Haggopian and Other Stories (62 page)

Jason: “I only know of me and mine, which are real things. As for alien beings ‘seeping’ down from the stars: the nearest star—other than Sol—is four and a half light-years away. That is one hell of a seep! I am convinced it’s all a fiction. Think about it. A certain star is a billion light years away. Even at the speed of light your alien ‘gods’ will take a billion years to get here. And if they are only ‘seeping’…?”

James, with a shrug: “As for it being a fiction, our hosts don’t seem to think so, else why are we here? And as for ‘seeping’: a poetic turn of phrase. The Old Gentleman might just as well have used ‘filtering’, which is another slow process.”

Jason: “Yes, he used ‘seeping’; but he meant it like poison in a wound, like pus from an open sore. And remember: the gods of his pantheon were evil. Is that what you crave, the destruction of everything we consider good?”

James, sneeringly: “
Hah!
Good, bad, love, hate—emotions in general—
They
are beyond, above all that! And anyway, you miss what should be obvious: that they are timeless.”

Jason, grunting, and the corners of his mouth turning down: “Timeless—sleeping but not dead—oh yeah, sure.”

James, dreamily, ignoring Jason’s obvious sarcasm: “Immortal they journey, wandering between the stars, pausing now and then, but only long enough to…to
harvest
their worlds.”

Jason: “Immortal? They will be here until the end? Doesn’t that imply that they were here at the beginning? How, immortal? Though I’ll grant you they would need to be to ‘seep’ down from the stars!”

James: “Exactly! And that is the point you missed. For when you speak of the speed of light you should not forget that time stands still at such a speed! It is the secret of their immortality: that during their journey
they do not age
!”

Jason does not answer immediately; when he does, it is only to frown and ask: “Do you think that perhaps we’re confused? Do
you
feel confused? Our conversations, our arguments, seem to go in circles. And personally my mind never felt so cluttered! But…maybe I’ve asked you that before? Or did you ask me?”

James, ignoring the other’s question and indicating with a nod of his head and a pointed finger the artefact in its glass globe: “There it is: a ‘lens of light’, or so I believe. But do you know where they found it, these people who are using us in an attempt to prove its properties?”

Jason, blinking rapidly, as if to clear his head of confusing thoughts: “No, do you?”

James: “Absolutely! Before I volunteered my person for this experiment, I had them volunteer their sources, their whys and wherefors. Are you interested?”

Jason: “I shall try to be.”

James: “It was five years ago, in Iraq, after the war that deposed Saddam the Dictator.”

Jason: “Ah, yes! Saddam Hussein and his alleged, er, weapons of mass destruction? I remember.”

James: “The American forces stopped a truck on its way to Syria. They found a large amount of gold, a million dollars in hundred dollar bills, and certain items of immense antiquity—including an old book or scroll written in an ancient, indecipherable script. The book contained a map of the desert—with a certain area marked out in the shape of a five-pointed star. It transpired that the book’s ancient text was the language of a sunken city or continent lost in Pacific deeps.”

Jason: “By any chance, (R’xxxx)? Where (Cxxxxxx) lies dreaming?”

James, nodding: “The same—or so I suspect—though for some reason no one has deigned to confirm my suspicion in that regard. But, learning of the book’s existence, a certain esoteric organisation took steps to obtain it. Among our hosts are members of that organisation….Do you want to know more?”

Jason: “All very interesting. And by all means carry on.”

James: “As you wish. The five-pointed star symbol is well known; indeed its powers, if any, have long been prone to argument among certain savants—”

Jason: “Savants?”

James: “Authorities, such as you and I.”

Jason: “But I don’t consider myself an ‘authority,’ merely a reader of weird and macabre fiction.”

James, scornfully: “Not to mention someone who catches the occasional glimpse of the future! But let me proceed:

“The map indicated or superimposed this pentagram on a portion of the Iraqi desert. And the most important thing is this, that the desert has not changed in a million years, not to any significant degree. Anyway, the esoteric organisation of which I speak sent their agents to investigate, ostensibly to search out elusive weapons of mass destruction said to be hidden somewhere in those great wastelands. But in fact they had predetermined to locate the points of the star symbol—and from these to determine its geometric centre.

“This was not nearly as difficult as it might at first have seemed. The locals offered up information; they said that there were five ‘holy men’ who occupied the selfsame locations out in the desert. And each of the five—drug-addicted Dervishes, as it transpired, and completely bereft of reason as perceived in our Western society—was discovered to be in possession of a star-stone! Alas, they were also in possession of Russian small arms, which they did not hesitate to turn on the investigators. Enter the military, who dealt with these five ‘terrorists’ with despatch…or so I assume since the star-stones were confiscated or ‘commandeered.’

“Now we move to the geometric centre: a dried-up well, into which our investigators descend, and down below discover a vast natural cavern, once a waterway—but how many millennia ago?—whose walls are carved with myriad foreign or alien sigils. And upon a marble pedestal at the approximate centre—”

Jason, pointing at the artefact in its glass bubble: “That thing.”

James: “Indeed!”

Jason: “I see. And the star-stones kept it secure, turning aside its malign influence. Correct?”

James, shaking his head: “This is not how I perceive it…though I can see how such confusion in the Mythos arose originally. No, I believe that upon a time the cavern housed a Being. As for ‘malign’: I fail to see anything malign in this. What I do see is that there are travellers out there among the stars; not gods, not evil aliens, in no way a threat, but scientists! Different, certainly—our superiors in as many fields as you care to number, and in others that you can’t even imagine, you may be sure—but ‘kept secure’, yes, I can agree with that.”

Jason: “Secure against what?”

James: “Secure against being disturbed! It is a marker, and perhaps even a Gateway, for those who wander the star spaces.”

Jason, whose sneer no longer carries conviction: “Sure, and who perform their wandering, seeping, or filtering at the speed of light, eh? As for these five Arab madmen, these zealots: why were they so protective of the star-stones, or rather, this so-called ‘lens of light’? Why would they lay down their lives for it? Were they protecting it as some kind of holy relic, or were they in fact protecting us, humankind,
from
it?”

James: “Bah! Your thoughts are mired in fear! You’re a pronounced
xenophobe!”

Jason: “Possibly, and on a cosmic scale at that! But in the light of my precognizance, ask yourself this: what do you suppose I am most afraid of?”

James: “Of the (Gxxxx Oxx Oxxx), the Outer Ones, of course. Of the thought of
Them
in the spaces between the spaces we know—in the stellar voids—riding the gravitic waves of exploding stars! Of their superiority!”

Jason: “Wrong! But you’ve mentioned two things that do concern me. One: you spoke of Them harvesting their worlds—”

James, starting, blinking, obviously taken aback: “Eh? Did I? A harvest? Yes, indeed, I seem to recall saying something of the sort. I may even have dreamed something of it. But now…I can’t seem to remember what it was about.”

Jason: “There are beads of sweat on your brow. Are you now feeling
confused?”

James, wiping his forehead: “Quite right. It’s suddenly hot in here. Whoever controls the temperature is not doing his job. But confused? I’m…not sure.” Then, after a moment’s thought: “And two?”

Jason: “Two?”

James: “The second thing I said that concerns you. What was it?”

Jason: “Ah yes! You called the lens a ‘Gateway’. And if so, well, wouldn’t that be something to fear?”

James, throwing his arms wide: “For
thought
! A Gateway that allows my thoughts to reach out to
Them
…and theirs to reach me—to reach us, if you would only help me, assist me in opening up our minds to them!”

Jason, thoughtfully: “I think we’ve both been somewhat confused ever since being put in this place. I certainly have not been thinking clearly, and you’ve blown hot and cold—contradicted yourself—on several occasions. But if what you say is right: that the lens is a Gateway for mental communication…well, perhaps that would explain it.”

James, snapping his fingers: “And there you have it! Their thoughts are incompatible with ours, or at best only marginally readable. Can we explain ourselves to sea snakes or gibbons? No of course not! Likewise their purpose—their messages—come unclear, distorted, and misunderstood by us.”

Jason: “You admit it, then? That we are being influenced by that thing in the globe?”

James: “Is there any need to admit what was obvious to me from the start? It is why we are here; to enable our observers to discover to what degree we are influenced. For after all, we are the guinea pigs—the ones with enhanced psychic senses—whereas they are merely…observers.”

NOTE: In this James was only partly right. I was not lacking in certain psychic sensitivities myself; not as intense as James’s or Jason’s, true, but certainly I had experienced and was still experiencing something of the lens’s peculiar influence, a sort of mental confusion—as had the Dervishes in the Iraqi desert, to the extent that prolonged exposure was probably responsible for their madness. It was not our intention, however, to allow so grave a deterioration in our subjects; the experiment could be brought to a close at any time. No, our main interest lay in whatever other properties the lens might or might not possess.

• • •

James, continuing: “So then, shall we work together rather than continue to constantly needle each other?”

Jason: “If I have needled it was only or mainly in riposte. And I think I’ll sleep on the idea of working together. Perhaps someone will advise me in that regard.”

James: “Your…relatives?”

Jason: “Perhaps. My mother was clairvoyant, and my brother…was my twin. We were all three in a traffic accident. I saw it coming but could do nothing about it. In the moment of their deaths…maybe something transferred to me. It strikes me as possible that they had seen it coming, too. As to why that may be relevant to our current situation: I have been experiencing similar feelings of imminence.”

James: “You are worried that you’re going to die?”

Jason: “I feel…a sense of transference, metamorphosis—as if I were about to take flight!”

James, nodding: “Light-headedness. I can feel it, too—the pressure of my thoughts.”

Jason: “Ah yes, thoughts! Which reminds me of something you said earlier. On that same subject, tell me if you will how you intend to exchange thoughts with alien Beings who could be billions of light years away? That is, assuming the speed of light to be the ultimate reach of material things.”

James: “But you have supplied the answer to your own question! Thought is
not
material. It may take time and myriad small electrical impulses to cogitate, but once a thought is set free it exists everywhere. The lens amplifies thoughts, directs them and makes them accessible. But a thought in itself, in its immanence, is as far ranging as the entire universe!”

Jason: “Accessible, but not understandable?”

James, nodding: “Hence the confusion, our confusion. We are less than successful at comprehending the incomprehensible, the mental emanations of minds that think in a great many more dimensions than our pitiful three.”

Jason, tiredly now: “Well anyway, let’s sleep on it…”

• • •

But of course the observers must sleep too. We were taking the watch in shifts; that night it was the turn of our psychiatric specialist and myself. The technician slept as best possible on a couch in a room adjacent. It was not the best of times for my mental processes; I was feeling the strain; indeed, the thought had crossed my mind that despite the strength and thickness of the cell’s walls I, too, was in close proximity to the lens.

The lens:

Three inches across, a scalloped, faceted disc of what appeared to be smoky quartz. Its constituent elements had not been analysed for fear of damaging its as yet unknown properties. It seemed inactive; had never shown any kind of activity; might as well have been some not especially elegant paperweight.

I asked my companion of the night watch for her thoughts on the subject.

“The lens?” She brought the object in its glass bubble into focus on one of the screens. “I find it…disturbing.”

“Its looks, shape, opacity?”

“Its presence.”

She meant its proximity, of course. “Do you feel in any way…confused?”

She smiled. “Tiredness, that’s all. Leading to a perfectly natural lack of concentration.” Which confirmed what I had suspected…

• • •

James, his eyes hollow, red-rimmed: “Well, we’ve slept on it—myself, badly. And frankly, I have had enough of this so-called experiment. I suggest we put our minds to it, see or experience what we see or experience, and however it goes we call it a day and demand to be out of here. As far as I am concerned they can keep their money. I know what I know, and that must suffice.”

Jason, cooking breakfast, his voice far-distant: “I dreamed of dinosaurs; herds of them, thousands of them, stampeding.”

James, with a start, his sore eyes blinking rapidly: “Why, so did I!” And then, recovering himself and rather more calmly, “What do you suppose it means?”

Jason, having apparently failed to hear, or having ignored James’ question: “I also dreamed of my mother and brother. They didn’t say anything and looked sad, but in any case I knew what they were thinking: that I wouldn’t be joining them.”