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Brooks was a little shocked by that. But no – the border of Shoggoth territory was hundreds of miles from Perry.
“I understand your confusion,” Kell said, reading his face. “You have walked only a little but travelled far.”
“I don’t understand,” Brooks replied.
Kell motioned for him to follow, and Brooks did so. The crowd of beings continued to watch him, their faces passive to a degree that was in itself disturbing. None blinked.
Something about their faces looked . . . unfinished. They lacked the most subtle details, he could see as he got closer. Like dolls, nestled deeply in the uncanny valley.
It caused a fear to swell inside him, and suddenly the thought came to him, that he’d heard others bring up before; just why was it that humans were so terrified of things that looked almost like them, unless they’d met such things in the past?
Moving beyond them, he saw that Kell was walking up an ice ramp, and he followed.
This ramp was more steeply inclined, and Brooks struggled up it slowly, while Kell waited at the top.
When he came out, they were no longer near Perry. They were hundreds of miles distant, in the mountains.
His system struggled for a moment before telling him that he was on Mt. Darwin in the Xi Range of the transantarctic mountain range.
Nearly two thousand miles from where he’d recently been.
“How?” he asked breathlessly, snapping his eyes to Kell.
“There are ancient ways to travel,” Kell replied. “Long-forgotten. My kind are the only ones who still know how they work.”
Brooks’s mind struggled, trying to understand this. “Your people have technology?” he asked.
Kell did not look at him, merely out upon the snow that blanketed the land for as far as they could see.
“We only know how to use it,” Kell replied, but offered no more.
Something that implied strange secrets, Brooks thought. And tantalizing; he’d never known of any history given by the Shoggoths – technologically or otherwise.
His words implied his kind had not created it – but if they hadn’t, who had?
Something stayed him in asking, though. Kell’s face seemed unusually intense as it stared out at the flat plains of the diminished Beardmore Glacier to the East.
“These mountains are tall now,” he said. “The ice has shrunk away.” He glanced to Brooks for a mere moment. “I recall watching these glaciers grow from nothing. I was saddened to see them disappear.”
Brooks took in his words in confusion. It took his mind several moments to understand them, to put them in a context.
Obviously the ice had decreased, even in the heart of the continent. But the glaciers that covered Antarctica had formed tens of millions of years ago.
“How old are you, Kell?” he asked.
They’d believed ten thousand years or so would be possible; but it had only ever been a guess. This was not the first time a Shoggoth had claimed to have witnessed something ancient, yet he’d always taken it as a general statement of his kind.
But this was a personal recollection.
“As old as life itself,” Kell told him. “I am of this world. Sometimes I wonder if I should ever have left – if we should have spoken to you.”
He turned now, facing Brooks, his face serious. “But you left us little choice.”
“As old as life? Kell, are you being literal? We understand that abiogenesis was nearly four billion years-“
Kell said nothing, not interrupting him with words, but a simple, clear nod.
Brooks staggered back.
That was impossible – impossible. No being could live for billions of years. It was incomprehensible.
Or was it? he asked himself. Could he truly say it was impossible?
Shoggoths were not like humans, or fish, or even bacteria. They functioned differently.
Truly, he had to admit, he could not rule out the possibility of life that simply did not age.
But the odds of surviving in a dangerous world for that long seemed incredible. The extinction events, the changing world – shifting continents, the oxygenation of the atmosphere, so many things that nearly ended life, certainly ended many types of life over and over and over again, yet his kind – this particular individual – had lived through all of it?
And the sheer scale of that deep time caused a wave of dizziness to sweep over him. What would one’s mind become on such a scale? How could they not go mad? Not give up on life, simply lay down and let the ages wash over them until nothing was left?
How could a being live that long and still wish to be?
Kell was watching him, perhaps seeing the emotions roiling across his face.
“I had been told you were from here,” Kell said to him. “When I learned you were here, I came.”
“Why?” Brooks asked, his voice sounding hoarse in his throat.
The wind howled around them, pitiless, and Brooks began to feel cold. His suit was not set up for the temperatures he now felt, approaching negative eighty degrees centigrade.
“Because this land is also my home,” Kell told him.
“That’s significant to me,” Brooks said. “It is to you as well?”
“I suppose,” Kell replied. “I do not derive meaning as you do. But it is something we share.”
A silence fell, and Brooks fiddled with his suit’s controls, trying to make it warmer. It could not quite deal with the temperatures, though, and he began to shiver.
He was about to tell Kell he had to leave when the being spoke again.
“You afford me trust, Captain,” Kell said. “And you have earned some from me. That is the deeper reason I came to see you here. All of the others of my kind are satisfied by meeting you, and have left. We are truly alone now, and thus we can speak freely.”
Brooks wrapped his arms around himself, the cold reminding him of the days of his youth.
Kell suddenly noticed, and gestured slightly with his hand. Brooks thought he was gesturing a direction to move, but was not sure where he was pointing.
Yet suddenly the wind was not hitting him any longer.
He let his arms slip to his side and looked around. It was still blowing – but it was not touching them. It curved around them, as if hitting something that could not be seen.
“Soon there will be an action by one of your people,” Kell said. “That action will have negative repercussions.”
“You mean Director Freeman, don’t you? At the inquiry,” Brooks replied. “They’ve said they’re just after me.”
Kell said nothing, staring out at the mountains. He tucked his hands behind his back.
“The man has arrogated to himself many things,” Kell replied. “Things that he ought not have. He seeks more.”
“What is it that he wants?” Brooks asked.
“Knowledge,” Kell replied.
“All humans seek knowledge,” Brooks said. “I am not a friend of the man, but it is in our nature to seek to understand. Is that so bad?”
“There are some things, a few things, that to know them is dangerous,” Kell said. “Things that he believes work in a way he can control.”
“It’s about zerospace, isn’t it?” Brooks asked. “The ways in which you are connected to it? Is what he seeks a danger to your kind?”
Kell looked at him. “It is a danger to everything,” he said.
“What is it, Kell? If you can tell me, we can work to keep it-“
Kell turned, and walked back down into the ice.
“I will take you back to your vehicle,” he said.
Brooks recognized that their meeting was over. As much as he wanted to ask for more, he recognized that he had crossed a line by asking for the same forbidden knowledge that Freeman wanted.
So he couldn’t know what it was that Kell wished to keep hidden. Only now . . . he had an idea of just what it was that the Director wanted from this farce of justice. He just didn’t know how the man aimed to achieve them simply by bringing these charges, though.
But he’d soon learn.
Turning, he followed Kell back down into the ice.
Other Terrestrial 