I think Spender and Hamilton got to the Moon, and they set their simps to dig down deep into the lunar soil, for the silo. Sixty feet deep it had to be, but some of those simps dug on, and on . . . Maybe they didn’t understand the depth measures, or were trying to plant deep foundations—or maybe they knew, somehow, there was something down there to find. . . .
What they found was a city, built by the Great Old Ones of Yith. Just like Dyer found in Australia.
You know the story, or anyhow the version Lovecraft gave. The Yithians had the ability to travel through time and space, by exchanging their minds with creatures on other planets, in other ages. They came to the Earth some time in the deep past, perhaps as much as a billion years ago. They traveled back and forth through Earth’s history—traveled by means of possession of hosts in each era—according to Lovecraft, using just the kind of clunky gadget that George found inside the Moon.
And they created a great archive city in Australia, which Dyer eventually found.
They died out on Earth maybe fifty million years ago, and Dyer imagined they fled to the future. But maybe they fled to the Moon first, for a time anyhow—a place not unlike Australia after all: deep and old and dry and stable, just as good a place to site an archive, a library of past and future.
But—bad news for them—some time in the 19th century the Color came to the Moon, and found them.
I mean, it’s logical. In the Yith the Color found the organic life it needed to fuel its migrant existence. Maybe the Color was even able to browse selectively, here on the Moon. It would take less energy to escape the Moon’s shallow gravity field. Maybe there was a stable arrangement for a while.
Parasite and host.
But maybe the Color of Aristarchus got too greedy. Or the Yith, depleted, fled at last to the future.
And now that hungry colony on Aristarchus is looking toward our Earth with envious eyes.
I might have it all wrong. But as I sit here now, talking to you, I have George’s machine on the console before me, retrieved from that underground city, and my slim archive book. . . . Proof that we found something . . .
We had to get back to work. We clambered back up that rough shaft to the silo launch center.
Where, it turned out, Spender was already waiting for us.
VII
“Who are you? Where’s my damn Apollo, come to take me home?”
Francis Edward Spender, the first human to walk on the Moon.
Spender, the monster.
He had evidently found my Mercury. He was brandishing a chunk of it, a panel of dials and lights and dangling wires, torn from the cabin, held in a glassy glove. Oddly, that was the first thing I noticed about him, that Mercury component.
Odd because he filled that control room. Odd, because when he faced George, it was as if the two of them were distorted images of each other.
Spender had somehow built himself a simp suit.
So here were two glass robots, their carapaces filled with electronic parts and winking lights, and exoskeletal components. Two angry faces glaring: one ape, one human. Spender’s beard was thick, curled up inside the glass.
But whereas George’s suit had been manufactured in some covert NASA workshop, probably at Holloman AFB, and made to fit, the travesty Spender wore was obviously improvised—pieces of several suits bolted and glued, fixed with duct tape. He even wore those glove-like ape boots, like George’s. Behind the glass panels, the electronics were roughly crammed around Spender’s body—and I saw how the exoskeletal supports had been strapped to the man’s limbs.
And in there too were traces of chimp: scraps of dark hair, blood splashes, even flesh, sticking to the glass and the electronics.
George, ominously still, just glowered.
On any other day I would have been boggled. Maybe I was awed out.
“Well,” I said. “I can see why you don’t use your bunk any more. And I guess I know what became of George’s simian buddies. Picked them off one at a time, did you, Spender? To strip them of their cyborg parts?”
He glared at me. “Where’s my Apollo?”
“Apollo’s not ready,” I said as evenly as I could. “I’m a One-Way Space Man, Spender. Like you, like Bob Hamilton. Relying on a pickup some time in the future. Here to do my duty. As you must do yours.”
He sneered, behind the glass. “What duty?”
I tried to tell him. About the Color in Aristarchus. About Cthulhu stirring. About how I was here to secure humanity’s flank in the Eldritch War to come. About how, if we got the order today, he had to sit down with me now, in this launch center, and prepare to fire the nukes he had been babysitting for so long.
He stared at me, incredulous, and laughed. “Are you crazy? Don’t you get it? You’re in the same boat as me now, sister. Those damn nukes are the only leverage we have. Leave them in their silos and those NASA assholes or the air force might come get us some day. Set them off and they certainly won’t.”
“That’s not the deal—”
“And besides, detonate them over Aristarchus and we’d never survive ourselves.”
I frowned. “You know as well as I do that the nukes are on a timer. Turn those keys and we have an hour before launch, an hour to get out of here to the secondary shelter.”
He snorted. “What secondary shelter? Even after the first year we were barely surviving. We went over, me and Bob, and looted the damn place.”
That closed off several options in my head. “All right. And Bob Hamilton?”
“I didn’t touch him,” Spender said quickly. “Hell, we argued, stuck up here.”
“The Color—”
“It got to him in the city. Down below. Went down there once too often, the sap. It was all I could do to shovel him in his cabin and lock the door.” His face, behind the glass, looked anguished, and the words came tumbling out. Too long since he had anyone to talk to, I guess. “Look—who are you? What’s the name on that tag?”
“Magnolia Jones,” I said. “USAF and NASA. One of the Blue Gemini 21.”
His eyes widened. “I never believed you existed.”
“I never knew you existed.”
He shook his head. “You got to see how it was up here, for me, Jones. And for Bob, I guess. We were both military. From military families. And we never got a decent war to fight. My father fought in World War II. Fighter ace. Why, even some of the Mercury guys got to fight in Korea. I was already in the space program when Vietnam came along . . . I should be out there swinging. Instead, I wasted my life stuck in a hole in the ground, on the Moon. You got to see how it was. You got to see . . .”
“You had your duty. That’s how I see it.”
CHIMPS.
Somehow George’s glowing sign was louder than either of our voices.
Spender sneered. “What’s that, Cheetah?”
CHIMPS. STOLE.
Spender glanced down at himself. “Oh, you mean my tailoring?” He grinned, in George’s face. “After I lost Bob, what was I supposed to do? I needed more strength, more than one man’s, to keep the place running. You can’t rely on these damn dirty apes. So—”
STOLE.
“He’s right. You stole their lives, Spender.”
“And I was right,” Spender said.
George stood straight.
“I had the right. I’m human, they weren’t.” Spender’s glass-coated fists clenched with a scrape. He walked up to George, and faced him. “You want to discuss this further?”
And suddenly I had a vision of these two cyborgs smashing up each other, and this launch center. “Gentlemen. You can’t fight in here! This is a nuclear silo!”
But George signed, NO NEED. NO FIGHT. He reached out with one finger, and tapped an exposed button on Spender’s glass-covered torso.
There was a blue glow around Spender’s feet.
He jumped in the air, jolted, cried out—and toppled like a statue. Out cold.
George just looked down at him. SORE FEET. DANCE LIKE MONKEY.
He faced me. NOW WHAT.
I looked at George, and the unconscious Spender, and at those double keys.
“Now what? Now nothing. It takes two to launch those damn nukes. Spender could have turned one of the keys. But even if you haven’t killed him, he’ll surely be out for hours.”
CHIMPS NOT TURN KEY.
I nodded sagely. “Chimps aren’t supposed to turn the keys, right. I imagine you guys have some kind of conditioning to stop you messing with nuclear missiles. Makes sense.”
George shrugged. CONDITIONING. NOT TURN KEY. CONDITIONING. NOT HIT SPENDER. He gave Spender a solid kick in the glassed-over ribs. And he reached up and flicked a launch key with one finger. GEORGE ONE SMART CHIMP. CONDITION THAT.
I marveled.
NOW WHAT, he flashed again.
“Now,” I said, “if they tell us to, we save the world.”
He sat down at one console, and flicked that dangling key again.
Epilogue
So, Jocelyn, nearly an hour ago . . .
Time was running out.
We had images from surface cameras. I could see how the eclipse was progressing.
And as seen by the big telescopes around the world, the surface of Aristarchus was starting to boil, as the biggest Color Incursion we’re ever likely to see prepared to launch itself at the fragile Earth. Talk about a transient lunar phenomenon.
We had our duty.
And we called Houston, and got our orders. Confirm to launch.
I didn’t think about the consequences, for me. Or George. We just did it.
There’s a kind of dance to launching a nuclear strike. With the verbal order came a coded signal that made a box on my console light up with a code: CAP-811, if you want to know. This is called a “c-cubed code.” There are paper records in here with us, a slip of paper coded for each day of the first fifty years of the base’s operation. I found today’s slip, and it bore a matching code. CAP-811.
We punched that in. Now we had authorization; we had control of the nukes.
Then we had to go through a number of technical steps. We went to standby status, which enabled us to power up our missiles. Then we went through a pre-launch sequence, like this was a miniature Canaveral—checks of the electronics and the guidance systems. We had to enter the final targeting data into the missiles’ memories.
And then we turned our two keys, one ape hand, one human.
The whole place shuddered when the missiles went up.
Soon six megatons will be raining down on Aristarchus, hopefully scrambling and sealing that nest of Color for a goodly time.
And scrambling us. There’s no point running, even; there’s no shelter to take us.
Unless, unless . . .
You see, we have our souvenirs, here with us. From the Yithian city. My archive book and George’s glassy machine. And he’s tinkering with it. Lovecraft says that machines just like this were used to move Yithians, or at least their minds. Professor Dyer agreed. The Yithians could move indiscriminately across time and space, he said.
Maybe so. Maybe we have a way out after all.
You know, Jocelyn, your aunt Mabel wasn’t evil. Her head was turned by dreams of Azathoth. She was like poor Spender, in a way. A soldier without a decent, clean war to fight. And who knows what lies ahead for you, once this Eldritch War is over? For all wars end, you know.
One way or another, though, this might be the end of humans on the patient Moon. Strange to think that we, and the Yithians, and the Color might in the end be nothing more than transient lunar phenomena.
The date is Thursday, September 11, 1969. My name is Magnolia Jones. I was born on a cotton farm in Atlanta, Georgia. And I flew a Mercury spacecraft to the Moon, in order to save the world. I guess it was the most extraordinary thing I ever did.
Until now . . .
SIX
Into the Dreamlands
“RANDOLPH,” SAYS THE CAT, its tongue slightly troubled by the name; it makes a point of pronouncing quite distinctly the “l” and the “ph” rather than running them together as nature intended.
The weight on Randolph’s chest is what wakes him, mere moments before he hears anything . . . yet he knows it’s a cat there, compressing his lungs. He thinks briefly of the tales of felines stealing breath from babies, considers that if a grown man—mutated, hybridized, utterly changed by the Dreamlands—struggles with such a burden, it’s no wonder that a child might die.
“Randolph. You must come along. The Queens await.”
Besides, he’s not been into the Dreamscape in weeks—the Gates, it seems, have been closed against him. Although perhaps not against him personally no matter that it feels like it, but against all those who travel as he does. The gods know he’s tried every single door and window, every crack and fissure, split and hair’s breadth, attempting to force his way back to the one place where he feels at home.
But there’s been no grace.
“Randolph,” insists the cat, and Special Agent Carter opens his eyes at last and sees how big the animal is, how yellow its irises, how long its whiskers (and sharp! Like épées! En garde!), how small its mouth yet how vicious the teeth that protrude, how sleek and black its fur, and how strange and violet the light around it shines. “Randolph, we have so little time.”
“We?”
“The Sunset City has fallen, Randolph. The Queens call for aid,” says the cat, then leans down and purposefully bites the hand Randolph has raised to his chest, his only limb, now, that bears much resemblance to human.
That’s when he wakes. Properly wakes, truly opens his eyes. He believes for a moment, though he of all people knows better, that it was just a dream. But the blood oozing from his punctured flesh is the only proof he needs to the contrary—that and the fur the creature has left behind: Long filaments, ebony-limned with a purple luminescence like an oil slick, adhering to the white coverlet, which is the brightest thing in his room. Careful not to get crimson on the sheets, he reaches for the trim phone beside his bed. He speaks before he’s even certain someone has picked up at the other end, taking for granted that the agents of the Human Protection League in general, of Dream Division in particular, are well-trained enough to take everything seriously, to be on constant alert.
“I need to speak to her,” he says, then hangs up. He hears, without paying attention, the sound of scuttling, that disappears almost as soon as it began. At any rate, Randolph is too distracted to take much notice. He doesn’t know of the Queens, cannot recall having heard of them, but wonders how his old friend King Kuranes of Celephaïs fares. Perhaps he’d misheard?
“Kadath,” he whispers in a voice that trembles with longing. “Kadath has fallen.”
Randolph is at his worst, physically; the Dreamlands have warped his body though his mind remains as sharp as ever. And he doesn’t seem to age either, a weird benediction from his journeys. Yet there’s no doubt that he’s monstrous to behold, that Dr. Frankenstein would deem him “too much.” He doesn’t know what Miracle Brady makes of him, and would prefer not to speculate.
Professor Brady terrifies him. As ugly as he’s become he feels himself a counterpoint, a direct riposte to her beauty. He’s a punch line, a cautionary tale. So in recent years he’s kept to his rooms more and more. He barely even goes into the labs and cells of Dream Division nowadays, and certainly never to the common areas. Even the corridors are fraught, and he avoids them too, for who knows what kind of glances he might encounter? Once upon a time, he didn’t really care, but his skin’s grown thin over the years in more ways than one. It’s even worse when he sees Miracle Brady.
If Randolph knew more of the world, had spent some time outside the walls of HPL headquarters, he could have learned that even the most beautiful of women might well regard herself as nothing more than an assemblage of features which she cannot recognize as pleasing or otherwise. That such a face remains merely a series of fragments, fault lines, flaws, and fractures that simply never make sense. That whoe
ver said beauty was on the inside, never spoke a truer word in jest; the natural corollary is, of course, that what’s on the outside is easier to see, but harder to interpret. Randolph might have learned he’s not alone.
How he misses Dorothy Williams. She was not only his assistant, but also his confidant. She protected him from the outside world, but nothing could protect her from the malignant cells that ultimately ravaged her body. He still wonders if her proximity to him over the years may have been the cause . . .
The only people who see him on a regular basis now are the nameless kitchen hand who brings his meals (all exquisitely crafted, not that he eats much of them anymore—so far no one’s seemed to notice when he throws them in the garbage chute in the corner of the small lab attached to his suite), the cleaner (who, in all fairness, really only spots the back of him as he scurries into the corner behind the privacy screen where he reads a book until the room is given a lick and a promise), and his friend Dr. Orme Appleton.
Dr. Appleton is tall and blond, but his face is a bland thing only animated when he smiles. Randolph’s never seen such a stillness in anyone—it’s like Orme is a mountain pond untroubled by anything to send ripples across his surface. That lack of feedback is, Randolph suspects, why he is so comfortable with the man selected to take care of his health. Orme helps him dress each day, checks his blood pressure, heartbeat, his eyesight and hearing, his speech, his breathing. He examines, with an expression that some days approaches avid interest if he’s not careful, the places where the dream-limbs have met and replaced his real-limbs, checking the joins for leaks or fissures which are never there, for the fusion that occurs when Special Agent Carter travels is a seamless thing.
“A cat, Randolph? Really?” Orme carefully helps to slide one arm of the strangely cut jacket over Randolph’s most alternate limb (jointed and shaped like an enlarged black lobster’s claw). Clothes might well maketh the man, but they cannot cover up Agent Carter’s true shape.
The Lovecraft Squad: Dreaming Page 22