The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort)

by Alan K Baker

  PELLIN: A circle?

  SMITH: A world. Mars. The planet Mars as seen from this higher-dimensional vantage point. The planet has… appeared to it, flowering into its horrible awareness. The thing… hungers for it, for what it contains; it wants to consume it, like some obscene cosmic tumour. And then… and then a door opens…

  PELLIN: A door?

  SMITH: A portal between dimensions, a path leading from these higher spaces to our own realm of three dimensions. And the thing squirts itself towards the door and…

  PELLIN: And?

  SMITH: It eats the planet!

  At this point, Captain Smith became too distraught to continue. A sedative was administered by Dr. Pellin, and the session was resumed an hour later.

  PELLIN: How do you feel now, Thorne?

  SMITH: Better, thank you. I’m sorry…

  PELLIN: There’s no need to apologise.

  SMITH: The dreams… they’re…

  PELLIN: Why do you think that you and the others are experiencing them?

  SMITH: Because of what’s on Mars.

  PELLIN: The city? Cydonia?

  SMITH: No. I think it’s because of the thing… the thing that ate the planet, the thing that sucked the life from it. It’s still there, somewhere far underground, perhaps… perhaps at the very centre of Mars.

  PELLIN: What makes you think that?

  SMITH: Because the dreams… they’re not really dreams. I think the thing is speaking to us.

  ‘Speaking to them?’ said Fort, handing the pages back to Tesla.

  ‘They all say the same thing,’ Tesla replied. ‘And their dreams are becoming more and more… intense. Dr. Pellin thinks it’s only a matter of a short while before their minds collapse entirely under the psychic stress. I’m afraid that if no way can be found to help them, the crew of Rocketship X-M will be driven incurably insane.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lovecraft, ‘I suppose that puts paid to the X-M 2 expedition.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Tesla sighed.

  ‘How so?’ asked Fort. ‘I mean, there’s no way the NCPE can send more people there.’

  ‘The final decision isn’t theirs to make. That rests with the Senate Committee on Planetary Exploration… and their position is that the X-M crew are simply suffering from the after effects of such a prolonged and stressful mission. They refuse to accept that the dreams could be anything more than simply dreams. I suppose one can see the difficulty of their position,’ Tesla added doubtfully. ‘The government has sunk untold millions of dollars into the X-M program. To cancel it now because of some bad dreams… well, the President wouldn’t stand for it, and neither, I suspect, would the American people. The NCPE’s hands are tied; they must launch the X-M 2 on schedule with a replacement crew… which is why I’ve been trying desperately to develop a method of shielding them once they arrive.’

  ‘I can’t believe they’d be so stupid,’ said Lovecraft disgustedly. ‘That thing… the thing that consumed Mars… I think we all know what it is, and why no human should ever set foot on Mars again.’

  ‘A Great Old One,’ said Fort. ‘A weakly-godlike agency, an elemental force from Outside. A thing that called this universe its home when the universe was young…’

  ‘That’s my conclusion, also,’ agreed Tesla.

  ‘But which one is it?’ wondered Lovecraft.

  ‘At this point, there’s no way of knowing,’ Fort replied with a shake of his head. ‘The Martian recording was made in the moments after it came through the portal between dimensions, before it could cohere into its true form. If we could see it now, we might be able to make an educated guess.’ He gave a disgusted grunt. ‘It should be left the hell alone – Mars should be left alone! If the thing’s still there, it seems to be dormant. We should thank our lucky stars for that and leave Mars out of our plans for space exploration permanently.’

  ‘The NCPE aren’t going to do that,’ Tesla replied. ‘They’re talking about a colony on Mars within ten years.’

  ‘Do you think Crystalman knows all this?’ said Lovecraft.

  ‘Chances are he does,’ Fort replied.

  Lovecraft sighed loudly in exasperation. ‘But we still don’t know why. What’s his motive for taking possession of the Falcon? What does he hope to achieve?’

  ‘Cormack said Johnny Sanguine’s ghost told him that an ancient evil will be released unless the Falcon is returned to Mars. Question is, does Crystalman know this? Is this his intention, and if so, why?’

  Tesla glanced rapidly from Fort to Lovecraft, and then held up his hands. ‘Hold on a moment! What’s all this? Who’s Cormack? And what does Johnny Sanguine have to do with it? And why are you talking about returning the Falcon to Mars?’

  ‘Sorry, Dr. Tesla,’ said Fort with a crooked smile. ‘I guess we need to bring you up to speed on the whole Martian Falcon case…’

  *

  When Fort had finished, Tesla shook his head and chuckled. ‘So what started as a skirmish between gangsters has developed into… this.’

  ‘The major player is Crystalman,’ said Fort. ‘But Sanguine’s following his own agenda, I’m pretty sure of that…’

  ‘You don’t believe his story about wanting to send the Falcon back to Mars in order to redeem his soul?’ said Tesla.

  ‘Not for a second. No, Sanguine’s up to something else. He wants the Falcon, we can be sure of that…’

  ‘So why come up with the story about needing to get it back to Mars?’ asked Tesla.

  ‘Howard wondered the same thing.’ Fort fell silent, thinking. Then he said: ‘It’s pretty clear that Sanguine wants O’Malley to do his work for him and get the Falcon from Crystalman, which implies that Sanguine can’t do it alone, not even with his vampire goons… which in turn implies that Crystalman’s hideout is impregnable, or damn close. That makes sense. What if this story about taking the Falcon back to Mars is really just a way of getting it to a specific location so that Sanguine can send in his boys to snatch it?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Lovecraft, ‘but it does raise another question. Do Johnny Sanguine and Crystalman want the Falcon for the same reason?’

  Fort gave a miserable sigh. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Tesla. ‘If Crystalman and Johnny Sanguine want the Falcon, then it follows that the artefact is extremely dangerous. So… not only must it be retrieved, it must also be destroyed.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ grumbled Fort.

  ‘True,’ said Tesla, standing up, ‘but I may have the solution to both those problems.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lovecraft. ‘And what might that be?’

  Tesla smiled at him, but the smile was uncertain. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Kitab Al Azif

  Furtively, as if moving through an ancient land he thought he knew well, but which had now become unfamiliar and threatening, Father Cormack O’Malley walked along the marble-floored corridors leading to the Papal Secret Archives of the Vatican. Beyond the Leonine Wall which enclosed the city-state, the midnight hum of unsleeping Rome – a white noise of diesel engines punctuated by the occasional bleat of a horn which echoed and re-echoed like some great thing stirring constantly in troubled contemplation – had gradually given way to a profound silence.

  Like a tomb, O’Malley thought. Let us pray that the tomb is not the Earth itself…

  He did not walk alone: beside him strode the pensive, bespectacled figure of Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, Pope Pius XI. Neither man had spoken since their conversation in Pius’s private office. It seemed as though the weight of the decision that had been made was too great to allow further conversation.

  All the ages of Man were enshrined in the colossal walls that rose on each side of the two striding figures, preserved miraculously in paint and marble, and the pri
nted words of thousands of books and manuscripts; and it seemed to O’Malley that the history of both Man and the Holy Mother Church that sought to guide him towards God were a living part of the immense chambers and interminable corridors and galleries through which the American priest and the Bishop of Rome moved.

  Love and devotion to his calling stirred in O’Malley’s heart, as well as pride – although he well understood that the latter emotion was an inappropriate alloy which threatened to contaminate the purity of the others, and he silently entreated God to rid him of it. His faith was as unshakeable as the walls of Saint Peter’s Basilica; yet the foul thing towards which he and Pius turned their stride, here in the midnight heart of the Church, made his mind and soul tremble together.

  They continued into the lower zone of the Cortile del Belvedere before turning right into the long wing that enclosed the lower half of Bramante’s Cortile. At opposite ends of this wing stood two doors, one of which led to the Vatican Library, the other to the Archives. At this late hour, the place was almost deserted. They could have come during the day, of course: no one would have questioned their presence in the Archives; but the thought of performing this task in the unsullied daytime under the innocent gaze of the faithful seemed inappropriate. In any event, O’Malley’s flight had got into Rome’s Fiumicino Aerodrome at 9.00p.m., and he had made his way directly to the Vatican with his strange and terrible request. He had wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible, and he thanked God that the Holy Father had agreed to it – however reluctantly.

  It was indeed better to do this under the concealing blanket of night… like a thief who was about to steal that which did not and should never belong to the human race: the knowledge that had been spat into the face of Mankind by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred more than twelve hundred years ago.

  Al Azif.

  The Necronomicon.

  ‘But I am not a thief,’ whispered O’Malley.

  Pius glanced at him. ‘What was that, old friend?’

  O’Malley heaved a sigh that was so heavy it made his entire body shudder, its sudden sound almost blasphemous in the silence.

  ‘I am doing God’s work. Even by looking upon those words that should never be looked upon. By reading the words of a mind driven to the edge of annihilation by its quest for forbidden knowledge. I am still doing God’s work!’

  ‘I know,’ said Pius in a quiet voice. ‘That is why I agreed to allow this… and that is why I chose to accompany you, for I will not allow you to endure it alone.’

  Slowly, as if carrying an insupportable weight upon their shoulders, they climbed the stairs leading to the piani nobili containing the Manuscript Depository. They passed the small café, now deserted, where academics and researchers could take a break from their work without leaving the Archives.

  The night prefect rose from his desk as Pius and O’Malley approached. ‘Holy Father!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is there… is there some way I can be of service?’

  Pius smiled warmly and hoped that the prefect didn’t realise that the smile was a lie. ‘No, Fernando,’ he replied in his quiet, gentle voice. ‘Thank you, but we can manage.’

  The night prefect nodded, returned the Pope’s smile and bowed. The thought of asking why he was here at midnight in the company of a priest whose name was unknown to him didn’t even occur to the prefect: to do so would have been a terrible impertinence. Besides, it was not unheard of for high-ranking members of the Church to conduct research in the Archives late at night – although he could not remember an occasion when the Holy Father himself had done so. He merely assumed that he was performing his duties with the tireless devotion for which he was so well known and loved; and so he waited for the Holy Father and the unknown priest to pass into the Archives, and then returned to his desk.

  Pius knew the exact location of the book; he had no need of the complex indices and cross-referenced lists to help him find it – although in his heart of hearts he wished that through some miracle of God’s infinite mercy, they would find it scorched to dust instead of intact… waiting. It would have been a daunting task had they been merely curious outsiders wandering among the kilometres of steel shelves that held the tens of thousands of volumes comprising the Archivio Segreto. Daunting and futile, mused Pius, for the book did not lie here, out in the open, nor was access granted to the curious. The suicidally curious, he added to himself. The very thought made him cringe inwardly, and he silently thanked the long-departed soul of Pope Paul IV for deciding that the Necronomicon should be the first book to be placed upon the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Index of Prohibited Materials, in 1559.

  He led O’Malley to a stout wooden cabinet standing alone at the far end of the dimly lit hall, an ancient sentinel jealously guarding its secrets. Their figures cast shadows that seemed to bow mockingly as they passed the silent ranks of books and manuscripts.

  Pius withdrew a large key from a pocket of his soutane. He hesitated, holding the key in front of the lock; O’Malley sensed that his trepidation had increased. He knew what his old friend was thinking: he was about to perform an unclean act, a violation of the laws of God and the universe…

  Pius turned to O’Malley. ‘Cormack,’ he whispered, ‘are you absolutely sure about this? Is there nothing I can say to dissuade you?’

  ‘You could have forbidden me, Ambrogio,’ O’Malley replied. ‘It would have been the easiest thing in the world to say “no”, but you didn’t. I’ve told you everything; I’ve explained why I need to try. If it contains anything… anything that might help us to find out what the Martian Falcon really is, and why Crystalman wants it…’

  ‘All right,’ said Pius. ‘Very well…’ Taking a deep breath of air that carried the musty scent of two thousand years of history, he inserted the key and twisted. The sound of the tumblers echoed fitfully through the chamber.

  He pulled open the doors.

  Inside were three shelves holding several volumes, their leather spines worn and faded with age, the tooling cracked, the letters of their titles all but masked by the relentless, merciless passage of time.

  Pius and O’Malley scanned the titles, peering through the gloom at the ghostly letters:

  De Vermis Mysteriis

  Cultes des Ghoules

  The Book of Eibon

  Unaussprechlichen Kulten

  Regem in Flavum

  Dhol Chants

  Codex Pnakotus

  Kitab Al Azif

  ‘I can’t remember the last time this cabinet was opened,’ said Pius, not bothering to hide the disgust in his voice. ‘I can’t remember the last person I knew who was so lost, so desperate, as to look to any of these… things… for guidance.’

  ‘Pray that I find guidance this time, old friend,’ said O’Malley.

  ‘I will pray for you, Cormack… but not for that reason.’

  Pius took a step back, tacitly giving O’Malley permission to proceed. O’Malley reached into the cabinet and carefully removed the book called the Kitab Al Azif, the Necronomicon. He took it to a small desk nearby and placed it there. It was large and heavy, its binding weathered and cracked – disfigured, as if time had wanted it gone from the world.

  O’Malley sat on the wooden chair. ‘The Wormius translation,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Pius, who now stood behind him, looking down over his shoulder.

  ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,’ whispered O’Malley.

  ‘And with strange aeons even death may die,’ Pius said, completing the dread couplet. He made the sign of the Cross on O’Malley, and them himself.

  The book was written by a mad poet of Sanaá in Yemen, Abdul Alhazred, who lived during the time of the Ommiade caliphs around the turn of the eighth century. He travelled widely during his strange life, visiting the ruins of Babylon and Memphis; he spent ten years in the Rub’ al Khali, the ‘Empty Quarter’ in
the Arabian Peninsula, during which he is said to have encountered the spirits and monsters which inhabit that cursed region. He claimed to have seen legendary Irem, the City of Pillars, and to have encountered the relics of the serpent people of Valusia, who ruled Earth before the advent of Man.

  His death, it is said, was even stranger than his life. He settled in Damascus to compose his horrible opus, and it was in a crowded marketplace that, shortly after completion of the Azif, Alhazred was seized by an invisible entity and devoured in full sight of hundreds of horrified witnesses.

  In A.D. 950, the book was translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon, meaning ‘The Book of the Law of the Dead’. For a century it induced madness and death in those foolish enough to read it, until it was suppressed and many copies burned on the orders of the patriarch Michael in the eleventh century. In 1228, a Latin translation was made by an ancestor of the famed Danish physician and antiquary, Ole Worm. This translation was the one now held in the Secret Archives of the Vatican.

  This was the book before which Father Cormack O’Malley now sat.

  O’Malley took a deep breath and opened the large metal clasp. The hinge gave a muted squeak. He opened the book, the ancient leather creaking as the contents were revealed. The pages were brittle, and O’Malley detected a peculiar granularity in their surfaces, as though some hard substance akin to sand had been pressed into them. He had handled ancient books before, but had never encountered anything with this singular texture. He turned the pages with care that was decidedly not born of reverence.

  O’Malley scanned the faded blackletter text, trying to avert his eyes from the blasphemous drawings that accompanied it – drawings that represented places that should never be seen, concepts that should never be entertained by sane minds, entities that should not exist…