"He did past life regressions."

"Figures. And?"

"I had him do mine," she said and paused to wait for the explosion. But it didn't come. She felt almost annoyed at this, for some reason, and asked why.

"This is getting interesting! Actually, I'm not quite as down on this stuff as I give out. Of course it's hok.u.m on one level. But I'm willing to admit that these people can get in touch with their subconscious, both the medium and the person who gets regressed. Reincarnation's bulls.h.i.t, of course, but regression is an interesting free-a.s.sociation sort of exercise. Psychodrama, I guess."

"Coming from you, that's almost a profession of faith!"

"Don't make too much out of it. I'm going out of my way to be tolerant."

"I can see that, Larry. But y'know what I think? I think you're still so stung from being fooled by Churchward and those old frauds that you're being skeptical as a defense mechanism. But you have to be open to new experiences."

"I suppose so. That's why I want you to tell me what happened when you were regressed."

"OK, back to our story. Maybe you're right and it was pure power of suggestion. But I felt that I was a priestess in ancient Atlantis, or at least some sunken civilization."

Larry had imperceptibly moved away from her again. He wanted to look into her eyes as she talked. He had done this unconsciously. It was just that when they were on the same wavelength, they almost seemed to merge into one, like a set of twins. But when, as now, they differed, his body language reflected it. He faced her as an object of scrutiny, almost like one of his strange marine life-forms. And now he held up a finger to flag another interruption.

"Y'know, you were in a sunken continent, the kingdom of the subconscious. Jung knew it well. Seriously. Now, go ahead."

Barb continued: "At first I didn't think it had worked, the hypnosis or whatever it was. Because the light was the same as in the meeting room, all dark blue and green. I know that's just dream imagery, right? Borrowing the background from waking life."

Larry nodded.

"But this couldn't have been taken from waking life. I had the most vivid sense of breathing water! This wasn't Atlantis before it sank! It was already sunk, and we lived in it! That's why I'm mentioning this! It's just like your Bimini Wall!"

"d.a.m.ned if it isn't!"

"I was naked, I know, because there was no place I couldn't feel the water on me. And I was walking in line with a whole group of women. Or...I'm not sure of that. They were all naked, and none of them had anything between their legs. And, uh, we were all...bald...! I had forgotten that till now."

Larry's a.n.a.lytical mood had pa.s.sed. He was back at her side again, holding her. It was as if she were a child having a bad dream, or someone having a bad trip. And he was extending a hand to keep her in the real world.

"Where were you all going? What were you doing? Did you feel like you were drowning?"

"No, I'm sure it wasn't that, because once when I was ten I nearly did drown. There was none of the panic, the clutching, the blacking out. It felt as natural as...a fish in water!

"And we were walking up, kind of gliding, really, along a beautiful coral reef, you know, like you see when you go snorkeling: everything is absolutely brilliant and glowing. It overcomes you, and you feel like you're trespa.s.sing in someone else's world.

"Anyway, we got to where we were going, and this is the hard part. We seemed to be crawling down a hill, a big tilted plane, really, and we had to be careful not to lose our balance, but when we made it there, we were at the top of the thing!"

"What thing?"

"Something like a huge garage door, or those shutter doors behind a house, leading down into a bas.e.m.e.nt. Some kind of stuff was coming up from a narrow crack of an opening, and it was, like, smoking up through the water. And then we stopped and we looked down at the crack, and we all just stood there, as if we were waiting for something to happen, and it never did. I had the feeling I wanted to sing something-under water! But I didn't know the words. That's when I woke up."

"Barb, I'm sorry; I can see this thing really moved you. I don't mean to make light of it. Are you feeling okay? Are you-?"

"Larry, I'm fine! It wasn't scary at all. I guess I speak of it with a kind of amazement, that's all. In fact, I don't think I'd mind going through it again."

"If you do, promise you'll tell me what happens. I promise, next time no smarta.s.s remarks."

"Sure, Larry, sure I will. And maybe you can come along. I think the channeler has regular meetings, or performances, or whatever, at a New Age store with an auditorium downtown. It would be something fun to do together. And besides, you could use a break from your work."

"I could, that's true. But I better wait till the Midterms are over. I'll have piles of papers and exams to slog through-like sea-floor ooze!"

Larry paid the check and they headed off to the off-campus housing complex. Barb's roommate was away, so they pa.s.sed the night there. Larry forgot to set the clock and got to cla.s.s the next morning just in the nick of time. He'd had little chance to prepare for his lecture, but luckily most of the students wanted to ask questions about the Lab two days before. For once he was grateful they were so obtuse.

When that was over, he shuffled out of the building and down the block to his office at Sanbourne. The pebble-gla.s.s door was ajar. This did not alarm him, since it was a cubbyhole shared with two other part-timers. Either of them might have been there. But neither was.

Instead it was the tweed-clad form of the gaunt Professor Maitland. Typically he was standing, not sitting, holding up a sheaf of papers to the window.

"Sorry, Stanton, I was just impatient to see what progress you'd made on the Text in light of the Bimini evidence. Not much, I see. Too deeply submerged with that young lady."

Tossing his jacket like a shapeless bag over the top of the coat rack, Larry replied, "I guess you're right, Professor, but I can't be a cold fish all the time. But the Glyphs are a big help. Almost like a Rosetta Stone. I guess you expected that. I swear I'll have it done by the end of the semester, at least in draft. The Text isn't long, and it should progress pretty rapidly from here on in."

Professor Maitland handed him the stack of notes, restored to their folder, and headed for the door. With a backward glance, he reminded his apprentice: "Just see to it that you have something in shape to present when the Academy meets in February. My reputation, not just yours, is riding on this, remember!"

Larry sat down to get to work. He smiled at the gruff exterior of the old man. Larry had become almost like a son to the bachelor professor, who had never expected to find anyone to share, much less carry on, his obscure work. He had, he once told young Stanton, never expected to live long enough to see certain puzzles solved, but the arrival of the promising young student had given him new hope that he might see their solution after all. It would be worth the wait.

An hour into it, Larry found that his words to his mentor had been no exaggeration. The Bimini Glyphs plugged right into the R'lyeh Text. It was going surprisingly well. The way it was shaping up, the Text seemed to be a cultic text, possibly something of a cross between an apocalypse and a litany.

The Bimini inscriptions were a boon all right, but Larry found little of it would have made any sense at all without an extensive knowledge of the myth-patterns of the South Pacific. And there his predecessors had done some valuable work. Whatever else one might say about them, Shrewsbury and Copeland had set down and systematized a lot of esoteric stuff from the Trobriand Islanders, even some retrograde Ponape cultures, the very existence of which had gone unsuspected by previous anthropologists.

Much of it was colored by the Victorian biases of the nineteenth and early twentieth century ethnographers, but you could pretty well strain out distortions like that. There was no retracing their steps, because the global culture, together with missionary expansion, had largely obliterated any trace of the really ancient traditions. The only things the natives seemed to remember nowadays was the recycled stuff the tourist guide books told you anyway.

But the myth-patterns of the region, especially the real inner-circle stuff that Copeland had somehow gotten certain chiefs and shaman-priests to share, was proving invaluable. There were kindred myth-a.s.sociations and even names, though they were a mouthful even in transliteration. "Ghatanothoa," "Ythogtha," and others even less comprehensible. Even worse than the names of the Aztec deities!

Midterms pa.s.sed, and so did most of the students, though just barely. He was beginning to see Professor Maitland's urgency. You just couldn't bank on the future generations of students to be worth a d.a.m.n. What would happen to scholarly discovery when people like these were in charge of it?

Early one evening in November, Barbara reminded her increasingly serious boyfriend of their date at the channeler's. They found the address of the New Age Center in downtown Santiago and called first to make sure there'd be a meeting that night. Sure enough, Dr. Waite, the channeler, whose name Barb hadn't been able to recall, would be there. They set off on foot for the address, shunning a cab, given the balmy California climate even so late in the fall.

Maybe they should have hailed a cab after all, because when they arrived it was about time to start, and the place was packed. Dr. Waite, an impressive-looking man in a sea-green turtle-neck, settled his considerable girth into a leather chair. Larry recognized the face from the poster in the lobby as well as from the numerous paperback books and ca.s.sette tape boxes on the display tables. Waite was perfectly bald but sported a luxurious beard of curling locks that spread out on his chest like a nest of writhing serpents.

As he sat there, he began to twitch, a common mannerism of channelers, part of the act. His posture became suddenly different, subtly animated by a sense of regal pride and authoritativeness.

And then the blue and green lights came on. It was hard to say where they were coming from. It was an impressive effect. Must have cost some money.

"I bring to you the greetings of the Great Ones, who in Their grace retired from before the coming of men, so that men might have an hour upon the world-stage. One day, when men have spent their childish imaginations, the Great Ones will take again what is theirs. But for the present, they are content to speak in dreams, even as I now do. I speak to you from the depths of-"

Larry Stanton virtually jumped from his seat, Barb grasping his arm as if to keep him from ascending into the sky, glaring at him in shock. "Larry, what is it? What's wrong?"

He sank back and whispered in her ear: "Didn't you hear what he said? He says he's from, he's transmitting from R'lyeh! Only that's not how he p.r.o.nounced it. Maybe that's why you didn't recognize it before."

"So what? Didn't you tell me it was common knowledge in the occultist paperbacks? Maybe he's read his Churchward, that's all. Now calm down."

"Sure, sure, you must be right. I don't know what got into me. Working too late, I guess. But he did say it with almost a South Sea Islander's p.r.o.nunciation. I'd still like to know..."

"Shhhh! He's having people come up to the mike. I'm getting in line! You can come, too, or wait for me." And she was gone.

Larry waited in his seat, his momentary surprise replaced by a mixture of pity and disgust. What he was seeing was little more than one of those pathetic healing lines in an evangelist's tent show. People would kneel before the channeler, muttering some formula he told them.

Then, as Edgar Cayce and a hundred others had done, Dr. Waite would take them back in their imagination to some previous life, more likely some Walter Mitty secret life of their fantasies.

They would ask a question. About a loved one or a problem. And they would learn that they were overweight because they were compensating for having starved to death in the Irish Potato famine, or they were attracted to a new lover because they had been together in a previous incarnation. Most of it had the profundity of a newspaper horoscope, and Larry found himself feeling ashamed of Barb for taking it seriously.

But then it was Barb's turn. She knelt, like the rest, for the channeler's blessing. He cupped his quite large hands over her forehead and muttered something sotto voce. Larry couldn't make out what it was. Until Barb repeated it: Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wqah'nagl fhatgn.

At this, Larry jumped to his feet and shoved others aside in his rush to reach the foot of the stage. He didn't want to miss anything. For what he heard sounded for all the world like a pa.s.sable vocalization of one of the more difficult lines from the fragmentary R'lyeh Text. And the channeler couldn't have got this from Churchward.

The rest was in English. Barb's eyes were opened. She had turned and now faced the audience. She dreamily recounted a scene similar to the one she had repeated to Larry weeks before in the restaurant.

"I am joined to the company of those who make ready for His Returning. We drift like minnows across the vast face of the Great Seal. All that dwell below the watery firmament gaze with expectation. We a.s.sume our positions and make as if to sing forth. But we have forgotten what we are to sing. It is withheld from us. We wait and wait and then we return home again. How long? How long, O Mother Hydra? How long must we wait for the Great Betrothal?"

At this, her eyes fell shut again. She had actually been in a trance, then, not just letting her mind wander like the rest seemed to be doing. Only instead of waking up, she seemed to have fallen into a deeper sleep. Her form crumpled and she fell from the stage like a sack of potatoes.

The channeler had apparently not expected this, and made only a feeble effort to hoist his bulk from the seat where he was installed. Luckily, though, Larry's curiosity had driven him to within a few feet of where Barb had been standing, so at the crucial moment he found himself directly beneath her and poised for the catch.

Sparing not a look toward the stage or the vacantly curious crowd, Larry returned Barb to her seat, ma.s.saged her wrists, and told her to stay still while he got their coats. When he returned from the lobby she could stand again, and the audience had lost their momentary interest, returning their gaze stageward, where the unflappable Dr. Waite was already at work regressing another inquirer. They left.

Back at Larry's apartment, the couple strove in vain to make some sense of the experiences of the evening. Both had been affected, though Barb's hypnotic trance and fall so overshadowed Larry's momentary panic that they both nearly forgot how shaken he had been over the channeler's mention of the name R'lyeh.

"Larry," she said, "you're so sweet to worry over me like this, but really I'm all right. I'm more worried about you."

"Yes, I can see you're fine now, Barb, though I'm steamed at that Waite b.a.s.t.a.r.d for not taking any precautions. He's been at this game a long time now. He must know what can happen. But even that's not what has me so s.p.a.ced."

"What is it, then?" she asked, brushing his sweat-greased strands of hair off his forehead.

"It's what you said in that trance, Barb. Do you remember any of it? Doesn't matter much, I guess, because I'm not liable to forget it. I know this sounds crazy, but do you remember me reading you any of the translation I've been working on?"

"No, I know you haven't, because, remember? I asked you to once or twice and you said it was too rough and I wouldn't be able to make any sense of it anyway. Why? What on earth does that have to do with what happened tonight?"

"Just this-" he turned and stared out the window into the empty parking lot outside. In the wan moonlight he could see, even at this distance, crisp, curled autumn leaves floating in rain pools in the cratered blacktop, barques on the River Styx.

"You were chanting some of the words from the Text as I've translated it. In fact, your version's better than mine."

"I...Larry, I don't even remember what I said. In the dream I seemed to understand it, but when I woke up it was all just gibberish, and I forgot it.

"What is it that you seem to be afraid of, Larry? Do you think someone's sneaking a look at your work, planning to pirate it or something like that?"

"I can't say. It's like I'm looking at something so huge I can't put any shape to it yet. Listen, I better walk you home."

"Okay, mein Docktorvater, it's done. I wanted you to be the first to take a gander at it." Professor Maitland rose from where he had been ensconced, seemingly forever, among his clutter of open books, scattered papers, and artifact paperweights. It was almost like seeing one of the figures in a museum display of ancient Egypt walk out of the diorama. He picked his ribbon-strung pinc-nez off his vest and secured them on his thin nose bridge with one hand as he reached out to grasp the sheaf of smudged and interlineated pages with the other.

"Of course, it's far from the final typed perfection demanded by the rules of the Inst.i.tute, and the footnotes are going to take a while..."

Larry's tired voice trailed off as his old mentor brushed the words away as a distraction. "This is a great day, my boy," the old scholar said, not once lifting his eyes off the page before him.

"I had thought I never would live long enough to see the riddle of the Text unravelled. I failed myself, but it took new blood, a fresh mind, to find a new approach..." Now his own voice, beginning to constrict with emotion, faded into silence.

"Here, Professor, let me show you something about one of the charts. I think..."

"Never mind, Mr. Stanton; I may not have proven capable of deciphering the R'lyeh Text, but I'm quite confident I can decode anything you wrote! Run along, now. The faster I can get to it, the sooner I'll have my suggestions for revision to you." He was slowly returning to his seat, eyes on the second page, posterior following its own guidance system back to its point of origin. "Hmmm... Yes..."

Speaking more to himself than to the other, Larry replied, "Yes, I'd best be on my way. There's another little mystery I have to clear up. I'll see you later, Professor." He pulled the gla.s.s door shut and left a trail of hollow echoes down the hall of the Sanbourne Inst.i.tute of Pacific Antiquities. From there he turned into the too-brightly lit mid-day streets of Santiago. Intermittently shaded by the waving palms, he strode single-mindedly downtown to the New Age Center where, a couple of weeks earlier, he and Barb had attended the peculiar channeling show. He had to talk to the mysterious Dr. Waite. He felt sure that if Waite were any more than a fancy charlatan, he would talk to him, be willing to explain how he apparently knew so much of the R'lyeh Text.

Back in Professor Maitland's cluttered office, the pages turned rapidly. The old man's eagerness to learn the long-kept secrets of the enigmatic text had been gradually supplanted by the fatherly pride he felt at the accomplishment of his star pupil. But minutes ago, that feeling too, had pa.s.sed. The more he read of the translation, the more uneasy he became. A pattern was beginning to form. He began to see certain d.a.m.nable connections between the rough rendering before him and other, nearly forgotten, sc.r.a.ps of what he had once, perhaps too hastily, dismissed as quack pseudo-science.

At first his rising sense of unease brought a flush of embarra.s.sment to his wrinkled cheeks, as if what he feared was having to eat crow and admit that certain long-discredited names might after all have somehow antic.i.p.ated the results of modern linguistic scholarship and thus might be due an apology, posthumous vindication, like poor Galileo finally forgiven by the Pope.

But he realized almost as quickly that this was not the source of his keen discomfort. He could not so fool himself. Professor Maitland began to realize he was one of those unfortunates who knew enough to know that he knew too much. He had reached the end of the doc.u.ment already. For all the months of work that went into translating it, the R'lyeh Text was actually quite short. And concise. And clear, rather too clear in its implications.

His face now drained of blood, the old scholar sat a moment deliberating until his course seemed clear. And as if it were all perfectly routine, he gathered the pages of his student's draft translation, made sure they were all there, tapped the edges to make a square pile, and walked down the hall to one of the lab rooms. There he locked the door, dropped the stack of sheets into the insulated sink, and lit a match. After the ma.n.u.script was no more than a pile of ashes, Professor Maitland, with his customary precision, turned the handle on one of the nozzles, making the ash into grey muck. This he disposed of efficiently.

He found the skeleton key and invaded the cramped confines of young Stanton's office. It proved but a few moments' work to locate the material on the Bimini Glyphs, then the previous drafts and the relevant note cards. He almost forgot: there were some computer files that would need to be deleted. No great difficulty.

Then he returned to the hall and rounded a couple of corners to the Special Collections room of the Inst.i.tute. The room was empty, as he knew it would be this time of day. With the door locked behind him, the professor searched a moment for the requisite key to open the cabinet in which the priceless and irreplaceable palm-papyrus leaves of the R'lyeh Text were kept.

When these, too, were a mound of unrecognizable ash, he returned to his office, where he sat again at his desk, found yet another key and unlocked a drawer from which he drew an antique revolver, a Luger, and set it against his temple.

At first it seemed to Larry that no one was in the New Age store, though it was an odd time of day for it to be closed. Repeated knocking, at some cost to his knuckles, finally brought an answer. The proprietor had been meditating, his peculiar timing dictated by some harmonic cycle derived from Gurdjieff, and he did not much relish being brought back so rudely to Samsara. But he admitted that, yes, Dr. Waite did have an office in the building. The trouble was that he steadfastly refused to see anyone except when he was on stage in his channeled persona. Otherwise, he was just a normal mortal like you or me, with no special secrets to share.

"Speaking of secrets," Larry insisted, striking at what he hoped would be a tender spot, "I'd like to trade a couple with the good doctor, secrets about the R'lyeh Text."

That did it. The door ceased in its closing motion and the crack widened again. "Well...Dr. Waite might in fact be interested in that. You just stay here and I'll see if I can get him to come down."

There wasn't long to wait. The rotund, perfectly bald and fulsomely bearded man hurried to the door and ushered him in and up a narrow flight of stairs with no delay. No pretense of aloofness such as his doorman had shown. "Come up, come up, Mr. Stanton. I can see you and I have much to talk about. No, I'm afraid I don't recall you from the other week. You see, I'm not myself on such occasions."

Dr. Waite's office was bland, laid with a s.h.a.g rug, lined with pine panelling. The walls supported bracket shelves laden with the expected collection of Theosophical and Rosicrucian t.i.tles. Larry's eyes scanned them and paused only to note a couple of crudely bound, apparently privately printed volumes, called UnterZee Kulten and the Cthaat Aquadingen. He wondered, not for the first time, what Waite's doctorate was in. Or what school had bestowed it, if any. No visible diploma provided the answer.

He briefly explained what his concerns were, aware that he was telling all he knew with no a.s.surance of anything in return. But he couldn't figure how to open the game without tipping his hand, so he did and hoped for the best.

"As I stated earlier, Mr. Stanton, I'm afraid I can't answer your questions. But I know someone who can...if you'll give me a moment."

With that, the huge man swivelled in his chair, turning his back to his visitor. He slumped over-so convincingly that Larry made to rise from his chair in alarm that maybe the fat man was having a heart attack. But no, here he came, swivelling around again. And Larry could swear the quality of the light in the room had subtly changed.

But that was not all. Waite himself had suddenly changed in some way hard to pinpoint. It seemed that he had been replaced by an identical twin who was nonetheless plainly a different man. There was a certain imperiousness, coupled with an odd clumsiness, suggesting the insane notion that the ent.i.ty before him found the human body a singularly ill-fitting garment. The eyes rolled in a distracted manner, yet they were quite piercing when focused on the young visitor.

"Dr. Waite...or whoever, I, uh, came to see you a couple of weeks back with my girlfriend. You...did one of your past-life regressions with her, and she, she fell off the stage. That's not the problem; I caught her. But before she blacked out, she said some things... Some strange stuff that sounded a h.e.l.l of a lot like the language of a very old artifact I had been translating. Something called the R'lyeh Text. Just snippets, syllables, but..."

The other spoke: "The...? Oh yes, I know what you mean. Quaint, the way you p.r.o.nounce it. Continue, please."

"Well, sir, that's just it. It's obvious you know something about this text. And I was under the impression it had never been translated, not really, anyway. There were a couple of hoaxes a number of years ago, but... Anyway, how did you get access to it? Is there another copy or something? And how did...?"