"Alan Dean Foster - Some Notes Concerning A Green Box" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

whatsoever regarding the whereabouts of Professor Turner or Professor Nolan, who
apparently dropped out of sight after departing Valparaiso on May 21 of '67. I would greatly
appreciate any information concerning same. As a last resort 1 attempted to get in contact
with the only surviving relative of either man, but Professor Nolan's father retired from his law
practice last year and moved to Europe.
A recent chat with the Chilean consul in Los Angeles produced as a by-product a kind and
gracious letter from one Carlos Malpelo, the Valparaiso Chief of Police. He writes that after
the date mentioned, 21 May '67, there is no additional information on the two American
professors, but that there are two items of related interest which he thought I might find
interesting. The first is that the professors spent much time at the Santiago University, and in
particular with an old friend of Professor Turner's, the renowned Chilean linguist P. C.
Fernandez. It is also noted that the professor was much pleased upon receiving from the two
Americans a gift consisting of a sealed box containing a peculiarly formed statuette of
unusually repugnant design.
Unfortunately there appears to be no way to confirm any of this, because Professor
Fernandez was one of the many casualties of the recent great Chilean earthquake. The few
Indian porters in his party who
34
Some Notes Concerning a Green Box
survived the quake were too shaken to do more than report the death of the professor and of
their fellows. These men were found in the mountains the night after the quake, shivering and
frightened. They were given food and clothing by the government rescue team and permitted
to return to their families, except for one oldster who adamantly maintained in spite of the
most determined expostulations that the professor was responsible for the quake.
According to this patriarch, the professor had been performing some incomprehensible
ritual with burning herbs and an odd little idol when the tremors had begun. At this point the
old man's testimony lapses into insane drivel, as when he claims that the mountain across
the valley from them got upon gigantic stone feet and stepped on the professor, killing most
of the party with him. The poor man was placed hi the pubUc sanitarium for the poor at
Rancagua, but apparently escaped last year from that well-known institution.
The other "items of interest" which the good Senor Malpelo forwarded to me was much
shorter, but of no ,Iess import. It was a bit from a small Valparaiso newspaper stating that
one Juan Maria y Gomez, given occupation, shipwright, was missing and presumed lost at
sea during the night of a storm on June 6, 1967. A trawling fishing boat came upon the
shattered wreckage of Senor Gomez's boat the next day. It is mentioned that the ship must
have passed through an exceptionally violent part of the storm, because what pieces of the
ship's fittings were found were battered beyond all recognition, even to the shaft of one of
the ship's screws, which was twisted quite completely out of shape.
Lately, I have been showing the cryptic symbols which appeared in Professor Turner's hand
above the word Cthulhu around the University. The reaction I get is peculiar in the extreme.
Most professors who see it'take it hi good humor as an unusual student prank. Those few
who do not find it funny exhibit an odd trembling of the hands when they first set eyes upon it,
35
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE ...
but cover up very quickly thereafter and pronounce the symbol an insulting hoax. They are
quite forceful about this, and wish to have no more to do with it. I am much puzzled, as this
seems to occur almost always with the older professors,
The first of the charts I copied shows the general area of the South Pacific. It has drawn in
Easter Island, a rough duplication of Cook's courses for his voyages of 1773-75, and a
number of other notations and markings, most of which are unintelligible. Most peculiar of