Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
6 April, 1937
Tuesday April 6th, 1937 Definitely, we are earning our bread and curry-wurst here. A day spent with Officer Muller and the three hares, this time trying our very best not to stir anything up. It proved quite successful – we surveyed some parts of the complex where the Germans say they have lost researchers before – some of whom died, others are denizens of padded cells back in Germany for the foreseeable future. Exactly what Mindel, Riss and Wurm do is rather hard to describe. They are definitely using some tradition we have not seen before, and that we could hardly copy if we tried – it is like being two different models of aircraft, us having hydraulic controls and their systems being electrical. Voltages are meaningless to one while fluid pressure is meaningless to the other. Unlike us they do not use specific chants or rituals – it must be very difficult to teach someone else that way. A tiring but successful morning, and then we were joined by the Director who is no office researcher but is constantly out in the field, mostly ice-fields around here. It was quite a sight – climbing up one of the rocky “nunataks” that poke out a thousand feet above the ice, where there are tunnels exposed that need to be investigated. Whatever had been there was long gone; we could give it a clean bill of health. Actually that might not be what Ritter Leopold wants to hear, as he is there to research artefacts despite their not being from the tradition he was expecting. I doubt any fur could really use anything we are finding here. It is just too strange – those minds that created it were as strange as the bodied that housed them. It was something of a strain being in close proximity with Ritter Leopold as we explored wind-scoured caverns – he is certainly a ruggedly handsome fur, and one I remember quite well from that party, in all sorts of details. I had disguised my fur but not my voice or scent that evening, and although I would generally not like to be forgettable, in this case I would make an exception. He does not seem to have identified me as that mixed Siamese island girl, though he does talk with me and Helen the most as we have scarce skills to contribute and he says we will soon have to be back again with the tourists. Thinking of it, actually he has good reason to keep quiet about the feline Kim-Anh even if he realised she was me; the Reich has a decided down on mixed species couples and by all accounts it would not go down at all well with his superiors or indeed anyone around here. Under their rules I would certainly not have become Lady Allworthy with the canine “husband” I had – which may or may not be a good thing. Anyway, it was a spectacular day and one not to be missed, all of us panting hard as on top of the Nunatak we must have been nearly fourteen thousand feet up, and in that air temperature one needs to protect the muzzle with layers of scarves which get in the way somewhat. Gasping in lungfulls of unfiltered Antarctic air at thirty below is like breathing in frigid fire, and not recommended. The view of the main mountain chain was stunning, with very few clouds making it over to this side and everything picked out in sharp black and white, rock and snow. A colour film would be rather wasted here. Helen had improvised a clinometer with a weighted bootlace and pencil, and from the angles was guessing some of the peaks to the West must be equal to anything in the Himalayas, if not bigger. And these are not on any map that we have ever seen – the locals are keeping quiet about the geography as well as the archaeology. (Later) Things have taken a rather alarming turn. When we got back we heard that the explorers have reached a new level far beneath us and were asking if we would take a look at it before progressing further. The ancient structures in the mountain peaks are empty and have been for an awfully long time – there are carvings that vanish behind thick layers of flowstone and stalagmites which must have taken tens of thousands of years to form, and that before the ice froze the continent. Stalagmites and stalactites need running water to form, and it has been geological time since there was any around here. After a fine meal, we joined up with a full team; Officer Schmidt, Herr G and the three talented hares who seem to have recovered from their ordeal – fully, I hope. I had talked with Helen after having seen them in action and though energetic I think it looks awfully inefficient. Rather than using the precisely focussed rituals we are taught, this is more like shoulder-charging with sheer force and momentum. It would take more raw power than any fur surely has available – we have done something of the sort in our Warrior Priestess training but even that is rather more efficient. The uppermost two levels are well explored and have electric lighting installed, but they end at a vertical shaft of nine-sided section some four yards wide dropping down like a lift shaft into the darkness. There is no sign of any machinery from its builders – in fact there Herr G mentioned that there has been no sign of machinery at all, not even rust stains on the floor. But a gantry of hefty aluminium girders was braced over the shaft with a winch and three-fur sized lift cage, and apparently there is two hundred metres of new steel cable. Miners’ helmets and carbide lamps were provided for us all: they are more robust than the electrical sort and if they get wet they only burn brighter – plus by observing one’s comrade’s acetylene flame there is a built-in measure of how stale the air is getting. Herr G has rough maps of the lowest level, which is difficult to survey as compasses work very poorly this close to the magnetic Pole, if not for more obscure reasons. Furthermore, he says it proves unexpectedly difficult to work out the angles of all these corridors: perfectly well-qualified surveyors with proven equipment shake their heads baffled over some of the results. In polite society triangles are meant to add up to a hundred and eighty degrees. An alarming minute in the mesh cage swaying at the ever-increasing end of the unreeling cable followed (“In God and the Krupp steelworks wire shops we trust” as Maria whispered) before we touched down on a flat floor of still polished stone. There was a party already here, four nervous-looking canine researchers standing with battery lamps pointing out in all directions like an isolated infantry post in no-furs land. They were very pleased to see reinforcements. The smooth walls echo most oddly and the shadows cast seem to fall in somehow unexpected shapes; it is not a place for anyone prone to nervousness. In five minutes we were all down, standing in an awe-inspiring triangular sectioned chamber the size of a city railway station, easily six hundred feet underground. Herr G led the way, carefully checking the number of corridors we passed, and explaining that people get easily confused down here. Many of the side corridors have been closed by rock faults in ages past – the roof is totally solid but when the entire mountain cracks the corridors will break with it. The whole area is strangely dry. I have been in canal and railway tunnels and they drip with water at the best of times; perhaps the rocks above have been chilled for so long that any unfrozen water has long since drained below this level. About nine hundred yards in we found what we were there to see. Evidently a rock fault had sheared through a communicating passage to another chamber, but as the fault had moved about ten feet and the passage was twenty wide, apart from producing a rock-fall that had evidently been recently cleared the only real obstacle was a steep scramble down the step into the new lowest level. That revealed a chamber about fifty feet on each side faceted like a jewel with dozens of angles – and a door. The ten foot wide door, or rather hatch was set in the floor absolutely flush with no obvious handles or rings to move it by. It was made in one piece of what looked like plain black obsidian, with a circular rim of the same material. It was a breathtakingly beautiful piece of engineering – and the most appallingly dangerous thing I had ever come close to, even including what was under Krupmark Island. Helen’s fur was almost standing on end, and she refused to go anywhere near it. I was very deliberately not using any of the skills I have learned as a Warrior Priestess – that would be all too much like throwing rocks around in a rediscovered military mine chamber somewhere under abandoned Flanders trenches with a hundred mouldy cases of war-emergency grade cheddite and melanite explosives lying around after twenty years in the damp growing ill-tempered. I started backing up very slowly. The black obsidian seemed to glow although I knew it was not my eyes that were seeing that energy, and doubted any camera would capture it. Herr G’s tail and ears were drooping: evidently he too could spot there was something damnably dangerous in there. He asked if we would investigate – and Helen and I turned him down flat. It is one thing to test the temperature of bathwater with sticking in one’s paw-tip, but on scale we were looking at the plug of a blast furnace and we want no part of what is within. If he wants our assistance that is the best advice we had to offer him, without a whisker of doubt. For a second he looked as if he was about to beckon Mindel, Riss and Wurm forward to work on the portal – but evidently he thought better of it, and gestured for us to head back the way we had come. It was with definite relief that we squeezed into the winch cage and returned to the upper levels, all glad to see the well-lit corridors and inhabited areas. Molly and Maria had picked up a fair amount of the atmosphere; indeed one would have to be as insensitive as a marble statue not to. We had got back to the chambers inhabited by the expedition when the other faction turned up, Mr. Klammer with Miss Muller and half a dozen others. There was a definitely heated “business meeting” that Maria could catch about a tenth of, but everyone retired to the evening meal looking definitely worried. Still, an excellent meal of ham and pea soup did a lot to restore us as does the prospect of an early night – we needed it. next |