Haggopian and Other Stories (61 page)

(Additional to my description of the cell: the “alien artefact” mentioned in the preceeding paragraph was fixed centrally in a strengthened glass sphere upon a marble pedestal in the living area, where its influence if any would be unavoidable by the two men.)

Oh, and one other factor conducive to their recruitment: they were both readers of other-worldly romances, with a penchant for the macabre; and so they were acquainted with the speculative fiction facet of matters which the Foundation had been attempting to fathom for several decades. In short, their minds would not be closed to themes, theories, and suggestions which narrower, more orthodox intellects might find unacceptable and immediately refute: they were “familiar” with notions of parallel dimensions, UFOs, alien encounters, and et cetera.

Enough: I have set the scene as clearly as possible within certain limits. So now let James and Jason speak for themselves.

One last point. While the following conversations are accurate (as covertly recorded by myself) I’ve excised and replaced certain names and references as a further security measure. For as elsewhere stated correspondence such as this—intended only for the eyes of my former Foundation colleagues—may not be as safe as their archive records.

NOTE: for easy recognition, all such altered sections will be parenthesized…

Jason, yawning: “What time do you have?”

James, showing great disinterest: “Does it really matter? After all, we’re not going anywhere.”

Jason: “I like to be regular in my habits and I’m feeling a bit hungry, so I suspect it’s time to eat.”

James: “You could regulate your habits by wearing a watch—but since I know you’ll only ask again, and since I’m already bored by this meaningless conversation…it’s six-forty. And before you ask, that’s p.m.”

Jason, grinning: “Thank you. Most gracious of you. And it seems I was right: time to eat.”

James: “I’m not hungry.”

Jason: “Then don’t eat. Me, I’m frying up mushrooms with a few slices of liver and bacon.”

James, suddenly restless: “Then perhaps I will eat, after all.”

Jason, going to the fridge: “I’ll be sure to set out equal, fresh portions for you…unless you want me to cook them for you?”

James, sighing: “Would that be such an inconvenience?”

Jason: “No more than glancing at your watch occasionally, no.”

James, changing the subject, staring fixedly at the artefact in its glass sphere, where its pedestal rose through the centre of the circular table at which he was seated: “Did you dream last night?”

Jason, frowning, and squirting a mist of olive oil into a frying pan: “Three nights, three dreams, yes.”

James: “The same dream?”

Jason, perhaps slightly troubled: “The very same: But very vague… More a set of sensations than a dream proper. Nothing clearly visual, nothing spoken out loud. Mental whispers, or—I don’t know—instinctive knowledge? Well, if you know what I mean.”

James: “Interesting. And of course I know what you mean! Do you think you’re more sensitive to this stuff than I am? I have been living with the knowledge of the truth of all this for…for longer than I care to think. Oh, yes. And I was dreaming my dreams long before they sat me in front of this thing.” He indicated the artefact, enlarged and distorted by the glass of its globe.

Jason, with perhaps a hint of amusement or gentle sarcasm in his voice: “You have always known you were, er, psychic?”

James: “My parapsychological or ESP skills are different from yours—each to his own mentality—but yes, I have always known. I feel things from afar, and in my dreams they are made manifest. Even though I am not given to understand everything, still I see what is
now
…unlike you who sees what will be.”

Jason, nodding, turning slivers of liver and bacon slices in his pan: “Or so I’ve lately discovered—but I didn’t know, not for sure. Or maybe I did, but tried to avoid it—because it worried me.”

James, with a snort: “Being able to see the future worried you? You were too dim to find a use for a skill like that? You scored 78 per cent on the Zener test, yet you were too poor to afford a wristwatch? And if you were ‘trying to avoid it’, why on earth did you answer the ad in the first place?”

Jason: “
Because
I was too poor to afford a wristwatch—or anything else for that matter! We weren’t all born with silver spoons in our mouths, you know! Anyway, why do I annoy you? Is there that about me which reminds you of something intolerably nasty that you stepped in at one time or another? Or could it be some kind of jealousy, because my skills are apparent while yours are—let’s face it—more or less, er, obscure?”

James, straightening up, narrowing his eyes more yet: “My skills may be obscure, as you put it, but our sponsors saw fit to choose me no less than you. In fact, I have always been…chosen. From the very first moment I read of (Cxxxxxx) and the others of the pantheon I knew that they were real; and that one day—when my stars were in the ascendant—I would communicate with them.”

Jason, not quite sneering, but with a cynical twist to his mouth: “Why can’t you say what you mean?”

James, sharply: “I beg your pardon?”

Jason: “Don’t you mean, ‘when the stars are right’?”

James, with a cold sidelong glance at Jason: “Interpret my words as you will—and (Axxxxxxx’s) if you dare! But he wasn’t such a madman, that old Arab. Or if he was, it was what he half knew but could not fathom that made him that way.” And, after a brief pause: “Doesn’t it concern you that you could be a millionaire instead of a pauper?”

Jason, returning to the table with two plates of sizzling food: “Are you talking about gambling again? How I could have beaten the bookies, cleaned up at roulette, broken the bank at Monte Carlo? But you know what they say about practice, how it makes perfect?… Maybe I didn’t want to perfect what I might have suspected I could do. Perhaps I didn’t want to see things—certain things—any clearer. It could even be that some of the futures I had seen were too clear by half.”

The pair, lapsing into silence while they eat. But after a while James asking: “What is it you saw that frightened you so? Myself, I have no fear with regard to the Mythos. I might possibly fear my own imaginings, which are not real, but I cannot fear what
is
real—and imminent! What is real exists, and what exists will find ways to impinge and may not be avoided. Wherefore what use to fear it?”

Jason, around his last mouthful of food: “But exactly!
Que sera, sera!
Ah, but would you really want to know the day, hour, and minute of your own death? And can’t you see how knowing it you would try to avoid it?—to no avail.
Que sera, sera!
”

James, his eyes fully open, staring now: “You saw your own death?”

Jason, thoughtfully: “Not my death, no—but my brother’s, and my mother’s. Enough to put me off.”

James: “Interesting. Can you tell me about it?”

Jason: “Not now. Some other time, maybe. But now I’m tired. A glass of white wine might help me sleep…hopefully not to dream.”

James: “But that is why we are here! Surely you’ve divined that much?”

Jason: “Of course. But still I get paid, whether I dream or not. And I prefer not.”

To which there is no answer…

• • •

Jason tosses, turns, and sweats in his sleep. He cries out, but feebly, on several occasions. The wine has not helped.

James is similarly affected. But he isn’t so much nightmaring as experiencing; which is to say that while Jason is trying to escape from whatever pursues or threatens, James accepts it. His claim that he does not fear the Mythos (the effects wrought by the artefact) appear to be borne out. Our psychiatric specialist is at least of that opinion: that unlike Jason, James has been having—or perhaps receiving?—dreams such as this for a long time, even as long as he claims, and has become inured.

But he is voluble.

He speaks of a (Shining Txxxxxxxxxxxx): an odd geometrical figure, and of a “prehistoric city, Mnar”—
not
the ruins in the Deer Park at Benares. He spouts of “the outer spheres” and “star-spawn”, and “the lenses of light”, before his subconscious ramblings become unintelligible gibberings—a mush and a mumble, defying reproduction by normal human vocal chords, and proving equally difficult to represent, even as writing. Then, after a period of lying perfectly still in an attitude of rapt attention, as if he were listening to something or someone, he states quite clearly, “I shall be your vessel, your gate, your embodiment. And through you I shall visit the farthest places: that roiling lake where the puffed (Sxxxxxxxx) spawn, the spiralling Towers of (Txxxxxxx), the dark light-years twirling like leaves blown in a storm. But…this ‘great
harvest’ of which you speak. Pray tell me, what shall we harvest?”

And then a gasp, a cry choked off, his body snapping into a weird rigidity and only very slowly relaxing, and his breathing steadying as his face slackens and he falls more deeply asleep, as if soothed by some unseen
hypnotist’s persuasions…

• • •

The night passes. The pair sleep late, and when they rise they avoid each other…James very deliberately, Jason because he can’t be bothered with the surliness of the other’s moods.

Jason cooks breakfast for himself; James doesn’t eat until well into the afternoon when he makes a small cheese sandwich, then sits eating it, scowling at the artefact. And finally:

James: “I believe I heard you call out in the night?”

Jason: “Unlike the outer shell of this place, the partitions between our rooms are thin as cardboard! You could hear a mouse fart on the other side. As for my outcry: well, my dream was a particularly bad one.”

James: “Which doubtless accounts for your mood.”

Jason: “Oh?”

James: “Your silence.”

Jason: “Listen who’s talking! We were here for forty-eight hours before you so much as grunted!”

James: “As I recall, you complained to me about the lack of a TV. You asked why not. I did not grunt. I pointed out that as well as the absence of a TV there was no radio and indeed nothing that might interfere with our seclusion, concentration, the immanence of ulterior forces. And incidentally, I don’t dislike you. You accused me of disliking you, but that is not so. It is simply that I am remote from you…my thoughts are rarely mundane. And when I am disturbed—when my thoughts are interrupted—then naturally it becomes an inconvenience, an annoyance. So you see it isn’t the case that I dislike you, rather that I despise idle prattle. Not dislike but disinclination, disinterest.”

Jason, sighing, shaking his head: “You don’t seem to realise just how insulting such remarks are. Now I’m not normally a surly fellow, but I can certainly feel myself sliding that way. Today
you
were the one who commenced ‘prattling’, and I suspect you’re not yet done!”

James: “Because while
you
fail to excite my interest, your dreams are quite another matter. On several occasions I am sure I heard you cry out. This was before I myself fell asleep. Were you dreaming of your brother? Or perhaps your mother? I believe I heard you call a name. But I was only half awake and so can’t be sure.”

Jason: “Is this important to you? I can’t see why. And what with your lack of interest in me—the fact that my presence is ‘an inconvenience’ and even ‘an annoyance’—I don’t see why I should trouble myself to talk to you at all, not a single word! And certainly not about my poor dead mother or brother.”

James: “But the fact is you were prescient in the matter of their deaths. Could it be that your dreams represent guilt? You foresaw their deaths and could do nothing about it…
que sera, sera.
And now they come back to haunt you. As to why this is of interest to me: I see the NOW while failing to understand where it is going, while you see what is to be without knowing how to avoid it. I seek to probe deeper, while you turn away from your talent.”

Jason, shrugging: “So? Is there a lesson to be learned from these supposed facts? What is your conclusion?”

James, a trifle reluctantly: “That…perhaps we ought to work together? After all, that presumably is why they saw fit to lodge us as a pair.”

Jason: “Possibly, but it’s a shame they couldn’t have found me a female guinea pig partner. That way I wouldn’t be spending quite so much time dreaming.”

James, raising an eyebrow: “Sex? I have no time for it and never will have. It is an animal activity. Out beyond the stars…their procreation is different. More a melding, a substitution, a flowing together, and an explosive multiplication.”

Jason, singing: “…It’s the name of the game, and each generation…”

James, apparently aghast: “You would do well not to mock!”

Jason: “Oh, really? I shouldn’t mock? When what you’ve just said sounded like you were describing a clan of alien amoebas?”

James, apparently in disgust: “Pshaw!”

• • •

Later:

Jason, sitting at the table staring at the artefact, then bursting abruptly into speech: “My brother—and especially my mother—bring me warnings. Yes, I’m oneiromantic, but my precognition isn’t so much advanced knowledge of what to do or to avoid doing but, as you might have it, knowledge of the direction in which my current position or standing is leading me. In other words, their warnings are useless by reason of the fact that the outcome cannot be avoided. They can warn of my going to hell, but they can’t offer me a fire-proof parachute!”

James:
“Que…”

Jason, cutting the other off: “Yes, yes! Of course! What will be will be.”

James, nodding sagely: “So then, the dead go on; at least their thoughts: they are not dead who can forever lie. Having undergone their change—knowing more of Being by experiencing Not Being—they attempt to communicate their knowledge, their warnings, to the living loved ones they left behind. In which case I suspect—no, I affirm—that we have this in common with the gods of outer spheres. They too go on forever. Except they don’t die but are truly immortal! In my dreams I’ve seen them; their myriad shapes seeping down from the stars!”