The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (26 page)

“Tell me I’m tripping. Oh wait, I am tripping.”

“As you know, our consciousness changes over time; it never reverts entirely. But I’d say you worked out the dose just fine. How do you feel?”

“In the zone. Everything is sharp and clear. When I need to act, it all drops down to slow motion; my coordination feels way crisper
than usual. Not hungry, though. This would be a great weight-loss regimen if it wasn’t all so … adrenalin-addled.”

“Excellent, although you’ll be exhausted tomorrow. I’d say you’re functioning fine. Though I think we may have to do some pretty serious drugs to get out of here. The medicine men here use a small cactus that looks promising.”

“Did you just say ‘We may have to engage in heavy drug use to get out of here’?”

“Did I?”

“That’s what I love about you, Matthew.” Chantal stopped him with a hug.

Then she got a concerned look on her face. “Skeezix isn’t with you. Is he OK?”

“There’s another tribe here, another species, actually, the felinidae. They took quite a liking to Skeezix and he’s off with them now, learning their language. The Pthang don’t seem to get along with them, view them as competitors for their hunting territory south of the river, though Skeezix seems to have an idea he might be able to forge some kind of alliance. For some reason, the arachnidae leave the felinidae alone.”

“The … arachnidae?”

“I told you, a hostile non-human race. They sound a little scary. Giant spiders, basically. Very fast-moving. I’m trying to learn more.”

Soon she could make out the outlines of the tree village he’d spoken of. When they were within a hundred yards, a particularly tall and well-endowed blonde, wearing a kind of fur vest around her chest but nothing to cover her hips or ass — basically the X-rated version of Raquel Welch in “One Million Years B.C.” — recognized Matthew, broke free of the equally bare-assed group that had gathered near the edge of the settlement — several spears in evidence in case the approaching figures proved to be hostile — and came bounding toward Matthew, her substantial breasts bouncing.

Had no one told these people about pants?

The leggy blonde ran directly to Matthew, brimming with obvious affection, leaped into the air, and ended in his arms, her naked legs wrapped tightly around his waist as she nuzzled his cheek, greeting him with an outpouring of relief and affection in, Chantal could only presume, fluent Pthang.

Chantal was not amused.

“Oh, this is perfect. I risk my life to call up a vortex, shoot my way through Tyrannosaurus Junction to rescue your ass, and what do I find? Less than a week away, and you’re already shacked up out here in the Fifth Dimension with Sheena, Queen of the Jungle!”

“I am not shacked up, babe. Their sexual customs are very different from ours.”

“Oh, I just bet they are.”

“And we figure it’s the Sixth Dimension.”

“What the fuck do I care which dimension it is? You gonna try to convince me that’s the local version of the fireman’s carry? Matthew, the woman is butt naked. And are those her real breasts, or does she have a couple of small farm animals hidden under there?”

“Providence women no have breasts?” asked the big blonde, still wrapped around Matthew like a big praying mantis but now leaning over and eyeing Chantal’s chest with a heartfelt concern.

“Oh, great, you’ve taught her
English.
How
handy.
What did you start with, ‘Me Tarzan’? And my breasts have been plenty big enough to get the job done up till now, you bare-assed bitch.”

“She know my name!” the overly affectionate blonde smiled, sweetly.

“And you named her ‘Bitch.’ Well isn’t that just perfect? Do you lead her around on a leash?”

“I had nothing to do with naming the young lady, Chantal. Her name is Bidge. It caused me a bit of confusion, too, at first. If you’d let me get a word in edge-wise, I could explain the reason they speak some English here is attributable to none other than our old pal Henry Annesley, who’s apparently been here for almost a hundred
years now, warning them more folks would eventually be following him from Earth One.”

“That’s impossible. Henry Annesley would be…”

“At least a hundred and twenty. I suspect time passes differently here. But these people also brew up a ritual concoction to which they attribute their healthy life-spans, as well as their, uh … fertility.”

“A ‘concoction’?”

“And I am not shacked up with Bidge. Though I admit she’s lovely. Perhaps you’d like to get down now, Bidge.”

Bidge led the way back to the Pthang village, in the large grove of trees just ahead, where a good-sized group of people, mostly women and children, mostly naked except for a few more fur vests, and about half the women obviously pregnant, now stood pointing and chattering. Chantal had by no means softened her expression toward Matthew and his charming cavegirl bride, or whatever the hell she was. In fact, she was wondering what the punishment for homicide might be, here.

Bidge’s muscles flexed and unclenched as she walked. This and the width of her hips caused her well-muscled butt to kind of, well … sway as she rhythmically shifted her weight from one leg to the other. From time to time Chantal rabbit-punched Matthew in the left kidney, which hurt a bit.

“What
else
am I supposed to look at?” he asked. “You’ll have to admit it is a nice one. Notice the way it … Ow!”

The trees were huge, easily 70 or 80 feet tall, and well spaced to provide large, shaded clearings. Chantal’s botany wasn’t good enough to be sure if they were any kind of tree she’d ever seen. She’d heard baobabs were big like this, but largely leafless, while these seemed well-covered in leaves, so her best guess was some gargantuan version of what all those southern boys in the teams called the “live oak.” The huge, columnar central trunks rose a good 12 or 15 feet from the ground before they spread in substantial horizontal branches, which finally curved upward again toward the vertical only after extending outward forty feet or more.

Forming a kind of ring just outside the circumference of the grove of big trees, a four-foot-high hedge of thorny green bushes, broken here and there by openings only wide enough to admit one adult at a time, had been planted or encouraged. It didn’t look too formidable as a defensive perimeter all by itself, but given the fair number of eight-foot lances among the gawkers, tipped with what appeared to be razor-sharp flint or obsidian points, it occurred to Chantal that a phalanx of spearmen, standing inside that hedge with lances leveled, might present some fairly serious discouragement to unwelcome guests.

The Pthang appeared to have built their primary dwellings on platforms lashed to the main network of horizontal tree limbs, basically enormous tree houses, portions open to the sky and potions thatched with something resembling palm fronds, linked to each other by swaying rope catwalks and to the ground by ladders which could presumably be hauled up in case of attack by man or beast. Some smaller platforms decorated the next set of sizeable horizontal limbs, fully 30 feet off the ground, possibly for storage. Chantal thought she could spy even a third level of construction higher than that, though those were so small that they were likely used only as crows’ nests — watchtowers, whatever.

The most impressive feature of the constructions, though, were a series of five, no, at least six huge crossbow-like things pointing outward from elevated tree-fort positions arranged around the perimeter of the grove, compound bows, each loaded with a very businesslike looking six-foot spear with huge triangular obsidian warhead. Given that the rest of the Pthang technology seemed to be consistently stone-age, these were unexpected.

A babble of excited voices broke out as Bidge announced the arrival of a new visitor, and more largely naked bodies came scrambling down the ladders and — closest to the center of the grove — one route of descent that looked more like a traditional staircase with handrails, suspended by ropes.

There were lots of children, excited and curious. As a matter of fact, while there were probably 40 adults and 80 children — Chantal was ashamed to admit she was slightly relieved to see the men at least wore some kind of minimal loincloth — the first thing she noticed was that the balance seemed off.

“Where are the men?” she asked Matthew.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said, while smiling and waving at the approaching children to reassure them. “There is one band of men still away on a hunt, four or five maybe, but women outnumber eligible men here by at least three-to-one, probably due to combat losses. First you’ve got these large predators that you’ve met, but secondly they seem to be fighting an ongoing defensive war with this other aggressive species, the aforementioned arachnidae. Except for a few of the bigger Amazons, like Bidge, the women take to the trees to guard the children, the men guard the perimeter and take losses. Obviously, a system of monogamy, if they ever had one, can’t stand up to that kind of attrition. The women apparently mate with most of the men, any chance they get. Only way to keep the population numbers up.”

“Where’s she taking us?”

“To see the old man.”

The tree house at the center of the grove — the one with something approximating a normal wooden staircase — seemed to be the local headquarters. Word had moved ahead of them and Old Henry was ready to receive them, part-way reclining on a kind of couch in a roomy, well-ventilated hall but with his head and back supported by leather pillows. Henry Annesley had clung to the old ways at least to the extent that he wore a pair of leather short pants — very Austrian looking. With him was his grandson, Turok — probably past 60, himself — who seemed to be the closest thing to a chief that the Pthang recognized.

Given that he’d been a full-grown young man of at least college age when he disappeared from Providence on Earth One back in early 1921, Henry Annesley should be approaching 120 years of age.
It sounded like the punchline to some joke to say a man “only looked 80,” but in this case it would have been about right. Diet and fresh air, maybe? The presumed absence of alcohol and all the stresses of modern life? Or maybe there really was something to their “concoction” — the fertility elixir that Matthew had mentioned.

He hadn’t been a very large man to begin with — unlike his grandson, Turok, who was a barrel-chested giant, and who sported a healthy thatch of red hair, one of the few such heads of hair they’d noticed in the settlement, except on some of the children. In a polyandrous society, where establishing fatherhood must be difficult, it was not far-fetched to presume such a head of hair might be seen as a mark of distinction, indicating direct descent from the old man.

No, Henry Annesley’s body was not exactly robust — his limbs appeared quite thin, actually, under their sheath of leathery skin. The thin wisps of hair forming a sparse halo around his head ranged from silver to white. And his face was heavily lined and weathered, no doubt. But his skin tone was excellent — so far as could be told, beneath his nut-brown tan. He wore something metallic on a leather thong around his neck, brass or gold. Weirdly enough, Chantal wondered if it could be a Phi Beta Kappa key, or maybe some Masonic talisman. His expression was cheerful beneath perpetually arched, inquisitive eyebrows. And his most formidable and surprising feature, his piercing blue eyes, peered out still bright, alert, inquisitive.

“So, Matthew, you were right,” Henry Annesley spoke up in a surprisingly strong voice, sounding weirdly like his great-nephew Windsor. “Another traveler from Earth One! I assume there are more reinforcements coming behind this gentleman?”

“This is Chantal Stevens, Henry, the woman I’ve told you about.”

“Hello, sir,” Chantal tried.

“Oh my goodness. And a thousand pardons, madam. My eyesight isn’t near what it used to be, not hardly. In that clothing, I took you for a soldier. …” The old man propped himself on an elbow, sat up straighter for a better look.

“Well, our new friend Matthew has been telling me how much things have changed back home, but hearing and seeing are two different things, aren’t they? You and your party didn’t suffer too much inconvenience from our neighbors the thunder lizards?”

“Chantal is alone for now, Henry. She had to kill one of the big meat-eaters.”

“Kill it?”

“I brought a rifle, sir.”

“Thank God. Yes, that does look like an elephant gun. .416 Rigby?”

“Browning fifty.”

“But … that would be a machine gun, unless my memory fails me.”

“We’ve developed turnbolt repeaters, as well as semi-autos, that use the BMG round.” Chantal stripped one from the spare magazine in her thigh pocket and handed it over, a cartridge as big as a cigar. Bigger than one of Dona Solana’s cheroots, actually.

“Very effective, I would think.” Old Henry handed it back. “But surely the recoil must be substantial.”

“The muzzle brake helps a little, sir.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m sure I don’t outrank you anywhere including here, young lady. Here I’m ‘Henry’ or ‘Old Henry,’ or, when they think I’m not listening, ‘the old fool.’”

“Not so, grandfather,” smiled Turok, in what was obviously some pretty rusty English, as he patted the old man’s knee.

“I’m not that deaf, Turok. At any rate, no need to call me ‘sir,’ young lady, unless it makes you happy.”

“OK, sir.”

“Henry has been telling me the Pthang had almost lost faith in his tales of more people coming from Earth One,” Matthew explained.

“Matthew tells me my resonator was lost all this time, despite young Lovecraft writing about it. Smart, I’ll admit, young Howie Lovecraft, well-read, but a bit of a mama’s boy. We never thought he’d amount to anything. He wrote a newspaper piece?”

“Fiction — basically a mad scientist story. No one ever thought it was anything but fiction.”

“Well, good. That’s all for the best. I was scared to death the Army would get hold of the thing, or some latter-day P.T. Barnum looking to build a carnival attraction. Not meaning to insult the Army, young lady.”

“I did my tour in the Navy, sir.”

“And now I’ve insulted the young woman twice. See there? Never knew a Navy man who liked being called a soldier — or a Marine, either. I imagine you fetched coffee and donuts, that kind of thing?”