Pickman’s log showed that he had posted, “BAck from the pits—hi, Guys! Sorry I wuz gone, didja miss Me?”
“Someone,” I said, “has been rewriting every word you’ve sent out since you got your new modem.”
“That’s silly,” he said. I nodded.
“Silly,” I said, “but true.”
“How could anyone do that?” he asked, baffled.
I shrugged. “Someone is.”
“Or something.” He eyed the black box atop the monitor speculatively. “Maybe it’s the modem,” he said. “Maybe it’s doing something weird.”
I looked at the device; it was an oblong of black plastic, featureless save for the two red lights that shone balefully from the front and the small metal plate bolted to one side where incised letters spelled out MISKATONIC DATA SYSTEMS, ARKHAM MA, SERIAL #RILYEH.
“I never heard of Miskatonic Data Systems,” I said. “Is there a customer-support number?”
He shrugged. “I got it secondhand,” he said. “No documentation.”
I considered the modem for several seconds and had the uneasy feeling it was staring back at me. It was those two red lights, I suppose. There was something seriously strange about that gadget, certainly. It buzzed; modems aren’t supposed to buzz. Theories about miniature AI rambled through the back corridors of my brain; lower down were other theories I tried to ignore, theories about forces far more sinister. The brand name nagged at something, deep in my memory.
“It probably is the modem that’s causing the trouble,” I said. “Maybe you should get rid of it.”
“But I can’t afford another one!” he wailed.
I looked at him, then at the screen, where the two messages still glowed side by side in orange phosphor. I shrugged.
“Well, it’s up to you,” I said.
“It isn’t really dangerous, anyway,” he said, trying to convince himself. “It just rewrites my stuff, makes it better. More powerful, y’know.”
“I suppose,” I said dubiously.
“I just need to be more careful about what I say,” he said, wheedling.
“You don’t need to convince me,” I said. “It’s your decision.”
We were both staring thoughtfully at the screen now.
“I’ve always wanted to write like that,” he said. “But I just couldn’t, you know, get the hang of it. All those rules and stuff, the spelling, and getting the words to sound good.”
I nodded.
“You know,” he said slowly, “I’ve heard that some magazines and stuff will take submissions by E-mail now.”
“I’ve heard that,” I agreed.
“You ready for another beer?”
And with that, the subject was closed; when I refused the offer of more beer, the visit, too, was at an end.
I never saw Pickman in the flesh again, but his messages were all over the nets in the subsequent weeks—messages that grew steadily stranger and more lurid. He spoke of submitting articles and stories, at first to the major markets, and then to others, ever more esoteric and bizarre. He posted long diatribes of stupendous fury and venom whenever a piece was rejected—the usual reason given was apparently that his new style was too florid and archaic.
Sometimes I worried about what he might be letting out into the net, but it wasn’t really any of my business.
And then, after the last of April, though old messages continued to circulate for weeks, new ones no longer appeared. Henry Pickman was never heard from on the nets again, except once.
That once was netmail, a private message to me, sent at midnight on April 30.
“Goerge,” it began—Henry never could spell—“I boroed another modem to log on, I could’nt trust it any more, but I think its angry with me now. Its watching me, I sware it is. I unplugged it, but its watching me any way. And I think its calling someone, I can hear it dieling.#$”
And then a burst of line noise; the rest of the message was garbage.
Line noise? Oh, that’s when there’s interference on the phone line, and the modem tries to interpret it as if it were a real signal. Except instead of words, you get nonsense. The rest of Henry’s message was all stuff like “Iä! FThAGN!Iä!CTHulHu!”
I didn’t hear anything from Henry after that. I didn’t try to call him or anything; I figured it might all be a gag, and if it wasn’t—well, if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to get involved.
So when I went past his place a couple of weeks later, I was just in the neighborhood by coincidence, you understand, I wasn’t checking up on him. Anyway, his house was all boarded up, and it looked like there’d been a bad fire there.
I figured maybe the wiring in that cheap modem had been bad. I hoped no one had been hurt.
Yeah—bad wiring. That was probably it. Very bad.
After that, I sort of tapered off. Telecommunicating made me a bit uneasy; sometimes I almost thought my modem was watching me. So I don’t use the nets anymore. Ever.
After all, as I’ve always said, the nets will eat you alive if you let them.
Shaft Number 247
BASIL COPPER
The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.
—H. P. LOVECRAFT
Driscoll looked at the dial reflectively. The Control Room was silent except for the distant thumping of the dynamos. The dim lights gleamed reassuringly on the familiar faces of the instruments and on the curved metal of the roof, its massive nuts and bolts and girders holding back the tremendous weight of the earth above their heads. The green luminous digits of the triangular clock on the bulkhead pointed to midnight.
It was the quietest part of the Watch. Driscoll shifted to a more comfortable position in his padded swivel armchair. He was a big man, whose hair was going a little white at the edges, but his features were still hard and firm, unblurred by time, though he must have been past fifty.
He glanced across at Wainewright on the other side; he had the earphones clamped over his head and was turning one of his calibrating instruments anxiously. Driscoll smiled inwardly. But then Wainewright always had been the worrying type. He could not have been more than twenty-nine, yet he looked older than Driscoll with his lean, strained features, his straggly moustache, and the hair that was already thinning and receding.
Driscoll’s gaze rested just a fraction on his colleague, drifted on to bring into focus a bank of instruments with large easy-read dials on the far bulkhead, and finally came to rest on the red-painted lettering of the alarm board situated to his front and in a commanding position. The repeater screen below contained forty-five flickering blue images, which showed the state of the alarm boards in the farthest corners of the complex for which Driscoll, as Captain of the Watch, was responsible.
All was normal. But then it always was. Driscoll shrugged and turned his attention to the desk in front of him. He filled in the log with a luminous radionic pencil. Still two hours to go. But he had to admit that he liked the night duty better than the day. The word enjoy was frowned on nowadays, but the word was appropriate to Driscoll’s state; he actually enjoyed this Watch. It was quiet, almost private, and that was a decreasing quality in life.
His musings were interrupted by a sharp, sibilant exclamation from Wainewright.
“Some activity in Shaft 639!” he reported, swivelling to look at the Captain of the Watch with watery blue eyes.
Driscoll shook his head, a thin smile on his lips.
“It’s nothing. Some water in the shaft, probably.”
Wainewright tightened his mouth.
“Perhaps … Even so, it ought to be reported.”
Driscoll stiffened on the seat and looked at the thin man; the other was the first to drop his eyes.
“You have reported it,” he said gently. “And I say it is water in the shaft.”
He snapped on the log entries, read them off the illuminated repeater on the bulkhead.
“There have been seventeen similar reports in the past year. Water eac
h time.”
Wainewright hunched over his instruments; his shoulders heaved as though he had difficulty in repressing his emotions. Driscoll looked at him sharply. It might be time to make a report on Wainewright. He would wait a little longer. No sense in being too precipitant.
“Shaft clear,” Wainewright mumbled presently.
He went on making a play of checking instruments, throwing switches, examining dials, avoiding Driscoll’s eye.
Driscoll sat back in his chair again. He looked at the domed metal roof spreading its protective shell over them; its rivets and studs winking and throwing back the lights from the instrument dials and the shaded lamps. He mentally reviewed Wainewright’s case, sifting and evaluating the facts as he knew them.
The man was beginning to show signs of psychotic disturbance. Driscoll could well understand this. They did not know what was out there, that was the trouble. He had over forty miles of galleries and communicating tunnels alone in the section under his own command, for example. But still, that did not excuse him. They had to proceed on empirical methods. He yawned slightly, looked again at the time.
He thought of his relief without either expectation or regret; he was quite without emotion, unlike Wainewright. Unlike Wainewright again, well suited to his exacting task. He would not be Captain of the Watch otherwise. Even when he was relieved he would not seek his bunk. He would descend to the canteen for coffee and food before joining Karlson for a brief session of chess.
He frowned. He had just thought of Deems again. He thrust the image of Deems from his mind. It flickered momentarily, then disappeared. It was no good; it had been two years now, but it still came back occasionally. He remembered, too, that he had been Wainewright’s particular friend; that probably explained his jumpiness lately. Nevertheless, he would need watching.
He pursed his lips and bent forward, watching the bright green pencil of tracery on the tube in front of him. He pressed the voice button, and Hort’s cavernous voice filled the Control Room.
“Condition Normal, I hope!”
There was a jovial edge to his query; the pronouncement was intended to be a joke, and Driscoll permitted himself a smile of about three millimeters in width. That would satisfy Hort, who was not really a humorous man. There was no point in knocking himself out for someone so devoid of the absurd in his makeup.
“Nothing to report,” he called back in the same voice.
Hort nodded. Driscoll could see his multi-imaged form flickering greenly at the corner of his vision, but he did not look directly at it. He knew that annoyed Hort, and it pleased him to make these small gestures of independence.
“I’d like to see you when you come off Watch,” Hort went on.
He had a slightly sardonic look on his thin face now.
Driscoll nodded.
“I’ll be there,” he said laconically.
He waved a perfunctory hand, and the vision on the tube wavered and died, a tiny rain of green sparks remaining against the blackness before dying out.
He was aware of Wainewright’s troubled eyes seeking his own; he ignored the other man and concentrated instead on a printout which was coming through. It was a routine check, he soon saw, and he leaned back, his sharp eyes sweeping across the serried ranks of instruments, his ears alert for even the slightest aberration in the smooth chatter of the machinery.
He wondered idly what Hort might want with him. Probably nothing of real importance, but it was best to be prepared; he pressed the repeater valve on the desk in front of him, instantly memorising the latest data that was being constantly fed in by a wide stream of instruments. There were only three sets of numbers of any importance; he scratched these onto his pad and kept it ready at his elbow.
There would be nothing else of note in the Watch now, short of an unforeseen emergency. He momentarily closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair, lightly resting his fingertips on the smooth polished metal of the desk. He savoured the moment, which lasted only for a few seconds. Then he opened his eyes again, refreshed and wide-awake. A faint humming vibration filled all the galleries and corridors adjacent to the Control Room. The vents were open for the moment; all was as it should be.
The rest of the Watch passed almost too quickly; Wainewright was already being relieved by Krampf, Driscoll noted. The bulkhead clock indicated nine minutes to the hour. But then Krampf always was more zealous than most of the personnel here. Driscoll really knew little about him. He glanced incuriously at the man now, dapper and self-confident, his dark hair bent over the panel opposite, listening to Wainewright’s handing-over report. Then he had adjusted the headphones and was sliding into the padded seat.
Wainewright waited almost helplessly for a moment, and then went hurriedly down the metal staircase. Krampf’s eyes rested on Driscoll and his lips curved in a smile; he gave the Captain of the Watch a jaunty thumbs-up signal. Driscoll felt vaguely irritated.
There was something about Krampf he did not quite understand. He had none of the anxiety to please that Wainewright displayed; indeed he exuded a disconcerting air of suppressed energy and egotistical drive.
Still, it was none of his business; he only saw Krampf for a very few minutes when they were changing over Watches. Three or four minutes in a week, perhaps, for sometimes their duties failed to overlap. His own relief was at his elbow now and Driscoll got up, almost reluctant to vacate the seat. He handed over with a few smooth phrases and went down the staircase in the wake of Wainewright.
There was no one in the canteen but Karlson. A plump, balding man, he nodded shyly as Driscoll came up. He rose and made room for him on the smooth plastic bench. Soft music was drifting from louvers in the ceiling. Karlson had already set up the board and had made his opening move. It was his turn to start. Driscoll glanced briefly at the problem and then crossed over to study the menu on the screen.
He put his token in the tray and drew out the hot coffee and the thin wheaten biscuits with honey that he liked so well. He did not eat very much when he came off Watch at this time, as it impaired his digestion and interfered with his sleep. He went back to the table in the corner where he and Karlson always sat and sipped the hot, strong coffee slowly, his eyes seemingly inattentive but all the time studying the board and Karlson’s concentrated face.
But it was obvious that his attention was waning. He fidgeted for a moment and then turned away from the board, his eyes fixed on the table before him. Karlson looked at him quickly, a sympathetic smile already flowering at the corners of his mouth.
“Tired?”
Driscoll shook his head.
“No more than usual. It is not that, no.”
He folded firm, capable hands round the rim of his beaker and stared into the steaming black surface of his coffee as though the answer to his unspoken question lay there.
“Then it is something which happened on Watch?”
Karlson’s eyes were alert, questioning now. Driscoll knew he had to be very careful in his choice of words. Karlson was a particular friend, but the system had to come first, whatever else happened. He sipped the coffee slowly, playing for time. Karlson watched him without impatience, a sort of majestic contentment on his outwardly placid face. Yet there was a wary and unusual brain beneath the banal exterior. Driscoll had ample evidence of that.
Then Karlson’s face relaxed. He smiled slowly.
“Not Wainewright again. And his shaft noises?”
Driscoll’s surprise showed on his face.
“So you know about it?”
Karlson nodded.
“It’s no secret. We have our eye on things. He was on Watch with Collins three weeks ago, when you were indisposed.”
Driscoll cast his mind back, failed to remember anything of significance. He avoided Karlson’s eye, looked instead at the gleaming metal dome of the roof that stretched above them. Wherever one went in the miles of corridors, there was nothing but the smooth unbroken monotony.
“Your loyalty does you credit,” Karlson said
drily. “But it is not really necessary in this case. Wainewright’s nerve was never strong. And he has certainly not been the same since Deems went to.…”
He broke off suddenly and leaned forward at the table. His sharp, attentive attitude made him look almost as if he were listening for something. Something beyond the roof. Which was absurd, under the circumstances. Driscoll allowed himself a thin smile at the thought. He took up Karlson as though his friend had not hesitated.
“Out There,” he finished bluntly.
Karlson looked momentarily startled; his bland facade abruptly cracked. He drummed with thick spatulate fingers on the table. He looked almost angry, Driscoll thought.
But his voice was calm and measured when he spoke.
“We do not mention that,” he said gently. “But since you have seen fit to raise it—yes.”
Driscoll picked up one of his special biscuits and took a fastidious bite.
“I have kept a close watch on Wainewright,” he said, more stiffly than he had intended. “If there had been the slightest doubt in my mind.…”
His companion interrupted him by laying a hand on his arm.
“There was no criticism intended,” he said gently. “As I said, we are all aware of Wainewright’s problems. They are being monitored at a higher level. Long before any danger point we shall take him out.”
Karlson focused his gaze back on the game before them.
“It does not seem as though we shall get any further tonight. With your permission …”
Driscoll nodded. Karlson animated the lever. Board and men sank back into the surface of the table with a barely audible whine. Karlson folded his hands on the spot where the board had stood.
“Wainewright reported five occurrences in the one Watch,” he said bluntly. “In various shafts.”
Driscoll licked his lips. He said nothing, merely bending his head politely as he waited for Karlson to go on.
“It was unprecedented,” Karlson continued. “It could not be overlooked. So Collins reported it to me direct. Wainewright has been under close surveillance ever since.”
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