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CHAPTER 18


There was a lot of catching up to do. I couldn’t get a long distance call to work from Nepal, but I had called Ray from New Delhi. Upon briefing him about the mava possibly being a baby Old One, he’d hit the roof. What had just been a regional problem was now an all hands on deck, priority-one, company freak-out.

My meeting with the DOJ lawyer and Myers was covered previously. Why didn’t I bring up the possible Old One under New Orleans? Because I didn’t have any proof and it wasn’t part of the agenda. If I could find something, anything solid, I’d…I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. MCB needed to know. On the other hand, I could easily see them nuking the hell out of New Orleans. I’m not sure what cover they’d use for that but I really didn’t want to see my house nuked.

On the other hand, Old One. Larval admittedly. We needed intelligence and proof. Since the MCB hadn’t signed the settlement papers yet, I couldn’t engage in “Monster Hunting.” But for “research” I was the man for the job.

* * *

LaGrange Seismic was a small company housed in a warehouse in Elmwood. They were the first ones in the phone book I’d been able to get an appointment with, simple as that. I’d just told them I was a prospective customer.

The receptionist was a middle-aged lady with bottle-blonde hair and otherwise indistinguishable. “Chad Gardenier. I have an appointment with Mr. Smith.”

“Of course, Mr. Gardener,” the lady said. “If you could wait just a moment while I call him?”

Gardenier, I thought. I might hate my name but I hated even more when people couldn’t pronounce it. Smith was medium height, brown hair and beard, heavy-set.

“Mr. Gardener,” he said, shaking my hand.

“Gardenier. Not a big issue. Where can we talk?”

The meeting room was small, musty and smelled of paper, ink and dirt. Not “dirty” dirt, but the kind of smell you get in construction trailers and civil engineering companies. It was from all the dirt shaking that goes on and people coming in covered in the stuff. There were piles of rolled up paper in every corner. I was pretty sure I had picked the right place.

“My company is interested in the potential that there might be a large anomalous…object beneath New Orleans.” I chose my words carefully. Now that we knew the mava had a super hard shell with a gooey center, we had a potential way to locate it. Ray had been kicking himself for not thinking of this avenue of investigation sooner. “The exact nature of why is proprietary. This object will be approximately one hundred and twenty meters in length and composed of…stone? I’m aware that is a very generalized term to geologists, but…”

“You meant the Frandsen Anomaly?”

“I’m not sure. What is the Frandsen Anomaly?”

“It’s a big cell more or less under Bourbon Street,” Smith said. “It was discovered back in the late sixties when modern seismic was really starting to kick in. There was a paper done on it in the early seventies and it even made minor news. I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for, because it is a little bigger.”

“How much bigger?”

“Not a lot in geological terms…About double that. It’s closer to two hundred meters.”

“Oh…” That couldn’t be good. That was way bigger than what the PUFF adjuster assumed the last one had been. “What sort of work has already been done? At this point I’m willing to pay you for your time just for a briefing.”

“Not really my specialty.” Smith leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and furrowed his brow. “It’s a large carbonaceous meteor that seems to have landed more or less intact probably during the Pleistocene era based on its depth. It’s mostly known because of the issues it causes.”

“Issues? Like odd acoustics or something?”

“The guy who did most of the work on it was Neil Frandsen. He was one of my professors at LSU. But…I really like the guy, but he sort of went crackers towards the end.”

“Crackers?”

“He insisted it was a UFO.” Smith grimaced. “Again, really thought he was a great guy but…”

“Crackers. Yeah. What set him off?”

“This was after I was out of college and I was just getting started on this gig. So I wasn’t directly keeping up at the time. As I got it, some seismographers found this anomaly and Professor Frandsen got a grant to check it out. When they drilled it, they got back some samples that indicated some sort of proto-life indicators. Later they figured out it was contamination. But Professor Frandsen went off about it. Started saying it was proof of extraterrestrial life, which admittedly would be a big deal. That was what made it a minor news story at the time. Then he started into it was a UFO and the end of the world was coming.”

“Did he report that to the government?”

“Would you believe it if you were government?” Smith said, grinning. Then he stopped. Apparently I wasn’t as poker-faced as I’d hoped. “Why are you interested in it again?”

“Proprietary. Is Professor Frandsen still at LSU?”

“No. He resigned. Asked, just did it—I’ve heard both stories.”

“Any idea where I can find him?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” I said, standing up. “Not sure what your minimum billing is but time is money. How much?”

* * *

Neil Frandsen, PhD (GeoPh), did not reside in Louisiana anymore, thank you for your inquiry, according to the secretary for the Dean of Geology at LSU. No, we don’t know where he resides presently. Will there be anything else?

I tracked down his old colleagues. They were one and all saddened by his “sudden change in demeanor.” Some of his less enthusiastic colleagues were more on the order of “he was always an arrogant ass and he just finally cracked.” One of them at least had a forwarding address.

He’d moved to Canada. Northern Canada. Really Northern Canada, up by the Arctic Circle Northern Canada. Ever heard of Yellowknife? No, me neither, not before then. Of course, the fact that it was the capital of the Northern Territories means real geography buffs know where it is and probably most Canadian school kids know for all of a day so they can pass the test. But regular people? Not so much.

How do you get in touch with him? You either write him a letter or go visit in person. And don’t expect a friendly reception.

It was September by then. I was supposed to be back at Oxford. I’d written a tersely worded telex to Dr. Henderson telling her I was going to have to extend my “sabbatical” due to real-world issues. Now I was going to northern Canada to interview a crazy professor. Gotta love my job.

Yellowknife was a fair-sized town, mostly ’cause it was, you know, a capital. Decent if small airport. Fucking weather was the pits. It was September and there was already a blizzard on the way. Why the hell would anyone exile themselves to a place like this? Oh, yeah, “The End is Coming!” Like you’d be safe up here.

Frandsen lived in a cabin off of the Frontier Trail about ten miles outside of Yellowknife. There was a large sign on the driveway—DO NOT ENTER! THIS MEANS YOU!—along with a heavy metal gate. The driveway went around a rock outcrop to the distantly visible cabin.

“Friendly fellow,” I said, paying the taxi driver. It wasn’t a yellow cab by any means. When I’d asked if there was a taxi that could take me out to the guy’s house, the nice Inuit young lady at the ticket counter had called a cousin who picked me up in a rattletrap pickup.

“I’ll stick around,” Aviqming said. “You probably won’t be long. He doesn’t take too kindly to visitors.”

“‘Shoots them’ doesn’t take too kindly or tells them to get the hell out?”

“Generally tells them to get the hell out. Shooting’s mostly for the bears and moose. Don’t pet the moose.”

“A moose once bit my sister.”

“Heard it,” Aviqming said. “I’ve got a better one. A moose once killed my cousin. Seriously. Avoid the moose.”

“Will do.” I headed down the driveway.

The area was low scrub and dwarf coniferous trees with multiple outcroppings of rock. The driveway more or less wandered between the outcroppings. I could see why a geologist would like the area. Why anybody else would live here was the question. The trees and scrub had been deliberately cleared in a large area around the cabin. As I walked down the driveway, a rifle poked out of an upstairs window.

“Go away! I don’t want any!”

I slowly held my hands up over my head. No sudden moves. There might be moose.

“Professor Neil Frandsen?”

“Nobody here by that name!” the man shouted back. “Go away!”

“I’m here to discuss the anomaly! I need to know what you know about it!”

The response was a bullet that hit off to my side. Pro-tip: You don’t shoot in front of someone. The ricochet is liable to hit them. Frandsen apparently knew this pro-tip.

“Would it help if I told you I believe you’re right and I need to know what you know so I can do something about it?”

“Or you’re here to shut me up!”

“Can we discuss it without shooting?”

“You got any guns, drop ’em!”

I squatted down and started disarming myself.

“Who’s with you?”

I was getting tired of all the shouting. “Just the guy who drove me from the airport! I swear, I’m on your side! I’m one of the good guys!”

It took a while. I could vaguely see the outline of presumably Frandsen moving around checking the surroundings. There’s paranoid and there’s “Lunatic Fringe.” I was going to have to handle this carefully.

“Go tell Aviqming to drive back,” Frandsen yelled from the front porch. “I’ll radio when he needs to pick you up. Might not be long.”

* * *

Former Professor Neil Frandsen was short and burly with iron-gray beard and hair and bright, intelligent, but suspicious blue eyes. He had a rifle trained on my chest as I sat down in the offered chair.

The interior of the cabin was cluttered with books and charts. Homey, clearly a single man’s domain, but well organized. The charts seemed to mostly be geological data of the surrounding region.

“I go by Robert Heinlein’s adage that you should always give a man ten words before you kill him,” Frandsen said. “You’ve got ten words.”

I thought about that. “It is a dangerous creature that has to be killed.”

“Repeating what I said isn’t going to save your life.” Frandsen pointed the rifle at my head.

“Do you know what it is? I do.”

“I know what I think it is,” Frandsen said. “But whenever I’ve told people what I think it is they call me crazy. And I’ve had plenty of people who write books for and about crazy people try to get me to open up. Figure you’re one of them.”

“I don’t write books about crazy stuff…Okay, I do write, but it’s academic. My job is to kill monsters. Simple as that. You were in New Orleans. Ever hear of Hoodoo Squad?”

“No.” Frandsen frowned. “But maybe it wasn’t called that then. You’re a Monster Hunter?”

“Yes. And the anomaly is what’s called an Old One. Very bad juju. Which is why I need to know everything you learned about it. If it hatches, the whole world’s in for a very bad time.”

“Why the hell do you think I’m up here?” Frandsen finally laid the rifle across his lap. “Prove you’re a Monster Hunter and not one of those UFO book writers.”

“I’ll have to take off my coat.” I pulled off the layers I was wearing and showed him my scars. I started pointing them out. “Loup-garou. Vampire. Ghoul. That weird one is from some sort of shadow demon…Do I look like a writer?”

“This thing…You can’t kill it.” Frandsen set his rifle aside, and got up to get a bottle of Wild Turkey. “It’s something from beyond time.”

“They’ve been killed before. It’s generally called a mava paṇauvaā, Gujarati for ‘worm mother.’ I believe it is the larval form for an extremely deadly alien species.”

“No kidding. Which is why I’m up here,” Frandsen said. “Once I figured out that thing was alive, and I couldn’t get anyone to listen, I headed for the most out-of-the-way area I could move to. This plat is about as stable geologically as you’re going to find in the world. I figured that if that thing started moving there’d be all sorts of crises. And one of them was bound to be geological. And sociological. Up here there’s too few people to be a problem.”

He might have thought that sounded bad, but it was actually a remarkably optimistic take on what would happen. Old Ones meant blood, fire, madness, and then lights out.

“Did you call the government when you figured it out?”

“Of course I did!” Frandsen said angrily. “The minute I put two and two together. They blew me off!”

“You got the wrong department.” This could have been handled well before my time. Thanks, God. “Let me start at the beginning…” I gave him the standard MHI “the supernatural is real but there are people who can do something about it” talk. After that, and a lot of Wild Turkey, he was ready to talk freely.

“When we found the anomaly on seismic surveys, it really wasn’t looked at as a big thing. How a big cell of rock got dropped under New Orleans was a puzzler, though. Do you understand New Orleans geology?”

“There’s oil under it?”

“Some,” Frandsen said. “New Orleans and the surrounding area, most of the delta region for that matter, is composed of Pleistocene-era loess. There’s thirty thousand feet of loess silt under New Orleans before you get to Cretaceous limestone bedrock.”

“Loess is…sorry, ‘dirt’ formed from the glaciers grinding rocks and releasing it as dust, right?”

“Get you a C in my class,” Frandsen said grumpily. “Close enough. That ‘dirt’ as you say—soil would be a better term—got washed down by the river that’s more or less where the Mississippi is over thousands of years during the Pleistocene.”

“Pleistocene. Mammoths. Ice Age.”

“Which is when you got continental glaciers,” Frandsen said. “And most loess formation. That was when most of the Mississippi delta built up. There’s more recent, within the last few thousand years, surface geology. But under that is pretty much undifferentiated silt going down twenty to thirty thousand feet. So when we found a gigantic cell of what looked like rock three thousand feet down, it was a sort of ‘Hmmm, that’s interesting’ moment.”

“Generally the best time in science.”

“Not this time. I wished I’d never gotten involved.” Frandsen took another drink. “Best hypothesis was an asteroid that somehow came down more or less intact. Bottom line, we got some grants and drilled down to it.”

He took another drink.

“You gotta understand, core tapping at those depths was sort of in its infancy. We were mostly getting ground-up bits of whatever the hell it was made from. The drill guys kept wearing out heads. What we were getting wasn’t making any sense, either. When we hit the hard stuff, it seemed to be organic. So we sent it to the biology lab…” Frandsen paused and seemed really reluctant to continue.

“And?”

“Dr. Catherine Ramos was in charge of analyzing the organic materials. I really liked Catherine. I’d never really dealt with her until we found organics in the anomaly. But working with her was a real charm. We sort of had a thing. Then she started to…change.”

“Get a bit crazy?” I asked.

“Bit?” Frandsen snorted. “By then we’d penetrated the shell. And it was definitely a shell. Carapace. Something. We got up this weird liquid. Gray-green. Just came gushing out of the mud from the pumps. Smelled…horrible.”

“Like dead cattle bloating in the road mixed with some sort of horrible chemical spill.”

“So you’ve smelled it. Ever seen a world-class biologist try to analyze it?”

“No.”

“Catherine was grounded, sane, totally rational,” the former professor said. “Two days after she got the sample, she was in a nut house. Been there ever since. One of her grad students committed suicide. The rest quit. Drillers got sick. Quit. One of them killed another guy with a wrench over nothing. I was feeling the effects. Anybody who touched those samples went nuts. That’s when I realized we’d struck not gold but pure evil. I shut down the drill and pulled out. I stopped researching geology and started researching theology. That’s when I realized we’d struck something that had been biding its time from before time.”

“And in ‘strange aeons even death may die,’” I quoted.

“Exactly,” Frandsen said. “But when I tried to tell people…”

“They thought you were nuts. Doomsayer prophets tend to get dismissed. One of the issues I’m going to face. I’m sort of surprised, though, that it didn’t come to the attention of the right authorities.”

“Well, if there are right authorities, they certainly screwed this one up. I’ve managed to keep up with it. Some of my real friends still send me reports. I know they do it just to humor their crazy friend, but they do humor me. The thing hasn’t really moved. Slight upward movement but no real acceleration. Though at the current rate, it will surface in five hundred years or so.”

“Unless it hatches,” I said. “But like you said, dawn-of-time stuff. It could hatch in five hundred years. Or five minutes. Or five million. Really don’t know. But it is, yes, just as bad as you think it is. Worse.” I thought about it for a few moments. Dr. Frandsen gave me the time. “I need you to come back.”

“No way in hell,” Frandsen replied. “I’m quite comfortable where I’m at, thank you.”

“You’re the expert. The only expert. You want the world to end or you want to do something about it?”

“I’m prepared.” Frandsen shrugged. “If people wanted to do something about it they should have listened when I was telling them back in the seventies.”

“You’re bitter. I get that. You just got ignored and ridiculed. I recently got beat most of the way to death by federal agents. I’m going to have to go back to those same people, the ones who put me in the fucking hospital, and tell them that they’re wrong. Again. That what’s down there isn’t just some scavenger creature but a full-on Old One. The thing they fear the most, and that I found it when they couldn’t. That they missed it. And I’m going to do that, one way or another. I’m going to convince them. Because if I don’t, world ends.

“And there is no ‘prepared,’” I added. “Get over that naïve notion. This thing breaks out, there’s nowhere on earth to hide. You can’t just hide up here. Not for long.”

“I’m old,” Frandsen said. “You said yourself it could break out in five minutes or five thousand years. I’ll take my chances. Here. Not in New Orleans. Screw you.”

“Fine. Can I at least get your data? We’re going to have to replicate your drill. You can at least give me what I need to do that.”

Frandsen thought about that for a bit then shrugged. “That you can have. For what good it will do you. You’re going to expose the drillers to this stuff, you know. Again. It’s evil.”

“Ultimate evil,” I said. “Which is exactly why we have to kill it.”



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