Sea Serpents Read online

  The needle was rock-steady.

  Svetz flipped the call button.

  The source of the tremendous NAI signal was off to his right, and moving. Svetz turned to follow it. It would be minutes before the call signal reached the Institute for Temporal Research and brought the big extension cage with its weaponry for hooking Leviathan.

  Many years ago, Ra Chen had dreamed of rescuing the Library at Alexandria from Caesar's fire. For this purpose he had built the big extension cage. Its door was a gaping iris, big enough to be loaded while the Library was actually burning. Its hold, at a guess, was at least twice large enough to hold all the scrolls in that ancient Library.

  The big cage had cost a fortune in government money. It had failed to go back beyond 400 AA, or 1550 AD. The books burned at Alexandria were still lost to history, or at least to historians.

  Such a boondoggle would have broken other men. Somehow Ra Chen had survived the blow to his reputation.

  He had pointed out the changes to Svetz after they returned from the Zoo. "We've fitted the cage out with heavy duty stunners and antigravity beams. You'll operate them by remote control. Be careful not to let the stun beam touch you. It would kill even a sperm whale if you held it on him for more than a few seconds, and it'd kill a man instantly. Other than that you should have no problems."

  It was at that moment that Svetz's stomach began to hurt.

  "Our major change is the call button. It will actually send us a signal through time, so that we can send the big extension cage back to you. We can land it right beside you, no more than a few minutes off. That took considerable research, Svetz. The Treasury raised our budget for this year so that we could get that whale."

  Svetz nodded.

  "Just be sure you've got a whale before you call for the big extension cage."

  Now, twelve hundred years earlier, Svetz followed an underwater source of nervous impulse. The signal was intensely powerful. It could not be anything smaller than an adult bull sperm whale.

  A shadow formed in the air to his right. Svetz watched it take shape: a great grey-blue sphere floating beside him. Around the rim of the door were antigravity beamers and heavy duty stun guns. The opposite side of the sphere wasn't there; it simply faded away.

  To Svetz that was the most frightening thing about any time machine: the way it seemed to turn a corner that wasn't there.

  Svetz was almost over the signal. Now he used the remote controls to swing the antigravity beamers around and down.

  He had them locked on the source. He switched them on, and dials surged.

  Leviathan was heavy. More massive than Svetz had expected. Svetz upped the power, and watched the NAI needle swing as Leviathan rose invisibly through the water.

  Where the surface of the water bulged upward under the attack of the antigravity beams, a shadow formed. Leviathan rising . . .

  Was there something wrong with the shape?

  Then a trembling spherical bubble of water rose shivering from the ocean, and Leviathan was within it.

  Partly within it. He was too big to fit, though he should not have been.

  He was four times as massive as a sperm whale should have been, and a dozen times as long. He looked nothing like the crystal Steuben sculpture. Leviathan was a kind of serpent armored with red-bronze scales as big as a Viking's shield, armed with teeth like ivory spears. His triangular jaws gaped wide. As he floated toward Svetz he writhed, seeking with his bulging yellow eyes for whatever strange enemy had subjected him to this indignity.

  Svetz was paralyzed with fear and indecision. Neither then nor later did he doubt that what he saw was the Biblical Leviathan. This had to be the largest beast that had ever roamed the sea; a beast large enough and fierce enough to be synonymous with anything big and destructive. Yet—if the crystal sculpture was anything like representational, this was not a sperm whale at all.

  In any case, he was far too big for the extension cage.

  Indecision stayed his hand—and then Svetz stopped thinking entirely, as the great slitted irises found him.

  The beast was floating past him. Around its waist was a sphere of weightless water, that shrank steadily as gobbets dripped away and rained back to the sea. The beast's nostrils flared—it was obviously an air-breather, though not a cetacean.

  It stretched, reaching for Svetz with gaping jaws.

  Teeth like scores of elephant's tusks all in a row. Polished and needle sharp. Svetz saw them close about him from above and below, while he sat frozen in fear.

  At the last moment he shut his eyes tight.

  When death did not come, Svetz opened his eyes.

  The jaws had not entirely closed on Svetz and his armchair. Svetz heard them grinding faintly against—against the invisible surface of the extension cage, whose existence Svetz had forgotten entirely.

  Svetz resumed breathing. He would return home with an empty extension cage, to face the wrath of Ra Chen . . . a fate better than death. Svetz moved his fingers to cut the antigravity beams from the big extension cage.

  Metal whined against metal. Svetz whiffed hot oil, while red lights bloomed all over his lunch-tray control board. He hastily turned the beams on again.

  The red lights blinked out one by reluctant one.

  Through the transparent shell Svetz could hear the grinding of teeth. Leviathan was trying to chew his way into the extension cage.

  His released weight had nearly torn the cage loose from the rest of the time machine. Svetz would have been stranded in the past, a hundred miles out to sea, in a broken extension cage that probably wouldn't float, with an angry sea monster waiting to snap him up. No, he couldn't turn off the antigravity beamers.

  But the beamers were on the big extension cage, and he couldn't keep the big extension cage more than about fifteen minutes longer. When the big extension cage was gone, what would prevent Leviathan from pulling him to his doom?

  "I'll stun him off," said Svetz.

  There was dark red palate above him, and red gums and forking tongue beneath, and the long curved fangs all around. But between the two rows of teeth Svetz could see the big extension cage, and the battery of stunners around the door. By eye he rotated the stunners until they pointed straight toward Leviathan.

  "I must be out of my mind," said Svetz, and he spun the stunners away from him. He couldn't fire the stunners at Leviathan without hitting himself.

  And Leviathan wouldn't let go.

  Trapped.

  No, he thought with a burst of relief. He could escape with his life. The go-home lever would send his small extension cage out from between the jaws of Leviathan, back into the time stream, back to the Institute. His mission had failed, but that was hardly his fault. Why had Ra Chen been unable to uncover mention of a sea serpent bigger than a sperm whale?

  "It's all his fault," said Svetz. And he reached for the go-home lever. But he stayed his hand.

  "I can't just tell him so," he said. For Ra Chen terrified him.

  The grinding of teeth came itchingly through the extension cage.

  "Hate to just quit," said Svetz. "Think I'll try something . . ."

  He could see the antigravity beamers by looking between the teeth. He could feel their influence, so nearly were they focused on the extension cage itself. If he focused them just on himself . . .

  He felt the change; he felt both strong and light-headed, like a drunken ballet master. And if he now narrowed the focus . . .

  The monster's teeth seemed to grind harder. Svetz looked between them, as best he could.

  Leviathan was no longer floating. He was hanging straight down from the extension cage, hanging by his teeth. The anti-gravity beamers still balanced the pull of his mass; but now they did so by pulling straight up on the extension cage.

  The monster was in obvious distress. Naturally. A water beast, he was supporting his own mass for the first time in his life. And by his teeth! His yellow eyes rolled frantically. His tail twitched slightly at the very tip. And s
till he clung . . .

  "Let go," said Svetz. "Let go, you . . . monster."

  The monster's teeth slid screeching down the transparent surface, and he fell.

  Svetz cut the antigravity a fraction of a second late. He smelled burnt oil, and there were tiny red lights blinking off one by one on his lunch-tray control board.

  Leviathan hit the water with a sound of thunder. His long, sinuous body rolled over and floated to the surface and lay as if dead. But his tail flicked once, and Svetz knew that he was alive.

  "I could kill you," said Svetz. "Hold the stunners on you until you're dead. There's time enough . . ."

  But he still had ten minutes to search for a sperm whale. It wasn't time enough. It didn't begin to be time enough, but if he used it all . . .

  The sea serpent flicked its tail and began to swim away. Once he rolled to look at Svetz, and his jaws opened wide in fury. He finished his roll and was fleeing again.

  "Just a minute," Svetz said thickly. "Just a science-perverting minute there . . ." And he swung the stunners to focus.

  Gravity behaved strangely inside an extension cage. While the cage was moving forward in time, down was all directions outward from the center of the cage. Svetz was plastered against the curved wall. He waited for the trip to end.

  Seasickness was nothing compared to the motion sickness of time travel.

  Free fall, then normal gravity. Svetz moved unsteadily to the door.

  Ra Chen was waiting to help him out. "Did you get it?"

  "Leviathan? No, sir." Svetz looked past his boss. "Where's the big extension cage?"

  "We're bringing it back slowly, to minimize the gravitational side effects. But if you don't have the whale—"

  "I said I don't have Leviathan."

  "Well, just what do you have?" Ra Chen demanded.

  Somewhat later he said, "It wasn't?"

  Later yet he said, "You killed him? Why, Svetz? Pure spite?"

  "No, sir. It was the most intelligent thing I did during the entire trip."

  "But why? Never mind, Svetz, here's the big extension cage." A grey-blue shadow congealed in the hollow cradle of the time machine. "And there does seem to be something in it. Hi, you idiots, throw an antigravity beam inside the cage! Do you want the beast crushed?"

  The cage had arrived. Ra Chen waved an arm in signal. The door opened.

  Something tremendous hovered within the big extension cage. It looked like a malevolent white mountain in there, peering back at its captors with a single tiny, angry eye. It was trying to get at Ra Chen, but it couldn't swim in air.

  Its other eye was only a torn socket. One of its flippers was ripped along the trailing edge. Rips and ridges and puckers of scar tissue, and a forest of broken wood and broken steel, marked its tremendous expanse of albino skin. Lines trailed from many of the broken harpoons. High up on one flank, bound to the beast by broken and tangled lines, was the corpse of a bearded man with one leg.

  "Hardly in mint condition, is he?" Ra Chen observed.

  "Be careful, sir. He's a killer. I saw him ram a sailing ship and sink it clean before I could focus the stunners on him."

  "What amazes me is that you found him at all in the time you had left. Svetz, I do not understand your luck. Or am I missing something?"

  "It wasn't luck, sir. It was the most intelligent thing I did the entire trip."

  "You said that before. About killing Leviathan."

  Svetz hurried to explain. "The sea serpent was just leaving the vicinity. I wanted to kill him, but I knew I didn't have the time. I was about to leave myself, when he turned back and bared his teeth.

  "He was an obvious carnivore. Those teeth were built strictly for killing, sir. I should have noticed earlier. And I could think of only one animal big enough to feed a carnivore that size."

  "Ah-h-h. Brilliant, Svetz."

  "There was corroborative evidence. Our research never found any mention of giant sea serpents. The great geological surveys of the first century Post Atomic should have turned up something. Why didn't they?"

  "Because the sea serpent quietly died out two centuries earlier, after whalers killed off his food supply."

  Svetz colored. "Exactly. So I turned the stunners on Leviathan before he could swim away, and I kept the stunners on him until the NAI said he was dead. I reasoned that if Leviathan was here, there must be whales in the vicinity."

  "And Leviathan's nervous output was masking the signal."

  "Sure enough, it was. The moment he was dead the NAI registered another signal. I followed it to—" Svetz jerked his head. They were floating the whale out of the extension cage. "To him."

  Days later, two men stood on one side of a thick glass wall.

  "We took some clones from him, then passed him on to the Secretary-General's vivarium," said Ra Chen. "Pity you had to settle for an albino." He waved aside Svetz's protest: "I know, I know, you were pressed for time."

  Beyond the glass, the one-eyed whale glared at Svetz through murky seawater. Surgeons had removed most of the harpoons, but scars remained along his flanks; and Svetz, awed, wondered how long the beast had been at war with Man. Centuries? How long did sperm whales live?

  Ra Chen lowered his voice. "We'd all be in trouble if the Secretary-General found out that there was once a bigger animal than this. You understand that, don't you, Svetz?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good." Ra Chen's gaze swept across another glass wall, and a fire-breathing Gila monster. Further down, a horse looked back at him along the dangerous spiral horn in its forehead.

  "Always we find the unexpected," said Ra Chen. "Sometimes I wonder . . ."

  If you'd do your research better, Svetz thought . . .

  "Did you know that time travel wasn't even a concept until the first century Ante Atomic? A writer invented it. From then until the fourth century Post Atomic, time travel was pure fantasy. It violates everything the scientists of the time thought were natural laws. Logic. Conservation of matter and energy. Momentum, reaction, any law of motion that makes time a part of the statement. Relativity.

  "It strikes me," said Ra Chen, "that every time we push an extension cage past that particular four-century period, we shove it into a kind of fantasy world. That's why you keep finding giant sea serpents and fire-breathing—"

  "That's nonsense," said Svetz. He was afraid of his boss, yes; but there were limits.

  "You're right," Ra Chen said instantly. Almost with relief. "Take a month's vacation, Svetz, then back to work. The Secretary-General wants a bird."

  "A bird?" Svetz smiled. A bird sounded harmless enough. "I suppose he found it in another children's book?"

  "That's right. Ever hear of a bird called a roc?"

  The Horses of Lir

  by

  Roger Zelazny

  Like a number of other writers, Roger Zelazny began publishing in 1962 in the pages of Cele Goldsmith's Amazing. Many writers in this so-called "class of '62" would eventually achieve prominence, but Zelazny's subsequent career would be one of the most meteoric in the history of SF. By the end of that decade, he had won two Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards and was widely regarded as one of the most important American SF writers of the sixties. Since then, he has won several more awards, and his series of novels about the enchanted land of Amber has made him one of the best-selling SF and fantasy writers of our time. His books include This Immortal, The Dream Master, Lord of Light, Isle of the Dead, and the collection The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories. His most recent novel is Sign of Chaos.

  Here he takes us along with him on a suspenseful investigation of a secret that's dark and sinister—and very, very old.

  The moonlight was muted and scattered by the mist above the loch. A chill breeze stirred the white tendrils to a sliding, skating motion upon the water's surface. Staring into the dark depths, Randy smoothed his jacket several times, then stepped forward. He pursed his lips to begin and discovered that his throat was dry.

&
nbsp; Sighing, almost with relief, he turned and walked back several paces. The night was especially soundless about him. He seated himself upon a rock, drew his pipe from his pocket and began to fill it.

  What am I doing here? he asked himself. How can I . . . ?

  As he shielded his flame against the breeze, his gaze fell upon the heavy bronze ring with the Celtic design that he wore upon his forefinger.

  It's real enough, he thought, and it had been his, and he could do it. But this . . .

  He dropped his hand. He did not want to think about the body lying in a shallow depression ten or twelve paces up the hillside behind him.

  His Uncle Stephen had taken care of him for almost two years after the deaths of his parents, back in Philadelphia. He remembered the day he had come over—on that interminable plane flight—when the old man had met him at the airport in Glasgow. He had seemed shorter than Randy remembered, partly because he was a bit stooped now he supposed. His hair was pure white and his skin had the weathered appearance of a man's who had spent his life out-of-doors. Randy never learned his age.

  Uncle Stephen had not embraced him. He had simply taken his hand, and his gray eyes had fixed upon his own for a moment as if searching for something. He had nodded then and looked away. It might have been then that Randy first noticed the ring.

  "You'll have a home with me, lad," he had said. "Let's get your bags."

  There was a brief splashing noise out in the loch. Randy searched its mist-ridden surface but saw nothing.

  They know. Somehow they know, he decided. What now?

  During the ride to his home, his uncle had quickly learned that Randy's knowledge of Gaelic was limited. He had determined to remedy the situation by speaking it with him almost exclusively. At first, this had annoyed Randy, who saw no use to it in a modern world. But the rudiments were there, words and phrases returned to him, and after several months he began to see a certain beauty in the Old Tongue. Now he cherished this knowledge—another thing he owed the old man.