by John Shirley
“Oh yeah,” said Ane, and her weapon shivered in anticipation.
Nuka whinnied and made the sign of Saint Toad.
Pipaluk opened the airlock. A rush of cooling, semi-congealed blood poured out over their feet.
III
The bay between the second and third airlock doors glowed a faint turquoise from a K’n-yan luminance system, and before the Voormis’ bio-helms could tint out the blinding, pale light a fail-safe leapt on Ane and bit off her head. The thing’s gears screamed and spat puffs of rust as it thrashed atop the decapitated subgineer, a blur of slick, amphibious tails and bluish metal pincers. Nuka panicked, his high-pitched howl nearly blowing out Pipaluk’s com-membrane, and the Ingeniøri had to force herself not to attack the subgineer before taking out the fail-safe. She spat out the immolation code for Ane’s suit, even as she leapt out of the way of the imminent blast. Even through her own salamander armor, she felt the wave of heat buffet her like a solar flare.
The fail-safe was still alive, but its metallic components had melted to the point of incapacitating the thing. Nuka had managed to avoid the worst of the blast, but was still crying like a Gnophkeh, sitting in the tacky, smoking blood that had flooded the bay. The bio-helm filtered out everything but the smell, the bouquet of burnt hair and engine oil making Pipaluk’s eyes water. She didn’t look down at the fused mass of mewling fail-safe and gorgeous, dead subgineer. Instead, she yanked Nuka to his feet and fired a cold-shower code down his channel - the result was instantaneous, the coward straightening up and shuddering as his suit doused him in a psychoactive chemical spray.
“Subgineer Nuka,” Pipaluk barked in his face while he was ripe for imprinting. “Ready your weapon and follow me. Those hymirbjarg-brained academics have obviously breached the last airlock. Hurry!”
The subgineer saluted and snapped his olid-pistol off his belt. It was no microwave spitter, but it was better than the ceremonial gladius that Pipaluk had brought - had she known Laila wouldn’t be in her lab, ready for arrest, she obviously would have brought something more substantial. At least there weren’t any more fail-safes between them and the final airlock. Probably.
They cautiously entered the final bay, splashing in puddles as they moved through the cobalt twilight. Judging from the oily whorls of colour in the blood, the team of grad students, servitors, and spawn had taken out a fail-safe, as well, but there was no sign of the fallen guardian, nor, for that matter, any of Laila’s crew, beyond the blood. That was ... odd. Holding her hand up to the last panel, Pipaluk saw her talons were shaking. She gritted her fangs, willing herself to enter the code, when Nuka nickered excitedly behind her. She lowered the volume on his channel before turning to see what was bothering him now.
A pillar of blood had flowed straight up into the air behind them. Pipaluk went into a roll, just as the formless spawn crashed down. Of course that was why there were no bodies - this must be one of Laila’s, injured in battle with the fail-safe and left behind to heal itself on the corpses of the fallen. It probably couldn’t have hid from the fail-safe for long, trapped alone with it in this bay, which meant they might be just behind the blasphemous Professori ... unless she had died in this place, too. Well, no sense being optimistic just yet, Pipaluk reasoned, as her reflexes carried her backward, up, down, sideways, flipping away from the relentless, deadly ooze.
“Stink it!” Pipaluk panted, as she lured the pursuing wave back toward Nuka, who sat with his back to the final airlock. “Stink the thing, already!”
Nothing came over the subgineer’s channel and, cartwheeling up to his splayed body, she saw he was not simply lying down on the job; he had quit it altogether: His neck had been twisted almost completely off when the spawn had hit him, only the suit keeping it attached. Gross. The pistol in his hand seemed intact, however, and all she had to do was -
- Go spinning across the bay as the formless spawn caught her foot and hurled her away from her prize. It was on her before she stopped sliding over the slick basalt, but a low heatburst from her suit drove it back, the thing hissing as it smoldered. Before it could throw itself atop her again, she was on all fours and dashing back to Nuka’s corpse. It tried to put itself between her and the gun, but another suit-pulse let her slip past it, then the bony handle of the stinker was in hand. The spawn tried to hide in the pools on the ground, but her bio-helm filters picked up the creature immediately and she blasted it into oblivion with the foul little weapon.
“For Ane,” she caught herself saying, as she depressed the trigger a second, superfluous time, which surprised her - she was not one for redundancy or sentimentality, as a rule. If anyone found out she was going soft, they might make a move for her position, try to hit her with the old bump-and-shuffle. But there was no time for politics, not now. Giving the bay another scan, just to make sure she hadn’t missed any of the spawn in her haste, she turned and opened the final airlock, praying she wasn’t too late.
IV
The ruins of Eibon’s tower retained their five-sided design but little else, at least that Pipaluk could recall from the blueprints. There certainly hadn’t been any mention of mineral cacti, molten streams of metal crisscrossing the floor, or a perpetual ashy cloud in the toxic air. A yellow moss coating the walls and fallen blocks confused her, for it was surely a close relation to the squamous fungus that grew only in the most hallowed temples of Tsathoggua, and yet she could not imagine a place less-favoured by the god than this foyer to his uncle’s realm.
The moss also carpeted the floor wherever the mercurial creeks did not, but was trampled down so thoroughly that she could make no estimate of who had passed this way, or when. Everywhere she looked were wet scraps of Voormis, oily hunks of fail-safes, and puddles of deconstructed formless spawn, but nothing seemed alive in the ruins. The grotto was cramped, dark, and malodorous; it immediately put her at ease.
Pipaluk crossed the bizarre chamber, ducking beneath acid-dripping stalactites that whispered to her in a foreign tongue as she methodically searched the area. She paid them no mind, for she made out the name ‘Hziulquoigmnzhah’ amidst their stony gibberings and knew them to be heretical deposits. Then, at last, she saw a florescent reddish panel set in a spit of black gneiss that rose from a pool of the liquid metal – the small plate had a crack at its base, and from this fissure issued the iridescent fluid that dribbled down the ebon rock to feed stream and puddle alike. There was no sign of Laila, any member of her team, or even an active fail-safe. Pipaluk had failed.
“Pipaluk!” Provost Ole blared in her ear, the Quorum channel forcejacked back on. He sounded upset. “We’ve been monitoring everything. You’ve failed.”
“Impossible,” she sneered, too tired and disappointed for diplomacy. “You’re bluffing; you can’t - “
“Subgineer Refn here sneakpatched us into your bio-helm before you even reached the second airlock,” said Ole. “He’s also filled us in rather thoroughly regarding the numerous infractions you have committed in the course of your tenure. Effective immediately, you are to return to the first bay, where politibetjents are waiting to relieve you of your government equipment. Thereupon, you will stand trial for putting your subgineers in harm’s way instead of using spawn, as is basic protocol. And then there is the matter of your refusal to obey my direct order to return to the Quorum for further instruction, and –”
Pipaluk couldn’t deactivate the channel anymore, but she found she could still mute it. Subgineer Refn, eh? She hadn’t seen that coming - she’d taken him back to her warrens a few months ago, but hadn’t found him particularly enjoyable or even memorable. Now she wondered if he had been researching her, probing for weaknesses, rather than probing for - well, no matter, the damage was done. She had to admit he’d made a decent play of it, going directly to the Quorum, but it was hard to admire an action that would most likely result in her being painfully sacrificed to the inscrutable god she had spent her entire life trying to serve.
Of course, there was a second option.
Depriving Ole, Refn, and their cronies of the political points her public trial would bring was a proposition too tempting to pass up, interdimensional, reality-shattering horror be damned. Pipaluk smiled to herself, shaking her head, and stepped into the shallow pool of shimmering metal. Just as she put her hand on the portal, however, a cry came from just behind her. Spinning around with the olid-pistol primed, she saw Professori Laila rising from behind a softly-chanting stalagmite, the camouflage of her suit falling away as she willingly revealed herself.
“Wait!” Laila repeated. “Don’t!”
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Pipaluk, dialing the gun down to Reek. She wanted Laila alive and sane enough to stand trial, after all. Pipaluk might be going down, but it wouldn’t be alone. Then she remembered the portal just behind her, her potentially suicidal resolution of moments before, and she cocked her head curiously. “What are you doing here? I thought the whole point was to go through the Gate, not get your team killed just to skulk about some ruins.”
“The point was to determine if the Gate could be safely used,” said Laila, crossing her arms. “Just as I always said. You were the one who insisted I was trying to enter the damn thing.”
“Right,” said Pipaluk. “Sure. So, you’re telling me you didn’t have any of your team go through?”
Laila winced. “Most of them didn’t make it this far. Those fail-safes were –”
“Most. But you made it. And so did ...?”
“A couple of grad students.” Laila shivered. “Their names aren’t important now. They’ll come up at the trial, I’m sure, and –”
“What happened to them!” Pipaluk barked. “You crazy kanaak, what happened to them?”
“They went through.” Laila looked down at the blurred shadow of her reflection in the metal pool. “Dorthe went first. She was supposed to return immediately, if she could. When she didn’t, after a day, Nivi went and –”
“‘A day’,” Pipaluk groaned. “Those toe-dragging fools on the Quorum.”
“More like two,” Laila said sheepishly. “No sign of either of them. Which, well, isn’t surprising - the portal is older than we could date. Even if it still leads to Cykranosh, there’s no telling what might be on the other end by now. Maybe the Gate projects you into solid rock, the bottom of an ocean. Maybe the planet’s shifted so much it just dumps you into space.” The Professori shuddered. “None of the probes we sent through came back, observation cables were severed as soon as they crossed over, remotes failed, blah blah blah, and so those two volunteered. And now we know – it’s not safe, anymore. If it ever was.”
“Maybe,” said Pipaluk thoughtfully. “Maybe not. Surprised you didn’t take your chances with it when you saw me coming. Surprised you warned me off it.”
“Despite your slanderous campaign of character assassination, I’m a devout Klarkash-Tonian,” said Laila, straightening her shoulders. “I would never allow a fellow servant of the Sleeper of N’Kai to unwittingly fall into that devil Hziulquoigmnzhah’s realm without a sure means of escape. I told you and I told the Quorum time and again, I’m not a heretic. I’m just –”
“Hush!” said Pipaluk, her com-membrane rippling. The second airlock had just been activated. The politibetjents were coming to arrest them. “They’re coming. For both of us – I violated orders by pursuing you and got a few subgineers killed in the process. That puts us in the same bath, so let’s make a break for it. I’ll take a possible death of my own making over a certain one of theirs.”
“Pipaluk, Pipaluk, Pipaluk,” Laila chided. “Where is your faith? There is nowhere to run. We have committed crimes, you and I, and must be taken to the Eiglophian Plains for punishment. It is written that they who err in the service of the slothful ebon god shall be forgiven, so long as they are purified by a sacrificial death. I go willingly to my justice and suggest you – blargh!”
Laila doubled over in agony, retching into her bio-helm. A faint wisp of stench danced at the end of Pipaluk’s pistol as she tucked the hot weapon into her belt and went to the incapacitated Professori. The final airlock was beginning to open as Pipaluk hoisted her former adversary and shoved her headlong through the Eibon Gate, the back of the hinged metal panel banging softly against its gneiss setting as the Voormi disappeared into the misty haze that obscured whatever lay on the far side. Without a backward glance at her pursuers, Pipaluk hoisted herself up and squirmed after, through the door to Saturn.
IV
The team of politibetjents and formless spawn sent to capture Pipaluk waited for days in the mossy ruins, neither wishing to follow the Ingeniøri through the mysterious portal, nor daring to leave in disobedience of Provost Ole’s orders. At length, they were recalled, but the result of the whole affair was highly regrettable from the standpoint of the Quorum. It was universally believed, due to a leaked bio-helm file here and an uploaded simcreation there, that Professori Laila and Ingeniøri Pipaluk had not only escaped by virtue of the luminous science they had learned from Hziulquoigmnzhah, but had made away with a dozen formless spawn commandos and fail-safe behemoths in the bargain. As a consequence of this belief, the public’s trust in the Quorum declined and there was a widespread revival of the dark worship of Tsathoggua’s paternal uncle throughout Mhu Thulan in the last century before the onset of the great Solar Firestorms.
Weird of the White Sybil
By Ann K. Schwader
You see me as you wish, a lissome maid
Descended from some lunar race of old,
& never dream that you should be afraid.
No matter that my draperies are frayed
By tempests only glacial wastelands hold.
You see me as you wish, a lissome maid
Less prophetess than purest spirit strayed
From paradise – or legends left untold --
& never dream that you should be afraid
To follow in my footsteps. Undismayed
As any moth hypnotic flames enfold,
You see me as you wish: a lissome maid
Who flickers at your vision’s edge, displayed
Within a bower, brilliant in the cold.
O, never dream that you should be afraid
To speak your love . . . or to embrace its shade
As one more of the fortune-favored bold
Who saw me as a wish, a lissome maid
To kiss their dreams. Too late to be afraid.
Table of Contents
Wider Than The World: A Door To Hyperborea
Hostage
To Walk Night... Alone...
In Old Commoriom
Yhoundeh Fades
Coils Of The Ouroboros The History Of Avasquiddoc The Apprentice
Daughter of the Elk Goddess
The Darkness Below
The Conquest of Rhizopium
Zolamin and the Mad God
Having Set Out to Be Vanquished
The Lost Archetype
One Last Task for Athammaus
The Beauties of Polarion
The Frigid Ilk of Sarn Kathool
The Debt Owed Abhoth
Return of the Crystal
Rodney LaSalle Has a Job Waiting in Commoriom
The Winter of Atiradarinsept
The Door from Earth
Weird of the White Sybil