Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (12 page)

Hellboy opened his eyes.

The cruise ship moved on its way, all instances of happiness on board moving on as well, and seconds later the scene began to shift from reality into disbelief. The sea around the liner — previously disturbed only by the boat's wake — began to stir. Ripples turned to waves, and waves spun into swirling whirlpools that spat spray. It was as if the sea were heating up, reaching boiling point in a matter of seconds, and then something burst from its depths. Calmness gave way to violence. Peace gave way to terror. And the kraken surfaced.

A huge gray tentacle rose from the water, tip waving, feeling up the side of the ship. It twisted onto the deck and slapped down among dozens of tiny shapes fleeing its appearance. As it rose it revealed several bright red splashes on the deck. It smashed down again, swatting a dozen more vacationers into the pale timber. Several more tentacles rose to join it, and then on the other side of the ship, three more came into view. They curved up and over the superstructure, slapping, waving, punching down. Glass exploded out from windows, scurrying shapes were crushed or sent plummeting into the sea, and several lifeboats were knocked from their moorings. They fell, crashing into the churning waters, saving no one.

The liner, massive engines still powering at the waves, began to lift.

A huge gray body surfaced beside the ship, and one eye — twenty feet across — clouded as it emerged into sunlight. The tentacles still raged across the decks, exploding parts of the superstructure and sending showers of timber and metal to splash into the sea. People ran here and there, sometimes in groups, more often alone and lonely in death. Tiny shapes floated in the sea around the emerging monster. Arms waved, but the unfortunates did not remain on the surface for long; the huge swells drove them down, and when they bobbed back up, they were lifeless, drifting at the mercy of the waves.

The kraken rose further, the liner now firmly in its grasp. Only a minute had passed between the first tentacle rising and the monster basking in the sun with the liner lifted almost clear of the sea. The ship's huge turbines still pumped spray, forming a rainbow at its stern. The sea boiled as if in fury at the kraken's appearance. Or perhaps the fury was directed at the ship itself, an invader here, a construct slicing the ocean and leaving only an oily wake behind. Because as the kraken suddenly rose higher and slammed down — breaking the ship's back, crushing it, spilling passengers like innards for the carrion creatures of the sea to pick off — the waters seemed to rise in celebration. Huge spurts erupted on either side of the ship, driven by the unbearable pressures of air escaping the crushed hull. Shapes rose and fell, forming desperate waving stars with arms and legs. Several small explosions blew out sections of the hull, but the worst destruction belonged to the kraken, and the kraken alone. It shook like a crocodile trying to drown a gazelle. The liner — gleaming white and proud once, now broken and sad — came apart.

After the kraken sank back below the waves, it took only a few minutes for the remains of the great ship to go under. None of those in the BPRD conference room spoke; none of them wanted to break the silence, because there was really nothing to be said. The helicopter must have swung in close then, because the view suddenly began to change. Instead of specks seen from a distance, the survivors in the water were suddenly real people — men and women, boys and girls. A few bobbed here and there — those flung free by the kraken's thrashing tentacles — but mostly the survivors clung on to ragged wreckage. The helicopter passed low across the disaster scene. Desperate faces turned upward, pleading to be saved.

"Turn it off," Hellboy said. He had closed his eyes, but he still felt the thrum of tension in the room. "We don't need to see any more."

Tom clicked the remote control. "That's about it. The helicopter left the area because it was running out of fuel. When the U.S. Coast Guard arrived three hours later, they found fewer than a hundred survivors."

"How many were aboard?" Abe asked.

"Almost three thousand, including crew." Tom's words hung in the room, accompanied only by the whir of the projection-screen doors enclosing it once again.

Hellboy whistled, looked around the room at Abe, Tom, and Kate, but for a while none of them had anything else to say. Tom poured some water, Kate leafed through a file, and Abe stared at Hellboy, his big eyes more watery than usual.

"So what's happening?" Abe said at last.

Tom looked at Kate and nodded.

"I don't need to tell you all just how wrong this is," she said. "All the creatures we've seen here are from myth and legend. Some of them go back thousands of years — the dragon, the phoenix — while others are more modern. Gremlins are a creation of the age of technology, an excuse for machines going wrong."

"Not an excuse any longer," Hellboy said.

"Maybe. We've all seen things here, things that most people wouldn't or couldn't believe. We know what exists beyond the everyday, behind the veil, and in the dark. And some of us can shift that veil. But what we're seeing here is a complete manifestation of a whole slate of myths, not just one aspect. It's not just a dragon or a demon, it's a Who's Who of world mythology, from the beginning of time up to the modern day. It's true. It's all here. There's a hundred hours of film of these things, and both of you have just returned from brushes with creatures of myth and legend."

"Brush? More like a hammering." Hellboy flicked at his arm as if still clearing water from his skin. He struck the floor with his tail and looked down at the table, angry.

"So where does all this come from?" Kate asked.

"Memory?" Abe said. "Collective subconscious?"

"Ah, the Memory." She picked up a sheaf of notes and began flipping through them, but Hellboy could not help thinking that she was not really seeing anything written there.

"Kate?" he said. "Is it just me, or did you say that with a capital
M
?"

She looked up at Hellboy and smiled. "There's a book," she said. "It's a map to the Memory, where humankind has relegated many of the most wonderful things that ever lived — allegedly. It tells its owners how to find that place, how to dig down through layers of the veil that overshadows this world until they break into the pure darkness of that other. It's a plane in itself, the Memory, a whole level of existence. A sad place but a temporary place as well, because one day it will be touched upon from this side, and those creatures shunned by humankind will find themselves once more."

"Seems to me this Memory leaks," Hellboy said. "We've all been dealing with this stuff for years."

"Maybe it does," Kate said. "But it's only a minor leak compared with today. The book is the key and the map. Again, allegedly. It was written by a man called Zahid de Lainree, but there's no proof anywhere that he ever existed."

"A book is no proof?" Abe said.

"Even if it existed, would it be proof enough? No one has ever seen it or met anyone who has seen it, but its existence is mooted by cultures and societies all across the world. Some think it's a guilt thing; having turned their backs on creatures of imagination, people have to manufacture a belief in something that can explain what happened. Others think it's just a story made up and carried down through time, designed to explain why these creatures of myth don't exist in this world anymore."

"And you?" Hellboy asked. "You're a lady with strong opinions. What do you think?"

"Yesterday I'd have said it was make-believe. Today ... ?" She shrugged and threw down a batch of photographs that fanned out across the table: a dragon, a herd of unicorns, a still from the destruction of the ocean liner by the kraken. "Today I'm starting to wonder."

"But who could be doing this?" Abe said. "Supposing the book even exists, who would have the knowledge to know how to use it?"

"A megalomaniacal madman," Hellboy muttered. Everyone turned to look at him, and he smiled grimly. "Isn't it always? Something I talked about with Amelia Francis down in Rio. For her, the dragon she saw was impossible, so she deduced that something impossible must have created it: magic. Reverse logic, I thought, but maybe — "

"Benedict Blake," Kate whispered.

"Huh?"

Kate was not listening. As if she were alone in the room, she flipped the lid on her laptop and started tapping at the keys. A minute later she sat back, shaking her head. "But he's dead. He
must
be dead. Especially after so long ... "

"Sorry, Kate," Hellboy said. "I don't want to crash your party, but who the hell is Benedict Blake?"

"An insane genius who knew magic, and mythologies were his love," she said. "After what was done to him and his family, it'd be only a small step to add 'megalomaniac' to his resume. If he were alive, of course."

"Sometimes being dead's no obstacle. You know that," Hellboy said.

"Tell us what you know," Tom said. "I'm tired, Kate. This could well be the worst time we've ever faced. So if there's any chance that you have any idea at all about what's going on here, stand up and cough up. Because I sure as hell don't. Abe?"

"Lots of monsters, and we can't fight them all," he said.

"Hellboy?"

"Just got my ass kicked by a dragon."

Tom nodded. "Right. Kate ... the floor's all yours."

Kate Corrigan stood and opened her laptop wider. She glanced down at the screen for a few seconds, frowned, and then began.

"You have to remember, this all happened when I was a little girl. Everything I know about this man comes from reports written at the time, and you'll see from what I say in a minute that those who wrote the reports ... well, they all had their own agendas. But I've read everything I can about Benedict Blake, and I know as much about him as anyone. A few years ago he became something of a fascination for me, though I haven't really thought about him for some time." Kate scrolled down the file she was looking at and turned the computer around. "Haven't really had cause to." She showed them all a photograph of Blake, standing behind a lectern, delivering a speech or lecture.

"Looks like a regular guy," Hellboy said.

"To start with, he was. Blake was a scientist and something of a magician. The scientist side people respected; his research into cell reconstruction was second to none, and he was one of the first to catalogue the genetic changes being caused in the natural world by humankind's pollution of the planet. A sort of roster of defects, which back then was pretty much doubted or ignored by many people. The magic ... well, that made people nervous. For such a serious scientist to dabble in arcane matters meant that he was effectively ostracized from the rest of the scientific community. It didn't stop his research, or his messing with magic, but it did mean that he lost several major grants from universities and government agencies. Blake went out on his own, and in 1969 he went underground."

"Disappeared?" Abe said.

"Vanished. Nobody knew where he was or what he was doing. And in many ways, nobody really cared. His wife and two boys went with him. There was no big hoo-ha, no fuss. A few people here and there wondered where he was and what he was doing, but he soon just faded away. Another nutty professor. Those few who cared thought he'd probably had enough of the mockery and ridicule and found himself a quiet place in South America to continue his research.

"But then something happened. In 1970 certain U.S. government agencies started trying to track him down — nothing official, all covert. I've collected files and letters over the years, all of them pointing to the fact that, suddenly, the government wanted him. There are few hints about why, but one of the main reasons seems to be something to do with what he left behind. Someone took an interest in his research, broke into his home, and found something there that scared them."

"Who broke in?" Hellboy asked.

"I don't know."

"What did they find?"

"Again, I don't know. But there seems to have been a tremendous amount of energy and resources expended in an effort to track down Blake and his family. They didn't find him."

"So that's it?" Hellboy said. "It's hardly conclusive."

"That's not all," Kate said. "The best is yet to come. Blake came back of his own accord, and he'd changed. He set up home in New York, but he never seemed to go back to work. Instead he launched a bitter series of verbal assaults on the world's governments' disregard of the environment. He warned of the end of the world being brought about through pollution and climate change. He predicted holes in the ozone layer, dead seas, and the air being denuded of oxygen because of deforestation. He was raving, expounding all sorts of apocalyptic theories that most people ignored or just laughed at. On the surface he became something of an object of ridicule." She tapped her finger on the table and stared down at Blake's image on her computer.

"On the surface?" Abe said. "What about underneath?"

"Beneath the surface certain people were very scared. Blake was scorned by his peers and vilified by governments, but he kept on ranting through every possible public forum. He went from delivering lectures on TV to standing on street corners, raging about the death we were bringing down on ourselves, claiming that humanity had already wiped out most of the wonder in the world and now was ready to destroy what was left. 'Slow suffocation' is the phrase he used. He claimed that we had destroyed all that was good in the world, and now we were suffocating."

"He wasn't far off on some points," Hellboy said. "The pollution stuff, at least."

"It wasn't something that governments wanted to hear."

"Still isn't now. Too much money involved in saving the planet. So what's all this building up to? What happened to Blake?"

"Official version first," said Kate. "He killed his wife and children, burned down his house, and went off somewhere to commit suicide." She opened another computer file and showed them all the image of the blackened house, the framework a charred skeleton.

"And the true version?"

"Conjecture on my part, but I'm pretty certain that his wife was killed in a state-sanctioned hit that went wrong."