“We have radio and video contact with the pilot,” said Walker, “direct feed from seven underwater cameras on those monitors there, and an ongoing display of whatever the submersible’s long-range sensors are picking up. Almost as good as being there.”
“Can you hear me, Honey?” I said, leaning forward over the mike.
“Of course I can hear you! I can hear all of you.” Strapped into a pilot’s chair and surrounded very closely on all sides by what looked like enough instrumentation to take the submersible into near Earth orbit, Honey glared out at us from a small screen.
“Looks a bit snug,” I said.
“Snug? I’ve known spacier coffins. There isn’t room in here to swing a flea. I’ve already severely bruised precious parts of my anatomy just getting into the driving seat, and you don’t even want to know what I have to do to work the air-conditioning. Still, all systems are go; we are ready to proceed.”
“We still haven’t decided how you’re going to lure the famously shy Nessie out of hiding,” said Walker. “You don’t appear to have anything on board that will do the trick. Or at least, nothing that hasn’t been tried before.”
“Maybe I should try to attract the creature,” said Katt, half seriously. “I do have an outstanding track record for attracting anyone and anything with a pulse . . .”
“Yeah,” said the Blue Fairy. “That’ll do it. Stand on the edge of the loch and show it your tits, Katt.”
“Crude little man,” Katt said frostily.
“Actually, you’ve just given me an idea,” said Blue. “Attraction: that’s the key. We have to make Nessie want to come up to the surface. And there are some things, some sounds, that will attract anything, luring them on against their will, pulling them on like a hook in the jaw. And I have just the thing in mind: something I’ve fished for before.”
We all looked at him, standing tall and proud and only a bit bedraggled in his Elizabethan finery, his battered old fishing rod and reel at the ready. And perhaps I was the only one who saw just how much he needed to be taken seriously.
“What did you have in mind?” I said.
“A mating call,” said the Blue Fairy, smiling back at all of us, pleased at being the centre of attention. “I once brought up from the dimensional depths, entirely by accident I have to admit, a kind of . . . siren. A temptress, a seducer, whose call no mortal will could hope to withstand. Fortunately, this particular siren’s call was only ever intended to work on those of a heterosexual persuasion, so I remained relatively unaffected and was able to throw the damned thing back.”
“Can you find it again?” said Walker.
“Well, obviously,” said Blue, “or I wouldn’t have said anything. I’ll find it, hook it, and reel it in, and then we can use its call to bring Nessie right to us.”
“Hold everything,” said Walker. “Are you seriously proposing we call up another monster and drop it into the loch? Isn’t the situation here complicated enough as it is? Not to mention the problem we would be leaving behind for the future. What if the siren developed a taste for the locals? They could end up swarming here like so many lemmings.”
“I never suggested leaving the siren here,” the Blue Fairy said in a calm, patient, and infuriatingly understanding voice. “In fact, I think it would be downright dangerous to keep the thing around one moment longer than we absolutely have to. What I have in mind is much simpler, bordering on elegant. I bring the siren here, we record its call on this marvellous communications system . . . and I throw it back again. We then broadcast the recording of the call into the loch’s waters. Foolproof. Unless Nessie turns out to be gay as well, of course . . .”
“Let us very definitely not go there,” I said quickly. “The recording sounds fine to me. Everyone? Right; do your thing, Blue. Catch us a siren.”
Of course, then he had to make a whole big thing out of finding just the right spot along the bank of the loch. He walked us up and down through the mud and spiky grass, his face set in a rigid mask of concentration, which he had to spoil by occasionally glancing at us to see how we were taking it. He finally settled on one particular spot that looked exactly the same as all the others and gestured grandly with his left hand. A glowing golden pool some six feet in diameter appeared before him, flat and featureless, not so much covering the ground as replacing it. The pool was a gateway to everywhere else, to all the dimensions that ever were or may be, and was painful to look at directly for more than a moment.
Blue’s time with the elves had clearly helped him; I could remember when he needed to spill his own blood in sacrifice to summon the golden pool to him. And the pool looked a lot bigger than I remembered. A hole punched right through the walls of reality by sheer willpower. Only the Blue Fairy was skilled enough and crazy enough to call it up, just so he could go fishing in it . . .
He worked his rod and reel expertly, and hook and line disappeared into the golden pool without in any way disturbing the glowing surface. Blue stood quietly, apparently calm and relaxed, and we all stood and watched him. There’s always something fascinating about watching someone do the one thing they’re really good at. The sound of the line whining off the spinning reel was almost hypnotic as the line dove down and down into depths we really had no business fooling with. But that’s an elf for you. And then the line snapped taut, jerking this way and that across the glowing pool, and the Blue Fairy’s breath hissed between his clenched teeth as he worked the reel, putting a steady pressure on the line. Slowly, steadily, he began to haul his catch in.
I realised I was holding my breath. Blue didn’t always get what he was after the first time, and he had been known to haul some really nasty things up out of the depths. The line remained taut, rising very slowly, the reel clicking quietly. Whatever Blue had hooked, it didn’t seem to be fighting him.
I glanced quickly around. We were all standing far too close to the pool, and none of us had taken any precautions. I had my torc to protect me, but God alone knew what the others were relying on to save them from the siren’s call. I started to say something, and then the golden pool exploded as the siren burst through into our reality.
It rose up and up, towering over us, too big to be contained by the pool through which it had found a foothold into our reality. It was huge and glorious, completely unearthly, unfolding and uncoiling in every direction at once. It was vast and wonderful, too beautiful to be born, dark yellow flesh with rainbows exploding inside it. It sang, and I was lost. A glorious, wonderful, unbearable sound. I fell to my knees before it, and so did we all. Who knows what songs the sirens sang? Who knows what songs were sung for noble Odysseus? We knew, and I will hear that song in my nightmares forever.
Because I was nothing in the face of that song. Nothing that mattered.
The siren called, and we all shuffled forward on our knees, gazing adoringly up at the living fountain of flesh towering over us. Even the Blue Fairy had dropped his rod and reel, caught up in a song that went for the soul. I could barely see my surroundings, feel the tough grass scuffing beneath my knees. The siren wanted us, and not for anything good. Death would be the kindest thing that would happen to us, once the siren had clasped us to its unforgiving bosom. I knew that, and I didn’t care. I wanted to worship it forever, worship it with my body until I died of it.
Except . . . there was another voice in my head and in my heart, another face before my eyes. My Molly, my sweet Molly Metcalf, who had put her mark upon me long ago. As soon as I thought of her, I could feel the torc blazing coldly around my neck, trying to alert me to the threat . . . and those two things together gave me all the strength I needed to stop moving forward. I slowly turned my head to one side, looking away from the terrible, wonderful thing before me. It was all I’d ever wanted, right there waiting for me, and I fought it with every ounce of strength and will I had. I turned my head away, my whole body twitching and trembling with the effort, and saw another face, looking at me.
The Blue Fairy had stopped moving t
oo and had turned his face away from the siren. Perhaps because of his nature, perhaps because he also wore the golden torc, perhaps because he was half-elf. Or maybe he was just stubborn, like me.
We looked at each other, and I slowly turned my gaze to the rod and reel lying abandoned before the Blue Fairy. He looked at it too, and with the last of his strength, he grabbed the reel and threw it into the golden pool, hook and line and all.
The line snapped taut again, dragging at the siren’s fleshy orchid head, distracting its attention. I forced myself up onto my feet, turned my back on the siren, and lurched over to the communications centre. I had to record the siren’s call before it was sucked back down again. I subvocalised my activating Words, and my armour flowed over me in an instant, sealing me in and protecting me from the world. The golden strange matter encased me from head to toe, and just like that the siren’s song was nothing more than noise. I hit the record button and turned quickly to see what was happening.
The siren was no longer held to this world, but it didn’t want to go. It had been defied, and it was angry. It had found an endless feeding ground, and it would not be denied. It towered high above us, flaring and pulsating; and even through the protecting filters of my golden mask, this extreme and awful creature was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The Blue Fairy was on his feet but halfway transfixed again, and the others were very close to the siren now. So that left just me. Because that’s a Drood’s job: to be the last man standing, and stand between humanity and all the threats from outside.
I walked right up to the siren and hit its glistening side as hard as I could with a spiked armoured hand. My fist slammed right through the pulsing, sliding substance, and my armoured arm sank deep into the shifting body, right up to my shoulder. The siren screamed, a terrible agonised sound that blew away all its song’s effects in a moment. The others scrambled back away from the pool, away from what they’d been worshipping just a moment before. I jerked my arm out and drew back a fist to strike again. The siren plunged into the glowing golden pool, sounding for the dimensional depths where it belonged. Where prey knew its place.
I armoured down, the golden strange matter retreating into my torc. I wasn’t ready for the others to see me in my armour just yet. They’d look at me differently. I stood by the side of the loch, savouring the quiet. With the siren gone, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what had been so entrancing about its song, and that was probably for the best. The others were back on their feet, their eyes still a little lost and dimmed, but they were recovering fast. They were professionals, after all.
Katt glared at the Blue Fairy. “The next time you have a brilliant idea, feel free to keep it to yourself!”
“We have a recording of the call,” said Blue, giving her back glare for glare. “Or at least, as much of it as the console could handle.” He looked over the equipment, muttering to himself. “We’re missing most of the higher and lower frequencies, which is probably just as well, but what we have should do the job. More than enough to bring Nessie at the gallop, if only to see who’s calling. Honey, I’m patching the recording through to you now. Are you getting it?”
“Got it. There’s just under a minute of the call recorded, so I’ll put it out as a repeating loop. Yeah, that should do it.”
“A thought,” Peter said suddenly. “If what we’re broadcasting is a mating call . . . won’t everything in the loch with working glands come running? We could end up with every living thing in the loch trying to hump the submersible.”
“Thank you for that mental image,” said Katt. “Which I just know will haunt my nights for years to come.”
“I’ll put the call through some filters,” said Honey, “so only really large organisms should be affected.”
I leaned in close so I could see her face on the tiny screen. “Are you sure you can drive that thing?”
“Of course,” said Honey. “I’m CIA. I can drive anything.”
“Want to bet she crashes the gears on her first try?” Peter murmured to Walker.
“I heard that!” said Honey. “Okay . . . Going down, people. See you in a while.”
We all looked around just in time to see air bubbles frothing all around the yellow submersible as it drifted away from the bank, and then it sank slowly and with great dignity beneath the dark waters of Loch Ness. It was soon gone, not even a yellow glimmer in the water, with only the slowly widening ripples on the surface to mark its passing.
We all crowded around the communications console, watching the data coming in and listening intently as Honey kept up a running commentary on her dive. Walker and I studied the data streams carefully, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Everything in the submersible seemed to be functioning as required. Honey sent it nosing carefully through the night-dark waters, broadcasting its looped siren call, watching and waiting.
Time passed, and after the first half dozen false alarms, we all started to relax a bit. Two hours passed, then three. If anything, it got colder. A heavy wind blew the length of the loch, driving its chill through our clothes and into our bones. We all ended up huddling together like sheep, to share our warmth. The sky was completely overcast now, the light fading, and it occurred to me we’d better scare up something while there was still enough light to photograph by.
The submersible prowled up and down all twenty-four miles of the loch, and most of what lived in the waters gave it a wide berth. The submersible’s powerful lights hardly penetrated the underwater gloom at all, and while the sonar picked up shape after intriguing shape, Honey had to be almost on top of the object before she could identify it. So far, the most promising near misses had involved several hopefully shaped sunken tree trunks, half a dozen shoals of fish, and a couple of quite surprisingly large eels. And that . . . was it. Honey grew increasingly short and bad-tempered in response to our well-meaning suggestions, and she ploughed more and more desperately up and down the loch. I think the overcrowded confines of the submersible’s cabin were getting to her. Her sonar did pick up a great many large cave mouths sunk deep into the sides of the underwater banks, some of which led on into whole cave systems farther in than the sonar could follow.
“There could be miles and miles of caverns down there,” said the Blue Fairy. “Maybe even rising above sea level, with breathable air. Maybe that’s where the creature lives when it’s not in the loch itself. Maybe it only comes out to feed, or breed, and that’s why it’s so rarely seen . . .”
“The words straws and clutching at spring to mind,” said Katt. “Can’t we call this a day and go find a nice hotel somewhere? The monster will still be here tomorrow, if it’s here at all. I hate this place! Beastly cold and . . . grim! I’ve shivered so much I must have lost ten pounds through sheer exhaustion. Mind you, on me it looks good.”
“Heads up! I’ve got something!” Honey’s voice crashed out of the console viewscreen, jolting those of us who were understandably half-asleep on our feet.
“Oh, joy,” said Katt. “Another suggestively shaped tree trunk? A stray duck with delusions of grandeur, perhaps?”
“I have a new contact on the sonar,” said Honey. “It’s big, it’s moving, and it’s heading right for me. Still too far off for the headlights to reach it, but . . . It’s big. I mean seriously big. The computer estimates . . . four hundred feet long, from end to end. Estimated weight . . . No, wait a minute, that can’t be right . . .”
Walker and I pressed our shoulders together as we leaned in over the data streams crossing the console screens. Whatever was heading for Honey and her little yellow submersible, the computer was estimating its weight as eighty-seven tons. No. Not possible; not in any living organism I understood.
“How close is it?” said Peter.
“It just changed direction,” said Honey, her voice calm and professional. “It was coming at me head-on, but now . . . it seems to be circling the submersible, keeping its distance. Damn, these speed estimates can’t be right ei
ther. Nothing that big and that heavy could move so fast in these waters . . .”
“Nothing we know,” said Walker. He was frowning. “I think it’s time for you to head for the surface, Honey. Let it follow the mating call—”
“Too late!” Honey’s voice rose despite herself. “It’s here! Right here! It’s huge! It shot straight past the front window; I had it square in my headlights for a moment!”
“What is it?” said the Blue Fairy. “What does it look like?”
“Ugly bastard,” said Honey. She sounded shaken, but her voice was under control again. “It’s gone back to circling the submersible. Moving more slowly now. I think it’s curious. Oh! I just got a look at the face through the window. It came right up and looked at me. It’s . . . horrible. It’s a monster. Not Nessie. Not Nessie at all. All right, that’s it. I’m heading for the surface. I’m not staying down here with that . . . thing one moment longer.”
“Slowly,” I said. “Slowly and steadily and very carefully. Don’t do anything that might upset or panic the beast.”
“Or frighten it off,” Peter said quickly. “I can’t film the thing till you get it up here on the surface.”
“Teach your grandmother to suck dick,” said Honey. “Now shut up and stop distracting me. I know what I’m doing. Damn, that thing is big! It dwarfs the submersible.”
“Does your craft have any defence systems?” said Walker. “Guns, force shields, that kind of thing?”
“Not even a loudspeaker for me to shout harsh language through,” said Honey. “Apparently this happy little yellow toy was never meant for anything but short-range reconnaissance. Which is not what I asked for . . . I shall have some very harsh words with certain people once I get back to Langley. I’m still rising, very slowly. I’m not far from you. I should end up surfacing within a few yards . . . The beast is following . . . and sticking pretty close. Just the wash of its passage is enough to rock me from side to side.”