Philip pushed the door open and entered, plunging immediately into a brightly lit, heavily perfumed space whose walls were plastered with magazines and video boxes depicting men and women copulating garishly.
A fat man with a goatee perched on a stool. His arms were laced with tattoos of dragons and serpents. These intertwining reptiles were, Philip felt certain, etched over older tattoos, faded images that were still evident by reason of their ghastly subject matter. The blazing head of Cthulhu was unmistakably present behind the scaled visage of a fire-breathing lizard.
The fat man nodded slowly and Philip nodded back, passed through a small gate, and entered the room. Two men, both of whom appeared to be human, studied the walls with identical expressions of boredom.
Philip adopted this expression and drifted slowly around the room. It was a long, narrow room and the racks of video boxes and magazines displayed the variety—and sameness—of the human sexual impulse. Some of the videos were imaginatively titled: STIFF COMPETITION, PORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY, DRIVING MISS DAISY CRAZY, YUPPIES IN HEAT, SATURDAY NIGHT BEAVER. Other videos were rather matter-of-factly packaged: INTERRACIAL ORAL SEX #9, CLIT-O- RAMA, SUZIE'S SUCKFEST, TRACI'S HOTTEST THREE-WAYS.
Philip blinked at a video located in a section entitled, simply, "Breasts." A woman with breasts considerably larger than her head leaned forward grimly under a red-lettered title that troubled Philip. The title, BUTT-NAKED BREASTS, bothered Philip, who was something of a prude when it came to logical sentence construction. Breasts did not have buttocks and could not, therefore, bare them. As usual when encountering such constructions, he felt an almost irresistible urge to point this out to someone in authority, but he realized he had a mission to accomplish. He moved on.
He came to a dark-curtained room and entered.
He moved quickly past rows of bondage magazines and videos for yet more specialized tastes. This room was a little darker, the lighting in keeping with the impulses pandered to. Indeed, as the corridor narrowed, the darkness seemed to increase.
He hurried past rows of foreign pornography, the titles no longer in English.
He paused, stricken, in front of what, of course, he had been seeking.
The video box displayed a spiderlike thing, wrapped in the naked embrace of something resembling a giant sea anemone. On other boxes, lurid organs caressed unspeakable appendages.
Alien porn. Here the Old Ones came to satisfy their fibrillating libidos, to clatter their chitinous mandibles, to drool acid and undulate in the promise of secret, forbidden pleasures.
And, of course, the corporate bigshots would have discreet access to this room. They wouldn't—like that poor scuttling bug he had passed on the street—have to march through the front door. There was, Philip was certain, a passage leading directly to Pelidyne.
It took him ten minutes to find it, harrowing minutes when the certainty of the proprietor's hand on his shoulder made him tremble.
The lever was concealed—purloined-letter- like—as the third silver dildo in a gleaming display of eight. Pulled forward, the lever activated a section of magazines which rolled back to reveal a dark, musty-smelling concrete stairway leading upward. Philip entered and found a switch that set the door clattering back to its prior position.
I'm in it now, he thought, and he ascended the stairs.
11.
He came out in a janitor's closet filled with cleaning supplies, mops, an ancient floor waxer, and 50-gallon drums of disinfectant.
The hall was empty.
He remembered that Amelia's offices were on the fifth floor. That seemed the logical place to begin, although he didn't expect to find her there. If he found her desk, her computer, he might (bloodhoundlike) sniff through her papers and pick up her trail.
He stood in front of the elevator and pushed the "UP" button. As he waited, he glanced at the ubiquitous bulletin board. Amelia's photo jumped out at him again, the same photo he had recently seen in Personality Bytes. Again, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH was the caption.
Philip scanned the copy, "Let's all congratulate Amelia Price on a job well done. Amelia will be receiving a commemorative plaque recognizing her achievement and she will be officially entered into the Employee Merit Hall of Fame at a short ceremony that will take place..."
Tomorrow.
Philip felt the first real surge of hope. If Amelia was accepting an award tomorrow, then she was still alive and still on earth.
The elevator arrived and its doors opened with a hiss. Philip jumped inside and punched the lighted "5."
The fifth floor was as silent as the third.
Usually, a corporation like Pelidyne had at least a dozen workers on any floor no matter how late the hour. This stillness was ominous, as though a sudden eruption of terrible industry were brewing.
Philip ran down the hall. He stopped abruptly in front of the door marked GRAPHICS SUPPORT. He pushed it open and peered inside.
All the lights were on in the room. Amelia sat stiffly in front of her computer, her back to Philip.
"Amelia," Philip said.
He ran to her. She did not turn until he touched her shoulder and then she swiveled in her chair.
Her eyes were blank, emotionless.
Some sort of hypnotic trance, Philip thought.
Her mouth opened suddenly, the action accompanied by a whirring sound, and she spoke. "Whag... on... wah... bah," she said, her voice low, as though recorded speech were played on a sluggish, dying tape recorder. Then, with a whoop, the pitch rose and quite distinctly,
Amelia said, "I can't tell you how delighted I am to accept this honor. Working at Pelidyne has been a wonderful experience and..."
Philip knew then. Knew he was too late.
"You are too late, my friend."
"I know," Philip said.
He turned, not at all surprised to see Hal Ketch, welcoming the man's familiar, uncomplicated evil. Ketch was wearing his uniform, his cap pushed forward over his eyes.
Amelia droned on: "When I first came here, I had no idea I would come to love it so much, that I would..."
Ketch was slouched against the door frame and now he shrugged himself upright and sauntered toward Philip.
There isn't going to be a better time, Philip thought, and he lunged toward his enemy.
Ketch saw him coming and drew his revolver. He didn't have time to fire it before Philip was on him and they both tumbled to the ground, banging against a light table that crashed to the floor instantly, like a prizefighter taking a dive.
They fought amid broken glass. They rolled across the carpet, collided with Amelia's chair which fell on its side, sending her sprawling. She continued to speak, "Being part of a team, having a real sense of belonging, is something I've always..."
Philip was no match for the security guard.
Ketch pushed the gun barrel against Philip's cheek.
"So long, mutherfucker," Ketch said.
"It's a great honor," Amelia was saying. "I couldn't have done it without..."
"Shit," Ketch said, his weight lifting from Philip's chest.
Philip, surprised to be alive, blinked at the running form of Hal Ketch.
Amelia was marching stolidly toward the wide plate glass window.
"Stop!" Ketch shouted, leaping toward her.
"I accept this award for my colleagues as much as for myself. I understand—" Arms outstretched, Amelia crashed through the window and into the night.
Ketch grabbed for her legs and hauled her back inside. Amelia was floundering oddly, arms pinwheeling. She fell back into the room and opened her mouth and coughed a glittering mass of capacitors, resistors, ICs.
The light in her eyes flickered and died. "Without the help of my.... without the help of my... without the help of my..."
"Shit," Hal Ketch was grumbling, rising on his knees, the revolver inches from his hand. He found it as he began to turn.
Philip rushed forward, hitting the man hard and low, hoping to bring him down.
> He failed in this too. Ketch hit him in the face with the gun and Philip screamed.
Amelia was on her feet, arms still flaying the air, locked in an epileptic seizure of circuits. A large rent in the side of her neck revealed metal tubes and bright, colored wires.
"So long, sucker," Ketch said, crouching for the kill.
Amelia's arm caught him on the chin and lifted him.
Ketch made a noise, not a grunt or scream but something closer to an articulated word, as though he had spoken a comic-book balloon: "Gaagh."
Ketch rose up and out, the night sky and the gleaming stars behind him. He rose effortlessly, as though levitated, his chin balanced precisely on robot-Amelia's arm, and then the delicate balance was broken, that moment of suspense suddenly only a memory, and he fell, crying out, arms clawing indifferent air.
He was gone, embarked on five stories of falling, his scream modulated by wind and distance and velocity, his death ruled by mathematics.
Robot-Amelia spun and toppled to its side and could not right itself again but flipped on the floor, whirring and clicking.
Philip crawled away from the facsimile of his ex-lover. He spied the Necronomicon where it lay on the floor, the printer's apron spread out under it like a drop-cloth. The fiendishly conceived volume seemed to glow, gaining strength, no doubt, by close proximity to its ancient progenitors.
He rewrapped the book, lifted it, and lurched back into the hall.
He took the elevator to the basement. He seemed, now, prescient in his awareness, and there was no question of his destination.
Although he had been dragged there while unconscious he could have found that dreadful room had it been hidden amid a hundred million worlds in a million galaxies.
It is the obvious that we find unbelievable, he thought, as he crawled over ruined computers, rusting file cabinets, coils of copper wire, broken ergonomic chairs.
How many times had he watched an awards ceremony, muttered, "God, what a lot of robots," and so missed the truth by speaking it?
He came to Yuggoth's waiting room.
He found Amelia almost instantly, before the crablike robots were alerted, and he did not hesitate (indecisiveness was behind him) but smashed the glass container with the fire extinguisher he'd grabbed from the wall.
The emerald liquid poured out, oozing over the polished floor, enveloping Philip in its rotted fish reek. He held his breath, knelt down, lifted Amelia's nude body in his arms. She coughed violently, her lungs contracting to disgorge the stagnant seas of Yuggoth.
She'll be all right, Philip thought, knowing he was right in this too.
Alarms were ringing now. But lights did not flare overhead, and the implacable alien voice did not boom from the rafters.
Pelidyne's resources were elsewhere engaged.
Luck?
Why not? Philip thought. I'm due.
A single, crablike robot clattered across the floor. Philip turned, lay Amelia on the floor beside the Necronomicon, and stood up. He was not frightened. He felt oddly invulnerable.
Perhaps it was just such a feeling that would get him killed.
The robot swayed slowly on thin, articulated legs, as though engaged in the alien equivalent of some martial arts discipline.
"Go away," Philip said. “I don't want any trouble here. I'm leaving. I quit."
The robot scuttled forward.
Philip swung the fire extinguisher over his head. He spun it in a warning circle. "Scram!" he shouted. "Get!"
The robot skittered three feet closer.
Philip released the extinguisher, and it flew through the air. Effortlessly, with the laconic skill of an outfielder snatching a lazy fly ball, the robot snagged the red cylinder with three whiplike appendages.
Philip turned, tossed the wrapped Necronomicon on Amelia's stomach, and lifted her in the air, cradling her in his arms.
"Hang onto that book, Amelia," he whispered. "We are going to need it before this is over."
Philip turned and hurried toward the door. He looked back to see if the robot was following.
It was not. It was turning the bright cylinder over, tumbling it from tentacle to tentacle as its ocular units extended and retreated. It made a whirring noise, perhaps the machine equivalent of a man's vocal accompaniment to thought: Hmmmmmmmm.
Philip had almost reached the door when the fire extinguisher erupted, a spray of foam hissing into the air. This violent, accidental detonation seemed to cause some reflexive locking mechanism to occur within the robot. Rather than release the trigger, it stiffened. Philip was reminded of a wasp, stilled instantly by a poisonous burst of insecticide.
Philip moved on toward the door, looking back one last time to see the immobile robot, transformed into a vision of some skeletal sculpture in the aftermath of a snowstorm. Foam continued to spew into the air, cotton-candy clots scudding across the smooth floor.
Philip kicked the door open with his foot and entered the hall.
This hallway was unfamiliar. It was cold and poorly lit with walls of dirty cinderblock. When he came to the first doorway on the right, he opened it.
He was in some sort of laboratory, with long sinks and white counters and banks of equipment and glinting glass. One long table was occupied by a pale white corpse, male, nude. Philip lay Amelia on the floor. He spied a lab coat hanging from a rack and grabbed it. He bent over her.
"Amelia," he whispered. "Can you hear me?"
She opened her eyes. "Philip," she said. "What are you—"
She became aware of her nakedness, sitting up abruptly.
"Where are my clothes?" she screamed, scrambling away from him.
"I don't know," Philip said. "Here." He extended his hand with the lab coat. She grabbed it from him and donned it instantly.
"You'll go to jail for this!" she screamed.
"I didn't take your clothes off," Philip shouted back. "What kind of person do you take me for?"
"A crazy person," Amelia said. "The kind of person who would break into my apartment when I'm at work and lie on my bed. And drink beer! I always wondered why the place smelled like beer. The kind of person who would drug a woman and take advantage of her while she was unconscious, like some sick pervert, like, like a psychiatrist, like that psychiatrist they wrote a book about. The kind of person who should be locked up for life."
Philip spoke slowly, trying to calm her. He was hurt by these accusations, only some of which were true.
“I saved your life, actually," Philip said. "Well, I hope to save your life. We aren't in the clear yet, and I don't think we can afford to stand here discussing this at length right now."
"Where are we?" Amelia asked, looking around her with a wary eye.
"Pelidyne," Philip said. "Or a parallel Pelidyne. Think. Maybe you can remember. They switched you with a robot and brought you down here. They were going to send you to Yuggoth. That's what they do to all the Employees of the
Month. My guess is they like to weed out any humans who are a little too innovative, too intelligent. They don't want them in the workplace. So..."
Amelia turned and began to walk away.
"Where are you going?" Philip shouted after her.
"Anywhere away from you."
"Wait. You don't even know where you are. This is not—"
Amelia began to run, her bare feet slapping on the tiled floor.
Philip snatched up the Necronomicon and raced after her.
She banged through a white door.
And fell, pitched into the abyss.
Philip paused, swaying on the edge of the dark, fetid pit. He clung to the doorway, hearing Amelia's scream, already dreadfully distant.
Dear God!
He opened the Necronomicon. A dark wind from the depths whipped the apron violently and Philip almost lost his grip. He clutched the book fiercely as the apron swam out over the black void, like some flat, bottom-dwelling fish.
He held the book tighter, despite the grim images it engendered, despi
te the rotted-flesh feel of its binding.
He found the page, the page Al Bingham had marked. He spoke loudly, his words ringing out over the pit.
"Na'ghimgor thdid lym," Philip screamed. "Mjn th'x barsoom lu'gndar."
He did not know the meaning of the words, but he felt the power of their shapes, and sensed that these vocals were more than words, were conjured entities.
From the dark pit sounds began to rise. And light.
Résumé With Monsters Page 23