The Daughter of the Night Read online

  'Yes I can see it, but so what? With that much fat stuck on your front, it's bound to wobble every now and then.'

  'Oh Daddy,' said Unity, 'How often do I have to explain to you that my boobs are not just lumps of fat. And they're normally quite firm as well. You can feel them if you like.'

  'No! I mean, no, I'll take your word for it that these 'boobs', wait a minute, isn't that a kind of bird?'

  'No, Daddy, that's a booby. Totally different. A bird is one booby, whereas I have two boobies.' Cthulhu was horribly confused,

  'First you said it was different, and now you're saying it's the same. This is the first time you've mentioned anything about birds. Since when have you given up your monomania about orgasms and taken to ornithology?'

  'Oh Daddy, you can be so dim. I have boobs. Here they are.' She pointed. 'While this,' and, to Cthulhu's horror, and evincing a squeak of dismay from Nina, she reached into what little bodice she had, and pulled one of the things out for inspection, 'While being technically speaking a boob, is commonly known as a boobie. Which is not a bird at all. Are you sure you don't want to feel it? It gives me a thrill, and I'm told it's . . . enough . . . to . . . give . . . some . . . people . . . an . . . org . . . oh Daddy, I'm so unhappy,' she wailed and then started to cry again. Cthulhu didn't know what to do. He had been led to believe, by a Fungus he had once got drunk with, that humans found consolation in touching one another, and, given that the Fungi, as a race, had a strange liking for talking to humans, or at least to the disembodied brains of humans, as opposed to just eating them or squashing them or hybridising with them, or building abstract sculptures representing philosophical ideas out of them (the Elder Things had some very strange, at least to Cthulhu's way of thinking, ideas about what constituted fun), this was probably all too true. But say he did touch her. Where? He was not, whatever she may say about it giving her a thrill, going to go within a mile of those – 'boobs' – but perhaps a gentle pat on the shoulder with one of his more delicate tentacles would do the trick. So, with great trepidation and even greater misgivings, he reached out and brushed her shoulder. And he was right to have misgivings, because she grabbed the tentacle and started to rub it around on the left, ahem, boobie, while saying,

  'Oh that's good, yes, that's the stuff. The suckers really do it for me. Oh yes, yes, yes! Hey, am I about to? Oh no, drat.' During which Nina had been, as far as Cthulhu could tell, in as much as he had any of his mind to spare from being nauseated, praying to some individual whom she addressed as 'Lord', which, he reflected, was a bit strange, as the only person of that description within several light-years was him, and she normally called him 'father'. Remembering his little-used title, he reminisced for a moment about his friend Edward II's sad end. But after all, given the general intolerance of the unusual at the time, it was not surprising that a king who had given a peerage to a giant green monster who, during the ceremony, ate half the Privy Council, had ended up with a poker up the back-side. Shame really. Cthulhu was going on to consider the ends some of his other friends had come to – Captain Ahab, who took his desire to be a Deep One a little too far, Ivan the Terrible, who was sound on the subject of anthropophagy but had an unhealthy interest in sexual reproduction that almost rivalled Unity's, and, of course, dear old H P – when he felt a tugging on his tentacle and realised that Unity was trying to get his attention. Somewhat tetchily, he said,

  'What? Isn't it enough that you use me to turn yourself on?' She dismissed this:

  'Oh don't be silly, daddy, that wasn't turning myself on, it just made me a bit happy. No, I want to tell you about my boobs.' Cthulhu sighed.

  'You already have. Far more than I want to know. You know child . . .'

  'Well listen. The thing is, they always do that wobble thing when somebody has said something, or I've thought something, that can help me get what I want. I don't know why. If I was Nina, I'd attribute it to a higher power, but I know there isn't one – unless perhaps Granddad Yoggie . . .' Cthulhu pondered this. Yog Sothoth was averse to her company, but he had always taken an unusual interest in the girl, unusual in that he was an asexual congeries of bubbles who apparently, or so he had once tried to explain to a befuddled Cthulhu, was fed by the pure energy of fundamental isness, and so existed because he existed, which Cthulhu had found a bit deep. So perhaps he did send her messages, though it had to be said, doing it by vibrating those – things – seemed a bit elliptical. Then, Cthulhu, like the other Great Old Ones tended to be quite direct. If you want to communicate with humanity, he always thought, do it with extreme prejudice, so there's no way they can mistake your message for a bizarre natural event. Intrigued, Cthulhu said,

  'Maybe so. Yog Sothoth's a strange chap. When all's said and done, you're bound to get a bit peculiar if you're responsible for an entire multiverse. I mean, look at Heliogabolus. He only ruled bits of Europe, and he was mad as a hatter. Even Dagon thought he was a bit odd, and coming from Dagon that means he was so far into left field that if he went any further left he'd fall of the edge of the Universe. I always say . . .'

  'Daddy?'

  'Yes, Unity?'

  'Don't ramble. It's a bad habit of yours.'

  'Sorry. So, about your, er,'

  'Boobs. I mean, come on, are you really saying you didn't enjoy fondling them?' Cthulhu really, really didn't want to answer this, so he turned a darker shade of green and said,

  'Well, er . . .' Unity smiled knowingly and said,

  'I thought as much,' which showed how empathic she was. 'So, my boobs wobbled when you said . . . what was it you said?' Cthulhu thought he could justifiable become tetchy,

  'Oh really, my dear, how can you expect me to remember? I'm a busy squid-thing, and I'm tired, and we've been talking about birds and your appendages and all kinds of things. I really have no idea.'

  'Right, then we're buggered, aren't we?' Which wasn't a way of putting it that Cthulhu was particularly happy with, but then he was even less happy when she continued, 'Hey, that's an idea. Perhaps I should give buggery a go? Daddy, do you think I'd be more likely to have an orgasm if I let them bugger me? I always used to leave the ones who suggested it outside for the Fungi to take away, but maybe that’s been my big mistake.' And, unlikely as it may sound, so averse to answering this was Cthulhu, that he was actually happy to hear Nina say, in a rather smug tone,

  'I know what he was talking about.' Unity did a double take.

  'Eh?'

  'I said, I know what he was talking about. He was claiming, falsely, as I know, for the Lord is my guide, that there is no God, and that the only powers are himself and his blasphemous crew.'

  'What?' said Cthulhu. 'You mean me and Shub Niggurath and Dagon?'

  'And Hastur.' And lo, as Unity excitedly pointed out,

  'Look, it's happening again.' And indeed it was. It was as if an earthquake was happening deep within those mounds of flesh, so great was the perturbation therein. 'Isn't it funny,' she said, 'Apparently if it happens when I'm making love with someone, it really turns them on. It's a great way to get people to do what I want them to. So long as it's something they can do while making love to me, that is, which does limit things a bit. Perhaps I need to get more adventurous about the places I do it. What do you think, daddy?' Cthulhu gave this serious consideration and said,

  'Well, my dear, given that you've had sex with the Chancellor of the Exchequer during Prime Minister's Question Time, I don't really think you can get more public. And then there was that time you stowed away on a space shuttle and we all got to see you and the entire crew at it. It was weeks before the others stopped ribbing me about it. So, no, I think you're quite uninhibited enough as it is.'

  'Thank you daddy, that's most kind. Now, what were we talking about?'

  'Your – boobs?'

  'Oh yes. Aren't they great? A lot of women with very big boobs just don't look right, they look more like boobs with a woman attached, but though these are big, I reckon they suit me perfectly, don't you?'

 
'Er, I thought we were actually talking about . . .'

  'And I've always thought that if you've got good stuff, you should show it off, whatever Miss Purity here thinks. Not that I care what she thinks. I hate her and I wish she'd go away.'

  'Yes, indeed, my dear, but weren't we talking about . . .'

  'I mean, when I'm trying to get intimate with someone it just doesn't help having this mysterious voice saying that we're doomed to Hellfire because of what we're doing, which is ridiculous, because it isn't as if there's such a place anyway. After all, you do air, Auntie Shubby does earth and Uncle Dagon does water. There's nobody for fire, so there's no Hellfire. Which means that . . .'

  'There is, was, I don't know, someone for fire.'

  'Eh? What? Who? There's only three of you Great Old Ones, aren't there?'

  'Four, you're forgetting Hastur.'

  'Hey, look,' she almost shouted, jumping up and down in her excitement, 'It's happening again. It happens whenever you mention Hastur! Oh, wow, yes definitely. Oh Daddy, that means me having an orgasm must have something to do with Hastur. Ooh, it does feel funny. How do I find out about Hastur?'

  And with this Cthulhu saw his chance. He loved, liked, tolerated his daughter, but 'Are You Being Disembowelled?' was on in ten minutes, so, craftily, he said,

  'What you want to do is go and talk to Dagon and Shub Niggurath. They knew Hastur – sorry – much better than I did.'

  'So where do I find them?'

  'This time – I'd try The Ancient Shoggoth on Akeley Street. But better be quick about it, because if I know those two, they'll be passing out soon.' Unity picked up her handbag and prepared to depart.

  'Well Daddy, it's been nice seeing you again, and thanks for the help. I'll see you again soon – unless you want to come too?'

  'No, my dear,' he said quickly, heading off this threat to his televisual pleasure, 'They're very much into carousing, and you can't really carouse on orange juice. It just isn't the same somehow.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry. I know how you used to like a good carouse. Well, in that case, I'll see you soon.' With which she left Cthulhu to sink into his usual state of contented, mindless sloth

  Chapter 2: Dagon and Shub Niggurath Drink and Drivel

  'You know what, you know what, you know what?' said Dagon, very, very carefully levitating his glass, as it had got to that point in the evening when it was oh so much easier to spill the precious fluid than to actually swallow it.

  'No, I don't. What?' said Shub Niggurath, staring unhappily into her drink, which was undulating in a strangely eldritch way as she stirred it with her swizzle stick. And, with one of those feats of logic common to the very drunk and continental philosophers, she said, 'But what I want to know is what is this shit here?'

  'What shit?'

  'This shit.' Shub Niggurath said, removing the swizzle stick from the fluid, for want of a better term, which glooped rather disturbingly and gave off an odour of rotting artichokes, then pointing said stick, rather unsteadily, at it, so as to make it clear to Dagon to which shit it was she was referring. There being so much of it about these days, what with the stars being wrong, not to mention being a single mother trying to bring up seventeen thousand four hundred and sixty nine (at the last count) children. Dagon tried to focus on the epicentre of their discussion, discovered that he was so drunk he had gone cross-eyed and, after a certain amount of experimentation, gave the substance a damned good looking at with his left eye. After the initial, getting to know you, inspection, he showed clear signs of surprise. Shub Niggurath was one of his only two friends, and he would hate to think she was losing her marbles, but, as a second examination conclusively proved,

  'That's not shit.'

  'Oh yeah? You just taste it and we'll see if you're still so certain.'

  'No, what I mean is, shit's brown, and that's a sort of greenish-greyish-pinkish-yellow. So it can't be shit.' Shub Niggurath rolled her eyes in despair, and then did it again, because it was that time of the evening, and simple repetitive tasks, such as bored her to tears all day, now came under the heading of jolly good fun. Once she had got bored, or, to be more accurate, her eyes had begun to hurt, she stopped rolling them and said,

  'Azathoth save me from literal-minded idiots.'

  'He can't?'

  'Eh? Why not?'

  'Well, he hasn't got a mind has he? So how could he save you from people with minds. He wouldn't know what one was, so he'd probably end up saving you from rabbits or lung-fish, which wouldn't do you any good at all.' Shub Niggurath drew herself up to her full height of four feet and six inches and said,

  'I resent that. I've known some perfectly splendid rabbits.'

  'And for that matter,' said Dagon in an annoyingly triumphalist tone that he had a habit of adopting when he (usually mistakenly) thought he had scored a point, 'I've known some very personable lungfish. Went down a treat.' At which point, the rules of argumentation being different if you are very, very drunk, rather than hauling off and thumping one another, they both started to giggle, then guffaw, and then, when they had quieted down and drained their drinks, Dagon said, 'Come on, let me get you another – what was that?' Shub Niggurath looked suspiciously at the list of cocktails behind the bar and, judging from the way she was muttering and counting on her trotters, seemed to be doing higher mathematics of some sort. But eventually she came to a conclusion and said,

  'I think it was a Colour out of Space. It certainly looked like it. But if you don't mind, this round I'll have a Plateau of Leng. I feel in the mood for a nice cool drink.'

  So, Dagon, eventually, attracted the attention of the Fungus behind the bar and ordered a Plateau of Leng and a pint of Old Unspeakable then said, as if struck for the very first time by an entirely original idea,

  'Do you know what, you know what, you know what?'

  'No, I don't know what. Ha!' laughed Shub Niggurath, 'I made a funny joke. Did you hear that? It's funny because “no” sounds like “know” and that means it . . .'

  'Yes, very funny,' said Dagon, 'Now do you mind if we get back to the topic of conversation?'

  'Not at all sir. Be my guest. You just go on and say what you have to say. I'm all ears. Well, I'm not, I'd have to be a Shoggoth to be all ears, but you know what I mean, and what I always say is that when you've got a friend you need never run out of people to eat, not even if your children are all crying out for . . .'

  'Will you shut up?' shouted Dagon. Shub Niggurath tried to hide behind one of her trotters, but in her state of advanced inebriation this was not a wise move and she ended up on the floor, looking around in indignation and saying,

  'Who pushed me? Someone pushed me! My balance is as steady as a rock. Someone must have pushed me. Bastards. You're all bastards,' she informed the regulars, who, as they were regulars, weren't especially offended, as this happened every night. They'd probably have been more upset if she hadn't ended up shouting abuse at them for no particular reason. Their favourite was when she saw invisible Martians and tried to catch them with her glass, but the old falling-down-drunk trick was good for a laugh too. Well, unless you were Dagon, who was a very prim drunk, perhaps because, being more than half fish, drinking was first nature to him, while if you are an animal who subsists on pretty well anything up to and including barbed wire, alcohol tends to be a bit rough on the old synapses. So, Dagon pulled Shub Niggurath up and said,

  'I don't know why I come out with you, I really don't.' Which was a lie. As already mentioned, he had precisely two friends, one of whom was in the final stages of alcohol addiction and the other of whom had gone way beyond the final stages of television addiction. Sure, he ruled millions of Deep Ones, but they were all so damned servile. You can't make a friend of someone who quite literally worships you. Bloody Cthulhu had it lucky, he thought, looking after the Elder Things, who were so vague they could go for years without even noticing him. Or annoying him, more to the point. And that reminded him of something. An idea sprang into his mind, freshly minted and bran
d new.

  'You know what, you know what, you know what?' he said, as one coming out with an original conversational gambit.

  'What?'

  'I just don't get it.' Shub Niggurath considered this statement carefully. As it were, from all angles, some of them in her very own private dimension. And then, with the exaggerated caution of a bomb-disposal expert playing “eeny-meeny-miny-mo” to decide which wire to cut, she said,

  'What don't you get?'

  'Well, that's just it. I don't understand why old Cthulhu went and got himself a daughter. I mean, I know you've got,' he paused, because seventeen thousand four hundred and sixty nine-ish was far to hard a concept for him to handle right now, and substituted, 'lots of kids,' illustrated with a vapid hand gesture which ended up sending most of his drink in the direction of a rather startled congeries. 'But then, you're a fertility goddess. The fertility goddess. Am I right? Yes, I'm right. Thank you. Everyone, a big hand for the smartest man in the room.'