by Alan K Baker
‘That all sounds plausible enough,’ said Lovecraft. ‘But how on earth did Crystalman get his hands on a reproductive pheromone from a sky beast?’
Fort sighed. ‘I’m not sure, Howard, but I do know that Crystalman’s a genius; a warped bastard to be sure, but a genius nonetheless. He couldn’t have evaded the law for so long, otherwise.’ He thought for a moment and added: ‘You know, I wouldn’t put it past him to chemically synthesise the active compounds in the reproductive pheromone. He’s got the knowledge, and chances are he’s got the equipment…’ He grimaced. ‘Which reminds me, I need a shower and a change of clothes.’
CHAPTER 20
As Dead as Mars
Rusty looked around the conference table at the expectant faces looking back at her. An update, she thought. They want an update. Okay… okay.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m still conducting my analysis and evaluation…’
‘And?’ said Troy Martell.
‘To be honest, there’s not too much to report at this stage…’
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ asked Canning with a glance at the others. ‘Come on, Aldous! I mean, you were the one who recommended that we keep the ninth rock book. You said it might contain the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs in the other books. You were pretty adamant about it, in fact.’
‘Brian’s right,’ said Martell. ‘You’ve been pretty cagey about your research so far. I decided to cut you some slack, in view of the difficulty of your work – trying to interpret the words of an alien language with nothing to compare them to. It’s a tough job, I’ll grant you, but you must have come up with something by now.’
Rusty had an answer for them – or rather, Aldous Bradlee did, but she had no way of knowing if he had already mentioned it in a previous meeting. If she told them what they already knew, she’d be in trouble; they’d know something was up. But, she decided, she had no choice: she had to tell them something, so she went for broke and told them what she had read in Bradlee’s files.
‘Okay… I wasn’t going to share this with you just yet; I was going to do some more work, to make sure I wasn’t wrong, to make sure I wasn’t crazy… but you need an answer now, so here it is. We know that the Martian rock books are – or were – their favoured means of literary expression. They’re masterpieces of craftsmanship, both in design and execution: thin slivers of basalt, granite, onyx and other minerals bound together with metal rings and containing text and images. We have no idea how they were made; it’s as if the different minerals were somehow shaped and manipulated to produce the images on each page.’
‘We know all this, Aldous,’ said Canning with more than a trace of impatience. ‘We know what they look like; we want to know what they mean.’
‘I’m getting to that, Brian,’ said Rusty. ‘They’re more than just books whose pages are made of rock – much more.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Martell.
‘I believe they’re the product of a highly-advanced technology, which I’ve called “lithotechnology”.’ Rusty scanned the faces of the others. Their bemused expressions told her that this was news to them, that she was still on safe ground. She began to relax a little. If they’d never heard that word, it followed that they’d never heard the rest of it.
‘Lithotechnology? What the hell does that mean?’ said Pete Medina.
‘Simply put,’ Rusty replied, ‘it means that the ninth rock book is an information storage device, but not in the way a normal book is. Oh, it has text and images, but it contains much more than that. Somehow… somehow, it’s capable of communicating with whoever looks at it.’
The others cast incredulous glances at each other.
‘Communicating?’ said Martell. ‘How?’
‘It takes a long time to get going,’ Rusty replied, ‘which is why no one has noticed it before. It could be because our brain patterns are different from those of the Martians. It takes longer for the book to key into the electrical field generated by the human brain. But I’ve spent an awful lot of time staring at the pages of the ninth book – enough time for the lithotechnology to align itself with my brain pattern…’
‘Excuse me, Aldous,’ said Monica Quinlan, ‘but are you saying that the rock book speaks to you?’
‘Not as such,’ Rusty replied. ‘It’s difficult to describe the sensation. When I look at the pages of the rock book, it’s as if memories are triggered in my brain – memories I obviously don’t possess. It’s like I’m remembering things I never experienced, things I never knew before.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘It’s a very unsettling experience. The book isn’t telling me anything as such; it’s… implanting information without my realising it, and then prompting me to remember what’s been implanted.’
‘You mean it’s communicating with your subconscious mind?’ said Deborah Pellin.
‘Yes, I think that’s a pretty good way of describing it. The information is somehow transferred to my subconscious, and since that’s not a normal event, the subconscious doesn’t know how to process it, so it rejects it, in effect; it shunts the information up into the waking consciousness, which experiences it as memories. At least, that’s my guess.’
‘Fascinating,’ murmured Pellin.
‘Do the other rock books have this ability?’ asked Martell.
Rusty shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I tried it with them, but they’re completely inert. They may have been damaged in some way. The ninth book is the only one that does this.’
‘Incredible,’ said Pete Medina in a tone which suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘What you’re describing certainly sounds like tech of some kind… but in rock? How the hell does that work?’
Rusty shrugged. ‘Like I said, it’s highly advanced.’ She nodded at the projector on the wall. ‘We’ve just seen images of Mars taken from orbit, so we know they were capable of spaceflight. They were on a level with humanity as far as technology goes, and I suspect that they were pretty far in advance of us. Somehow they had a way of embedding their technology – in terms of communications at least – in mineral forms. Don’t ask me how.’
‘All right,’ said Martell. ‘Let’s leave that aside for now. What did the book tell you?’
Rusty hesitated before replying: ‘It told me that what we call the Martian Falcon utilises the same technology. It told me what the Falcon really is.’
‘And what’s that?’ asked Martell.
‘A prison,’ Rusty replied.
The others glanced at each other again.
‘A prison for who, or what?’ asked Medina.
‘The one in the robes,’ said Rusty. ‘The one who destroyed Mars and every living thing on it. The bird isn’t really a falcon, of course – although it’s a pretty close analogy to a terrestrial falcon. It was their symbol for justice, and it was the way they punished their criminals. They didn’t have prisons like ours, with criminals locked up in cells. Those who were convicted of serious crimes were placed in the machine we saw, and their minds – their life force, the very essence of what they were – were transferred to a statue like the one we brought back from Mars. They were trapped there for the length of their sentence while their physical bodies were kept in a kind of… I don’t know what you’d call it – suspended animation?’
‘That sounds awful,’ said Deborah Pellin, who gave a visible shudder.
‘Yes… yes it does,’ said Rusty. ‘It was a highly symbolic punishment: the total confinement of the mind and soul within the physical representation of justice. When they did it to the one in the robes – his name was Haq ul’Suun – they allowed his body to die. They knew that they were condemning him to an eternity trapped within the mineral matrix of the Falcon. It was the only fitting punishment for the utter destruction he had wrought upon Vattan.’
‘Vattan?’ said Medina.
‘That was their name for Ma
rs,’ said Rusty.
Martell leaned forward, planting his elbows on the conference table. ‘So… you’re saying that this Martian–’
‘Vattanian,’ Rusty corrected.
‘This Vattanian, Haq ul’Suun… his mind is still inside the Falcon?’
‘I believe so.’
‘And is it dangerous?’ asked Martell.
‘He was called the God-King of Vattan,’ Rusty replied. ‘That was how the Vattanians considered him. I don’t know if he was really a god. I doubt it, since they effectively killed him – his body at least. But his intellect was immense, and he had access to information about the universe which would make him very dangerous indeed if he were ever to be released from his prison.’
‘What information?’ asked Brian Canning.
‘What we saw in that vid was a ritual of sorts, but not an occult ritual. It was based on a scientific theory. Don’t ask me how he knew this, because the rock book didn’t give me that information…’ (At least, thought Rusty, it wasn’t in the notes I managed to read.) ‘…but Haq ul’Suun had figured out how to create a portal between this universe and another – what he called “a place between the spaces we know”.’
‘Between the spaces we know?’ said Medina. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I think it means he found a way to access other dimensions of reality,’ Rusty replied. ‘The pyramid was a machine – a machine of immense power and sophistication, capable of opening a way between our reality… and another.’
‘And the thing that came through?’ said Pellin. ‘The thing that destroyed Mars?’
‘Something from outside… or I should say something from between. An entity from between the four dimensional axes of our universe – length, breadth, height and time.’
‘So this guy Haq ul’Suun,’ said Martell. ‘He was up there with Einstein – way above him, in fact.’
‘Way above,’ said Rusty. ‘Haq ul’Suun must have thought he could harness the power of the between. I don’t know what he was planning to do with that power, or what he thought he could do; the rock book didn’t tell me that. But whatever his intentions were, they failed…’
‘That’s an understatement,’ said Medina with a snort. ‘Makes what happened to the Titanic look like a minor inconvenience.’
‘Does the rock book say what happened after the thing destroyed Mars?’ asked Martell. ‘Where did it go? Is it still there?’
Rusty shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Troy. It may contain that information, but if it does, I haven’t managed to access it – not yet.’
‘All right,’ Martell nodded. ‘Keep trying. We need to know as much about this as we can.’
‘What about the X-M 2?’ asked Canning. ‘Do we still go back to Mars?’
Martell sighed. ‘I’ll have to take this to the Senate Committee on Planetary Exploration. It’s not a call I can make. They’ll have to decide, and I’m pretty sure I know what their decision will be.’
‘They’ll decide we should go back,’ said Canning.
‘That’s my guess. They’ll figure that since the first expedition made it back alive, it’ll be okay to send another.’
‘But you’re not convinced,’ said Pellin.
‘Who could be?’ Martell sighed. ‘They know full well that Thorne Smith and his crew haven’t been the same since they got back, but they’re putting it down to the stress of space travel. They think the replacement crew will be better prepared – and I’m not convinced of that, either.’
‘We still have the problem of the Falcon, and what’s inside it,’ said Canning.
‘Not to mention whoever really stole it,’ added Medina.
Martell shook his head. ‘Like I said, that’s out of our hands.’ He turned to Rusty. ‘This is all riding on you now, Aldous.’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah. You implied that you haven’t got everything the rock book has to give – not yet. Well, we need you to get everything, every scrap of information that that thing contains. Understood?’
Rusty saw her chance to skip out. ‘Understood, Troy. I’ll get to work on it right now.’ She stood up. ‘If you’ll excuse me?’
Martell nodded. ‘Go to it, pal.’
Rusty nodded to the others and left the room.
Five minutes later, she was back in Aldous Bradlee’s office, looking around for the place where he had put the rock book. She checked the file cabinets and his desk drawers. Nothing. Then her eyes fell upon a wall safe with a combination lock. Got to be in there, she thought.
She went back to the outer office where Bridget Sullivan was typing up some correspondence. Modifying her vocal chords so that she sounded even rougher than before, she said: ‘Bridget, would you please do me a favour?’
‘Of course, Mr. Bradlee.’
‘Would you be a dear and pop along to the pharmacy for me? I think I really am coming down with something…’
‘Some linctus, that’s what you need,’ Bridget said, standing up.
Rusty smiled. ‘Bless you, you read my mind. I would go myself, but Troy just dumped a load of work in my lap – wants it pronto.’
‘No problem, Mr. Bradlee,’ Bridget smiled. ‘I’ll get you some straight away.’
‘You’re a doll.’
When she heard to door to the outer office open and close, Rusty turned to the wall safe. Of course, she had no idea what the combination was, but with Bridget out on her errand, Rusty no longer needed it.
She took off Bradlee’s suit jacket, tie and shirt, which would have been shredded by what her upper body was about to become. She closed her eyes and concentrated, and her torso and arms expanded, changing from lithe and supply-muscled to brutally, supernaturally powerful. A few seconds later, a hybrid thing that possessed Aldous Bradlee’s legs and the upper body of a Bavarian forest troll – a thing that was, nevertheless, still Rusty Links – stood before the wall safe.
With a single swipe of its fist, the thing smashed away the dial of the combination lock. Then it thrust a stubby finger into the resulting hole and yanked open the door. The locking mechanism gave with a loud metallic crunch. Rusty reassumed the form of Aldous Bradlee, quickly dressed in his clothes again and looked inside the safe.
Bingo!
She took the Martian rock book and put it on Bradlee’s desk, hardly looking at it but marvelling at its lightness. She opened Bradlee’s briefcase and put it inside, along with the file containing the notes he had made, then she closed the wall safe and replaced the combination dial. She took a moment to make sure that it looked undamaged, and then went through to the outer office, where she hastily wrote a note for Bridget. The note said that Bradlee was feeling pretty darned sick and had decided to work at home for the rest of the day. The note wasn’t in Bradlee’s handwriting, of course, but by the time Bridget began to puzzle over it, it wouldn’t matter.
Taking the briefcase with her, she left the office and walked quickly out to the car park. She got into Bradlee’s car and drove away, thinking about what she had read in his notes – that is, the parts she had not told Troy Martell and the others.
Crystalman’s suspicions were on the money, she reflected. The ninth rock book did contain the means to access what the Martian Falcon contained – although he was wrong in his assumption that it included the key to translating the other books. They were irrelevant; everything Crystalman needed was in the ninth book, which lay on the seat beside Rusty.
She thought about what the book had told Aldous Bradlee: the images and pseudo memories which it had transmitted to him by means of its strange lithotechnology, and which he had transcribed in his notes. The book had told him that it did not just describe Haq ul’Suun’s punishment; it was part of it.
She drove north for a few miles and then pulled onto a deserted stretch of beach. She turned off the engine, opened the briefcas
e and looked through Bradlee’s notes. A moment later, she found the page she was looking for. She read it again, more carefully this time, taking in the information slowly instead of skimming over it.
The rock book has provided so much incredible information, but by far the most incredible is the nature of the book itself. The Vattanians punished their worst criminals by confining their minds in the falcons; but since the punishment was never permanent, the mind-transfer was reversible. It seems that the lithotechnological process was encoded within a rock book specially created for the purpose at the time of the transfer.
The book we now have in our possession is the one that was created at the time of Haq ul’Suun’s punishment. As far as I can understand, its creation was automatic and unavoidable. The Vattanians who condemned Haq ul’Suun never intended for him ever to be released from his prison; but they didn’t have time to reprogram the transfer machine, and so this code book was created as his mind was transferred to the Falcon.
I have little doubt that, given the chance, they would have destroyed the book, but events overtook them. It’s for this reason that I am going to request that the book remain with the NCPE here at Cabo Cañaveral, rather than being transferred to the Metropolitan Museum with the others. If it really does contain the key to unlocking Haq ul’Suun’s prison, it should never be allowed anywhere near the Martian Falcon. In fact, I am tempted to destroy the thing; perhaps at some point I will, but for now I need to study it further. I know it contains more information – information that may prove vital to the success of the X-M 2 expedition.
I think Troy Martell is correct: the Senate Committee will insist on the X-M 2 mission going ahead, in spite of the dangers – in spite of what Dr. Pellin has reported following her examination of Captain Smith and his crew. Their dreams are horrific. Who could experience such dreams and remain sane? But what is the origin of those dreams? Can the thing that destroyed the Vattanians and their world really still be on Mars – or inside it, bubbling and blaspheming at the planet’s core… waiting? And if so, why? Why does it not boil forth to consume the entire Solar System? Could it be that it’s somehow linked to Haq ul’Suun, that its fate is tied to that of the one who summoned it?