Dark Matter by Brett Adams Page B

creature unearthed was
the memory of a bag Rasputin owned. It lay crumpled in the dark by a tunnel
wall. A year before, the bag had carried books bought at a library sale, among
them Churchill’s history. He remembered its weight knocking against his hip as
he had walked to a bus stop. It had been peak hour, and the bus had been full.
He had stood, clinging to a rail for dear life while the driver flung the bus
around corners.
    Soon the creature halted again, and
Rasputin saw, snagged on a rock jutting into the tunnel, a handkerchief. He
smiled, remembering how on the bus he had wondered if he should risk retrieving
it from his pocket, and whether the world was ready for it. A day of heavy use,
thanks to a cold, had left it sodden.
    The creature strained forward, and was soon
slavering over a bright orange packet. Rasputin tasted cough lollies. He
remembered sucking one in bed while he read Churchill. He had torn the lid off
the lolly box for a bookmark.
    With that realisation, they entered a room.
The smell of mildew was strongest here. He looked, and saw something lying on
the floor in the flickering light, amid a tangle of straw.
    He had found the book.
    “Good boy,” he said, and bent to retrieve
it.
    But when he opened it, its covers flopped
apart to reveal a bare spine. It was empty. His elation died.
    Was that all he remembered of it, the
cover? Nothing of its content?
    He scanned the grotto again. Torchlight lit
all but its corners, where darkness gathered. He stooped to peer at the floor,
at what he had taken to be wisps of straw. He plucked a piece from the ground
and, holding it near the light, discovered it was not straw but a sliver of
paper. Along its length ran a fragment of text, a handful of words blotted in
places by ink:
     
    “—repair ****** the errors of former years
and thus govern, ******* with the needs and glory of man, the awful unfolding
science of the future.”
     
    A smile split his face. This was from the
preface, the very sentence he had told Jordy struck him, that the Allies having
endured blitz and battle had reached the brink of an abyss even more
terrifying: the nuclear age.
    But where was the rest of it?
    He turned to look at the creature. Its
limbs had stilled. Though it held the torch aloft, its posture was apologetic.
It looked to Rasputin how a bloodhound might look had it missed the fox but
caught the frog.
    He held the strip of paper closer to the
flame to see if by its light he might discern the missing words. A muted glow
struggled through the yellow paper, but only made the blots darker by
comparison, gaps in the sentence his memory would not yield.
    He became aware of Jordy in his peripheral
vision, out there in the real world. He seemed in stasis, standing by the
bookshelf from where he had sent Rasputin into the bowels of his memory.
    With a stab of anger he thrust the paper
into the torch flame. It ignited and flared, coruscating like an arc welder.
    A blaze ran down the creature’s arm,
consuming its fur, and engulfing it in a white bonfire. Rasputin smelled
burning hair, but the creature was silent. As the bonfire shrank and grew more
intense, he was forced to shield his eyes. Through slitted fingers he saw the
errand carrier collapse into a brilliant orb floating by his side.
    For the first time, Rasputin wanted out of
his brain.
    But now a greater transformation began. The
brilliance of the orb washed the walls. Its light smote the stone like furnace
fire. The stone began to sweat, and soon cataracts of molten lava poured
upwards and down, fleeing the horizon, dissolving imperfections, obliterating
edges.
    No sooner had he realised the once-square
room had become a sphere, than the fluid slowed. It grew sluggish and congealed,
and as it cooled, its colour slid from red, to orange, yellow and white,
dimming as it went. The sphere was becoming translucent.
    It was then Rasputin felt the first real
tremor of fear. Beyond those walls, something moved. His imagination was