Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [59]
In his increasingly unsteady progress, he had stumbled over the edge of one of the flooring stones. I rushed to his assistance, but he sat up unaided and held the intact bottle triumphantly aloft. "Sit down, my boy." He patted a raised section beside himself. "Sit; and let us talk… about…" He swayed gently from side to side as he stared in front of himself, "… great things…"
I did as he instructed. "Are you all right?" I asked again.
"Never better," he said brightly, snapping a wideeyed gaze around to me. "My dear boy – we are on the verge…"
"Of great things?" I suggested.
He nodded, raising a skeletal finger for emphasis. "New worlds," he spoke in a quavering whisper. "We… are not alone."
I looked around the cavernous laboratory, but saw no one else. "Beg pardon?"
His finger jabbed towards the ceiling. "Up there… no, not in the Hall, you doll… Beyond! In the skies! The stars! Intelligences – not like us, you understand, different; and much more advanced… marvellous stuff. Makes us look like children in the nursery. Whizzing about…"
"Whizzing about in the nursery?" I grew even more concerned about the effect of the alcohol on his enfeebled constitution. Perhaps this was the explanation for some of the other lunacies generated by him.
"No, no; in the skies! Between the planets – and the stars! I've seen them," he concluded with decisive finality.
"I'm not sure I understand…"
Lord Bendray sighed and poured himself another drink. "Evidently not. Your father did, however; what insights that man had! The Cosmos was an open book to him. Mind you, I had long suspected their existence. But your father proved it! Showed them to me!"
"Showed who?" A display of interest on my part seemed to have a calming effect on the old gentleman. To myself, I was debating whether it would be better to drag him along in search of the stairs leading out, or abandon him and seek some helpful member of his household staff.
"Them! Who else? Creatures of worlds not our own, intelligences far greater than ours." He leaned closer to me, his voice dropping to a secretive pitch. "Mark you, my boy – the earth is the subject of scrutiny by beings from other planets." He straightened up, maintaining a wobbling dignity. "I – myself – have seen them," he announced.
"You have?" It was worse than I had thought.
He nodded. "Not here – though I've tried; bloody fortune in telescopes and what-not up on the roof. They seem," he mused, "to prefer isolated locales for their occasional forays into our atmosphere. On Groughay that's where I saw them. In one of their great celestial vehicles."
"Where's that?" Perhaps if he talked out his mania, a measure of sanity would be restored, and we could return to the Hall proper.
A bony hand waved towards some vague distance. "A little island – Outer Hebrides. Ancestral seat of the Bendrays. Godforsaken place; nothing but rock and seaweed. Nothing wrong with seaweed, mind you. A lot of money to be made from seaweed. That was the first commission I ever gave your father… seaweed."
He appeared to have drifted off into some recess of memory. Oblivious to my presence, he gazed abstractedly in front of himself.
I prodded him: "Seaweed, you say…"
"Seaweed?" He turned his fierce glare one me. "Bugger seaweed; filthy stuff. Keep your mind on the important matters. We can contact beings from another world – think of it! The things they could tell us: Science; the Secrets of the Universe… and more, perhaps! We have but to signal them. And they'll come to us."
"Who will?"
He rolled his eyes at my obtuseness. "I've told you: those beings from other worlds. Who already have observed our puny, earthbound comings and goings, in the lenses of their powerful observatories and close at hand. I tell you again: they are but waiting for our sign."