The Way You Came In May Not Be the Best Way Out

Chapter 6

Urxula’s body was like a six-foot squash, thicker on the bottom, and with ridges along the sides. Her hide was greenish brown, flexible and leathery, patterned with warts and bumps, gently pulsing like a bellows. Her head resembled a five-armed starfish, resting flat atop the narrow end of her body. The starfish-head had a gleaming blue eye at each of its five tips, with a wobbly mouth-tube between each pair of tips. Her five feet splayed out from her wide bottom end. Her branching arms were very like the feeding organs of a sea cucumber I’d once seen in an aquarium at Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Five arms, five feet, five mouths, five eyes. Later, in conversation, Leon would describe Urxula as a radially symmetric echinodermoid.

Words go only so far. The main thing about the cukes is that they’re telepaths. That is, as soon as Urxula noticed me, my thoughts changed. It wasn’t anything so banal as me hearing a weirdly accented voice in my head. No, it was subtler than that. You’ve always got a low-level stream of images and memories and phrases burbling through your mind, right? And once in a while a particularly weird or catchy nugget pops to the surface, That was the communication channel the cukes used. As soon Urxula trained her five blue eyes on me I saw—

A giant slug chasing some cukes and blind penguins. Ice all around. Low sun. An ice-bound city of fanciful towers. An odd pontoon plane angling in and sliding to a stop on the deep snow. Baxter romping out, happily barking.

The captivated Baxter had obviously gotten the transmission too, and he liked the last image enough to stop growling. Urxula loosened her nest of branching fingers and let him loose. He stared at her, tongue lolling, thinking things over, adjusting to the big cuke’s smell. Not really so bad. Sort of like a fresh fish market next to a flower stand next to a filling station.

Urxula swept her frondy fingers across the rug and disappeared the puddle that Baxter had made. And then once again she focused on me. I saw myself at the controls of a plane with Vivi Nordström in the other pilot’s seat. Vivi smiling at me. Touching my face with her hand. Yes.

“Urxula likes you,” said Vivi. “I can see you’re picking up her images. Leon and I call it teep. If she’s teeping you, that means you’ll work out fine.”

“So it’s decided!” said Leon, handing me a cup of tea. “A temperate toast!” The four of us grinned and clinked our tea cups. With Gorski maybe a little wistful for the days when his cup would’ve been heavily spiked.

“I’ll get paid too?” I asked.

With one smooth motion, Urxula unfolded a snaky arm and set a rough crystal into my hand. Each of her arms had what you might call five fingers, with five fingerlets on each finger, and another level of branching below that. I held the crystal to the light. Could it really be an uncut diamond? So large! In my mind’s eye I saw my gem gleaming on a tiny silk pillow in the window of Tiffany’s. Urxula was my pal, you bet. Her people needed our help. I saw images of a giant slug in flames. While Vivi Nordström, swathed in a flying-fur blanket, held out her arms and sang.

“We’re going to save the cuke people,” said Leon. “And we’re leaving tonight.”

“It’s almost dark,” said Stan Gorski. “My car has room for all of you. Let’s hit the bricks.”

“What about supplies?” I asked. “It’s a long trip.”

“Our plane’s loaded,” said Gorski.

As it turned out, our plane belonged to someone else.

“A fire-and-brimstone fanatic named Ransome Tierney,” explained Stan Gorski as he pulled his sleek, low Duesenberg into the shadows beside a seaplane hanger at Jeffrey field. “Reminds me of Aleister Crowley lumped together with Cotton Mather. From Arkham. He says the cukes—I mean Elder Ones—are demons from hell. He wants to close off Leng. Says he can seal off the entrance with a cannon shot and some hand grenades. Raised fifty grand from his congregation..”

“Typical Arkham,” said Leon Bagger, shaking his head. “They completely misunderstand the nature of Leng.”

“Wait,” I said. “We burst into this hanger and steal a flying boat? That’s your big plan?”

“Maybe you shoulda brought a Chicago typewriter,” said the hardened Gorski, laughing and pretending to shoot a machine g*n. We were all wearing aviation togs—boots, fur-lined overalls, leather jackets, and caps with side flaps.

Chicago“Don’t be silly,” said Vivi. “Stan got himself on Tierney’s payroll. He’s been helping to outfit the plane. And Stan, I hope you remembered to give the guards that case of cognac this morning?”

Stan didn’t need to answer. We could hear the guards singing. Blurry voices, blended in bonhomie. And it was barely eight pm.

“Come on,” hissed Leon, heading out of the shadows. He was laden down with two heavy bags. Vivi had a bag too, but I carried it for her, juggling it with my own suitcase and my Globe typewriter. The wind off the bay was icy. Snowflakes were beginning to fall.

Globe“You’re sweet,” said Vivi, raising the flap of my aviator hat to plant a kiss on my cheek. It didn’t seem to matter to her if Leon saw. Her features were vivid in the gloom. She was wearing dark red lipstick that set off her togs. Baxter was close at her heels. To fully win over my dog, Vivi had somehow fashioned him a little fleece vest.

In the rear, Stan Gorski led Urxula along. Our cuke friend was cloaked in a blanket-like flying fur. A bright eye showed in the shadow of a fold at top, as if peering out from a monk’s cowl. A seven-foot monk.