The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort)

by Alan K Baker

‘Fragments?’ said Fort as he switched off the AOD. ‘I thought their stuff was indestructible.’

  ‘Almost indestructible,’ Tesla corrected. ‘Don’t forget, they were subjected to a force which destroyed the Martian civilisation and ruined the planet.’

  ‘True,’ nodded Fort. He hefted the AOD and glanced at the Teleforce Projector on the other workbench. ‘This stuff’s going to come in very handy, Dr. Tesla. We can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘There’s no need to thank me, Mr. Fort,’ Tesla replied with a slight smile. ‘All you need to do is find the Martian Falcon and destroy it, otherwise Earth may well suffer the same fate as Mars did five million years ago…’

  CHAPTER 25

  Strange Pursuit

  Rusty Links ran.

  At first it was with the assumption that the running would be easy.

  He won’t find me. No one can find a shifter who doesn’t want to be found. No one!

  Still wearing Bradlee’s form, she checked into a motel on the outskirts of a small town that might as well have been nameless for all the attention she paid to its name. She took the room key from the desk clerk and went to her room. She went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror for five minutes, looking at the face of the man she had killed, then picked up the briefcase containing the rock book and left the motel. The desk clerk gave her a brief glance and then went back to the sports section of the newspaper he was reading.

  She walked along what passed for a main street until she reached the centre of the town, where she found a small rental car company. Using Bradlee’s ID and the money in his wallet, she hired a car and drove north out of the town.

  As she drove, she caught a glimpse of something in the rear view mirror: a dark smudge that seemed to float in the air behind her, but which vanished as she blinked. She shook her head, frowned and increased her speed.

  She played out the likely scenario of the next few hours in her head.

  It would only be a very short while before they realised something was wrong back at Cabo Cañaveral – twenty-four hours at most. Bradlee’s secretary would find the note she had left, would puzzle over the unfamiliar handwriting. Would she raise the alarm then? Probably not: if she tried, Troy Martell would respond that he had just seen Bradlee at the meeting, and nothing had seemed odd about him. Of course, when Bradlee failed to return home that evening, his wife would immediately start worrying and call the NCPE, who would reply that he had shown up for work, but had mentioned that he wasn’t feeling so great. His secretary would confirm that he had left early: a sore throat.

  Bradlee’s wife would call the Titusville police, and her concerns would immediately be taken seriously; no ‘wait forty-eight hours and call us again’ bullshit. A US government employee working at the world’s only fully functioning rocket complex going missing a few days after the theft of the Martian Falcon in New York would get everyone’s attention – especially the folks at Cabo Cañaveral. Bradlee’s office would be examined by security, who would quickly discover the ruined wall safe.

  And then all hell would break loose.

  She would have to ditch Bradlee’s car and his form soon, but that was fine. She had known she would have to before long.

  *

  Crystalman stood in front of the telaug machine with his eyes closed and a slight smile playing about his lips, watching the road ahead through Rusty’s eyes. Had Rusty been human, it would have been a simple matter to alter the settings on the telaug to allow Crystalman access to her mind-body interface, forcing her to do his bidding. She would have had no choice but to bring the rock book to Long Island, here to meet the unpleasant fate he had devised for her.

  But Rusty wasn’t human: such was her chameleon nature that the telaug could not maintain a lock for long enough to influence her physical behaviour. It was an inconvenience, to be sure, but not an insurmountable one.

  Crystalman would simply have to guide her back through more subtle means. The Dark Ones would help: the air elementals over which he did have control. One had already appeared briefly on the back seat of her car.

  Gave you a bit of a start, didn’t it, Rusty? Crystalman thought. But that’s nothing compared to what’s about to happen…

  *

  Like most of her singular race, Rusty had always lived beyond the limits of society. There were a few shapeshifters who tried to integrate themselves into the common run of humanity and who kept their true nature hidden from those around them, but they were the exception rather than the rule. It was the general consensus that, by their very nature, shifters could not be trusted – for how could one trust a creature whose fundamental characteristic was deceit?

  So they either kept to themselves or clung to each other for solace and companionship in the face of a world that hated and mistrusted them. Rusty Links was one of the former: she had no need of companionship or solace; all she needed were her wits and enough luck to see her through the dangerous playground of life.

  She had always known that her luck couldn’t last forever – luck never does. Getting involved with Johnny Sanguine had been an amusing diversion; Johnny had been fun to be with – in every sense of the phrase – and the truth was that she had felt some regret at dispatching such a diverting playmate before the game had run its natural course. But Crystalman had offered good money for the Falcon – serious money, the kind she would have been a fool to turn down. She had done occasional work for him in the past, and he had always paid well. He had never tried to stiff her or double cross her, and while she had never felt entirely safe in his presence, she had still considered him to be something of a kindred spirit.

  But now the terms of their association had changed, and it was very much of her doing; she began to wonder if that association had been a mistake in the first place, maybe the most serious mistake she had ever made… maybe the last mistake she would ever make.

  Yes, Rusty, thought Crystalman on the other side of the telaug machine’s psychic two-way mirror. You are quite right: it is the last mistake you will ever make. You have betrayed me, and the price of betrayal is more terrible than you can conceive.

  Rusty had always preferred the east of the country and had made it her playground for many years. For that reason, she maintained a series of apartments and identities from South Carolina all the way up to Maine. Her first stop would be Charleston; she would ditch the rental car on the outskirts of town, take on a new face and lay low in the apartment for a day or so while planning her next move. Chances were she would have to leave the country for a time, while she figured out a way to destroy the rock book, but that was okay, too. There were places in Europe she hadn’t seen yet, and the Far East was a near-total mystery, ripe for exploration.

  Yeah, she thought, the Far East sounds good…

  *

  It was dark by the time she reached the apartment block, which was in a nondescript, middle-class neighbourhood of Charleston. Wearing a new face, she stepped off the streetcar and walked unhurriedly to the main entrance, unlocked the door and slipped inside.

  She glanced at the elevator – a wrought iron cage with only one way in and out – and decided to take the stairs to her floor. She climbed, carrying the briefcase containing the rock book and Bradlee’s notes.

  As she walked along the corridor towards her apartment, she found herself slowing down… automatically, instinctively. Something was wrong. She didn’t know what it was, but the part of her brain whose job it was to make sure she stayed alive was telling her to get the hell out of there, and fast.

  She came to a halt and listened.

  The corridor was silent, which was wrong in itself. Normally at this time, there were faint sounds to be heard: a radio in one apartment, dinner conversation in another; the normal sounds of a building with people in almost every room – faint and muffled, to be sure, but there.

  The only sound she heard was that of her
own breathing.

  She continued the final few paces to her door and slowly inserted the key. The sound it made seemed unnaturally loud. She turned the key and opened the door a few inches – just wide enough to allow her to reach in and switch on the hall light.

  What the hell are you afraid of? she asked herself. He doesn’t know about this place… he doesn’t know about any of them. No one does… only you.

  She pushed the door fully open and looked down the corridor, which led to the sitting room. Along the corridor there were doors leading to the single bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen. All were closed, as she had left them. The silence of the corridor outside had seeped into the apartment – or maybe it was the other way round…

  Slowly, she edged along the corridor, opening doors and checking rooms as she went. The apartment seemed empty and undisturbed; everything was where it should be, nothing was out of place, nothing was wrong.

  Except that something was wrong; she was certain of it.

  There was only the sitting room left. She walked the rest of the way along the corridor and entered the room.

  She was glad she had left the apartment door open.

  Standing at the centre of the sitting room was a man-shaped figure, entirely black, like a living, three-dimensional shadow.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ she whispered.

  The shadow being hissed out her name. The voice was Crystalman’s. ‘Russsty… Rusty, you have betrayed me!’

  ‘I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Rusty,’ said the voice. ‘I am with you everywhere you go, as close to you as your own skin. You cannot escape from me, you cannot hide from me, you cannot defeat me. You know all these things, and yet still you test me.’

  ‘How did you know?’ she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  ‘That is not your concern. All that concerns you is the fact that I am waiting for you to bring the rock book to me, and that if you don’t, things will go very, very badly for you.’

  ‘You don’t scare me, Crystalman,’ Rusty said, trying to force some strength into her voice and failing miserably. ‘You think you can scare me with an air elemental?’

  ‘Not just one,’ Crystalman replied with a chuckle. ‘I can summon hundreds, thousands, millions. I can make your world a whirling maelstrom of unending, seething darkness; I can make them torment you until your mind breaks, until your brain is emptied of all rational thought. I can drive you insane, Rusty – don’t doubt it.’

  Rusty started to back away from the elemental. The being took a step forward. ‘Bring me the rock book,’ Crystalman’s voice said. ‘Bring it to me, as we agreed, and I will overlook your transgression; I will pay you your fee and allow you to be on your way. It will be as if none of this happened. We shall be friends again, Rusty.’

  ‘We were never friends, Crystalman. Do you know what the rock book is?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘You’re going to use it to free the thing that’s inside the Falcon… so that something else will be freed, something on Mars, something that will destroy the Earth…’

  ‘You have learned much, Rusty.’

  ‘Why?’ she cried. ‘Why do you want to do this? You’ll be killed, too!’

  ‘Once again, that is not your concern. Bring me the book.’

  ‘No.’

  The shadow being took another step forward. ‘Bring me the book, Rusty.’

  ‘No!’

  She ran from the apartment, slamming and locking the door behind her. Once out on the dark, deserted street, she shifted into the bat-winged demon-thing and launched herself into the night, her great, membranous wings thrusting her up into the moonless sky, leaving Aldous Bradlee’s shredded clothes on the street below.

  She glanced down at the apartment building and saw the shadow being emerging from her sitting room window. With a curse, she beat her vast wings and flew off into the night.

  *

  She found them waiting for her in Raleigh, North Carolina, in Roanoke, Virginia, in Annapolis, Maryland, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She knew then that she would find them in Hartford, Connecticut, in Providence, Rhode Island, in Boston, Massachusetts, in Concord, New Hampshire, in Augusta, Maine…

  All of her hideaways had been compromised, somehow. None were safe now. The bat-winged demon flew in circles high in the air above the eastern states, looking down in desperation, trying to think of a way to escape, and realising with a leaden weight in its belly that there was no way – nowhere to hide from the gaze of Crystalman.

  How did he do it? Rusty asked herself. How does he know?

  When the sun came up, she thrust herself further into the cold, high air, flying amongst the sky beasts of the ultimate altitudes, envying them their uncomplicated lives.

  What the fuck do I do now? I could be on the other side of the world and he’d still find me. I could be on the moon and he’d find me. Somehow… somehow he’s inside my head…

  She felt herself beginning to tire; it was becoming more and more of an effort to keep herself aloft, especially in the thin air of the upper atmosphere.

  Got to find somewhere to lay low… got to find someone to help me… but where, and who?

  And then a name popped out of her memory, like the sudden flash of a lighthouse beam.

  Charles Fort.

  CHAPTER 26

  A Proposal

  Fort and Lovecraft took the red-eye back from Denver to New York, arriving at LaGuardia at 8:00a.m. They took a cab from the aerodrome to Fort’s apartment and found Cormack O’Malley asleep in one of the armchairs in the lobby, his overnight bag on the floor beside him. Fort tapped him gently on the shoulder.

  ‘That was damned quick,’ he said when the priest had roused himself. ‘How did you get back so soon?’

  O’Malley yawned and stretched and rubbed his eyes. ‘Ambrogio loaned me his plane. Jet-assisted… goes like snot – but never mind that. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘So I gathered. Come on up.’

  As they entered the elevator, O’Malley pointed to the case Fort was carrying in addition to his travelling valise. It was about the size of a violin case. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Something Dr. Tesla loaned to us,’ Fort replied. ‘He calls it a Teleforce Projector. Apparently, it’s the only thing that stands a chance of destroying the Martian Falcon.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The NCPE reckons the damned thing’s all but indestructible – something to do with the way it was made.’

  ‘He also gave us a device which will detect the Falcon at a distance,’ added Lovecraft. ‘We now have the means at our disposal to find and destroy the artefact.’

  ‘To a certain extent,’ Fort added. ‘We still have to get within a couple of hundred yards of it before the gadget will start working.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start,’ said O’Malley.

  When they arrived at Fort’s apartment, he went through to the kitchen and made some coffee for them all, and they sat in the living room.

  ‘Well, Cormack,’ said Fort as he rolled a cigarette. ‘You don’t look all that bad after reading the Necronomicon. Maybe it’s not the devilish thing it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘Trust me, Charlie, it is,’ O’Malley replied without smiling. ‘If I had my way, I’d hunt down every last copy of the damned thing and burn the lot of them.’

  Fort gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘That’s been tried… more than once. Did you get anything interesting from it?’

  ‘Did I ever! Charlie… we’re in trouble, and by we I mean everyone, the entire planet.’

  Fort sat back and lit his cigarette. ‘What’s the deal?’

  ‘You know how Crystalman got his name?’

  ‘Of course I do. He wears a quartz mask. Bit theatrical in my opinion, bu
t each to his own, I guess.’

  ‘This isn’t funny, Charlie,’ said O’Malley. ‘The Necronomicon describes what happened on Mars five million years ago. The planet was wiped out by an aspect of Azathoth that broke through into our universe from the centre of infinity…’

  Fort sat forward. ‘Azathoth?’

  ‘Oh good Lord!’ cried Lovecraft. ‘What do you mean “an aspect”?’

  ‘The book describes it as the “breath” or “gaze” of Azathoth…’

  ‘So, some aspect of the being’s awareness,’ Lovecraft mused. ‘Not the being itself, but still hideously dangerous, like the venom of a snake. Even though it’s separate from what produced it, it can still wreak untold havoc.’

  O’Malley nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Where is it now?’ asked Fort.

  ‘At the centre of Mars.’

  Fort and Lovecraft glanced at each other.

  ‘That’s right, lads,’ said O’Malley. ‘It’s there, dormant – sleeping, I guess you could say. It’s somehow tied to the mind of Haq ul’Suun –’

  ‘Haq ul what?’ said Fort.

  ‘Haq ul’Suun, the god-king of ancient Mars. He was the ultimate ruler of the planet. He was the one who opened the way into our universe for it. According to the Necronomicon, he was trying to harness the power of the Outer Gods and got way more than he bargained for.’

  ‘So he was the one in the transmission which Dr. Tesla intercepted,’ said Lovecraft.

  ‘Right,’ O’Malley nodded. ‘His mind, his very soul was imprisoned within the artefact we know as the Martian Falcon – an eternal prison, a punishment whose awfulness fully matches the nature of his transgression. But the thing he summoned, the breath and gaze of Azathoth, are sympathetically tied to his soul, so as long as his soul is imprisoned in the Falcon, they will remain dormant at the centre of Mars.’

  Fort shook his head. ‘Are you sure about this, Cormack? I mean, really sure?’

  ‘I think the Necronomicon speaks the truth about this. And it gets worse…’

  Fort grunted. ‘What a surprise!’