 right 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 replied, as we looked around the 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 appears there’s no way up, not from here.”

Henry nodded. “Not even if we wanted or needed one, 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 Ones 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.”