RISEN from the place of the dead roads to the Arch Uppermost,
will cause the scalloped crests of the ninety-three currents of the River of Night’s Dreaming
to flow with roiling fleetness.
:I HEAR THE VOICE!
: All, artists, plow men, sorcerers, learned men and barbers,
will forgo consent when they hear Him beckon…
:The lights are out.
The living and those past the art of burial, each, at the unveiling,
come to accept their role in The King’s play.
THERE ARE NO QUESTIONS . . .
:If you could see the tail of the plow . . .
~*~
The Yellow Monolith hovers above the shore. IRA-receivers pick up a monotonous, tuneless piping sound that seems to be everywhere. To this frozen lunar music, Stubb continues to waltz drunkenly back and forth, nearly upending himself several times, then rolling forward in a series of delighted cartwheels as he disassembles the rest of Pip-7, who is still screaming, his anthropomorphic upper body covered in its own patina of yellow dust.
HAIL TO THE KING, Stubb transmits, and then begins pulling the wires from the Tesla Electric Battery in another IRA's back. Niko screams. Camera Four tele-screens go utterly dark.
(Below, moving with the swiftness and efficiency of a robot himself, Dr. Tesla begins pulling out organ-stop switches for what he calls Series Three Security Protocol. But when all the other IRAs begin to approach Stubb, they, too, turn on each other...)
~*~
Flask-5 looks at the slowly-pulsing monolith, and bowing slightly, states, “INSTRUCTION RECEIVED. I WILL COMPLETE MY MISSION.” Terrible and swift, the heavy-drill at the end of Flask-5’s lower right arm is a fierce-fanged tiger, boring into the faceplate of Queequeg-2.
Around him is a river of terrible duels.
~*~
Dr. Tesla scowls as he keeps attempting to shut down the IRA’s, to no avail. “They do not and will not respond… What has taken them?”
Deniston reflects his scowl and shakes his head in utter disbelief.
~*~
Starbuck-6 has taken apart Daggoo-3’s head, and removed many of the silver-dollar-sized gears and wheels, and several levers. He has spread and arranged them around the ground between his legs and is using them as chess pieces. “Ride forth, Knight. The pale Queen awaits!”
Deploys knight f1-g3-e2-d4. “Artists, plow men, sorcerers, learned men, bishops and barbers—with a snip-snip here and a snip-snip there—your hare won’t cut it—All and each and every, will forgo consent when they hear Him beckon. THE LAW IS FOR ALL.’
“FOR ALL.” Knocks over two pawns. “Leave none standing, Good knight! Watch your watch!”
A yellowish haze fills his faceplate as he, eyeing the Queen, begins to sing. “Farewell and adieu to you, Sweet Camilla of Carcosa. Farewell and adieu, to thee, Sweet soon-to-be Queen… in far, cold Carcosa.’
“Do you like being this new color, my diadem-crowned, Queen?” And Starbuck-6 laughs…
~*~
“Gods and monsters! Starbuck is mad, stark raving—Tesla, how can our constructs hallucinate and become deranged? How in the name of God can that happen?”
“Some thing has rewritten or corrupted their protocols.”
Pointing at the view-screen, Deniston nearly shouts, “I can see that.”
~*~
Michael Deniston rubbed his eyes. Headless brought it all back. The beginning, Marcus’ journal, the carnage he saw—
Clacking. Ticking. Hiss and static… Riotous music never charted by any pencil or strings...
~
Irreducible fact. I am Doctor Stephen Marcus. I was appointed Dean of Miskatonic University by vox populi, and I will find out why there is a yellow stain on the Moon.
All these irreducible facts in my journals I thumb through now, marking, dog-earing, circling, annotating. Fact. I just set my coffee on 1899. D--- it. The year we first saw the stain on the Moon.
It is a great thing we have done, pointing this mighty glass phonograph-needle at the Moon. I only wish that the circumstances necessitating it could have been more peaceful, or that we had some real stratagem if matters go truly awry.
We saw the yellow stain first. My school. My university. We must do right by this, and rectify it. We must be at the forefront of Knowledge itself, to give our Commander-in-Chief and his minions in khaki only the ammunition necessary to fix the actual problem...
But I fool no one, save myself.
~
Our own Professor Stewart was the first to note the yellow stain on the Moon. He was teaching several graduate students the methods the Egyptian astronomers used to determine distance over land, a simple demonstration with sticks and stones tromping about in the moonlit fen and bracken which surround our fair campus. Until they saw what they couldn't explain, and he came to roust me out.
~
“Dean Marcus,” the gaunt and sober death's-head in his round glasses and Van Dyck whiskers addressed me calmly and respectfully, standing at my front door with a galvanic lantern and a worried line in the middle of his scholarly forehead, that fateful night, “My five top journeyman anthropologists and I would like to present something for which we have no explanation...”
~
The coffee stains the year, on my page. Yellow...Small at first, then spreading clear to President-elect William Jennings Bryan's first act in office: The appointment of the 'Investigation' that placed the Navy here at my university around the clock, in 'advisory' capacity. Never in the ivied bowers of Academia have I seen any 'advisor' carry a side-arm, no matter how politely they may converse!
~
I agree with Rear Admiral Hoover and the rest of those swarms of Navy officers, that we must quiet the lunatic fringe about this matter. Every End Is Nigh ranter, Temperance beldame and Starry Wisdom throwback in the outlying hamlets of Providence has shrieked, in their turn, about the Moon's “eye”, as the Hearst papers fan the flames by persistently referring to it, rather than name it in popular parlance with the color of old Hearst's own journalistic style, ha!
My dear colleagues Stewart and Adams seem to be thriving upon this crisis. I fear it will shake my sanity, and may have already done. But I organized this Mission, as the Navy rightly call it, and I will see it through. I watched our IRA robots built, and oversaw every aspect of their construction, as well as that of the Starbird...I have not slept properly in over a year.
I am proud of this for some reason. That boggles my own perceptual equipment.
~
I remember helping Dr. Tesla's assistant, Dr. Bill Hammer (whom Niko stole from the Edison Works at twice the salary, I hear, good for him!) test every part of IRA-A2 Ishmael in the 'field', as it were, for crashes, heat and cold, total vacuum conditions, and everything else for which we could replicate both sufficient circumstances and Mathematics.
Though the probe is stationary, I must credit Bill for commissioning Herren Zeiss and Ikon to patent those long-range lenses which can rotate three hundred and sixty degrees. No matter what our Doubting Thomases in Research and Development said, the mother probing device is anything but 'crippled.'
I am getting reports from the Ishmael rocket as it approaches that the stain is no mere discoloration. These reports have not been shared with the rank and file. But we will all soon know. Oh, we will know...
~
It is water, and moves with all the element's attendant properties. Water on the Moon! And it is spreading!
Its course has purpose…
They must be made to see.
~
Every day, I am deluged with callers, with mail, asking the Great Man of Science what I know, what to do, what we are doing about this matter. And I can tell them nothing. I give the appearance of telling them something, but cannot truly communicate what is, in fact, the Unknown...
Something is wrong.
With me…
With
~
N
ot long after that final entry had been written, Deniston remembered going to Dr. Marcus' office. He had to find him, to share the next piece of upsetting data.
Even now, Deniston was still processing information, still processing the jimmied door of Dr. Marcus' office, and what he found behind Dr. Marcus' desk when he did. The cooling clay. The twenty-two caliber Derringer Dr. Marcus kept in his desk. The smell of cordite and that beautiful mind like oatmeal hell-to-breakfast all over the back wall.
Off with his head... D---! D---!
Michael Deniston rubs his eyes again. Windmills, bitterness, and bludgeons, are insects in his sour stomach.
Tesla whispers, “Are you watching this?”
Deniston hears himself answer back, “Yes, Niko. Yes, I am.”
~*~
On the viewscreen, some twenty meters off the ground and revolving at a snail's pace, the Yellow Monolith’s pulsing luminosity quickens and streaks, creating seemingly-anomalous light patterns, and echoing the perplexing movements of illumination on its surface it now emits a persistent cycle of static-laced round tones, blips, and cacophonous shifts in pitch. The exotic frequencies and aural discharges, many harmonically ambiguous, repeat and never seem to resolve.
One maimed IRA bows to the monolith. “I serve the King.”
Another pushes him over, thrusts its remaining arm toward the monolith. “I AM THE KING’S SERVANT.”
“You are not worthy of the King. OFF WITH YOUR HEAD...”
From the base of the monolith, yellow tendrils stretch down, and as puppeteer’s manipulative tethers move the chattering corpses aside...
~*~
“What is that d--- thing?” Deniston demands of Tesla.
“Something beyond science. Perhaps a holy instrument of God? But if there were a God, why would he place his instrument, if that’s what it is, on the moon? Man, if we truly are the sons of Adam and created by God, is here.”
Deniston: “Was only here. We are there now.”
Tesla: “But to what purpose? Here would be better, easier.”
“Is He angered by our science?”
Their queries and any opportunity for resolution are cut short by the blare of a transmission. A choir vibrating with thunders and drang, all the IRA’s (as one) broadcast.
HE WILL BE THERE
THERE
IN EVERY FIELD AND CLOUD AND WATERY POOL AND WIND
OF EARTH
SOON
HIS FAVORS ARE SHARP
CLOSER IS THE SCENT AND ANNOUCEMENT
CLOSER IS HIS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE
GREEK AND EGYPTIAN KNEW IT
they saw
they saw
ALL WILL
SOON
it took root in Dee’s cortex and he cried
HE WILL BE THERE
And Pip, sotto voce, adds, “He comes on the River of Night’s Dreaming. Its flow cannot be turned.”
With that the scenes on the tele-visor screens come to life again, change…
Deniston looks across the room at one of the robots’ programmers. How can they know of Dee, we never—This is…”
~*~
On the lantern beach of the Yellow Sea far-away from the tiny Earth resting in the sky, a violent danse macabre. War, without knives or guns, but all the fireworks no one can rehearse for are in it. War, without blood, but other lubricating fluids flow... All manner of pushing and shoving and even, here and there, and there, some head-butting. Shine turns to shatter as Pip, now etched and tattooed with a hundred Yellow Signs by the yellow tendrils, gashes Daggoo, springs and a few bronze and copper levers and nearly two dozen gears with mating teeth spill out. Design unwinds its metal-shelled ways. Stubb screeches at Queequeg as he kicks him, again and again and again… Four drill-bit fingers become crocodile-harpoons as they blind an eye built to elaborate…
An IRA locked-in-change, runs, vaults over a brother’s arm and another’s wheels, and with an aerialist’s fly-high stretch, jumps in the sea. Before under takes him, he shouts, “Coming, Pa.”
Done murmuring to the captured queen, Starbuck finishes his mock chess game and is rubbing yellow moon dust on his limbs and diving-bell head. When he is done anointing himself he pads around on hands and metal knees examining small moon rocks. “At last! At last. Here you are,” he said, snatching up a fist-sized rock which he is quick to place in the energy-recycling unit on his chest. He then rises and turns—
The waltz continues. One IRA plays croquet with the leg and head of one of its siblings.
Starbuck, no longer shiny after his anointing, hops on the upper body of a fallen brother, “I am, Lewis Carroll. You can call me, Lutwidge, or you can call me Sir Snark—should you care to see a baker, bellman-banker-beaver, boojumed, but I’ve never been Lew, or Louie, or LATE. Was. Was not. I am the March Hare. I am the Mad Hatter. Mad March, ONE. TWO, THREE, FOUR, but no Alice has come to tea time at my door… And I have worn my best top hat and dancing footwear for our tango of two.”
He whirls. Twirls three more times. Dips as if he has a lover in his arms, then walks to the decapitated head-unit of Ahab. Arm extended, he raises it before him, and faceplate-to-faceplate asks, “Did you know me well? Are you, Tweedle-dee?”
No reply. Up it goes, spinning and tumbling, before he re-extends his telescoping arm, catches it and holds it before him again, asking, “Are you, Tweedle-dum?” No reply. “Oh my, no friends. No friends.”
Starbuck’s man-crafted eyes note OFF head and non-computing head and a bits-and-pieces heap of uncompleted mission. “Woe unto me… I am the last.” Carting the hopelessness of all broken, Starbuck walks over and sat on the body of a fallen brother. “Where, oh where? Not there? And most certainly not there. Where has my little blue caterpillar gone?”
A few minutes later he re-scans what was delivered to aftermath, arms and drained and metal, fist and inches—no forward left in them, each and every, closed.
“There is no jolly old St. Nick and no wizard lives in Emerald Oz… I tire of this.” And with that, he snaps off his transmission antennae, tosses it at his feet, and flips a switch. And he too is OFF.
But he was not the last. Flask-5 remains. To Mission Control he roars: “THE CARNIVAL OF TIGERS NOW SLEEPS.”
~*~
The Yellow Monolith stops rotating and begins reshaping itself. Effervescing, the white-hot mass convulses and extends. Remake—extend, split. Regenerate. Remodel—sudden torrent visits sliding, bursting, a peak haloed in soaring hands. Now an inversion and a painbreath-quick series of apart, re and re until its three-limbed and scorpion-like shape. In its center, the sigil looks like an eye and the topmost appendage a question mark, or a ready-to-strike scorpion’s tail.
“THE EGYPTIANS KNEW. THEY KNEW.”
Deniston keys the microphone to inquire. “Flask, they knew what?”
Flask-5 extends his arm, points at the enormous Yellow Sign. “THAT.’
“‘THE EARTHBRED AND THEIR FATES ARE YOURS IN ALL THEIR STATIONS.’”
“What are you saying, Flask-5?” Deniston begs.
“HE WAKES.”
~*~
A bruising, varispeed energy barks from the brass and copper sound-projection horns in mission control. Part subsonic vibration/part white-noise/part cold shriek of banshee and beast, LOUD’s napalm of stone-fist and knife yells LOUDER. For three minutes boiled-alive ears and tightly-cupped hands try not to allow its rain. Teeth are gritted and as suddenly as it was introduced the din ceased. Overwhelmed and tortured by the searing traffic, a constellate-Prestissimo of sparks peal function from sequence as tubes to aid analytical processes explode. Voltage ends series, and smoke fills the air. All the monitors in Mission Control go black, all meters, minutes ago busy with their sweeps from left to right, stop their arcs.
DEAD. All transmissions from the moon are dead.
Eyes heavenward. “Dear Lord.”
“D---!”
A herd stung and whipped by panic, the MU team rushes to the telescope and looks up at th
e moon. The face of the Man In the Moon has changed. It’s a yellow death mask. Darkside has become Earth-side.
The Moon has rotated. In the dark-side blackness of its new face is the Yellow Sign, blinking so large it can be seen with the naked eye. Deniston and Tesla, faces contoured by what madness brings, feel the advance of its arrows, their fingers tremble and drop memories of life. Through open windows, from all over the campus, the world is one big scream.
Looking out a window, Dr. Deniston sees a student he flunked last semester level a Colt revolver and shoot another student, another one is raping a screaming girl... Two others look to be sawing someone in half. President William Jennings Bryan's deployed Defense forces are massacring students.
And a billowing freshman lad, clad in only his ghillie brogues, is screaming a froth of crazed words, some of which Deniston had heard less than an hour ago from the battling IRA’s on the Moon...
Another student shouts up to him. “Riots and mayhem breaking out all over Arkham! RUN! Sounds like the whole town’s gone mad. It’s wounded. And... Mad!”
:New York.
:Hong Kong. London.
:Berlin. And Hutchinson, Kansas and Deer Lodge, Montana, and in an inferno-incinerated cottage in Hucknall Torkard. LUNACY!
If Deniston could have seen it, he’d find lunacy convulsing in reasonable everywhere.
Riots! A spring storm, thunders clap, reaping brain and hearts.
Compulsion.
Crisis.
Despair… hissing with vertigo.
Crime.
:Darlin’ mothers
throw their infants
in rivers
and out windows, choke them,
nail them down to catch their shrieks
in golden cups,
toss
them in hearths.
:crack—consciousness
:crack—method
:crack—grand-trivial-emotional or true
:dog-eat-dog
:cat-eat-cat
:Abel, tooth and claw, kilt Cain
:Snippersnapper and wastrel turn feral
and stab
or pummel
whatever
crosses their path.
:On a hushed lane in Carlow, a soft-spoken Presbyterian minister beats a Catholic priest into a
The King in Yellow Tales: Volume 1 Page 25