by Joshi, S. T
Convinced that he had arrived at a destination of shorts, Magnus Eriksson drew his sword and took off his bandolier, setting down his water-skin, the bag containing his jar of oil and his parcel of salted fish before moving forward again, holding his lamp high and making sweeping gestures with the sword, as if to clear away the stubborn wisps of mist.
When he had taken forty cautious paces—not quite halfway to the far wall of the space, if it really was approximately spherical—he came to a square block of black stone, on which a child was lying. It was a girl, less than two years old. She seemed to be sleeping. She was wrapped up well and stirring slightly in her sleep; Magnus had no doubt that she was alive.
The geometrical squaring of the black block, however, was undoubtedly the result of careful artifice, either human or demonic.
“Where are you?” said Magnus Eriksson, clearly, addressing the still-invisible monster. Even without the lenses, he thought, he would surely have been able to detect its presence if it were close at hand, because of the vapor its presumably massive body would displace.
There was no answer to his question.
“I am Magnus Eriksson,” the warrior repeated. “I have come to kill the monster who steals children from the Eastern Settlement. I cannot be content to take this one home and leave others at risk in the future. Come out of the mist and face me, if you are not a coward.”
He could not believe that such a frank challenge would be ignored.
There was a sudden increase in the frequency of the moving point of light that he had likened to shooting stars, whose glare now outshone his lamp—to such an extent that he set the lamp down, freeing his left hand so that he would be able to draw his dagger, if need be.
Then his adversary stepped out of the black block, as if emerging from the deepest shadow ever cast. It rose up as it emerged, as if climbing the last few steps of a flight of stairs. It was not a spectral monster, though, but a solid creature, seemingly made of ice. It was shaped like a human being, dressed much as Magnus Eriksson was dressed, but its apparent boots were sculpted in ice, as were its apparent clothing and its apparent sword. Its head was made of ice too, including its bulging, toadlike eyes, which were too obviously real to be a mere reflection of the strange helmet that the warrior had put on.
The creature’s eyes were no mere artificial lenses covering human eyes; they were the corneas of actual eyes, with an all-too-unhuman stare.
Magnus stopped trying to sweep the mist away with his blade and directed the weapon at his adversary—which immediately attacked, thrusting so artfully and so forcefully that the Greenlander’s parry almost failed to deflect the blade of ice.
The enemy blade was made of exceedingly solid ice, which was no more brittle than iron.
The ice-man moved forward, forcing Magnus to retreat. Every time the Greenlander parried the silvery blade with his own much duller one, he felt a chill run along his arm, all the way to his heart.
Magnus was a tolerably skillful swordsman, by the standards of his fellow warriors, and knew how to catch an opponent’s blade on the flat of his own weapon, preserving the edge—but knowing how to do that was not the same as being able to do it, under the pressure of the kind of attack he was suffering now.
The ice-warrior with the toad’s eyes had been trained to a higher standard that any Greenlander, and its blade evidently had more tensile strength and resilience than Magnus’s inferior weapon. The edge of Magnus’s sword was soon blunted and dented, and whenever he attempted a riposte of his own, the point of his weapon met solid resistance that soon curled it over.
Magnus knew, within less than a minute, that he could not defeat his opponent by means of skill—but he was a hero, and he had berserker blood in him, and therefore knew that when the conscious mind is not adequate to its task, wrath can sometimes prevail.
Wrath was not difficult to find, in the circumstances.
As he allowed the fury to flood him, like the magma of a volcano, Magnus leapt forward, driving himself and his blade with all the force his body could muster. Sometimes even the most skillful of warriors could be disconcerted by such a surge, but the ice-warrior was too cold to be taken by surprise. The ice blade met the iron one, not with brute force but with cleverness, using the force of the thrust to its own end. With a flick that only the most skillful of warriors would ever have had the grace to effect, the blade of ice seized the blade of iron and sent it spinning out of Magnus’s hand with a brilliant flourish.
It was the flourish that cost the more skillful fighter dearly. For a moment, the ice-warrior’s arm went high and wide, chasing away the dislodged sword—and that was when Magnus the berserker, who was not even conscious of having drawn his dagger from the sheath at his right-hand side, plunged it into the creature’s heart of ice.
Alas, the ice-warrior did not fall. Its heart, it seemed, was not the vulnerable organ that it would have been had the monster been merely human. The short blade of the knife did plunge into the icy flesh rather than simply rebounding therefrom, but as it dug into the false flesh, the ice closed around it, gripping it and sealing it, and wrenching the hilt from Magnus’s hand.
Had Magnus been conscious, he would probably have been so startled that he would have paused, and the blade of ice would likely have run him through—but Magnus was still in the grip of his wrath, and he wasted no time in surprise.
Instead, a single catlike bound took him back to the place where he had set down his oil and water, and he snatched up the jar. Had he been conscious he might have paused to remove the stopper—which might, again, have been fatal—but in his berserk rage he simply threw it at his adversary’s feet, to shatter.
Had Magnus been forced to use his lamp to light the spilled oil, he would again have given his opponent a chance to kill him, and might well have stranded himself in the dark had the maneuver come off; but the shooting stars in the mist really were a kind of fire, and the liberated oil ignited without a second’s delay.
Flames leapt up around the man of ice.
Their heat could not possibly have been enough to melt the creature in any ordinary manner, but that was not necessary. It was the light that apparently proved fatal, as it surged into the ice-warrior’s body in a million reflected glints and gleams, devouring the exotic flesh. The warrior did not shatter, but it fell into the lake of fire, and the golden tongues reached into it avidly, licking up its semblance of life as if it were mere water. Its sword-blade too was filled with golden rivulets, and the dissolving warrior was forced to release it, as if by an irresistible surge of convulsive agony.
Magnus became conscious again as he pounced on his own sword, and he was no longer berserk when he brought the blunted but massive blade down with all his might on his stricken opponent’s head, shattering his toadlike eyes to reveal the putrid gel within.
Magnus immediately picked up the child, his lamp, and his water-skin. Without pausing for an instant, he ran back into the corridor from which he had come. He ran as fast as he could, fearful that the oil remaining in the lamp would be consumed before he got back to the open air of Greenland.
Multitudinous other selves ran alongside him, to the left and to the right, and they were all cheering him, proclaiming him as a hero fit for the composition of a celebratory saga. But they were not alone—there were creatures in pursuit of them, some like toads running on their long hind legs and others like hairy giants, sometimes running on their hind legs and sometimes on all fours.
It did not matter, the pursuers could not catch up with his fleeing selves; all they could do was chase them.
Had he not been running uphill, Magnus might have regained the entrance to the first ice-cave before the oil in his lap gave out and the light died; but his stride shortened as his legs became tired, and when the flame guttered and went out he was left in near-darkness, his path illuminated only by the reflections of sunlight within the ice. He was, however, close enough to the surface of the glacier, and the winter sun was shining bri
ghtly enough, to allow him to see the direction of the tunnel and follow it unerringly.
He burst out into the light like a geyser and plunged into the snow, where the strange footsteps still marked out a path back to the village. Before following that path and delivering the child to her frightened family, however, he took off the hood supporting the strange lenses. He had no difficulty at all in achieving that removal; all he had to do was reach up and pull the straps away.
There was nothing in his appearance to give rise to alarm when he handed the child back to her grateful mother.
“I have slain a monster,” he told the crowd that had assembled as if by magic. “I have descended into the heart of the glacier, to a world beyond the world of ice. I cannot promise that nothing will come out again, this winter or next, for it is a world, and it contains more monsters than there are souls in our settlement—but I have done what I could, and I will pray that, with the Lord’s help, it might be enough.”
Even as he turned away, though, in order to seek out Gudmund the Skald and return the borrowed lenses, Magnus could feel a strange cold within his body, as if an intangible dagger of ice had been thrust into his heart, and the golden reflections of a strange cold fire had taken possession of his flesh. It was as if his eyes, no matter that they could see the houses and the people of the village perfectly well, had in some strange sense been shattered.
Magnus knew, then, that merely removing the helmet and the lenses from his head could not protect him from all the other potential selves that his eyes had seen in the underworld beneath the glacier, and which his mind could no longer forget. He had, indeed, found and slain a monster—but that was only the merest part of what his soul and mind had glimpsed and forged, and he knew that, no matter how often, how intently or how sincerely he might pray to the Lord from now until his dying day, some fraction of him, or of his potential selves, would henceforth be a figment of Tsathoggua’s dream, and would never be entirely free of the chill of Tsathoggua’s breath.
In fact, no other child was stolen from the Eastern Settlement that winter, nor the next, nor any other winter while Magnus Eriksson still lived—but that was not to say very much, because he did not live to become an elder, even though his blond hair turned frost-white and the blue of his eyes faded away to such an extent that his gaze seemed literally icy. When he was killed in a skirmish with the natives of Vinland during an expedition to fetch timber, he had not yet seen thirty winters.
He was given a proper funeral, set afloat on the sea in a burning boat. There was no skald present at the time, and whether Gudmund believed the details reported back by those who returned from the raid or not, he never repeated them in any tale or song. Who, after all, would ever believe that the corpse of a man with berserker blood in him had turned transparent, and drawn all the light of the funeral fire into itself, and that the dead man’s eyes had swollen in his head like those of a toad, before shattering into a million un-Christian smithereens?
THE DOOR BENEATH
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
IT DID NOT MATTER THAT ARKADY KOSLOV FELT SECURE IN HIS JOB as director of security and safety for the plant. It did not matter that he had been present for its initial commissioning in 1977. It did not matter that he had friends in high places. It did not even matter that Yefrem showed up in his office unannounced.
What did matter were the two men who accompanied his nominal superior. They wore similar dark suits, tinted glasses, and even darker expressions. Had they worn little plastic nameplates over their breast pockets that read “KGB” their employer could not have been more readily identified.
It helped that Yefrem smiled. “You should see the look on your face, Arkady Vitalovich. Relax, my friend. While this is a professional visit, it is not of the kind that need worry you.”
Deciding to accept on the face of it what might or might not be the truth, largely because he had no choice, Koslov remained seated at his desk while gesturing his visitor to a nearby chair.
“Tea? Biscuit?”
The colonel shook his head. A champion long-distance runner in his youth, he was still whippet-thin. The incongruous walrus mustache that dominated his face like a pair of mating African caterpillars was intended to distract the attention of the follicularly sensitive from his polished bald pate. Combined with his lean muscularity this gave him the appearance of a human arrow; one capable of piercing the unwary or the guilty at a moment’s notice. In contrast his broad smile was disarming; intentionally so.
Studying them, no one would have assumed he and Koslov worked for the same national department, taking their orders directly from Moscow. Where in appearance the colonel was as threatening as a dyspeptic Cossack, the director was avuncular. The consumption of too many blini had ballooned his own once-athletic body. Where once he had played serious rugby, his gut now closely resembled a rugby ball. His own hair was thinning, undecided whether to continue the fight to cover his head or give up entirely. He was not blubbery; just soft. A secure desk job will do that to a man.
At least, he assumed it was still secure.
“If I am not to be worried, you need to explain the necessity for your garrulous escort.”
Yefrem nodded toward the large man on his left. “A procedural requirement. I am going to show you something, and it is not permitted that I do so without armed accompaniment.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice slightly. “It is really not necessary, but you know how Moscow is.”
Knowing too well, Koslov did not even bother to nod. “I am to come with you now, to see this ‘something’?”
“Now,” Yefrem told him. “So we can arrive before the test begins. It has been decided that considering your position and your unmarred record of service you deserve to know what is happening.” He winked. “I pushed for it.”
Koslov was finally starting to relax. It did not matter that Yefrem was not a friend: only that he was not an enemy.
“The test is routine. It has been performed before. Why the interest now?”
Yefrem shook his head. “The test to which you are referring is not the same as the one to which I am going to show you. I refer to another, involving a different portion of the facility. One with which you are unfamiliar.”
The director frowned. “I consider myself familiar with every corner of the plant.”
“Then prepare to be enlightened, comrade Koslov.”
The lift that was located between components three and four of the facility was well known to the director. It was one he had ridden hundreds of times. Entering behind the colonel and flanked by the two KGB guards, he turned to watch as Yefrem removed a silvery tag and passed it over the lower, buttonless corner of the lift’s gold-toned control panel. The tag, he noticed, was attached to the colonel by a metal chain.
Mentally timing the journey, he soon realized they were descending well below ground level. That in itself was interesting because the lowermost button on the elevator control panel stopped the lift at the surface. There were no subterranean levels to access. Or so he had believed.
No indicator lit up on the panel when the lift finally halted. There was nothing to indicate how far they had descended or if any additional unknown levels lay below this one.
Stepping out, he waited for Yefrem to take the lead once again. At once surprised and stunned, he found himself accompanying the colonel down a wide corridor filled with men and women intent on unknown tasks. Recognizing none of the faces, he commented on the fact to his guide.
“They come here directly from the river.” The colonel was evidently enjoying his colleague’s bewilderment. “There is a tunnel equipped with silent electric transport. The workers in the main facility above never see or interact with those who work down here.”
“But why?” Koslov noted that many of the unfamiliar personnel were wearing lab coats. Others were draped in vests filled with small tools. “Why such secrecy, even from someone in my position?”
The colonel’s voice tightened as they turned a c
orner. “It is deemed necessary to keep knowledge of the project from being passed to others. The Americans, the British, the Chinese … anyone. That is why it was constructed here, beneath the plant, where it is safely hidden from even the most sensitive espionage apparatus. It is the most closely guarded operation in the country, Comrade Koslov … and you are about to, finally, be granted access.”
The director pondered a moment. “Why now? Why keep it secret from me for nearly ten years only to share it with me now?”
“I told you. There is to be a test.” One leathery finger pointed upward. “It is no secret that a test of component four of the facility is to be conducted today. That will provide any cover necessary for the parallel experiment we are about to conduct down here.”
“What kind of experiment?” Koslov’s curiosity had long since overcome any fear he felt for his personal safety.
“You will see. We will all see, at the same time.”
They had reached a door. It should not have been there. The entire subterranean level should not have been there. Even as Yefrem showed identification to the guards flanking the doorway, who gripped modified AK-47’s with a determination rarely seen outside of Lubyanka, the director marveled at the portal. Made of alloyed steel, it looked more like the door to a vault in a major bank than anything one would expect to find beneath the plant.
Once clearance had been granted one of the guards spoke into the microphone clipped to his collar. A moment passed, the guard nodded to no one in particular, and then the barrier swung inward on hinges the size of refrigerators. The wall it penetrated was two meters thick and made of the same specially reinforced concrete as much of the facility above ground.
Koslov’s eyes widened as he followed the colonel into the room beyond. He could not help himself. The chamber they entered was high, wide, and deep enough to hold large aircraft. Ranks of powerful ceiling lights poured illumination on the area below, penetrating every corner of the vast open space. The heavy background whine of concealed fans explained the slight breeze he felt on his face. The room was suffused with purpose and expectation.