Cabal laughed, a dry, cynical noise that stirred and died in his throat. ‘There is nothing mealy-mouthed about you, is there, gentlemen? Good. I approve.
‘To the Fear Institute, then, I offer my services.’
Chapter 2
IN WHICH THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ARE VISITED, THOUGH BRIEFLY
Neither were the claims of Shadrach, Corde and Bose unfounded. Money was requested, and money was forthcoming. They travelled by train to a major port, and there took passage across the Atlantic. Corde suggested they travel by aeroship, but Johannes Cabal made a face, said that air travel was very overrated and that he would prefer to go by surface ship. Thus, forty-eight hours after their first meeting with Cabal, the party was steaming across the ocean, due for arrival at New York in eight days.
‘From there, we take the New Haven railroad service to Boston, and thence . . .’ Bose consulted the back and front of a train timetable for some moments, dropping it to the table in the lounge in favour of another before going back to the first ‘. . . and thence a short trip, also by train, to Arkham station, which is in, ah . . .’ he read the fine print carefully ‘. . . Arkham.’
Shadrach and Corde nodded sagely at this intelligence. Cabal, for his part, had left his cabin only out of boredom, and was now considering this a folly. The journey so far had been low in incident and high in planning. While a staunch proponent of at least some preparation, Cabal had long since learned the utility and frequent necessity of extemporisation. Once one went beyond that, however, one effectively hobbled oneself, leaving oneself vulnerable and liable to one becoming zero, and one wouldn’t like that. Contingency plans were all well and good, but they were going into a very
When Cabal made a comment along those lines, however, Shadrach said, ‘We must expect the unexpected,’ before laying out his scheme to deal with pirates riding stilt-legged elephants to the others. It was a good plan, as it happened, but then, so had been the plans to deal with giant platypuses and killer begonias. Cabal wondered if they were simply going through the dictionary and evolving procedures to deal with every noun they came across. He hardly cared, having belatedly realised that the more planning they did, the less he had to talk to them.
He also realised, and this he kept to himself, that the Animus travelled with them. These men were afraid, so they planned for the silliest eventualities simply because it kept them occupied. They denied themselves pause for reflection, because fear breeds in the quiet moments.
Cabal also had a small fear: that eight days of their nonsense would drive him insane. He was regretting having been quite so efficient in his preparation that it left him few distractions. He had copies of two very rough maps and a notebook filled with the distilled wisdom of any number of laudanum-enhanced poets with respect to useful knowledge of the Dreamlands. It was a very thin notebook.
He was flicking through it when the others finally agreed on a plan in case of attack by soft furnishings, and Corde asked, ‘What was that creature you were speaking of the other day, Cabal? The gog, was it?’
‘Gug,’ replied Cabal, without looking up. ‘It’s called a gug.’
‘Well, I was just thinking, gentlemen,’ said Corde, addressing Shadrach and Bose, ‘that we should also plan for known threats in the Dreamlands. After all, it is that sort of information that Mr Cabal has at his fingertips.’ The others agreed, with much humming and stroking of chins, that addressing real threats might be a good idea. Having secured their agreement, Corde turned back to Cabal. ‘So, what can you tell us about this
Cabal merely flicked through his notebook until he came to a sketch, and passed it over to them. He was gratified by their sudden pallor and widened eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Shadrach, finally. ‘Well . . . that looks . . . manageable.’ And the three of them started muttering about deadfalls and bear pits.
Cabal made a mental note that ‘manageable’ could apparently be applied as a euphemism for a furry monstrosity with too many forearms, a vertical slit for a mouth, poor dental hygiene and an uncritical worship of dark gods so debauched that even other dark gods would blank them at dark-god parties. He also decided not to burden them with the knowledge that ‘gug’ was the name of a race and not an individual, or to point out that the sketch bore no scale and so their assumption that a gug stood only at about man-sized was profoundly optimistic. He would wait until they had finalised their plan before politely enquiring how the gug would react on finding itself shin deep in their trap or, indeed, how any of its many friends might.
The eight days of the sea crossing became more bearable as the Institute members grew by degrees both bored of their over-planning, and cognisant of its futility after Cabal had dropped a few more bombshells into their sessions.
The final straw was when Cabal innocently enquired of them, ‘What is your plan for cats?’
‘Cats?’ said Shadrach.
‘Cats?’ echoed Corde. ‘Are we likely to be set upon by cats?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cabal. ‘That rather depends on your plan.’
Bose, the least enthusiastic of the three when it came to covering every conceivable contingency, tapped the box file that lay on the table. It was stuffed with plans, and there were another four just like it in Shadrach’s cabin. ‘Which plan?’ he asked morosely.
‘Your plan for cats.’
Shadrach frowned. If Johannes Cabal had not previously demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that he was disinclined to frivolity, then Shadrach would have been sure that they were being made fun of. ‘Do I understand you correctly, Mr Cabal? Our plan for cats, which has not yet been formulated, depends upon our plan for cats?’
Cabal nodded sadly. ‘It might.’
Shadrach and Corde looked at one another for a long moment. Then, with a heavy heart, Corde took up his pen and wrote upon a virgin sheet of paper, ‘Cats’. He had barely had time to underline it when it was whipped out from beneath his nib by Bose, who tore the sheet into halves, then quarters, then eights, before letting them flutter on to the table. ‘I am having a drink,’ he declared. ‘And I do not mean tea.’
