PRIMORDIUM NULLA RETRORSUM
Chapter 3
AUTHOR: TowandaBR, Thisbee, Lady Cris Krux
DISCLAIMER: All of the characters of the series "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World" are property of John Landis, Telescene, Coote/Hayes, DirecTV, New Line Television, Space, Action Adventure Network, Goodman/Rosen Productions, and Richmel Productions.
SPOILERS: After HEART OF THE STORM
To all people who keep TLW alive by any means.
Thanks for the reviews and comments: Explorer, Interested, Santa Crux.
Also in Portuguese: "PRIMORDIUM NULLA RETRORSUM"
For a long time they had imagined how their arrival to London would be likely.
The port crowded people: eminent members of the Zoological Society and of the London elite very well-dressed, men with their best suites and pending from their arms distinct ladies with their best dresses and hats.
Reporters with their writing pads and tireless hands trying to jot down all the details, photographers with their Brownie box or bellow cameras poking each other in search of the best angle for the first page picture of the great explorers' of the Challenger's expedition.
A band playing cheerful music, pricked papers being thrown over them, children raising a racket...
Instead of that, they disembarked under the cold fog of a rainy morning where only an employee of the Zoological Society awaited for them. It seemed that he was barely eighteen or nineteen years old. Wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella, he approached them.
"Professor George Challenger?" – He asked in a loud voice, trying to be heard above the noises that surrounded them.
"That's me." – The scientist said, then pointing to his companions - "And these are Lord John Roxton and Edward Malone."
"What about Professor Summerlee and Miss Krux?"
"It's only the tree of us now."
"All right. Please, follow me."
It seemed that it was the first time they saw London.
The quantity of cars in the streets had increased significantly during their absence, and also the lights and the new buildings.
Lost in their thoughts, none of them talked during the short journey.
They were taken to a hotel downtown. With no luxury, but very clean and silent, where they finally could take a shower, shave, have a delicious and full meal and sleep in beds covered with clean sheets perfumed with lavender.
Unlike Roxton and Challenger, Malone, even tired, woke up in the middle of the night seeking for refuge in a desk by the corner of the room. He lit the lamp and began to write compulsively as he had been doing since embarking in Belem.
"I want to remember everything, but it's impossible. I am writing what I can recall for maybe later trying to order all the facts in the clearest way. However no matter how much my thoughts float through everything we went through, they always insist on landing in the same place. Will she be alright?"
Ned observed his deep sleep friends.
"We talked so little during our journey back. We shared so many things together and suddenly we are acting quite as strangers. Much more silent now than when we departed, more than three years ago, to the lost world."
He stopped for an instant, because this last sentence made him think. And it was how the others meet him next morning, still eventually writing, but thinking, most of the time.
When they went down for breakfast, still in silence, they found a messenger of the Zoological Society, summoning them for a meeting on that morning.
They exchanged glances, thinking it strange. Until that moment they had not received any news about their families, any contact, anything, and the first thing that awaited them on that morning was exactly the improbable: a summoning for an immediate meeting in the Zoological Society.
The messenger was a simple bellboy anyway and he didn't have the answers that they would appreciate. They got back to their room and after quickly getting dressed they went down to follow the boy to the building of the Society.
Once again all their expectations would be frustrated. Whenever they imagined their reception in the Zoological Society, they visualized a crowd of renowned scientists bending their more elegant tuxedos. A lobby full of people, where the champagne, the scotch and the cigars were passing from hand to hand. The journalists strategically positioned at the entrance of the huge hall to photograph them from all angles, and all of them prepared so that each word the explorers could say became a front page article in all newspapers in London.
However, what they found when arriving was just the empty and silent lobby, covered in dust, as in any normal day. No public awaited them, the pulpit was empty and nothing there could remind them of the glamour that George Challenger had had exactly in that hall when he had been setting up the expedition.
A reduced group of severe-looking teachers waited for them, idly seating appreciating their tea. They were three teachers, who got up at the explorers' arrival, greeted them coldly, and asked that each one of them accompanied them, separately.
"I demand an explanation." - Challenger finally couldn't hold his rage.
His friends – and the professors – all stopped, caught by surprise due to his unexpected reaction.
"I'm sorry, Professor, but we are the ones who are here to listen to your explanations." – The professor who was in charge of Challenger hurried to punctuate, emphatically.
Challenger felt a blush wave invading his faces, and his traditional apoplexy was demonstrated, but he controlled himself in view of the apathetical glance of Roxton and Malone. The best thing seemed to remain quiet, do what the Society had drifted for, and put a soon end to all of that, so they could proceed with their lives.
They were led to the second floor of the building, where each one, accompanied of one of the teachers, was locked in a room. In that room, besides them, there was just one stenographer to take notes. And they were all alone when they understood what was happening.
"Please, tell us your full name, birth date and birthplace. "
The procedure was repeated in the three rooms as if it had been rehearsed thoroughly. The three answered to the identification questions, more and more intrigued due to the fact that such data was fully known by the Society!
"Can you tell us what happened in the last three years? "
"We arrived to the Lost World." – Challenger began – "Traveling through the Amazonian forest, we reached a continental plateau with a balloon piloted by Edward Malone."
"The balloon that I piloting was picked in an ascending flow, and when we came back to our senses again, we had crashed against an enormous tree inside of the plateau." – Malone explained in another room.
"We found all kinds of prehistoric animals in this plateau: tyrannosaurus Rex almost as high as this building, raptors faster than anything we have ever seen, and animals larger than a common house." - Roxton calmly explained for by his time.
"We had been preceded by a previous expedition, a large one, the Layton expedition." - Challenger tried to set up the jigsaw puzzle of their trip in the clearest way for their interviewers.
"And it was the leader of that expedition's daughter, Veronica, who gave us shelter during those three years that we spent at the plateau. We stayed at the Treehouse her parents and their expedition had built." - Ned added.
"Yes, Veronica was a great hunter, who survived alone for eleven years using as weapons just knives to hunt." – It was always admired observation always from Roxton to the professor who was interrogating him.
"Evidences? Let me see, we barely got to leave from there alive. I have just explained you that we fell in a waterfall and we lost everything that we had! How do you dare to doubt my words and demand concrete proofs of one of the more well-known members of this society?" – Challenger was irascible.
"My diaries were all lost in the waterfall!" – Ned insisted, knowing he would never show them the only diary that had remained: the one about Veronica.
"Trophies? Are you crazy? You don't even seem like a professor asking these silly questions! Do you have any idea about the size of one of those animals? We barely escaped alive, how could we even consider bringing some of those specimen with us! We would have sunk in the waterfall!" - Roxton, for his time, was bitter.
"What about Professor Summerlee? And what about the sponsor of your expedition, Miss Krux?" - The question was repeated separately in the three rooms.
"We had a battle with a rebel tribe that intended to dominate the plateau using of the gunpowder." - Challenger began explaining.
"Gunpowder? Did they know gunpowder? Or did you show them how to make it?"
"Actually, we taught a lizard-men tribe, involuntarily – under torture I should say. And they gave the knowledge to that rebel tribe." – Ned continued.
"Exactly. Lizard-men! Savages? Oh, my! At least they were not more savage than you professor is being now!" - Roxton had definitively lost his patience.
"No, we couldn't find him. He was dragged by the water flow and he fell in a huge waterfall. He still communicated with us after that." - Challenger added.
"He used telepathy, of course! It happened that I fell in the same waterfall, however I was strangely turned back." – Ned tried to explain.
"Of course we tried to save him! But the same lizard-man that saved me saw him falling in the waterfall, where we didn't get to reach him. We knew after that he had left the plateau and he was recovering in the same tribe who welcomed us, but he had a jungle fever and died soon afterwards." - Roxton completed his explanation about Summerlee.
"And your sponsor?"
"She was killed by a druid tribe who took her by one of her ancestral." – Challenger tried to maintain his voice impassive, despite the pain caused by talking over Marguerite.
"Yes! Druids who said they were her ancestral, but who stabbed her instead!" – Ned was trying to explain the terrible situation through which his friends had gone.
"Of course we didn't abandon her! But when we finally found her there was nothing else we could do, she was already dead!" - Roxton was taken by the pain and furious with the indifference and coldness that the professor was using during the interrogation.
They knew that there were details that should remain with them, or they would risk to be locked up as crazy men.
In another room, not far away from there, the transcriptions of each one of their interviews were arriving and being compared.
Even separate, the three men's story versions coincided and gave solid and coherent depositions towards the truth behind the facts, despite the lack of proofs. But everything they've told sounded absolutely impossible: a lost plateau, with dinosaurs, ape-men, lizard-men, encounter of reality plans, and still one of the members of the expedition killed by druidas. Definitely unlikely.
After having finished with the 'interrogatory', the three men were taken to the room where the chairman of the Zoological Society had followed the confrontation through the transcriptions.
"Can I know the reason for us to be interrogated in that way?" – Challenger had returned to his old self.
"Since you have not proofs, we needed to know if the information you were telling was true. It served also to evaluate the responsibility you had in the death of two members of your expedition. This Society has a reputation to take care of as you know, George." – The professor explained.
"And are you convinced now?" – Ned dared to ask.
The man delayed a little to answer.
"Let us just say that the depositions are impressive, but without proofs the Zoological Society cannot corroborate them, even less to allow the results to be published. Our impartial observer is dead, your sponsor is also deceased, and we don't want to see the name of the Society associated to this type of ambitious history that cannot be proven. I'm really sorry, George. Now, you are free to go. There is a car waiting for each one of you to take you to your houses or wherever you prefer. Have a good morning, gentlemen." - He got up, signaling that the interview was over.
The men greeted him surprised, and before they could protest they found themselves being dazzled by the dull brightness of the streets of London.
The three exchanged glances – just Roxton had remained quiet since the end of the interrogation.
"John?" – Noticing that Challenger put the hand in his friend's shoulders.
The hunter seemed to wake up from a bad dream, when he raised his astonished eyes towards him.
"They think we abandoned them, George. Could they be possibly right?" – Once again a not deserved guilty hurt the lord.
"We made everything that was possible, Roxton, and you know it as well as us. Don't leave those damn professors get what they want, that is to destroy us, to demoralize us." - Ned said, for his time, supporting his friend.
Definitely they were not used anymore to the cold weather in London neither to the coldness of London people. Nothing there could remind them of the plateau.
Three cars awaited for them, with their scanty luggage already collected at the hotel.
"I believe that, for now, it's here that we say good-bye. Let's be in touch, ok?" – Challenger said in a frustrated tone.
"Of course." – Roxton and Malone answered formally.
Each one entered in a car, and left in different directions.
Finally alone, each one would try to rebuild the images and references in that world they came back to.
Edward Malone would try to rescue his memories, John Roxton his life, George Challenger his credibility.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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