The Weird Company Read Online Free PDF Page A

time on my watch as 0430.
    It wasn’t long before I was deeply asleep and dreaming. I have always had the most vivid of dreams, and this one was no different. I was in the lab proctoring a class of students through a review of various aquatic microorganisms. We began with a selection of centric diatoms reviewing various species and noting the radial symmetries of their frustules. I wrote the word RADIAL horizontally on the chalkboard. With the next set of slides we examined the water flea daphnia and made special reference to their ability to reproduce both parthenogenically and sexually. As I said these things I wrote the word PARTHENOGENIC vertically on the chalkboard using the R in Radial as in a crossword puzzle. I then moved the class on to examining samples of the photosynthetic cyanobacteria Nostoc, which when exposed to rain has an unusual capability of swelling up to conspicuous proportions, earning it the name star jelly or the rot of the stars. Once again I wrote on the chalkboard, this time using the existing P to spell out PHOTOSYNTHETIC. As I did this I heard a dog barking outside. I asked one of the students to close the window before realizing that there was no window to close. We moved on to another slide, this one of a tardigrade or water bear, an eight-limbed creature that fed on a variety of other aquatic species including algae, bacteria and even other aquatic animals. The tardigrades were notable for being cryptobiotic, able to enter into an ametabolic state in response to unfavorable environmental conditions. As I wrote out CRYPTOBIOTIC using the C in PHOTOSYNTHETIC, the barking dog found friends and the sound filled up the room. The last slide was that of a lichen, a symbiotic composite of a fungus and an algae. As I wrote out SYMBIOTIC using the B in CRYPTOBIOTIC, I had to scream to make myself heard over the dogs. I was telling the students something important, something about the five words I had written on the board. These words were important, more important than the dogs barking. They were so loud, those dogs, they made it hard to think about what I was saying, but I knew it was important. Radial. Parthenogenic. Photosynthetic. Symbiotic. Cryptobiotic. Five words. Five characteristics of what? The Elder Things that Wilmarth had dared to name the Q’Hrell? Their morphology was radial, and the wings certainly could have had been capable of photosynthesis. Many species reproduced parthenogenically, why not the Elder Things? The strange body structure, the independent systems, implied a kind of symbiosis. It all fit except for one word. The dogs were howling now, screaming, yelping in fear and agony. Cryptobiotic meant what exactly? The ability to assume an ametabolic state in response to unfavorable environmental conditions, indefinitely until conditions improved. What conditions? I damned those dogs. What conditions? Toxins, yes. Anoxia, yes. Anhydric, yes. Cold . . . yes! For how long? I asked myself. Indefinitely. What did that mean? A year? A decade? A century? A thousand years? A million? The cave had been sealed up more than thirty million years ago. Could an organism enter into a cryptobiotic state and remain that way for thirty million years? It was impossible; it was madness to think such things. The dogs went silent and where they left off I began.
    I woke up screaming.
    There was a thud against the side of the plane and then something slowly slid down the hull whimpering in the way only an injured dog can whimper. Acting on instinct, I ran to the hatch, undid the lock and flung the metal door wide open. What I had intended to do I cannot remember, but I know what I saw. It took a moment for me to comprehend what was happening, at first I thought it was just the dogs, for they were scattered about the camp. Some were clearly dead, their bodies contorted into shapes inconsistent with life. Others were bloody and beaten, dragging themselves across the ice with broken legs, broken backs and