by Robert Price
“Greetings, Mr. Burroughs,” he said in an old-timey New England accent. “I’ve so been looking forward to meeting you. My name is Howard Phillips Lovecraft. But please, call me H.P.”
“H.P.,” I repeated.
“I understand you are interested in joining my little circle of Cthulhu Mythos writers.”
“Thinking about it.”
“You come very highly recommended by young Barlow. I knew immediately that we could use a writer of your caliber.”
The word caliber reminded me to check my pocket. Yes, it was still there. Right where Armitage had put it. Good old American steel.
“And the elder jism?” I asked. “Would I have access to that?”
Lovecraft winced at the word. “Oh my. I really detest such vulgar talk, you know. References to amatory phenomena make me so…uncomfortable.” I noticed the tentacles of his split-open octopus skin were still writhing. The thing was scampering across the floor towards him like a faithful dog.
“Oh come on, Howard,” I needled him. “Homosexuality is the best all-around cover an agent can have.”
“Please, Mr. Burroughs,” he said. “I will not have such talk in my house.”
“I can dig it. In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming, right?”
Lovecraft clapped his hands together like a kid who had just gotten a bicycle for his birthday. “Quite so! Quite so! So what do you say, Mr. Burroughs? Do you accept my offer? I’m thinking you’ll fit in nicely in the Carcosa department. The Lake of Hali is lovely this time of year.”
I cocked my pistol. “Sure. Just one thing though. It’s about time for our William Tell routine.”
“Our what?”
There was nothing on his head. Oh well. It didn’t matter. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. I put a bullet right between his eyes. You should have seen the look on his face.
LITTLE CURLY
BY NEIL BAKER
The three knocks at the door were so loud, so evenly spaced, that only one person could be standing outside the door of Apartment 719.
Fedor sighed loudly and placed the ladle on the stovetop next to a simmering pot of soup; soup he would not be eating that day. He turned off the hob and moved the pot, then wiped his hands on his pajamas as he strode across his tiny apartment and opened the door. The large man filling the door frame sported a bushy face the same color as his salt and pepper suit and the small exposed patches of skin on his cheeks and nose were as red as the beetroot in Fedor’s supper.
The man glared at Fedor’s dishevelment, his wild eyebrows clashing like angry storm clouds, and he spoke in a voice so low it sounded like a tractor on gravel. “Comrade Demidov, you are required.”
“Hello again, Lev. How long has it been, four months?”
“Six. We need to leave now.”
Fedor Demidov smiled and plucked at the top of his cotton pants. “As you can see, I am not quite ready to travel. Besides, I don’t think I work for them any more.”
Lev Ovseenko glanced at his watch. “That is of no consequence. When I am instructed to bring you in, that is what I do. Get dressed, Comrade.”
Fedor gave his waistband one last twang and then turned back toward his bedroom. “Then we shouldn’t keep them waiting. Take a seat, Lev, I won’t be long.” He padded into the room, noting that the big Ukrainian hadn’t moved from the hallway. Nothing changes, he thought as he rooted through the drawer beneath his mattress for something to wear. Something that didn’t smell of neglect.
Ninety minutes later the squat domiciles of Astana had faded and merged to resemble dirty hillocks behind them, as Lev Ovseenko and his passenger drove away from the capital city toward southern Kazakhstan. This was how Fedor referred to his adopted home, even though government workers were encouraged to use Kazakh SSR on official documents. They were still one hundred kilometers out from Zhezkazgan, a well-developed town that Ovseenko had decided would be their next rest spot, but Fedor’s legs were cramping in the rear seat of Lev’s Moskvich 410 and he insisted that Lev pull over, finally convincing the driver that he needed to relieve himself. As Fedor faked a piss behind a scrubby bush, Lev took the opportunity to stretch his own long legs and light a cigarette. He had been mute for the drive thus far, determined to maintain an air of professionalism, but Fedor suspected the tedious journey and innumerable potholes had loosened his tongue and so decided to test the waters.
“Just like old times eh, Lev?” It was the smallest of small talk, but his gambit paid off.
Lev reduced his cigarette to ash with three long draws and flicked the butt into a large hole at his feet. “Indeed, Comrade Demidov. I am not surprised to see that this miserable road has been untouched since we traveled it last November.”
Last November. How exciting that time had been. The west had watched with envious eyes as the Soviet space program sent Sputnik 2 into orbit with its delicate, yapping payload. As a junior engineer with the life support system team, Fedor had done his job to the best of his ability on November third and had been sent home one day later, his bonus secure and his apartment paid for. Then he had waited. Waited for the call that would bring him back into the regulated warmth of the Cosmodrome’s corridors; a chance to work on Luna 1 and to share in the glory of space exploration. But the call never came. Evidently the best of his ability wasn’t good enough. And now here was Lev Ovseenko, Tyuratam’s facilitator, the man the agency trusted to drive their scientists to and from the Cosmodrome; a man who could be everywhere at once.
“Who will I be reporting to, Lev?”
The big man picked a strand of tobacco from his teeth, “I was told to bring you to General Kozlov.”
Fedor quickly rounded the bush and strode back to the car, pulling his own cigarette case from his breast pocket and offering it to the Ukrainian who did not decline. “The general? This is a military matter?”
Ovseenko shrugged as he tossed the cigarette onto the dash before squeezing back behind the wheel. “I know this much, Fedor, the Cosmodrome is locked down tighter than I have ever seen.”
Fedor resumed his position behind the driver and attempted to get comfortable on the over-sprung seat, “The Americans?”
“We will know soon enough, Comrade,” answered Lev, crunching the car into gear, “perhaps our nuclear testing at Novaya Zemlya makes them nervous.” He laughed, loud and long, and then coughed up a great globule of phlegm, which he spat through the tiny car window into the dust that blurred beside their wheels.
Several hours later the crosshatched towers and bulky hangers of Tyuratam Cosmodrome slowly ascended from the foothills of the Urals, breaking the crisp line that separated the vast steppe from a powder-blue sky thick with salty clouds from the Aral Sea. Antelope and roe deer scattered before Lev’s angry-looking car as it roared onto the strip of concrete that would lead them to the perimeter fence. The steel bars of the main gate slowly parted like alfalfa in the breeze as they approached but this was not to accommodate their entry, instead, a fleet of silver buses streamed out through the maw and flew past them, rocking Lev’s car in the process. At the rear of the convoy was a black GAZ-12, chasing the buses like a panther and escorted by a swarm of military motorbikes.
As the limousine brushed past, Fedor caught sight of the passenger in the rear and tapped his driver on the shoulder. “Lev, that was Lieutenant Gagarin.”
“We have to keep our future secure, Comrade,” growled the big man as he drove up to the guards on the gate, his security pass in hand, “it appears to me the lockdown has become an evacuation.”
“Then I think we are traveling in the wrong direction,” said Fedor, shrinking back into his seat as the car sped across a vast runway to hanger number four.
Three separate inspections welcomed Fedor, the final one being more intrusive than he had previously recalled, before he was allowed into a makeshift meeting room in the center of the cavernous hanger. The room had been hastily erected using three canvas sheets strung between scaffolding and sent
inel floodlights; its rear wall comprised of the skeletal frame of Vostok 1. Several workbenches had been dragged into the center of the space forming one large table and an ill-matching assortment of chairs were scattered about, three of which were filled by gray-coated technicians while one was occupied by Kozlov himself. A quartet of soldiers stood rigidly to attention on either side of the flap purporting to be a door and two more stood at the shoulder of their superior officer. Lev Ovseenko sidled in and planted himself in a far corner while Fedor recognized one of his colleagues and strode over to him, grasping him firmly by the hand.
“Comrade Reznik! It is good to see you again, my friend.” He looked at the other two scientists, vaguely recognizing them from other divisions. “Where’s Kaplan?”
Nikita Reznik stared back at Fedor with dark-ringed eyes and then a flicker of recognition. He shook Fedor’s hand firmly but briefly, and then indicated to a chair opposite the general. “Sit, Fedor. We must speak with you.”
Fedor pulled out a wooden chair, not relishing the thought of subjecting his already numb nether-regions to another uncomfortable seat, and gingerly sat down across from the general. He had met Kozlov once before and had found him unpleasantly brusque.
From the look on the old soldier’s face it was business as usual as Kozlov stood and placed both hands on the workbench, leaning in toward Fedor. “Fedor Demidov, you were part of the life support system team on Sputnik 2, correct?”
“Correct, General.”
“Dr. Reznik here was your superior, and your project manager was Dr. Kaplan, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Fedor didn’t like the general’s tone which seemed to be unnecessarily angry, but the sudden recollection that he was no longer in the employ of the Cosmodrome emboldened him and he dared to venture his own query, “what is all this about, General?”
General Kozlov continued as if Fedor’s voice had been a whisper. “How well did you know Laika?”
“Excuse me?”
“The dog, comrade. Laika. Muttnik, as our American friends dubbed her.”
“You mean Kudryavka. Laika was the name given to her by the west.”
“Yes, Kudryavka, Little Curly, the bitch you sent into orbit. You were friendly with her, no?”
Fedor thought back to the first time he had been introduced to Kudryavka; how he had fallen under the spell of that tiny mongrel, along with everyone else that had been instructed not to form emotional attachments to her. The ridiculous moniker given her by the foreign press translated to Barker but this couldn’t be further from the truth; the little terrier mix was the gentlest dog on the program, and she had responded with enthusiasm and uncanny intelligence to the brutal training the agency had inflicted on her and her canine companions. He recalled the day before the launch, when Dr. Kaplan had brought his nieces onto the base for an impromptu playtime with Kudryavka; one last moment of joy for the little dog. She had danced and skipped with the girls, licking their faces until they were both drenched, performing tricks for tiny gelatinous treats. It was to be her last full day as a dog. As a living being. The next day Kaplan, Fedor and Reznik had shaved her, festooned her with sensors, chained her into a tiny capsule and then boiled her from the inside out.
Fedor looked back into the face of Kozlov: a face turning steadily redder as the general lost patience. “Yes, I knew her well,” Fedor answered quietly, “I looked after her when Dr. Kaplan was unavailable, I exercised her, fed her. I wept when she died.”
The general curled his thin lips in disgust, not bothering to hide his contempt for Fedor’s weakness, “You were responsible for her death, correct?”
Fedor grimaced. It had been his fault. His main responsibility on the team was to ensure the thermal control system operated efficiently, but a series of mechanical errors upon launch, compounded by the failure of the Block-A core to separate correctly, had resulted in several rips in the thermal insulation. This meant their whimpering passenger was already exposed to infernal temperatures before she left Earth’s atmosphere and was roasted before the fourth orbit had been completed. The thought of her suffering sickened him, and he had refused to take part in the post-mission celebrations. That wasn’t to say Fedor wanted no further employment with the agency, however it had taken him the past six months to convince himself that, at the end of the day, she was just a dog.
“Yes, General. I assume full responsibility for her death.”
Reznik quickly leaned across the table and placed his hand on Fedor’s arm. “Now wait, Fedor, we were all to blame. It was a combination of system failures that led to…”
“Enough!” The general cut Reznik off with a bellow that made one of the guards flinch, “You may wallow in your communal guilt when the current situation is resolved.” He stared at Reznik who slumped back in his seat, and then turned his attention back to Fedor. “As far as the rest of the world is concerned, everything went according to plan. They think the dog was euthanized before her oxygen depleted. As we know, this was not the case.”
“I don’t need reminding, General.”
Reznik removed his hand from Fedor’s forearm, “There is more, Fedor. These men,” he indicated to the other scientists sitting across the table, “Sidorov and Andreev, they spotted an anomaly as the capsule entered the exosphere, by which time the dog was already dying.”
The younger of the two scientists clasped his hands around his coffee cup and looked at Fedor as he spoke. “We ran the long-range trackers, Andreev monitored the capsule and I supervised the life support feed. Our reports have since been buried,” he glanced at Kozlov who quickly stared him down, “but I can tell you that we observed a simultaneous discrepancy. Firstly Kudryavka’s heart reached 280 beats per minute as the internal temperature reached 164 F and she died. A moment later Sputnik 2 vanished from all visual and audio monitors for two seconds and then appeared again; only it reappeared thirty kilometers within the thermosphere that it had already departed. Not only that, but we now detected a life sign coming from the capsule.”
“She had been dead seconds before…” added Andreev shaking his head, still in denial.
Fedor was unable to subdue an impulsive laugh and instead turned it into a spluttering cough as he looked around the table and then back to the young scientist. “What do you mean, vanished? Surely your readings were incorrect.”
“The readings were accurate, Comrade,” whispered Sidorov, and the seriousness in his eyes chilled Fedor’s blood, “besides, the events have been confirmed by Dr. Kaplan.”
“Where is Kaplan?” said Fedor, his voice rising, his anger percolating. He suddenly felt he was the butt of an elaborate and inexplicable prank.
The general slapped his palm on the bench surface and half of the group visibly jumped in their seats. He then waited to see that he had Fedor’s full attention before commencing in slow and measured tones. “Comrade Demidov, did you ever converse with the dog?”
“Converse…?”
“Talk to the dog, Junior Technician Demidov! Did you ever talk to…Little Curly?”
Fedor looked around the canvas chamber, trying to find support in his colleagues’ faces, but Lev seemed more interested in the welding on the rocket frame behind him, Andreev and Sidorov were focused on their feet and Reznik was staring at the bench surface, his neck veins popping as he ground his back teeth. Confused, Fedor gave a slight shake of his head and answered the best he could. “I’m not sure, general. Perhaps a few words here and there, but…”
“Nothing substantial?” interrupted the military man.
“Not that I am aware of, general. Why do you ask?”
Kozlov stood and gestured with pistol fingers to his soldiers who quickly went to the exit and held open the flap. He then fixed Fedor with a gaze that would crack granite and extended one hand, inviting the junior technician to leave with him. “Because, Comrade Demidov, the dog has asked to speak to you.”
Green-tinted overhead strip lights merged into one long ribbon as Fedor was led dazed t
hrough twisting corridors and out into the harsh twilight air as the group marched across crumbling tarmac garnished with unsupervised weeds toward the central training building. He had tried to listen as Reznik buzzed in his ear, bringing him up to speed, but the man’s words were so fantastic that Fedor could only absorb some of what he was being told. The general’s men held open a pair of large double doors as their leader shepherded the group into the building, their boots echoing in the deserted hallways, thin clouds of blue cigarette smoke still lingering above, testament to the sudden evacuation.
Fedor could smell fresh coffee as they marched past the recreation room, down a wide corridor and directly into the water chamber, a room used for weightlessness orientation training but which was now dry as a desert and being used for something quite different. Kozlov led the group to the observation wall of the vast pool and tapped on the glass. Immediately a row of lights stuttered on and Fedor could see three figures, two of them clad head to toe in HAZMAT suits, the third strapped to a gurney, seemingly asleep.
The general picked up a radio and turned it on as one of the protected figures did likewise.
One of the suited men approached the glass to better see the general and held up a clip chart, which displayed multiple line graphs and rows of numbers. “He’s clean, General. We’ve been monitoring him at twenty-minute intervals for the past six hours and his readings are perfectly normal. I recommend moving him to the medical wing.”
“That won’t be happening. I need him to come with us.”
The suited man did not even begin to protest; instead he nodded and returned to the gurney, waving at his colleague to release the patient.