The Philosophical Strangler(103)

“Yes, yes!” I cried. Let Zulkeh get started on the “Law of Gravity, properly so named only by himself,” and you’ll die of old age. “Continue!”

“Well! As I said, well—in the event, we are even now approaching the equinox of our oscillation. Within a fortnight, our solar system will cross the exact center of the galactic plane.”

He fell silent, exuding scholarly self-satisfaction.

I waited. Waited. Finally:

“So?”

The wizard glared furiously. “So? So?” He stretched his hands to the heavens. “Is such cretinism possible?”

“Just answer the question!”

“The thing’s obvious, Ignace! The moment we cross the exact center of the galactic plane, the entire planet will undergo a momentary shuddering in its geologic equilibrium. The tremors, needless to say, will emanate outward from the precise center of the core. Everything will be stirred up!”

A wave of his hand. “Oh, to be sure, the denizens upon the surface will note little beyond a slight haziness in the sky. Minute dust motes, agitated upward from the soil. But in the interior! Oh, no, a different matter altogether. The most ancient creatures will be stirred to sullen life!”

He frowned, stroked his beard.

“Troglodytes, of course—both of the Mesozoic and earlier branches of that noxious order. ’Tis the more evolved Mesozoic breeds which are to be feared. The primitive specimens can be handled with a few cantrips from H.G. Sfondrati-Piccolomini, the which should suffice to cast them back into the abyss of time from which they emerge.”

Again, he dismissed the matter with a wave.

“But even the more advanced troglodytes are a trifle for my science. No, the difficulty will lie with other specimens stirred from their antediluvian slumber. I speak of such terrors as the Malevolent Magnetic Monopoles, driven to nihilistic fury by the transference of polar magnetism which is sure to accompany the planet’s passage across the galactic plane; the insensate Thing From Beneath—not to be confused, mind, with the related but less disheartening Thing From Below—which, in its turn, must be distinguished from the more-distantly-related and yet-less-fearsome Thing Which Came From Below—which, in its turn—”

“And what else?” I demanded.

The wizard goggled. “What else? What else? Say better—what else will there not be stirred up?”

He frowned. “I fear, my dear Ignace, that the timing is not good for our expedition. A perilous adventure at the best of times! But to essay the penetration of the earth’s interior on the very eve of the crossing of the galactic plane—well! Perilous in the extreme, that. But barely possible, so long as we depart at once.”

He turned away. “At once, I say! At once! For, even as I explicate to an ignoramus, time wanes!”





So, we were off.

What a crew! The mage led the way. Cowardly, Zulkeh is not. He’s not brave, either. It’s just—oh, you’ll see. As the wise man says: “Never stand between a scholar and his subject. Stampeding buffalo would be trampled.”

Following the mage came Shelyid. The dwarf staggered about under the burden of the wizard’s sack. Except for Greyboar, Shelyid’s the only person that I know strong enough to carry that sack. You couldn’t see anything but his little legs twinkling beneath the overhang.

What’s in the sack? Everything the wizard Zulkeh had ever collected in his long and lore-lust life:

Instruments, scrolls, thick leather-bound tomes of great weight, clay tablets, stone figurines, vials, beakers, jars, jugs, amulets, talismans, vessels, bowls, ladles, retorts, pincers, tweezers, pins, bound bundles of sandalwood, ebony and dwarf pine, bags and sacks of incense, herbs, mushrooms, dried grue of animal parts, bottles of every shape and description filled with liquids of multitudinous variety of color, content and viscosity, charms, curios, relics, urns of meteor dust, cartons of saints’ bones and coffers of criminals’ skulls, and all the other artifacts of stupendous thaumaturgic potency crammed into every nook and cranny of every niche, room, closet and hallway in the abandoned death house in Goimr where Zulkeh and Shelyid used to live, not excluding the heavy iron engines in the lower vaults.

Still—

“It looks a little smaller than I remember,” I commented to Shelyid.

“Oh, it is!” came the dwarf’s little voice, from somewhere below the sack. “We dumped all kinds of stuff out of it while we were on the sled trying to make it to the Mutt. The Godferrets were chasing us, you know.”

No, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t surprised. Bound to draw the attention of Godferrets, mucking around with Joe business.