The Boggart and the Monster Read online

  Jenny leaned forward suddenly to another screen, and made a small surprised gurgling sound. “What’s that?” she said.

  The screen was white and glowing, with a shifting, indefinable pattern moving through it.

  “That’s the picture from the video,” Harold said, puzzled. “But Sydney’s two hundred feet under, it’s blacker than the pit down there — how can his video camera be picking up light? Have you turned the strobes on?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s fading,” Jenny said. “Look. It’s going away.”

  * * *

  THE BOGGART WAS TIRED of trying to remember; he gave it up. The glow that had made him visible died away, and he poured himself once more all the way around Sydney’s complex frame, curious, investigating. He came to the junction point where the long tether wire from the parent ship made its way into Sydney’s computer. And because boggarts are made up of a collection of electrical impulses of many varied kinds, he put himself into the wire.

  Once he was there, he was instantly everywhere in Sydney’s system: seeing, hearing and understanding every impulse that came in through the instrumentation, and blocking out any instructions that came from Harold’s switchboard in the parent ship. In effect, the Boggart became Sydney’s brain.

  * * *

  ON THE CONTROL PANEL in the research ship, the screen fed by Sydney’s video camera was dark again. Jenny pressed a switch, and wrote down some figures on her clipboard pad.

  “Back to normal,” she said. “It was just one of those flare aberrations, I guess. Won’t affect the regular functions. I’ll check out the tube when it comes back in.”

  Harold grunted. His eyes were fixed on a different screen, the green square fed by Sydney’s laser scan, which was almost filled by an image of the top of Nessie’s huge body. “Have Sydney back off a bit,” he said. “He’s too close — I want to see the creature’s whole outline. How deep is he?”

  “Two hundred and fifty feet,” Jenny said. She turned a dial. The image of Nessie’s back spread to fill the whole screen.

  “Wrong way,” Harold said.

  “But I’m turning it the right way.” Jenny frowned, and twiddled the dial. “Come on, Sydney,” she said. “Pay attention.”

  The image on the screen bounced a little, as if the scanner were giving a little skip. Then it moved sideways, to the edge of Nessie’s back and then away from it, and instead a cluster of large fish appeared on the screen. They stayed there, swimming at a slow, stately pace, as the scanner followed them.

  “Salmon at two hundred and fifty feet?” said Jenny. “That’s amazing!”

  “Never mind the salmon,” Harold said irritably. “Get the ROV under control. It’s not programmed to go off chasing fish.”

  Jenny began pressing buttons and turning other dials, but nothing happened. The image started to bounce again, moving up and down over the stately swimming fish. Harold moaned, and ran his hands through his thinning grey hair, turning it into an even wilder halo than before. He jumped to his feet, crossed the cabin to the hatchway, and yelled to the deck. “Chuck!”

  Several figures were waiting patiently on the deck, swathed in bright orange parkas against the rain. One of them raised an arm.

  “Put Adelaide over the side!” Harold shouted. “Right now! And watch her winch like a hawk — we’ve got a communications problem with Sydney!”

  Chuck waved his arm, shouted muffled instructions, and from the second set of davits on the deck the second yellow ROV splashed into the loch. It vanished below the surface, leaving a swirl of grey water, and from a turning winch on the deck the thin, tough fiber-optic cable that was its lifeline went after it, down and down.

  * * *

  TOURISTS STILL LINED the road along the north side of Loch Ness, peering out from under umbrellas and rain hats at the little flotilla of research boats, watching hungrily for a return of the Monster.

  “They say it tipped a boat over!”

  “And roared like a lion! I never heard of it roaring before!”

  “They say it was huge! Bigger than a dinosaur!”

  “What d’you mean, ‘bigger than’? It was a dinosaur!”

  “They say —”

  The collision was forgotten; the only remaining sign of it a little heap of melting Skootchy Bars lying in the gutter. Bobby’s ice cream van had limped away, and Mr. Maconochie’s Rover showed no wounds worse than some scraped paint and a dent in the right front mud-guard. With the permission and help of an amiable policeman who had stopped to check the accident, Mr. Maconochie had driven the car temporarily up onto the grassy verge of the road where no cars were normally allowed. There they all sat now, he and Miss Urquhart, Emily and Tommy and Jessup, ignoring all traffic and passers-by, thinking of boggarts. Each one sat in silence, waiting, hoping, calling without words to Nessie.

  And down on the mud in the loch below, Nessie stirred, hearing them.

  But the Boggart was hearing no one. Frolicking through the deep water inside Sydney’s small powerful frame, he was having the time of his life. For the first ten minutes, gradually discovering the maneuverability of the little submersible, he played as he did whenever he took on the shape of a seal: diving, looping, speeding through the water, chasing the fish. Up in the research boat, the Kalling-Pindle team was appalled.

  “Sydney’s computer’s gone crazy!” Jenny said in anguish to Harold, staring at the dials. “He’s roaring about at twenty knots! He’s turning somersaults! I didn’t know ROVs could do things like that!”

  This, however, was only the beginning. The Boggart was suddenly a small child let out of school, released from all discipline, letting off steam. For a boggart, he had been living under great pressure since he had come to Loch Ness. After a lifetime of total self-indulgent freedom, with no relationships but those based on mischief and trickery, he had found himself caught in a state of constant concern about someone other than himself — about Nessie. A sense of responsibility was not something he was used to. It was serious; it was exhausting.

  But now he was inside Sydney; now he had a toy, and he pushed his feelings of responsibility entirely away. For a little while now, he could be a boggart again, and play.

  When he was bored with merely zooming and somersaulting through the water, he began to pour himself into the devices through which the sturdy little ROV communicated with the research ship: the video camera fitted behind a heavy glass panel in Sydney’s bow, and the laser-scan device strapped to Sydney’s back. The camera came first; investigating it, the Boggart sniffed disdainfully when he found it could transmit only the pictures that it saw. That was something he could put right at once.

  “Harold!” said Jenny nervously, up in the research ship control room. “Sydney’s video screen is doing its own thing again!”

  Harold was watching the control screens that were receiving images from the other Remotely Operated Vehicle, Adelaide, as it coasted down through the water in pursuit of the Monster. He glanced reluctantly across at the screen in front of Jenny, and then blinked.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “I think it’s a daffodil,” said Jenny.

  “A daffodil?”

  “Now it’s a tulip,” Jenny said unhappily. “Five tulips, all in a row. Pink ones.”

  Harold got to his feet and stood looking over her shoulder. In quick succession, the little video screen showed them a clump of white narcissus, a close-up of a red anemone, and a bright blue cluster of grape hyacinths. The Boggart, down in the cold depths of the loch, was feeling nostalgic for spring.

  “I don’t believe this!” Harold said.

  “And it’s summer — they aren’t even in season,” said Jenny. She reached up to her shoulder, and began tugging nervously at the end of her black ponytail. The fingers of her other hand darted to and fro over the buttons of the computer keyboard that sent instructions to Sydney, and the computer paid no attention at all.

  “What moron h
as fed a bulb catalog into Sydney’s memory?” said Harold. “Was it you?”

  “Of course not!” Jenny said crossly. Fingers flying over the keyboard, she began hunting for flower pictures in the computer, but by now the Boggart had grown bored with spring flowers and was wishing he could be with his favorite butt for tricks, William.

  “That’s a dog!” said Harold, staring at the screen.

  “A golden Lab,” Jenny said. She gave a slightly hysterical giggle. “Maybe now it’s the Kennel Club listings. Next we’ll get a poodle, and a greyhound, and a cocker spaniel.”

  But all they saw, out of the Boggart’s memory, was a front view of William, with his big brown eyes and golden eyelashes, and the long red tongue dangling over the white teeth. He looked as though he were laughing at them. Then William vanished, and the screen was abruptly dark.

  Down in the loch, the Boggart, hovering deep inside Sydney the ROV, had seen a light approaching him through the water. He forgot instantly what he was doing, and zoomed up to investigate — and as if he were approaching a mirror he saw Adelaide, the twin ROV, coming down toward him. Two headlamps were beaming out from the front of her yellow frame. Delighted, the Boggart moved to meet her, but Adelaide paid him no attention. Her video camera picked him up briefly, and then passed him by. With her lights reaching out into the darkness, she sailed on through the water on the quest for which she had been programmed: the pursuit of the Monster.

  “She’s right by Sydney!” said Harold, gazing now at the screen showing him the picture from Adelaide’s video camera. “Let’s turn her round and see what’s wrong with him.” He pressed switches and buttons, and the picture swung around to pick up Sydney again.

  Jenny and Harold both peered intently at the closeup, as the picture showed every side of the little ROV.

  “Looks perfectly normal,” Harold said.

  “I sure don’t see any damage.”

  “It must just be the — whoops!”

  Below them, the Boggart, looking out through Sydney’s video-eye, watched Adelaide slowly circling, her headlamps illuminating him, her video camera dutifully recording his image and sending it up along her tether-wire to Harold’s screen. He chuckled, waiting for her to finish moving around him. Clearly this was some solemn dance performed by ROV vessels while under the water: a kind of ritual communication, suitable for machines. But it was rather dull; it needed a little jazzing up, a touch of boggartry. He watched as Adelaide circled back to the place where she had started. And then he dived at her.

  Harold had no time to work out what to do to Adelaide’s controls. All he saw was the flashing image of Sydney — controlled of course by the Boggart — crossing and recrossing the screen, and a whirling as Adelaide’s camera itself spun crazily about. Not in a hundred years could he have been brought to believe that one of his Remotely Operated Vehicles was dancing with the other, to the tune of an old Scottish reel called “Highland Mary.”

  Inside Sydney, the Boggart whirled happily round and round Adelaide, singing as he went. He was enjoying himself more than he had for weeks.

  But by the time he finally grew bored with his dancing, and the picture on the screen in the research vessel slowed out of its frenzy, something else had happened below the surface of the loch that Harold Pindle would never have predicted. His two roaming ROVs were inextricably tied together, beyond all separating. In the whirling of his dance around Adelaide, the Boggart had bound Sydney’s tether tightly to hers in a kind of braid.

  Pausing, the Boggart glanced back at the lumpy intertwined line of the two joined cables. He contemplated it, still humming “Highland Mary,” and giggled.

  Up in the research boat, Chuck came bursting into the control cabin from the deck, dripping raindrops everywhere from his slicker and his wet hair. “What’s happening? Both the tethers have quit paying out — have you told the ROVs to stop? Or have they hit the Monster?”

  Harold said despondently, “We’re not telling these two babies anything any more — just look at that!”

  In defiance of any other instructions given them, Sydney’s video screen was permanently showing a picture of Adelaide, Adelaide’s a picture of Sydney. As they watched, the two pictures began to bounce cheerfully. Like a child turning cartwheels, the Boggart was turning the two ROVs over and over in the water; when he moved Sydney now, Adelaide had to follow along.

  Jenny said, “I think their lines have tangled together.”

  Chuck glared at her. “Impossible!”

  “I’m not saying it was your fault.”

  “I’m in charge of the cables and winches and I tell you it’s impossible! Those two lines couldn’t get across each other unless there was a diver down there moving them deliberately.”

  “Stop!” said Harold, standing up abruptly, and narrowly avoiding bumping his head on the roof of the cabin. “Shut up, both of you! This is hopeless — we’ll have to bring them back. Try sending a recall, Jen — and Chuck, go start winching them in. Slowly. Gently. Carefully. ”

  Chuck snorted disdainfully at this unnecessary last admonition, and stalked out. While Jenny tried hopelessly to send instructions to the computerized minds of Sydney and Adelaide, muffled commands echoed down from the deck. The two winches sending out lifelines to the ROVs came to a stop, then reversed direction and begin drawing the lines in.

  And the Boggart, two hundred feet down in the water of the loch, felt the steady gentle pressure and resented it. He was enjoying his new game of playing submarine; it was fun, and he felt he deserved some fun, and was not ready to give it up. As the lines pulled toward the surface, and Sydney and Adelaide began to move, he pulled them back again.

  Sydney and Adelaide came to a halt once more. The Boggart chuckled. Then he let out an underwater war whoop, and like two small square torpedoes, Sydney and Adelaide took off in the opposite direction from the boat.

  Among the groups of tourists looking down at the loch from the side of the road, waiting hopefully with their cameras in case the Monster might surface again, there were cries of surprise and alarm as Harold Pindle’s research ship suddenly shot into motion and whizzed erratically across the water, on a collision course toward his patiently hovering line of small boats.

  ELEVEN ANGUS CAMERON HAD BEEN very busy in the last few hours. By two separate special messengers, arranged at huge cost which he hoped would be reimbursed, he had sent his first pictures of the Monster to the Glasgow Herald and his first videotape to Scottish Television, with a careful stipulation that he himself was to keep the world rights of each. Since there had been no time to process either the film or the tape, he had no idea whether his pictures were hopelessly blurred or amazingly clear, but his hopes were high.

  And the hopes were justified, for in Glasgow his editors were already composing a front page headed MONSTER! with a large magnificent photograph of Nessie rearing up and showing his teeth, and a byline in big print: SPECIAL EYEWITNESS REPORT BY ANGUS CAMERON. And his video film was to be the lead story of the six o’clock television news, at stations not only in Scotland but in England, Ireland, France, Germany and the U.S.A. As a result, crews from other television and radio stations were already converging on Loch Ness from assorted parts of the globe, by train and car and plane, not to mention three assorted helicopters that were whirring their way southwest from Inverness.

  Angus did not yet know any of this. He was sitting in a field overlooking the loch, still draped in cameras and binoculars under his rain gear. His gaze was fixed alternately on two things: the loch, for any possible further appearance of the Monster, or interesting actions by Harold Pindle’s little scientific fleet; and a piece of grassy land just beyond his field, bordering the road, where his son Tommy was standing with the Canadian children Emily and Jessup Volnik, the lawyer Mr. Maconochie and old Miss Urquhart from the heather nursery. Angus had a sense of unease about this group. They had no apparent connection with the Monster, except for having been among the first people to see it, but they aroused his
reporter’s intuition. He felt, for no good reason, that they were up to something.

  He waited and watched, and the rain trickled down his collar inside his parka. But nothing happened — until suddenly, down on the loch, Harold Pindle’s boat appeared to go mad.

  * * *

  STANDING NOW in the fine rain, to stretch legs cramped from long sitting in the Rover, Emily, Tommy and Jessup looked out over the water, silently calling Nessie. Miss Urquhart and Mr. Maconochie were back in the car, but the children knew that they were doing the same thing; they felt a particular closeness, as if all five of them were a small wonderful choir singing the same sequence of notes in perfect unison.

  Nessie, where are you? We’re here, we’ll keep you going, if you’ll just get out of that shape and come where it’s safe. . . .

  Miss Urquhart opened the car door suddenly, and got out. She called, “He can hear us! Do you feel it? He’s moving, he’s closer than he was — I think he’s on his way —”

  But all at once they heard faint shouts from the loch, and saw Harold’s research ship shoot crazily out across the water as if it intended to ram one of the smaller boats around it. They gaped, in an amazed silence. Even in a world where they had encountered boggarts and monsters, they felt that what they were watching now must be impossible.

  On the boat, Chuck was battling for control of a helm that refused to answer, and in the control cabin below, Harold and Jenny fought for balance, and clutched at loose pieces of equipment as the boat pitched and tossed to and fro.

  “What’s pulling us?”

  “It’s those crazy damn ROVs!”

  “Maybe it’s the Monster!”

  And below them, the Boggart, cackling with laughter, was shooting through the water in Sydney’s powerful metal frame, with Adelaide held fast beside it so that the two combined ROV tethers made a wonderfully durable towline, pulling Harold’s boat. Like a thoughtless rider on a roaring jet-ski he caromed through the line of quivering smaller boats, weaving the boat in and out of them slalom-fashion, terrifying every crew but never brushing a single hull.