Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute - Jonathan Howard

The time between standing at the bowsprit he passed much as the others did; swinging unhappily in a hammock, putting off visits to the frightful cubbyhole as long as possible, and being gloriously and violently sick on a regular basis. During the Atlantic passage, they had all suffered some sea-sickness for the first day or so, but had quickly overcome it and had mistakenly come to the conclusion that this was all the time necessary to find one’s sea-legs. Compared to the steam liner, however, the Edge of Dusk was like spending every hour of every day being blindfolded and lobbed at short, random intervals on to a trampoline. The horizon wantonly flung itself around at peculiar angles and the contents of their stomachs followed it faithfully, even while their inner ears told them that everything else was lying, and ‘downwards’ was actually this way. The crew found the sight of their passengers leaning over the rails hugely amusing in the absence of any other form of entertainment, although they quickly got a sense that it was unwise to laugh at Cabal. He never seemed particularly stricken, barking up his breakfast in a perfunctory way as if he had planned to do so all along, then strolling over to the water-butt and taking a mouthful from the scoop to rinse his mouth before spitting it out over the rail to follow his bacon and biscuit. None of the crew had ever seen a man vomit in a dignified manner, and it worried them in an disquietingly undefined fashion.

There was some commotion on the third day when the lookout sighted a sea serpent about a league off the port bow. Cabal barely felt it necessary to use his telescope to examine it; the creature was vast, a mile long and thicker than the Edge of Dusk was tall. They watched it swim by in a series of undulating humps that barely disturbed the waters, the sun glistening off the slick grey scales, unaware or uncaring of the tiny ship that sailed so near.

Corde noticed the captain watching it, his arms crossed and a ruminative expression on his face. His calmness did much to still Corde’s own nerves at being so close to such a giant, and he said, ‘I gather such creatures do not attack ships, Captain?’

Lochery looked sideways at Corde, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, aye? And what makes you say that, Master Corde?’

Corde laughed. ‘Why, your unconcerned attitude, of course. You do not look like a man who suspects imminent death.’

‘Ah,’ said Lochery, returning his attention to the diminishing serpent, now beginning a descent back into its native depths. ‘Well, you see, if we had been in its path, it would have devoured the ship whole. They can do that, you know, and we would not have been able to do a thing to stop it.’

‘What?’ Corde’s sang-froid fractured abruptly. ‘We were in danger the whole time? How could you be so calm, man?’

‘I repeat, we would not have been able to do a thing to stop it. If we are to die, Master Corde, we can at least die well.’

Ten days, the trip took altogether, and the majority were much like one another. Once, when the ocean grew shallow over a submarine plateau, Corde excitedly pointed out that he could see a sunken city clearly beneath the waves. Lochery was unhappy to hear it and put a greater press upon the sails, the sooner to be clear. Nor was Cabal delighted by this remarkable sight, refusing even to look at it, instead pacing up and down the deck, muttering about how greatly he resented the loss of his pistol.

Everyone was relieved when, on the early evening of the tenth day, the lookout called, ‘Land, ho!’ and shortly thereafter Oriab Island crept over the easterly horizon. There was sufficient light to study the architecture as the Edge of Dusk glided between two lighthouses to rival the Pharos on either side of Baharna harbour, and approached the quayside before lowering her sails and sculling in the last few yards. Sailors leaped easily to the quay and, within a minute, were tying her off to the bollards. After such a long and occasionally harrowing journey, the sense of anticlimax was intense.

‘Well,’ said Bose, as they gathered their few items of luggage bought in Hlanith, ‘that was an adventure in itself. Sea serpents and sunken cities! Tell me, Captain, is this journey always so exciting?’

Lochery considered for a moment. ‘No pirates this time,’ he said, shrugged, and then bade his passengers a good evening before turning his attention to unloading cargo.

Baharna was a very different city from Hlanith, even larger (in their experience to date, the Dreamlands didn’t seem to do small – except for ships) and seemed to owe less to Earth in its architecture. Or at least, as Cabal commented, to any surviving architecture known on Earth. The city was terraced, but in such a way as to make the ranks of Hlanith seem very modest indeed. The streets of Baharna rose and fell steeply and, as a result, were frequently stepped. The visitors guessed that loads were carried on the sharply zigzagging roads that ran across the terraced levels, but people still managed to ride up and down the interstitial stepped highways by an unexpected method.

‘Oh, I say,’ said Bose. ‘That chap’s riding a zebra.’

It seemed that the zebras of the Dreamlands, or at least the zebras of Oriab, were far more biddable creatures than their terrestrial counterparts. A smiling trader in an orange silken robe, saluted them with something similar but not exactly a salaam gesture, and rode by on his patient and sanguine zebra, laden with panniers.

They watched him pass and then watched him ride off down the stepped road towards the quays. The observation grew to a slightly irritating length until it was halted by Cabal’s curt, ‘Oh, hallelujah. We have seen a man on a zebra and may now die content.’ He stalked off up the hill, looking for an inn the captain had told them of, and did not deign to make sure the others were keeping up.

As he walked, and they pursued him in a desultory we-were-going-this-way-in-any-event sort of way, he looked up at the huge archways that bent upon the highways of the city, archways upon which stood more buildings of the same dark purplish porphyry from which much of the city seemed to be built. It gave an impression of great solidity and great age. Cabal knew that an igneous stone like porphyry was difficult to cut; the ancient Egyptians had certainly made heavy weather of it, loathing the stuff for its hardness but loving it for its colour, finish and resistance to the elements. Or so the mummy of a master architect had once told him during a not entirely legal experiment at a respected science academy held long after normal hours. In fact, the virtues of building materials were all that ancient worthy had been prepared to talk about, probably because the rest of his brain was in a canopic jar somewhere.

The vast quantities of the stuff in evidence here, however, raised the question of just how large a quarry would have to be opened in the side of a nearby volcano to supply such gargantuan – indeed, Cyclopean – loads of the distinctive rock. Cabal considered the hypothesis that if all the porphyry were to be dumped neatly back into the quarries it would produce a good-sized hill after filling the holes. In short, that most had never been mined but dreamed into existence, long, long ago by men or things like men. The hard stone had been chosen because it reasonably matched the environment, but mainly because it emanated permanence, and permanence in the land of sleep is better than gold in the world of wakefulness. Cabal’s chosen profession meant that he must perforce dabble frequently in history and folklore and the misty hinterland between them. Over time, he had developed a sense of what was likely and what was not, which historical theories were probably true, and which were bunkum. To this sense, the Dreamlands stank of bunkum, a rank, musty smell like old sacking. Real history was unromantic, steeped in greed and blood and abject eye-rolling stupidity. An endless parade of putative Ozymandiases marching off to glory before snapping off at the ankles in the depths of the desert: that was human history. Every now and then there would be the pretence of civilisation, but soon enough the restless, hateful, atavistic hearts of humanity would tear down the towers and slide back into barbarism, squealing with glee. Decadence loves the taste of blood, even though it is poison.

The Dreamlands had none of that. The town squares had statues to poets and artists, philosophers and writers, not generals and statesmen. Cabal had heard of no wars or even border squabbles in living memory. Oh, there were tales of great wars and toppled states, but these all dwelled in the distant past. When an Ozymandian empire fell here, it was explicitly for the convenience of any passing Shelley looking for a subject for a sonnet.

Yet, Cabal concurred, the Dreamlands should have had all the necessary ingredients for conflict and anarchy. There were fat merchants with vast wealth, so money was important here, and where there was money there were jealousy and violence. There were pirates, mercenaries, marines and soldiers. There were kingdoms that chafed under ancient enmities with other races and neighbours. All the elements were here, so why did no spark start a conflagration?

Perhaps, he concluded, wars could only start here for aesthetic reasons. Tawdry little land grabs simply didn’t happen because they were revolting and wrong. Noble crusades and heroic ventures, on the other hand, were romantic and right. Perhaps, Cabal thought, when he had more leisure he might try his hand at starting a conflict here, just for purposes of scientific enquiry. The Trojan model looked simple and effective. He made a mental note to foment a war at some point, and returned his attention to finding the inn.

It took another twenty minutes to locate the place, ten of which were spent in a small square, the centre of which was a compact but beautiful garden, arranged around a statue of a middle-aged man of patrician features, dressed in a toga. The statue was of striking craftsmanship, but the reason for the pause there was because all of the party – Cabal included – were astounded to discover that they were able, at some curious subconscious level, to hear the statue think. Several people were gathered around, sitting on the pale wood benches that bordered the square, in poses of deep concentration, ‘listening’ to the thoughts and occasionally nodding in slow comprehension.

When one of them arose from his meditations to make a few notes upon a waxen tablet, Corde asked him, ‘That statue, how is it that we can hear its mind?’

The man laughed, a small polite laugh of the type reserved for ignorant foreigners, and said, ‘That is not a statue. It is the great thinker Arturax, he who has travelled so deeply into the inner realms of thought and intellect that he has been transfigured by the very nature of his ideas. He has no need of food, drink or rest because such things are animal and unsuited to a man of thought. Thus, he has dispensed with them. He is a hero to all mankind, as he addresses question after question, slaying them with his wisdom.’

‘These problems,’ asked Johannes Cabal, ‘I was wondering, do they include how to deal with urban pigeons?’ But his colleagues shushed him and took him away before the student of Arturax could hear.

The inn was called the Haven of Majestic and Bountiful Rest and, worse yet, deserved that name. Cabal rarely visited inns, except to secure the temporary services of ratlike men with names like Tibbs, Feltch and Crivven to do the basic shovel work in moonlit cemeteries when he was in too much of a hurry to do it himself. The inns such men frequented in turn had names like the Friendly Gibbet, the Sucking Wound and the Sports Bar, vile places with vile clientele. The Haven, by contrast, was a lively, bustling place full of open-faced men and more than a few women, all wearing bright silks, drinking golden mead and ice wine, singing risqué but by no means obscene songs, and never getting more than pleasantly tipsy. Even the sawdust upon the saloon-bar floor was fresher than that in a busy woodwork shop. Bose and Shadrach were delighted to see it thus, Corde seemed slightly disappointed, and Cabal simply scowled, as was his wont.

The food was good, the drink was good, and the company was bearable, so Cabal bore it where once he might have gone to bed, leaving the others with an unspoken curse to be visited upon their next of kin. Two hours later, Bose waved over Captain Lochery, fresh from completing the offloading of the Edge of Dusk’s cargo and looking for a soft berth for the evening. As they were buying, he joined them with the practised alacrity of a seaman who scents free booze and, in return for a drink and a meal, regaled them with tales of the Dreamlands’ seas. These frequently ended with the words ‘. . . and he was never seen again’ so Cabal quickly lost interest. He was on the point of going to his room when he noticed that Lochery was – while cheerfully telling nautical tales of shipwrecked desperation, ingestion by sea monsters, the sodomite proclivities of pirates, and some unexpected combinations of these elements – feeding his right leg.

‘Captain Lochery,’ said Cabal, as he watched the man offer a piece of sour bread to his calf, which gratefully devoured it, ‘I cannot help but notice that you are feeding your leg.’

‘Aye,’ said Lochery, unabashed. ‘It gets hungry.’ In explanation, he rolled up his right pantaloon leg to reveal what Cabal had assumed would be pale flesh but was actually a beautifully carved wooden prosthetic. In the outer right calf there was a small hole, and from this hole an inquisitive rodent’s face was peering out at them.

There were cries of astonishment from the others, but Cabal went down on one knee to look more carefully. ‘I don’t recognise the species. It looks a little like a guinea pig, and a little like a dwarf rabbit, but is barely bigger than a hamster. What is it, Captain?’

‘Guinea what was that? Rabby? I don’t know anything of those, Master Cabal, exotic though they sound. But this is a dreff. They’re only found on this island.’ He slapped his thigh, but gently, so as not to disturb the creature. ‘I lost this leg when I was a lad. One day out from here. The weather was strange, and the creatures of air and water were disturbed. My ship – she was the Fool’s Wager out of Ulthar, under Captain Mart, dead these twenty years – was attacked by seagaunts.’ Some interested bystanders made a sympathetic groan. ‘Twenty or thirty, driven mad by the green sun.’

‘I’ve heard of nightgaunts,’ said Cabal. ‘Slick, rubbery, faceless black creatures with horns and wings. What are these seagaunts?’

‘Much the same,’ said Lochery, ‘except at sea. They fell on us. I saw poor old Jecks Pilt borne off by them. They tried to do the same to me, filthy flapping things, but I got a deadman’s grip on the rigging of the foremast – she was lateen rigged, by the bye – and I was not going to let go, not with Jecks’s screams still echoing in my ears. But the ’gaunts, they wanted something for their trouble. So . . .’ He waved at the wooden leg.

‘Well, Captain Mart, he was a good man, he said to me, “You’re a sailor through and through and no leg-thieving seagaunts are going to take that away from you.” At least, that’s what he said later, ’cause I’d flaked out at the time from loss of blood. Anyway, he had a favour owed to him by a sorcerer in the city, and he took me to him – big tower at the northern end of the Spice Quarter, some dodgy evoker’s got it now, last I heard – and he comes up with this little beauty. See, dreff live in trees from the Sinew Wood, south-east of the Lake of Yath. The trees can move, but they got no brains. The dreff have brains – pretty good ones, considerin’ how little they are – but they can’t look after themselves. So, the dreff and the sinew trees are sort of . . .’ He looked for the word.