Lost in individual contemplation, neither of the Westcotts sought to press their elderly guides for details during the long ride back to Kununurra. The specter of looming nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent was more than enough to keep their thoughts occupied. Unspoken between husband and wife was any thought of abandoning the two elderly men to return home to America. If they were telling the truth, then millions of lives were at stake. In that context, their own minor personal problems receded to insignificance.
Besides which, Kelli could hardly return to a normal life of housekeeping and teaching while carrying around a condensed bunyip in her belly. Somehow Cody doubted even a prescription purgative would be strong enough to alleviate the condition. And if by some chance it did, it might well result in consequences far worse than their present situation. In essence, then, they had no choice but to “volunteer” their support.
From Kununurra they flew to Darwin, and then by small plane to Port Moresby. As they were crossing the coral-encrusted Arafura Sea that separated the island of New Guinea from continental Australia, Cody jokingly asked the ever upbeat Kuwarra if his passport was in order, mimicking the admonition the archaeologist had heard on more than one occasion from Oelefse. By way of response, the aborigine elder brought forth the document in question and handed it to Cody for inspection. Upon opening the small booklet, the younger man was confronted with a bewildering mass of official stamps and impressions that covered every available square inch of every page. Reading the names was like skimming a worldwide travel agency’s main brochure. Kelli’s eyes widened as she looked over her husband’s shoulder at the battered pages.
Abashed, he handed it back to its owner. “I owe you an apology. When we first met you I never would have supposed you were a world traveler like . . .” His words trailed away as he became even more embarrassed by the implications of his comment.
Kuwarra was not offended. “Like my good mate and colleague Oelefse? Why would you think that? Because I live in a small house in a tiny community in the outback?” His grin was, as always, infectious. “The Society got members everywhere. It has to, mate, or we’d all of us be bloody walking birdhouses for Those Who Abide.” He slipped the thoroughly astonishing passport back into his shirt pocket. “You being archaeologists, you and your woman got to visit Heidelberg some day. See the scrolls saved from the library at Alexandria, that sort of thing. Very cool stuff.” The plane banked to starboard and he leaned his face against the window. Ahead and below, ravine-cut green-clad mountains towered above a dusty coastal plain and turquoise sea.
From Port Moresby they flew across the lofty spine of the world’s second largest island, until the pilot announced their imminent arrival at Hoskins. Looking out the window, Cody and Kelli saw a smaller replica of New Guinea itself emerge beneath the plane. Though not as large, New Britain was a huge island in its own right; an impressive, mountainous crescent more than three hundred miles from end to end that averaged some forty often impenetrable miles across.
“A difficult place to get around,” Oelefse informed them as the Fokker began its final descent. “There is no road from north to south and no road across. Only a little potholed pavement here and there on the west coast, then tracks. Lots of tracks. And the Hook.”
Having made the discovery at the beginning of the interisland flight that a Fokker F-28 has less leg room than the average baby carriage, Cody struggled to massage some feeling back into his long, cramped legs. “How do you know so much about such an obscure place?”
“When one joins the Society, the first thing one is taught is the location of those places on the Earth that possess distinctive characteristics unfamiliar to contemporary science. But I am also familiar with this part of the world from ordinary secondary school. For many decades, this was a German colony. We are presently flying over the Bismarck Sea, you know.”
“What happened to the German presence here?” Kelli’s expression reflected her internal discomfort. Despite the best efforts of her husband and friend, she had been suffering from recurrent nausea all the way from Australia. Dramamine, they had discovered, did not work on bunyips.
“The Australians happened,” Oelefse told her, “followed by the First World War. But reminders of the early colonial presence are still scattered across these islands.”
Hoskins was a ramshackle collection of westward facing buildings on the shores of Kimbe Bay. The commercial hub of the central and southern half of the island, it was being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Aspects of the old South Seas clung to it like lost adjectives from a novel by Conrad: wisps of clapboard buildings on posts and smiling dark-skinned women hauling fruit and chickens and children in the brightly colored woven string bags known as bilums.
There was no road across the ragged, emerald-draped spine of the island, but there were a number of well-used trails. Crossing on horseback, they arranged for final supplies in the town of Pomio before proceeding inland once more. The main trail terminated at Ora, a tightly knit knot of wood-and-thatch houses little changed from those built in the previous century. Naked children gawked at them out of wide eyes while suspicious village elders sat with their arms wrapped around their knees and stared solemnly at the outsiders. Ora saw perhaps a handful of visitors a year, and that only in a good year.
Dismounting, Oelefse began transferring supplies from saddlebags into a backpack. As always, the ubiquitous briefcase never left his side. Draped in a long cotton cloak decorated with intricate symbols and animal designs, Kuwarra was gazing deep into the mist-swathed jungle that enclosed them on all sides.
“From here we walk,” the elderly German was telling them. “This is a place where the world stumbles. The local people will go no farther.” He gestured inland. “North of here lies a mountain called The Father, that the locals know as Ulawun. It is over seven thousand feet high and cloaked in impenetrable rain forest.” Listening to him declaim on what lay ahead, watching him prepare for a conflict whose parameters remained unknown, Karl Heinrich Oelefsenten von Eichstatt struck Cody as a cross between Rambo and Geppetto, with a pinch of Merlin thrown in.
Retching sounds made him look elsewhere. Poor Kelli was standing at the edge of the forest wall, throwing up again. She had done so at least once every day since leaving Purnululu. She would continue to do so, an apologetic Oelefse explained, until the time came to void the bunyip. Every upchuck was tinged, however delicately, a light blue. The locals observed the sick white woman stolidly. Once informed of the visitors’ intended destination, any hint of sympathy had fled from the village. They were not hostile, but neither did they offer any help. Sensible folk did not seek the slopes of Mount Ulawun. Truly dangerous raskol bands used that country to hide from the law, and it had forever been the abode of malicious spirits.
Bidding farewell to their guides and horses, the four travelers struck out into the jungle, following the faintest of paths through the turgid, cloud-blanketed rain forest. Rustling sounds in the bush hinted at the hesitant passage of tree kangaroos and giant rats, while the spasmodic hollering of unseen birds-of-paradise echoed their progress.
They spent the night by the side of a megapode nest, a huge mound of decomposing leaves and forest-floor litter that the peculiar bird used to incubate its eggs. Volcanic heat rising from the ground aided the parent birds in maintaining a comfortable temperature for their offspring. It also warded off the dampness that rapidly descended on the travelers.
Bidding them draw near, Oelefse unfolded a map alongside the fluorescent lantern as Kuwarra used a shirt to ward off entranced moths the size of dinner plates.
“See here,” he told them, tracing lines and locales on the wrinkled paper, “out here in the western Bismarck Sea near little Aua Island the point of the Hook lies embedded deep in the ocean floor. It then runs in a perfect, unbroken curve through the Ninigo and Hermit Islands, on through the much larger island of Manus, before rising out of the sea at New Hanover.” He drew his finger across the map in a slow downward arc. “The curve of the Hook continues through New Ireland and becomes the northern tip of New Britain. Here near Mount Ulawun lies its easternmost point. At this place it begins to disrupt the crust of the Earth. The heat you feel beneath you tonight is of volcanic origin, as are all these larger islands. The Hook then bends back toward the mainland of New Guinea, giving rise to volcanic islands all along the way. Karkar, Manam, Kairiru—all active, and very dangerous, volcanoes.” Folding the map, he brought out another. A world map this time, Cody noted.
“You can see clearly where the line attached to the Hook goes, running perfectly straight down into the crust of the planet.” His finger moved as he spoke. “The line ends here, where it is secured to the mantle.”
Cody could have laid out the path with a ruler. Unbending, unvarying, never deviating, the line ran from the north coast of New Guinea, across southeast Asia, to terminate under . . .
Kashmir.
“Fortunate coincidence.” Kelli stared at the map.
“Not at all.” Oelefse proceeded to refold the map. “Other hooks are tied to other localities. We are fortunate only in that the one we require lies near to Tjapu’s homeland. It has saved us some traveling. The effort will be the same.”
“About that effort,” Cody wondered aloud. “Just what is it we’re supposed to do here?”
“Use the Hook, of course.” Oelefse smiled at him. “To do so we must get to its easternmost point. Then you will see.”
It took them several days of tramping through the sodden undergrowth to reach a ridge that was dominated by eroded needles of limestone. Surrounded by innumerable other, smaller versions of itself, the spire a triumphant Oelefse singled out was not especially distinctive. In a karst landscape, Cody knew, such spectacular rock formations were the geologic norm. To him and his wife the whitish stone monolith, festooned with ferns and epiphytes and clinging bushes, did not stand out among its disintegrating brethren.
“We will set ourselves up at its base.” Thumbs tucked under the straps of his backpack, the elderly German led them forward. “If all goes well, we will be on our way back to Ora Village by nightfall.”
All might indeed have gone as well as Oelefse hoped, and his prediction come true, had it not been for one complication.
They were not alone on the ridge.
There were fifteen or twenty of them, Cody estimated hastily. Certainly too many to fight. Having no experience with the notorious raskol gangs of Papua New Guinea, he could not tell if these were more or less scruffy and threatening than the average band of local miscreants. What surprised him most was their stature. Perhaps half hailed from the highlands of the main island; typical of their tribes, they averaged less than five and a half feet in height. The ferocity of their appearance made them appear considerably taller.
Most were armed with traditional weapons: stone axes, spears, bush knives, or bows and arrows fashioned from the flexible stalks of the black palm. Half a dozen carried firearms, including a trio of homemade shotguns made of iron plumbing pipe, with nails for hammers. Two of the grim-faced men wielded AK-47’s while the apparent leader wore an army-issue Glock pistol at his waist.
They emerged from their hiding places behind the monolith and its cousins, spreading out to form a semicircle in front of the travelers. Either it had not occurred to them to encircle the visitors to prevent their escape, or more likely, they knew they could easily run down the swiftest of the intruders. After a brief exchange among themselves in Melanesian trade pidgin, the leader stepped forward and addressed them in broken English. His eyes lingered entirely too long on Kelli Westcott for Cody’s liking. But neither their hostile stares nor their eclectic collection of weapons was what worried the archaeologist the most.
Every last one of them, as near as Cody could tell, was host to an Interloper.
“We not get many tourists up here. You want to see Mount Ulawun, you will need guides.” The pistol-toting leader wore a broad, confident smirk. “You hire us.”
Oelefse, who could perceive the roiling, shifting shapes of the abiding Interlopers as clearly as his younger companions, nodded tersely. “We are willing to do that. How much do you charge?”
The headman glanced at his men. A few chuckled softly, whispering among themselves. “First we take you to see Mount Ulawun. Then you give us everything you got, including your clothes. Then maybe we don’t kill you. That fair, is it not?”
“You can have my clothes now.” Kuwarra began to undo his colorful cloak, a masterpiece of traditional aboriginal art.
The chief raskol gestured sharply. “Maybe we let you keep yours, brother. Maybe we even let you share a little bit.” His eyes had roamed back to Kelli, who was standing as close to her husband as possible.
“We can share right now, mate.” Having removed his cloak, Kuwarra flung it in the direction of the leader. Startled, the other man reached up to ward it off. Wrapping itself around his upper body, the cloak continued to flutter and pulsate. The way it moved reminded Cody of the flapping wings of a bat. The analogy drew strength from the prominence on the back of the cloak of a beautifully rendered flying fox. Perhaps the cloak drew some kind of strength from the exquisitely rendered icon as well.
Cursing and flailing at the confining cloth, the raskol struggled with the cloak. As he did so, the cloak fought back. The nearest members of the band rushed to aid their chief. Momentarily flustered, their heavily armed colleagues could only look on in bewilderment. As they did so, Kuwarra unslung his didgeridoo from his back, his movements as swift and precise as those of a samurai unsheathing his sword. The notes he proceeded to blow were unlike anything Cody had heard before, even at Purnululu.
Attention shifted away from the lurching, cloak-enveloped raskol to the elderly aborigine and his braying instrument. A couple of the highlanders started in his direction. As they did so, Kelli abruptly staggered several steps backward and clutched at her lower abdomen with both hands. Traveling from her ears, the eerie drone had finally reached her stomach.
Something was emerging from between her lips. Something dark blue, noxious—and angry.
“Quickly, my friend—come with me! Schnell, schnell!” Pulling on Cody’s wrist, Oelefse was dragging him toward the monolith with one hand. In the other he held his stained, somewhat battered, but still intact briefcase.
“But Kelli—!” Cody struggled to resist the old man’s surprisingly powerful pull.
“She is safe with Tjapu. Hurry, while there is time!”
Against his will, Cody felt himself hauled, reluctant and stumbling, toward the looming limestone tower. Its peak submerged in fog, it looked no different from the others nearby. He wondered what unseen features distinguished it in Oelefse’s eyes.
Behind them, chaos had broken out. Drawn forth by the bawling drone of the didgeridoo, the enraged bunyip erupted from the prison of Kelli Westcott’s belly to find itself confronted by an ancient enemy. A couple of bursts from the Kalashnikovs passed through it as if through air. Massive, tenebrous blue tentacles lashed like whips. They caused only a shudder in the dense human matter of the raskols as they passed through their fleshy bodies, but upon contact, the Interlopers so struck shriveled and died in frightful convulsions. Echoes of elsewhere, their eerie, otherworldly screams lingered in the air long after their passing.
Standing protectively over Kelli’s gasping, retching form, the aborigine elder continued to blow the didgeridoo as the raskols staggered and fell. Driven mad, one sprinted right off a nearby cliff, spinning and tumbling to the rain forest below. Others clutched at their heads and screamed or moaned as the unsuspected unearthly entities they hosted were flayed from within. By the time Cody and Oelefse reached the base of the Hook, all but two of the band had been laid flat on the damp earth, weeping and wailing and twitching helplessly.
Having swept the ridge of its archenemies, the maddened bunyip sought new foes. Outlines of multiple eyes settled immediately on the two humans who were exerting themselves at the base of the monolith. With a cry like a bad wind rising, it flowed down the slight slope toward them, tentacles lashing, multiple mouths agape.
From the briefcase Oelefse had drawn forth a rolled-up net of glistening twine that shone like spider silk. He tossed one end to the archaeologist and began to back away. Only when the twine was fully extended did the old man point at the limestone pinnacle and shout.
“Now, my young friend! Cast it up, over the top!”
A disbelieving Cody frowned at the hundred-foot-high spire. “What, this—fishing net? What good will that do?” The twine was light as air in his fingers, which meant that while its weight presented no problems, having no mass would make it next to impossible to throw any distance.
“Just throw!” Oelefse was watching the bunyip, sloughing downslope toward them. Thus far it had slaughtered only Interlopers. The more its azure tint deepened, the longer it lingered, the denser it became. Another minute or two would see it sufficiently solidified in this reality to where it could begin to impact humans. They had very little time. “On three! Ein, zwei . . .!”
Given no time to think, Cody did as he was told. To his considerable surprise, the net soared up into the mist as if of its own volition, easily cresting the point of rock and floating down the other side. On either side of the spire, the loose ends hung trailing in the air.
Something slammed into the ground nearby. Eyes wide, Cody saw the incensed bunyip swiftly bearing down on them. Its rapidly curdling footsteps began to have an impact on the earth. Upslope, Kelli was sitting up and screaming. The drone of the didgeridoo had drifted, swallowed by distance. Dimly, he heard Oelefse shouting at him.
“Now—run!”
Stumbling backwards, Cody fought for balance and did as he was told, his long legs carrying him downslope as he ducked beneath the bottom flap of the glistening net. Limestone boulders protruding from the rich, loamy soil threatened to trip him up, and the steepness of the grade promised a serious, possibly fatal fall if he lost his footing. Behind him, the bunyip howled insanely, tentacles reaching for the two humans still standing.
It crashed into the net that lay draped over the apex of the monolith. Instantaneously entangled, it flailed and struck out wildly. The impact of its headlong rush generated a rumbling sound Cody immediately recognized from the time he had spent in South America. It was at once familiar and terrifying.
Earthquake.
Expending every iota of the unimaginable energy to which it was heir, the bunyip fought to free itself from the increasingly restrictive netting. As it did so, it yanked the entire limestone pillar infinitesimally forward. Yanked the Hook, Cody realized as he was thrown to the ground and found himself rolling downhill.
Deep within the Earth’s crust, the effect of the bunyip’s sudden, violent lunge was disproportionately magnified with increasing distance. The quake thus generated rolled up through the outer islands of New Guinea and down through the mainland. Karkar and Manam volcanoes erupted simultaneously, spewing hot ash and fiery lava into a pristine sea. From the Gazelle Peninsula to the mountains of the north, the ground trembled and heaved. There was fear, but no panic. The inhabitants of one of the most seismically active parts of the world were used to such tremors.
Its kinetic energy growing by orders of magnitude, the tectonic oscillation raced down the length of the Hook, rattling every city and village in Irian Jaya as it raced northwestward beneath the Celebes Sea. Passing deep under Indochina, it did no more than shake teacups in Da Nang and disturb priests’ prayers in Mandalay. To anyone able to track its progress it would have seemed that its strength had been lost, dissipated in the depths of the continental crust. In reality, the exact opposite was true, but the effects did not become apparent until the traveling fluctuation reached the end of the Hook—sunk securely into the fabric of the planet deep beneath the Deosai Range.
In a part of the world where a mountain must rise above twenty-five thousand feet simply to be considered high, twenty-one thousand-foot Muat Kangri drew little notice. Ignored by international climbers and locals alike, its comparatively moderate slopes overlooked the pass between the villages of Kargil and Marol; between Indian-held and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Through that pass ran the only paved road between the two disputed territories. It was through this defile that the massive Indian force that had been assembling in secret in the city of Srinagar planned to roll.
Muat Kangri, however, possessed one characteristic the taller, more impressive mountains that surrounded it lacked: Its base, buried deep within the Earth, was the northernmost terminus of the Hook.
Striking with incalculable force, the ascending oscillation that had traveled unseen and largely unfelt beneath the Earth’s surface all the way from east New Britain wrenched at the root of the mountain like a dentist tugging on a rotten tooth. Had anyone been present to document the aftermath, it would have been noted that the entire bulk of the mountain actually shifted to the northwest some two and a half inches. The result was a powerful but deep earthquake whose effects were devastating but highly localized.
The most immediate and noticeable effect was the colossal avalanche and accompanying landslide that roared down the southern slopes of Muat Kangri, completely obliterating the road through the pass. It would take, declared the engineers who arrived on the scene days later, months to clear away enough rubble to allow even one-lane, one-way traffic to inch its way through the entombed pass.
No military buildup the size of the one at Srinagar could go unnoticed for so long. Quietly, as unobtrusively as possible, it was disbanded, tanks and troop carriers and mechanized artillery dispersing to their accustomed bases throughout the northern portion of the subcontinent. No one knew how close the two countries had come to war and possible nuclear catastrophe. Subsequently weakened at the polls and in the elections that followed, the radical Bharatiya Janata party was never again in a position to contemplate so extreme a mobilization of aggressive forces in the vicinity of Kashmir-Jammu.
Drawing the bullroarer from his briefcase, a perspiring Oelefse began to whirl it over his head. The deep-throated drone rose above the hum of the forest and the muted shriek of the entangled bunyip. With his free hand he extracted something else from the open case and tossed it toward his younger companion. Cody caught the oblong object reflexively. The shape of it was vaguely familiar.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Shouting to be heard above the moan of the bullroarer and the wailing of the bunyip, he held high a solid-gold, intricately inscribed kazoo.
“Blow on it! When I give you the word, blow with all your strength!” Oelefse was spinning the bullroarer faster and faster. It was an indistinguishable blur now, its basso groan an abrasive howl that sounded like whole mountains grinding past one another.
“But,” the archaeologist began, “I don’t know how to pl—!”
“NOW!” Matching velocity to direction, Oelefse let go of the string, sending the whistling bullroarer flying toward the bunyip just as the cerulean monstrosity finally broke free of its bonds and came hurtling down the slope toward them. Immediately, the old man threw himself to the ground, face down, and covered his head with his hands.
Vacating every alveolus in his lungs, Cody blew what sounded to him like an extremely sour but very loud note on the kazoo, whereupon he did his best to imitate his mentor’s actions. As he hit the ground, he felt the wind of a razor-edged blue tentacle descending toward him and smelled the fetid, otherworldly breath of the bunyip on his neck.
Then it exploded.
Cobalt light suffused the surrounded atmosphere, tingeing the air with an actinic aroma of ozone and scorched flesh. Daring to raise his eyes ever so slightly, the archaeologist’s jaw dropped as he observed the graceful, lazy fall of blue snow. Twinkling brightly as they struck the ground, the fragments of detonated bunyip left little black streaks where they seared the earth. Several struck him and he leaped unbidden to his feet, slapping and flailing at the hot spots on his clothing. Nearby, Oelefse was performing the same energetic dance, albeit in a more dignified and reserved Teutonic manner.
When he was reasonably certain he was no longer on fire, a panting Cody fought his way back up the slope. A sobbing Kelli met him halfway, near the base of the limestone spire. Tjapu Kuwarra had recovered his cloak from the indisposed leader of the raskols and had wrapped it around her. Clutching his didgeridoo, he stood in shorts and shirt, his eyes alive with delight, his white beard streaked with blue as if he had pushed his face deep into a brightly colored birthday cake.
“Quite a bang the bunyip makes, s’truth. She’ll be right now.” Glancing over at the dazed, sluggishly recovering raskols, he made a face and raised his didg as if to blow in their direction. Yelping and moaning, the thoroughly intimidated would-be assailants staggered for the cover of the forest. Much to their surprise, they found that despite their horrific, mysterious encounter on the mountain, to a man they felt healthier and happier than any of them had in quite some time.
“The explosive situation in Kashmir?” Cody thought to ask when he and Kelli at last eased their tight embrace.
Kuwarra and Oelefse exchanged a glance before the elderly German replied. “If everything there happened akin to everything here, then it should by now have been alleviated, we believe.”
Kelli was shaking her head in disbelief. “How do you know that? How can you tell?”
“Everything work here,” a grinning Kuwarra told her. “No reason why everything should not work there.” Taking a deep breath, he surveyed the now tranquil, fog-shrouded mountainside. “Beaut country, this. Good place for sheep, maybe.” He affected an exaggerated shiver. “Too cold for old Tjapu, though.”
“And too uncultured for me.” Turning, Oelefse extended an open hand. Wordlessly, Cody passed him the golden kazoo. The spider-silky net and his friend’s bullroarer had been vaporized along with the bunyip. “I need a slice of good torte, with lots of chocolate, and a decent cup of cappuccino.”
“Might as well look for that in another dimension, mate.” Chuckling to himself, Kuwarra turned back to the two younger members of the quartet that had just saved the world—or a significant segment of it, anyway. “How about you blokes? What you want now? Go back to your teaching, I guess.”
Standing on the steep flank of the green mountain, enveloped by mist and rain forest, Cody’s gaze met that of his wife in a long, contemplative stare. When he finally responded to Kuwarra’s query, he knew he was doing so for the both of them.
“If you don’t mind, I think Kelli and I would like to learn a little more about this Society you and Oelefse belong to. It does dovetail somewhat with our work, you know.”
“And maybe,” Kelli added hesitantly as she clung to her husband, “sometime in the future, if conditions were right and we absorbed the necessary precepts, we could even join? Just for reasons of self-defense, of course.”
“Of course.” Tjapu Kuwarra’s expression turned uncharacteristically solemn. “The Interlopers are ever active, and always hungry. They have always been with us, holding mankind back, impeding our progress, feeding off our misery and despair. It is the job of those of us who belong to the Society to do our best to see that they starve.” Extending his hands, he took one of Kelli’s and one of Cody’s in each of his. His long fingers grasped theirs powerfully, his firm grip belying his age. Deeply felt emotion seemed to flow from the old man into them, raising their spirits and warming their souls. “The help of those who have learned to perceive is always welcome.”
“Good.” Wincing suddenly, Kelli reached down to grab at her stomach. Cody reacted with alarm.
“What, what is it? Something else the matter?”
“Yeah.” As she turned to look up at him, her grimace was replaced by a smile, radiant and gloriously free of the multiple torments from which she had suffered for far too many weeks. “It’s strange, but for the first time since I can remember, I think I’m actually hungry. My stomach’s so empty it’s growling.”
“That’s okay,” her relieved husband managed to reply, “so long as you’re not feeling blue.”