by Robert Price
Troy nodded. “Do you think me a traitor Dr. Peaslee?” There was no emotion in his voice.
“We shall see.” He settled down in the chair. “Do you mind if I smoke? I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Answer truthfully and this will all be over very quickly.” Peaslee shuffled through some paperwork. “Your name is Marcus Troy. Born and raised in North Hills, Pennsylvania, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Masters Degree in Engineering from Stanford. Last address 22C Lathe Ave, Oakland, California. Is that correct?”
“Is this part of the test?”
“No, no. Sorry, just getting my facts straight. You were assigned to the engineering corps, and captured July 22 1950 while working on fortifications at Outpost Harry?”
“Yes.”
Peaslee circled an area on the paper that was slowly rolling through the machine. “Good. Where were you held prisoner?”
“Camp 12.”
The interrogator dropped his pen. “Camp 12. Troy, I have to tell you that military intelligence has identified a number of Prisoner of War Camps, and until today none of us have ever heard of Camp 12.”
“I’m sorry. They must not be very good.”
“To whom are you referring Troy?”
“Your spies Dr. Peaslee, they must not be very good if they don’t know about Camp 12. It is quite large, several thousand prisoners.”
Peaslee picked up his pen in a huff. “Tell me about Doctor Hu.”
The pen on the machine jumped as Troy asked “Who?”
“The Chinaman in charge of the re-education program at Camp 12, his name is Hu, H U. Your friends Marquand and Hodgson seemed to know who he was.”
“Those men are not my friends.”
“That is a strange thing to say. Do you know what they said about you?” He shuffled through some papers. “Here, ‘Marcus Troy is the bravest human being I’ve ever known.’ They both said it, the exact same phrase. Funny things to say from men who you say are not your friends.” He shuffled more papers. “The same phrase. Very odd don’t you think?”
“I’ve told you; those men are not my friends.”
“But you do know Doctor Hu don’t you?”
Troy stared at his interrogator. There was something in his eyes, something that made Peaslee suspicious. “Oh yes, I know the good Doctor Hu. I only met him once, but . . .”
Peaslee leaned in, ‘But what Captain Troy?”
“I have dreams, vivid, horrible dreams. Hu is in them, he is always in them. He does strange things in my dreams; incomprehensible things; things that make no sense; horrible things.”
“These things he did . . .”
“IN MY DREAMS!” interjected Troy.
The interrogator nodded, “These things that Doctor Hu did in your dreams, he did them to you?”
Troy shook his head sadly and his hands turned into fists. “No, never to me, Doctor Hu never hurt me. But he did strange things, horrible things, sometimes to buildings, sometimes to the landscape, sometimes with machinery, and sometimes to other men, but never to me, never to me.” The officer paused and swallowed back tears.
“What is it you’re not telling me? I can’t help you Troy, unless you tell me everything.”
“In my dreams when Hu did those things, I wasn’t his victim. I was his assistant. GOD FORGIVE ME I WAS HELPING HIM!”
December 15, 1953
JACK Base 3 Codename: Whitechapel
“How are you feeling today?” Peaslee asked while rubbing the bruise on his cheek.
“Better,” replied Troy. “I am sorry about the other day. I don’t understand why I reacted like that.”
Peaslee nodded. “It is hard to predict how we will react to stress. We’ve given you a sedative, it should help keep you calm.” The man lit a cigarette. “I know that you don’t want to, but we need to talk about your dreams, the ones with Doctor Hu in them.”
The damaged man nodded, “Why do you want to know?”
The Terrible Old Man closed his eyes. “When I was a boy, my father suffered an attack. He lost his memory, became a different person. He left his wife and family, he didn’t know us, we didn’t know him. For years he traveled the world. Then one day he came home, and his memory came back. He tried to set things right, but he was haunted. Haunted by all that he had lost, and by dreams, horrible dreams in which he was not himself, and did things he did not understand.”
Troy seemed to perk up. “Like my dreams.”
“I think what happened to my father, something similar has happened to you. I want to understand it, help you to understand it, and perhaps find a way to heal you. But you have to tell me about your dreams.”
The captain cleared his throat, leaned forward, and then began to speak. “In my dream, the one I have most often, we’re getting off a plane, Doctor Hu and I. We’re dressed oddly, a uniform of some sort, not Korean uniforms, or Chinese, yellow silk with black stripping. As Hu leaves the plane there are whole groups of bureaucrats, military officers, diplomats and they are all bowing as Hu approaches. When they don’t rise up after he passes, I realize that they are bowing to me as well. We are escorted to a tented pavilion where we mingle with dignitaries from a number of countries. I recognize some of them, they are people of importance. There’s a large man speaking Korean and laughing that I think is important. To his left is a wiry little Chinaman who could be Hu’s brother, who introduces himself as Kang Sheng. It was only when Sheng spoke that I realized that none of the guests including myself were speaking English. Indeed, there were voices speaking not just Chinese and Korean, but Russian, Hungarian and even German, all of which I understood as easily as I understand you now.”
“The gathering was not purely social. Hu and I were engaged in some great negotiations; the gist of which escapes me now, but it involved the purchase of great machines, great conglomerates of tubes and metallic spheres constructed piecemeal, but on a massive scale. For these components we traded information, secrets, designs and formulas that could devastate cities and lay waste to whole continents. We gave them such knowledge as if it were nothing, as if it could never be used. For in truth we thought of them as insignificant, useful but insignificant. They were like bees. You can give a hive the designs for a gun, but you should have no fear of them actually taking advantage of them.”
“The negotiations take days, not because they are difficult, but because Hu and I are just two, and our needs are great, and they are a chattering unorganized horde desperate for our attentions and favor. We work non-stop. We do not sleep, we eat almost constantly, and Hu frequently dispenses for our consumption a strange yellow powder, heavy and granulated, like sugar but thicker. It is a stimulant, of that I am sure, but one that seems to have no deleterious side effects. It sustains us until we return to the plane. The flight takes hours. We are exhausted but content with our progress. We should be happy, ecstatic even, but I realize that during the course of our negotiations neither I nor Doctor Hu has shown any sign of emotion at all. The dream ends as I finally get comfortable and fall asleep in my seat.”
Peaslee reached into his briefcase and pulls out a folder. “I would like to show you some pictures. They are grainy, but you should be able to make out some faces.” He lays out the photos in front of Troy. They are of men of a variety of nationalities and cultures at a meeting; they appear relaxed, almost happy.
Troy pulled three photos out of the batch. “These men I recognize from my dreams.”
The doctor nodded and held up one of the photos. “This is Kang Sheng. He is a confidant of Chairman Mao. We believe him to be the Minister of Security for the People’s Republic of China.” The second photo Peaslee holds up is of a rotund little Korean. “This is Kim Il-Sung the Prime Minister of North Korea.” The third photo was of a soft looking but severe man in a suit and tie. “This is Lavrenti Beria, First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, and head of the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police.”
Troy seemed unphased by the revelations revealed by his interrogat
or. The little psychologist slid another photo across the table. “Do you recognize this man?”
The former POW stared at the image before him. The man was small, with a vaguely Asian look. Thin almost gaunt, with a shock of wild white hair surrounding a pair of knowing eyes. He pushed the photo back and nodded. “That is Doctor Hu.”
“I see,” there was a judgmental tone in Peaslee’s voice, “One last picture, who is the man in-between Sheng and Beria, the one behind Hu?”
Troy looked at the photo. There were dozens of people, all posed for a formal photo. He recognized many of them from his dream, and yes there was the man Peaslee had identified as Beria, and the other he called Sheng, and between them was Hu. Behind them all was a man who seemed out of place, a man whose features were so familiar, but whose expression was entirely alien to him. There was something wrong with that face. It was slack, emotionless, and almost dead. There was no life in those eyes. Yet they were eyes that Troy recognized, and that recognition welled up inside him and brought him to his feet. He turned away from the table and stood there shaking.
“Who is that man?” demanded Peaslee. “Who is that standing behind Hu?”
A tear escaped from Troy’s left eye as he fought to speak. “I don’t understand! How is it possible? That man, it’s me!”
December 20, 1953
JACK Base 3 Codename: Whitechapel
Hollister opened the large enamel box, connected up the battery, flipped a switch, and the machinery inside suddenly began to hum. He watched a few dials jump, adjusted them to a standard and then nodded to his superior. Doctor Peaslee nodded back and dismissed his junior with a subtle hand gesture. Then he turned back toward his subject. “Captain Troy, we are going to try an experiment today. You are going to tell me about another one of your dreams. Then I am going to ask you some questions, just like we did yesterday. The difference is this little piece of equipment. It’s called a Voigt magnetometer, it detects subtle changes in magnetic fields. It can help us detect certain influences, aberrations in the brain that are too subtle for the Kampff Test.”
Troy nodded slightly. “Do you still think I am a traitor Doctor Peaslee?”
“I think it might be more complicated than that Captain. I assure you that I am going to do everything to help you get back to normal.” He watched Troy squirm a little. “Now, tell me about another one of your dreams.”
The engineer took a deep breath, closed his eyes and began to speak in a strange, almost monotonic voice. “I’m on a train in a tunnel, I’m vaguely reminded of the subway in Philadelphia, but this tunnel is much larger, much older, and it isn’t level. I’m going down, down into the earth. I’m not alone; the car is full of men, young men, all of whom are covered in dust, which makes determining their nationalities difficult. From the wide range of features they seem to be mostly Asian, but with some Europeans and a few Africans. They are dressed in single piece utilitarian suits that zip up the front like a flight suit. They don’t talk to each other; they don’t even look at each other, the only thing they do is sway and bounce to the jostling rhythm of the train.
“We slowly pull into a station, little more than a raised concrete slab, and the doors open with a hiss. I step out and the air is hot, stagnant and heavy with the stench of humanity. I recoil a little as it seeps into my sinuses. I am just one of hundreds who march out of the train and down the platform. We move as one, in a practiced pace that may be slow, but ensures that we can all keep up. As we pass through a great gate a whistle blows, and suddenly there is another great throng of humanity, identical to our own, but moving in the opposite direction. We pass them as they move up, and we follow the wide tunnel that gently slopes down toward the dimly lit area below. We round a curve and emerge onto a staging platform overlooking a vast cavern. I move in one direction, while the others move in another. The horde moves down into the vast chamber, while I move up along a still oddly wide spiral ramp. The ramp and the tunnel itself seem different than the material around them. The cavern walls are dark gray and pitted, like sandstone. The ramp and the tunnel are smooth and slightly reflective, almost nacreous, and I can see no evidence of striations or layers. The material is slick, and difficult to walk on, though not impossible. I reach the top and find myself in a turret-like structure that allows me to see the entirety of the vast cavern that stretches out below me.
“Vast is not sufficient to describe the scene that my eyes took in. The cavern was immense, Brobdingnagian, cyclopean, stretching as far as I could see, and disappearing into murky darkness with hints of dim lights moving about in the distance. The cavern was not empty, everywhere were men, hundreds of men, and their machines, moving earth and climbing the scaffolding that clung like strange metallic growths to the masses of rock and sediment that were being excavated. Beneath the diggings were more of the strange nacreous structures, glittering in the faint light. They emerged from their earthen tombs like spiraled and bejeweled shells, or an ancient and petrified species of gigantic fungi. All seemed to be adorned with strange rods of an odd metallic compound, that would suddenly bulge into a sphere or oblong joint. These branching groups of apparatus shared the queer organic feel of the structures that supported them, though as I said the matrix was definitely more metallic in appearance. The purpose of such equipment was known to me, but I cannot tell you what it was. It bore some resemblance to the forest of antennae one can see across the rooftops of major cities, and it reminded me of the materials I sought to commission from the attendees at the party in my other dream, though infinitely better crafted. In some ways I think that the parts I was intent on purchasing were mere crude analogs of the pieces that were being excavated; that I was asking a blacksmith to supply parts to help repair a Lockheed F-80 fighter jet. Still, despite reservations, there was an undeniable sense of pride concerning what was happening in the cavern before me, pride and an immense sense of satisfaction.
“That feeling was suddenly interrupted by a disturbance in the distance. There was a sound, an explosion of sorts, but also a great roaring, like a pump or engine suddenly tearing itself to pieces, but on a massive scale. A plume of dust, smoke and debris suddenly mushroomed into view, it was at least a mile away but even from that distance I could hear the screams of men as they ran for their lives from whatever it was that had happened. Doctor Hu appeared by my side, mumbling some strange words I did not understand. In his hand was a tool of some sort, not totally unlike a screwdriver but where the blade should have been, there was instead a small glass bead that glowed as Hu chanted. With each repetition the bead glowed brighter, and was soon joined by a high-pitched whistling that hurt my ears. As the infernal whine grew louder something large and amorphous reeled up into the sky, flailing amongst the smoke and debris. It was a monstrous thing, like a gelatinous polyp, black in places while seemingly invisible in others; it twisted and turned in the sky, roiling in apparent agony. Whip-like tendrils flailed from its body smashing against the walls and nacreous structures, and wrapping around those poor souls who were too slow to escape its attentions.
“Then, as if some threshold had been reached the thing ceased moving. It hung there in the sky like a twisted mockery of a moon. It shuddered there, shuddered and then seemed to shrink, implode, before finally with a great and horrid sound it exploded, disintegrating into innumerable pieces that tumbled from the air and covered the city in slime and gore. The pieces, strange amalgamations of bladders, muscles and cartilage writhed on the ground for a few moments before finally collapsing into masses of quickly desiccating mucus. Doctor Hu cursed and spat a word I was not familiar with, but which still filled me with fear and loathing. I needed to know what it was that created in me such terror, that filled me with such anxiety and dread. With the strange high pitched alarm still ringing in my ears I screamed that strange word that Hu had cursed just moments before. I screamed it and demanded an explanation.
“And then he tells me, and I could no longer hear the workers below crying out in terror and ago
ny over the sound of my own screams! Screams that force me to flee back to the waking world, where I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding. But though I have dreamed this dream countless times I cannot tell you what he told me. I can only remember the name, that horrid name that Hu spat out in disgust. I remember it, but it still fills me with dread. Perhaps you can tell me Doctor Peaslee. Do you know what horrid monstrosity Doctor Hu was referring to?”
Peaslee shook his head. “Do you know where this dream took place Captain Troy?”
Troy shook his head. “He said this word, a word I didn’t understand.”
Peaslee fumbled with a map. He pointed at a spot. “Was it here? This is where Intelligence says Doctor Hu has been excavating, a place called Hwadae. Is that where you were?”
“What does it mean Doctor Peaslee?” Troy was ranting. He rose up from his chair and tore at the sensors. There was foam at the corners of his mouth. “What does it mean Peaslee! Tell me. WHAT IS A SHOGGOTH!?”
December 23, 1953
Jack Base 2 Codename: Candlestick
“I’m going to be honest with you Captain Troy, You are in it deep.” Peaslee took a drag off his cigarette. “You left your accommodations, in the middle of the night, jumped the fence into a restricted area, and sabotaged some very delicate and expensive equipment. Would you care to explain yourself?” There was no reply. “Captain you are facing charges of sabotage and treason, the penalty for which is death. Would you care to explain yourself?”
Captain Troy glared at Peaslee with tired eyes. “You know what I was doing there. You’ve known all along why I am here.”
A smile came across Peaslee’s face. “Of course I know, I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. Well, you or someone similar. I have to admit, you had us confused for a while. Your repressed memories were backwards. The memories are supposed to be of your world as seen through a human’s eyes, not of our world seen through alien eyes. It was puzzling, until we realized that it wasn’t the memories that were being repressed, but rather an entire personality, two minds in one body, one human and one Yithian. You must have been very desperate to attempt such a thing.”