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 pentagonal 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 wa
rned me off it.”
“Despite your slanderous campaign of character assassination, I’m a devout Klarkashian,” 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.
V
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.
THE DEEP ONES
By Bryan Thao Worra
Bryan Thao Worra is an award-winning Lao American author whose work has appeared in Illumen, The Book of Dark Wisdom, Tales of the Unanticipated, Mad Poets of Terra, Historical Lovecraft, Innsmouth Free Press, and G-Fan. His books include On the Other Side of the Eye, BARROW, Winter Ink, and the Tuk-Tuk Diaries: My Dinner with Cluster Bombs. You can visit him online at: http://thaoworra.blogspot.com.
From the sea we come,
From the sea we come,
Our mouths, the inns of the world
The salt of the earth unwelcome
At the tables and charts of
Explorers who expect:
Commodity and pliant territory.
Kingdoms, not wisdom.
Blood, not heavens children.
We grow with uncertain immortality
At the edge not made for man,
Bending, curving, humming cosmic
Awake and alien,
Our mass a dark and foaming mask,
A bed of enigma to certain eyes.
One with the moon,
One with the stars,
One with the ash that whispers history
In the same breath as myth and gods
Whose great backs yawn before us,
As we change with a growing tongue
Growling amid the dreamlands.
We built one blade, one leaf, one golden wall at a time.
THE LABYRINTH OF SLEEP
By Orrin Grey
Orrin Grey was born on the night before Halloween, and he’s been in love with monsters and the macabre ever since. Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, his first collection of supernatural stories, is coming soon from Evileye Books. You can find him online at: www.orringrey.com.
BEYOND THE WALL, the first moon has already risen. Kendrick stands still for awhile, getting used to the changes to air, to gravity. He can taste the last bitter dregs of the cigarette he stubbed out just before hooking up to the machine, can still smell the antiseptic tinge of the room he’s left behind, as a breeze perfumed by distant and unnamed glades carries it away.
Down below him, at the bottom of the hill, is a forest of tall, white trees and, beyond that, the beginning of the Labyrinth. He’s been here before, maybe not right here, but near enough. He’s seen this moon before, stood under its light. He’s been in that forest, even if maybe some other part of it. He’s seen the split-headed giants that live there, the doors that they build in the ground, the men with cloven hooves and the heads of dogs, the black shapes that occasionally flit in front of the moon. All of this is familiar to him, but something about the night, this night, feels different. A smell in the air, like the ozone smell before a storm. Something.
Maybe it’s because this trip is different. Not some hapless dreamer he’s riding in, this time, but another rider, another professional. McCabe, lying in a drugged coma in his hotel room. McCabe, a few milligrams of noxitol short of dead, lying there on his bed, hooked up to monitors and IVs and to the machine. McCabe, waiting somewhere in the Labyrinth for Kendrick to come in and find him, to learn why he’d gone to the needle instead of his oldest friend.
The company is paying for the hotel room now, for the monitors, and paying Kendrick double his usual rate, but this one he’d do for free. He has to know what happened, what changed. Or, the worse answer, if nothing has, if this was always what waited at the end of McCabe’s street and he’s just been blind to it until now.
One way or the other, he has to know, and so, he starts down the hill, toward the Labyrinth.
***
It probably started with the drugs, the new kinds of sleep aids to help a world full of light and motion find the time to dream. But it was the machine that ultimately did the job, that brought the wall of sleep crashing down. And what we found on the other side wasn’t what we had expected, not at all. Not a changing jungle of Freudian symbols, not personal, not subjective. An actual place: the Labyrinth and the lands that surrounded it.
It took the machine to find it. The dreamers themselves never remembered, somehow, that they all went to the same place. On their trips back to consciousness, the details of the dream world were lost, their minds replacing them with the minutiae of their memories and their own imaginations, the things that they remembered as their dreams. Always keyed to events in the Labyrinth but never identical to it.
The machine was the silver key. With it, another person, a rider, could piggyback in on the dreamer’s trip to that secret world. Not asleep, not really, and therefore, not subject to the forgetfulness that true dreaming entailed.
It became a fad, a drug, an industry. In the waking world, there were dream parlours in every mall, where you could hook into someone’s sleeping mind and take a ride to the Labyrinth. But most people were nothing more than tourists in the dreamlands, children stumbling along the turns of the Labyrinth. Kendrik and McCabe, they were professionals.
Or they had been, before McCabe tried to make himself sleep forever.
***
The walls of the Labyrinth are always black. Basalt, or something that can pass for it; the dreamland equivalent. They always rise up too high to scale, too high to jump. Once you’re in the Labyrinth, you’re in it, submerged, blind to anything except the next corner, and then the next.
Countless efforts have been made to map it. Kendrick has never known a professional who didn’t
have at least one in-progress map tacked up somewhere. But no one has ever managed. You can’t see the Labyrinth from anywhere except the top of the hill, near the wall, and from there, it all looks the same and once you’re in it, well....
There are landmarks. Some have been seen by more than one person. He and McCabe had compared their lists late one night. They’d both seen the fountain choked with moss. They’d both seen the doorway in the middle of the courtyard, the ground on the other side of it darker than on this side, but neither of them had been brave or stupid enough to step through. Kendrick had once seen a river, miles down, that cut a roaring chasm through the midst of the Labyrinth. McCabe claimed to have found a building that looked like an abandoned mosque, with no one inside, but an altar set in the back, with some kind of mummy in an alcove behind it, one he couldn’t quite make out without getting closer than he suddenly found himself wanting to.
Some people say that the Labyrinth changes and, certainly, Kendrick has never known two pros whose maps ever really lined up. Most people have an opinion on the subject, once they’ve put a few beers in themselves at the end of the day, but Kendrick never really thought about it before. To him, the Labyrinth was what it was. It was always there, on the other side of the wall, and it was always the same, really. Even if the paths changed, its nature never did and that was enough for him.
***
He stands at one of the gates to the Labyrinth. All the gates he’s ever seen looked identical. No horn or ivory, just unadorned clefts in the sides of the Labyrinth. Others have tried to mark them, he knows, but the markings were always gone when they came back. Either that, or no one has ever gone to the same gate twice.
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