Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (85 page)

The next westward hop was to America. It took the Slavs a while to prepare themselves for that. But when they made their move they were greeted with flowers and flags. They did not have to conquer. They only had to occupy and administer
.

The third power of the world in this time took form to the south of the Slavic domain. Arab leaders, glutted with petrobux, bought arms and hired mercenaries. Governments could not achieve unity, but a shadowy group known by the cryptic name of
opec
did. The governments as such withered. The shadowy
opec
exercised more and more power. It did so more and more openly
.

Slowly the influence of
opec
spread westward and southward until all of the old Near East and Africa were under its sway
.

Then was proclaimed the New Maghreb
.

Cut to logo representing heroic leadership
.

The most powerful person in the world was the Chairperson of the Asia-Pacific Co-prosperity Sphere, Vo Tran Quoc
.

The leader of the second power, the Slavic Empire, was called Svarozits Perun. This name means
thunderbolt of God.

The head of
opec
and de facto ruler of the New Maghreb was called Shahar Shalim. This name means
dawn of peace.

Cut to logo representing sex
.

The major sexual attitude of the time was androgyny, rivaled but not equaled by the cult of pansexuality. Androgyny implies a recognition of the full sexual potential of each individual. Former distinctions were abandoned. It was no longer regarded as improper to pursue a relationship of male to male or female to female; nor was it required to have two partners in a relationship. Practices ranging from onanism to mass interplay were accepted
.

The pansexualists held that androgyny was needlessly limiting in scope. If one could relate to any man or woman—why not to a giraffe? A condor? A cabbage? A bowl of sand? A machine?

The ocean?

The sky?

To the cosmos?

To God?

Cut to logo representing music
.

The most popular musical composition as of Mar 15, 2037, was ironically a hundred-year-old tune, complete with lyrics. Searches of nearly forgotten records revealed the names of the composer and lyricist. An old 78-rpm shellac-disk rendition of the tune was discovered in a watertight vault beneath a flooded city. The sound was transcribed and released once again to the world
.

The original lyrics had been written by one Jacob Jacobs. A second version, in English, was used on the shellac disk. These words were by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin. The music was by Sholom Secunda. The singers were Patti, Maxene, and LaVerne Andrews. The song was “Bei Mit Bist du Schön.”

Cut to logo representing geodynamics
.

The latter years of the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first were marked by changes in weather patterns and
geodynamics. Accustomed to the reliable round of winter and summer, rainy season and dry season, the flow of rivers and the currents and tides of the oceans, man had come to look upon the earth as a stable and dependable home
.

He was mistaken
.

A trivial shift in air patterns, a minor trembling of the planetary mantle, a minute increase or diminution of the sun’s warmth received by the planet, and the mighty works of man crumbled like sand castles in the surf
.

An example. Earthquakes were more or less expected in certain regions: the Pacific coast of North America, Japan, and eastern China, a Eurasian belt running from Yugoslavia through Greece and Turkey to Iran. Tragedies were masked with heroism, fear hidden behind the false face of humor. “When California falls into the ocean this piece of Arizona desert will be choice waterfront property.”

Nobody expected New England and maritime Canada to crumble, but when the big quake hit, they did. From the St. Lawrence to the Hudson. It started with a tremor and rumble, grew to a scream and smash, ended with a gurgle and then the soft, even lapping of the Atlantic waters
.

Among the bits of real estate that wound up on the ocean floor—a very minor bit—was a chunk of old Providence-Plantations known as Swan Point Cemetery. Now the Deep Ones indeed swam over the single stone marker of the Lovecraft family plot
. Winfield, Sarah, Howard,
the marker was inscribed. Currents could flow all the way from Devil’s Reef and Innsmouth Harbor to far Ponape in the Pacific, and the Deep Ones visited Swan Point
.

In the field of religion, there was a revival of the ancient cults of the sea-gods, especially that of Dagon
.

Khons
slithered through another correction, took up a complex orbit that circled one moon, crossed to the other, circled, returned, describing over and over the conventional sign for the infinite.

Shoten tapped a plate, and the large viewing screen inside
Khons
glowed once more, seeming to stand unsupported against the background of the two moons and the distant star-sprayed blackness. Every now and again the progress of the two whirling moons and
Khons
’s orbit around and between them would bring Yuggoth itself swinging across the view of the three crew members so that one or both of the
worldlets and the ship’s data screen swept opaquely across the dark, pulsating oblateness.

Shoten commanded, and cyberbiots magnified the surface features of the moons on the data screen. The omnipresent craters sprang up, but then, as the magnification increased, it became obvious that they were not the sharp-edged features of the typical airless satellite but the shortened, rounded curves typical of weathering. Shoten gestured, and the focus slid across the surface of the nearer body. Above the horizon distant stars faded and twinkled.

“Air!” Shoten declared. And Njord and Gomati, agreeing, “Air.” “Air.”

Shoten Binayakya dropped
Khons
into a lower orbit, circling only one of the twin moons, that which Gomati had arbitrarily named as Thog. Again the magnification of the screen increased. In the center of a crater outlines appeared, forms of structures reared ages before by purposeful intelligence.

Amazed, Njord Freyr asked, “Could there be life?”

Shoten turned a metallic face toward him, shook slowly that ambiguous head. “Not now. No movement, no radiation, no energy output. But once …” There was a silence. Breathing, whirring, the soft clicks and hums of
Khons
. “But once …” Shoten Binayakya said again in that cold, synthesized voice.

Sri Gomati gestured. “This is where we must land. After all the explorations of the planets and their moons, even the futile picking among the rubbish of the Asteroid Belt by the great Astrud do Muiscos—to find signs of life at last! This is where we must land!”

Shoten Binayakya nodded agreement without waiting even for the assent of Njord Freyr. A limb flicked out, tapped.
Khons
bucked and started circling downward toward the reticulated patterns on the surface of Thog.

With a jolt and a shudder
Khons
settled onto the surface of the moon, well within the weathered walls of the crater and within a kilometer or less of the structured protuberances. Shoten quiesced the cyberbiots to mere maintenance level of
Khons
, leaving only the receptors and telemeters warm, then asked the others to prepare to exit.

Njord Freyr and Sri Gomati slipped breathers over their heads and shoulders. Shoten ordered a variety of internal filtration modifications within the recirculation system that provided life support. They took readings from
Khons
’s external sensors, slid back hatches, made their way from
Khons
, stood facing what, it was now obvious, were relics of incredible antiquity.

Abreast, the three moved toward the ruins: Njord on motorized, gyrostabilized cyborged wheel assemblies; Shoten Binayakya rumbling
on tread-laying gear, stable, efficient; Sri Gomati striding left foot, right foot, organic legs encased in puff-jointed pressure suit like some anachronistic caricature of a Bipolar Technocompetitive Era spaceman.

They halted a few meters from the first row of structures. Like the crater rims, the walls, columns, arches, were weather-rounded, tumbled, softened. A metallic telescoping tentacle whiplashed out from the hub of one of Njord’s cyborg-wheels. A crumbled cube of some now-soft stonelike material fell away to ashes, to dust.

Njord turned bleak silver eyes to the others. “Once, perhaps …”

“Come along,” Gomati urged, “let’s get to exploring these ruins!” Excitement colored her voice. “There’s no telling what evidence they may contain of their builders. We may learn whether these worlds and their inhabitants originated in our own system or whether they came from—elsewhere.”

At Gomati’s final word she turned her face skyward, and the others followed suit. It was the worldlet Thog’s high noon or the equivalent of noon. The sun was so remote—sixteen billion kilometers, twice as far as it was from Pluto at the latter’s aphelion and 120 times as distant as it was from earth—that to the three standing on the surface of Thog, it was utterly lost in the star-dotted blackness.

But Yuggoth itself hung directly overhead, obscenely bloated and oblate, its surface filling the heavens, looking as if it were about to crash shockingly upon
Khons
and the three explorers, and all the time pulsing, pulsing, pulsing like an atrocious heart, throbbing, throbbing. And now Thog’s twin worldlet, dubbed Thok by the female crew member, swept in Stygian silhouette across the tumultuous face of Yuggoth, Thok’s black roundness varied by the serrations of craterrims casting their deep shadows on the pale, pink-pulsating gray rocks of Thog.

The blackness enveloped first
Khons
, then sped across the face of Thog, swept over the three explorers, blotting out the pulsing ruddiness of Yuggoth and plunging them into utter blackness.

Gomati’s fascination was broken by the purring synthetic voice of Shoten Binayakya. “An interesting occultation,” Shoten said, “but come, we have our mission to perform.
Khons
is taking automatic measurements and telemetering information back to Neptune. And here,” the silvery eyes seemed to flicker in distant starlight as a cybernetic extensor adjusted devices on the mechanical carapace, “my own recording and telemetering devices will send data back to the ship.”

Dr. Dustin stood by the bed. The patient was semiconscious. His lips moved, but no one could hear what he said. Two old women sat by the bed. One was his aunt Annie. The other was Annie’s dear friend Edna, present as much to comfort the grieving aunt as to visit the dying nephew
.

Dr. Dustin leaned over the bed. He checked the patient’s condition. He stood for a while trying to understand the patient’s words, but he could not. From time to time the patient moved his hand feebly. It looked as if he was trying to slap something
.

The old woman named Annie had tears on her face. She reached into a worn black purse for her handkerchief and wiped the tears away as best she could. She grasped Dr. Dustin’s hand and held it between her own. She asked him, “Is there any hope? Any?”

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gamwell.” And to the other woman, almost bowing, “Miss Lewis
.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said again
.

The old woman named Annie released the doctor’s hand. The other old woman, Edna, reached toward Annie. They sat facing each other. They embraced clumsily, as people must when sitting face to face. Each old woman tried to comfort the other
.

The doctor sighed and walked to the window. He looked outside. It was early morning. The sun had risen, but it was visible only as a pale watery glow in the east. The sky was gray with clouds. The ground was covered with patches of snow, ice, slush. More snow was falling
.