The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort) (15 page)

Taking the briefcase with her, she left the office and walked quickly out to the car park. She got into Bradlee’s car and drove away, thinking about what she had read in his notes – that is, the parts she had not told Troy Martell and the others.

Crystalman’s suspicions were on the money, she reflected. The ninth rock book
did
contain the means to access what the Martian Falcon contained – although he was wrong in his assumption that it included the key to translating the other books. They were irrelevant; everything Crystalman needed was in the ninth book, which lay on the seat beside Rusty.

She thought about what the book had told Aldous Bradlee: the images and pseudo memories which it had transmitted to him by means of its strange lithotechnology, and which he had transcribed in his notes. The book had told him that it did not just describe Haq ul’Suun’s punishment; it was
part
of it.

She drove north for a few miles and then pulled onto a deserted stretch of beach. She turned off the engine, opened the briefcase and looked through Bradlee’s notes. A moment later, she found the page she was looking for. She read it again, more carefully this time, taking in the information slowly instead of skimming over it.

The rock book has provided so much incredible information, but by far the most incredible is the nature of the book itself. The Vattanians punished their worst criminals by confining their minds in the falcons; but since the punishment was never permanent, the mind-transfer was reversible. It seems that the lithotechnological process was encoded within a rock book specially created for the purpose at the time of the transfer.

The book we now have in our possession is the one that was created at the time of Haq ul’Suun’s punishment. As far as I can understand, its creation was automatic and unavoidable. The Vattanians who condemned Haq ul’Suun never intended for him ever to be released from his prison; but they didn’t have time to reprogram the transfer machine, and so this code book was created as his mind was transferred to the Falcon.

I have little doubt that, given the chance, they would have destroyed the book, but events overtook them. It’s for this reason that I am going to request that the book remain with the NCPE here at Cabo Cañaveral, rather than being transferred to the Metropolitan Museum with the others. If it really does contain the key to unlocking Haq ul’Suun’s prison, it should never be allowed anywhere near the Martian Falcon. In fact, I am tempted to destroy the thing; perhaps at some point I will, but for now I need to study it further. I know it contains more information – information that may prove vital to the success of the X-M 2 expedition.

I think Troy Martell is correct: the Senate Committee will insist on the X-M 2 mission going ahead, in spite of the dangers – in spite of what Dr. Pellin has reported following her examination of Captain Smith and his crew. Their dreams are horrific. Who could experience such dreams and remain sane? But what is the origin of those dreams? Can the thing that destroyed the Vattanians and their world really still be on Mars – or inside it, bubbling and blaspheming at the planet’s core… waiting? And if so, why? Why does it not boil forth to consume the entire Solar System? Could it be that it’s somehow linked to Haq ul’Suun, that its fate is tied to that of the one who summoned it?

I must talk to Deborah about this. I need to know more about the dreams that Smith and the others are having. I’m convinced that they hold the key to what’s happening on Mars and the nature of the thing that may still be there.

Rusty put the notes down on the passenger seat beside her and thought about what she had just read, her fingers tapping the steering wheel contemplatively. So that was the reason why the crew of Rocketship X-M hadn’t been seen in public for nearly two years.
Plagued by nightmares
, she thought.
Their minds under siege by something that seeped into our universe five million years ago… something that’s still there, at the centre of Mars. Good Christ! If Bradlee was right, if it’s somehow rendered inert by Haq ul’Suun’s imprisonment, then what happens if his mind is released from the Falcon?

She took out the rock book and held it gingerly in her lap. It was beautiful, she had to admit. It was about ten inches by twelve. Each of its mineral pages, twenty-three in number, was as thin as a sheet of heavy-gauge writing paper and was bound with the others by means of an ingenious arrangement of silvery metal hinges. The book appeared to contain a visual chronicle of Haq ul’Suun’s crime: the construction of the pyramid-machine, the emergence of the thing that had sucked Mars dry and turned it into a corpse planet, the fleeing and the dying of its inhabitants – all rendered in differently-hued slivers of polished stone, the images merging into one another in ways Rusty could hardly fathom. Beautiful, yes – but horrible also: the silent death scream of an entire world…

What do you want with this, Crystalman?
she thought.
What do you
really
want? Did you know all along what the Falcon contains? You must have, otherwise why go to all that trouble to obtain it? And if I do give you the rock book… if I do give you the key to unlocking Haq ul’Suun’s prison, what happens then?

For the next five minutes, Rusty sat very still, thinking. Then, very slowly, she got out of the car, taking the rock book with her.
If I do this, I’m dead
, she told herself.
As dead as Mars. He’ll find me no matter what, no matter where I hide… but if I don’t do this, the whole damned planet may wind up dead.

She walked to the front of the car, holding the rock book in both hands.

Bullshit! He won’t find me. No one can find a shifter who doesn’t want to be found. No one!

She raised the rock book above her head and brought it down hard on the edge of the radiator grille. The book bounced off, still intact. She tried again, but again the Martian rock book remained undamaged.

‘Lithotechnology,’ she muttered, and then gave a loud and heartfelt curse.

She dropped the book onto the sand, took off her upper garments and became the troll again. Snatching up the book, she battered it again and again upon the car’s radiator – but to no avail. The rock book appeared to be indestructible, unlike the radiator grille, which now sported several sizeable dents.

She resumed Bradlee’s form, dressed again and threw herself into the driver’s seat, sighing loudly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep it. I’ll take it with me to wherever I end up going. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Crystalman, but I won’t let you do it.’

*

Beneath his house on Long Island, Crystalman stood before the telaug, reading Rusty Links’s brain patterns on the machine’s misshapen display screen. Not long after they had begun their association, he had sedated her, brought her to this chamber and recorded her patterns, just as he had with so many other useful people. Like the others, she retained no memory of the event. Like the others, her mind was now open and defenceless before his telepathic gaze.

No one can find a shifter who doesn’t want to be found
.

‘Normally, that’s true, Rusty,’ Crystalman whispered. ‘But not in your case, unfortunately.’ He smiled behind his quartz mask. ‘I’m in your head right now, but you don’t know it. My hand is at your throat, but you see me not.’

He switched off the telaug and stepped back from the machine. ‘I’m coming for you, Rusty. You have betrayed me, and I’m coming for you.’ He inclined his head, gazing up at the ceiling of the chamber. ‘And when I have the rock book, when I have released the spirit of Haq ul’Suun, then you too shall be free once again. Do you hear me, father? Though you sleep at the centre of Mars, do you hear me? You will be free again… soon.’

CHAPTER 21
Tesla

Fort and Lovecraft lost no time in getting off the aircraft, collecting their travelling valises and leaving the domestic terminal of Denver International Aerodrome. As they hurried to the car rental office, Fort expected to be apprehended by Aerodrome Security at any moment and taken to a small, quiet room to be questioned about the sabotaging of the Bel Geddes. He only allowed himself a sigh of relief when they were driving south out of Denver, towards Colorado Springs.

They decided to make straight for Dr. Tesla’s laboratory in the foothills of Cheyenne Mountain, southwest of the city. The scientist and inventor was famously obsessed with his work, and although he maintained a residence in Colorado Springs, his laboratory contained a small apartment. He was known to spend weeks at a time there, working on a bewildering array of ideas and projects.

The drive was too long for Fort, who was obliged to listen to Lovecraft waxing lyrical about the quaintness and charm of the architecture of the Old West, which, while lacking the elegance of the Colonial style of New England, was nevertheless redolent with the monumental trials and struggles of the frontiersmen and settlers of years gone by.

‘I didn’t know you were interested in architecture, Howard,’ Fort said during one of Lovecraft’s infrequent pauses.

‘I am indeed, Charles,’ Lovecraft enthused, ‘for it is only through a study of architecture that one can gain the measure of a place, and its true relationship to the people who live and lived there. Take Rhode Island, for instance. When one travels through it, one senses a subtle magick in the air, originating in the towns through which one passes – the noble domes and steeples, the steep Georgian alleys winding amongst gambrel roofs…’

Oh God
, thought Fort.

*

Tesla’s laboratory was a rambling, wood-built building at the end of a short, dusty road with a sign that read: PRIVATE PROPERTY. ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING.

‘I was afraid of this,’ said Lovecraft as they passed the sign.

‘Afraid of what?’ asked Fort.

‘Didn’t you see that? We’re trespassing, Charles! Intruding upon a man’s privacy, which should be considered sacred at all times. We should have phoned through first.’

Fort shook his head. ‘Are you for real, Howard?’

‘I’m merely saying–’

‘I doubt he’s going to come out with Smith & Wessons blazing. And if it means that much to you, I’ll let you apologise.’

‘Splendid,’ Lovecraft muttered as Fort brought the car to a halt beside the building and climbed out.

Fort strode up to the door and rapped loudly three times. He waited a few moments and rapped again.

Presently, the door opened to reveal a slender, immaculately dressed man with matinee idol looks and thick dark hair parted in the middle. His neatly-trimmed moustache twitched in irritation.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ he demanded.

‘Dr. Tesla,’ said Lovecraft, hurrying forward, ‘I offer our humble apologies –’

‘Nicely done, Howard,’ said Fort. ‘Now, sir, my name’s Charles Fort and this is Mr. Howard Lovecraft. We’ve come from New York to see you on a matter of the gravest urgency – a matter concerning the Martian Falcon.’

Tesla hesitated, looked Fort up and down, did the same with Lovecraft, and finally answered: ‘What’s your interest in the Falcon?’

‘You’re aware that the statue has been stolen?’ said Fort.

‘Of course I am. We do have newspapers out here, Mr. Fort.’

‘And do you know who stole it?’

Tesla’s frown deepened. ‘No. Do you?’

‘Yes, we do.’ Fort took out his Private Investigator ID and showed it to Tesla.

The inventor sniffed and glanced at Lovecraft. ‘Where’s yours?’

‘I, er, don’t have one,’ Lovecraft replied. ‘Which reminds me, Charles…’

‘Not now, Howard. Dr. Tesla, we’ve been investigating the theft of the Falcon, and our investigations have given us a name: Crystalman.’

Tesla’s eyes widened slightly as his frown faded. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely certain,’ Fort replied. ‘The report in the
New York Times
said you were working on cleaning up the transmission from Mars, processing it through your equipment to increase the resolution.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Had any luck?’

‘The NCPE have asked me not to comment to the press.’

Fort smiled. ‘We’re not the press.’

‘Why don’t the NCPE want you to speak to the press, Dr. Tesla?’ asked Lovecraft.

Tesla glanced at Lovecraft and then lowered his eyes. ‘Crystalman,’ he murmured. ‘What does
he
want with the Falcon?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Fort replied. ‘But you can bet your bottom dollar it’s nothing good. May we come in?’

Tesla hesitated and then sighed. ‘Very well.’

Fort and Lovecraft stepped through the door into a vast space filled with complex electrical equipment, only some of which they could identify. There were transmitters and receivers, switch and circuit boards, circuit breakers, meters, transformers, batteries, inductors, oscillators and distribution frames, either stacked in metal cabinets or standing upon the numerous workbenches ranged across the floor. The centre of the room was dominated by a conical framework about ten feet high, which supported a large silvery sphere about three feet in diameter.

Lovecraft pointed to the device and asked, fascinated: ‘Is that your magnifying transmitter?’

‘It is,’ Tesla replied. ‘I’m trying to perfect a method of wireless power transmission, which I’m hoping will revolutionise the production and distribution of electrical energy, just as telecommunications have been revolutionised by the development of wireless telegraphy.’

‘Incredible!’ said Lovecraft. ‘May I ask how close you are to achieving your goal?’

Before Tesla could answer, Fort said: ‘I’m sure this is all very interesting, gentlemen, but can we return to the matter at hand?’

‘Of course,’ said Tesla. ‘Please follow me.’

He led them across the floor of the laboratory to a door in a partition wall, which led to a large office containing a desk, chairs, file cabinets and bookshelves. The desk was strewn with papers on which Fort and Lovecraft glimpsed lines of complex equations which made about as much sense to them as Egyptian hieroglyphs. Beside the desk was a large cathode ray monitor screen sitting atop a wheeled trolley. Below the monitor was another machine containing two large reels of magnetic tape.

Motioning his visitors to be seated, Tesla said: ‘You asked why the NCPE wanted me to keep quiet about the Martian transmission. I also asked that question when Troy Martell called me…’

‘The Chief Administrator,’ said Fort.

Tesla nodded, adding with a mirthless chuckle: ‘Only I phrased it rather less politely than Mr. Lovecraft here. But, having given it some more thought, I can now see his point.’

Tesla switched on the monitor screen and the magnetic tape machine. He sat at his desk as the tape reels began to turn.

*

When the tape had ended, Lovecraft and Fort looked at each other and then at Tesla.

‘My God,’ said Fort. ‘What was it? Some kind of experiment that went wrong? The pyramid… a machine?’

‘That’s what I thought, at first,’ Tesla replied as he got up and crossed to one of the file cabinets. ‘An experiment in energy production… yes, that’s what I thought, but then, I am an engineer at heart, and one tends to approach problems from the direction that’s most comfortable to oneself. But now I’m not so sure. Now… well…’ He opened the file cabinet and took out a thick folder. ‘These are the psychological evaluations of the crew of Rocketship X-M, conducted by Deborah Pellin, the Director of Space Medicine.’

Fort leaned forward. ‘They’re confidential. How come you have them?’

‘I’m one of the contractors engaged by the NCPE; I helped to design the X-M,’ Tesla replied. ‘I worked on the spaceframe and the atomic motors, so I have access to every aspect of mission planning. I’ve also been working on the X-M 2, helping to improve the design in order to minimise the psychological stress of spaceflight. For that, I needed access to the crew’s medical reports: I needed to know exactly how the mission affected them, physically and mentally.’ Tesla tapped the file. ‘What I read in here… well, let’s just say that the current mental state of the X-M crew is not just the result of being shut up in a giant tin can for months on end.’

‘And just what
is
the crew’s current mental state?’ asked Fort.

‘Extreme emotional trauma,’ Tesla replied, ‘caused by the dreams they have been having ever since they returned from Mars.’

‘Dreams?’ said Lovecraft.

‘That’s Dr. Pellin’s conclusion, and judging by the content of the dreams, I’d have to agree.’

‘What are they dreaming about?’ asked Fort.

Tesla opened the folder and handed several pages to Fort. ‘By rights I shouldn’t be showing you this. As you say, this material is confidential, but in view of recent events…’

Lovecraft leaned across, and he and Fort read the pages together.

TRANSCRIPT OF FIFTH PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION SESSION WITH

CAPTAIN THORNE SMITH, COMMANDER,

X-M EXPEDITION

RECORDED ON 8TH. OCTOBER 1924

ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DEBORAH JANE PELLIN, M.D., PH. D.

PELLIN: Would you tell me about the dream you keep having, Captain Smith?

SMITH: The dream…

PELLIN: Yes. It appears to be the same dream as the others are having.

SMITH: They began in space… on the return flight. We’d just entered the calculations for the trans-Earth trajectory into the astrogation panel. We’d fired up the main atomics and were accelerating away from Mars, congratulating each other on a job well done. We’d made it to Mars and discovered things no one could have imagined. We were so proud of each other… so proud of ourselves.

PELLIN: You had every reason to be. You’d voyaged further than any human beings in history…

SMITH: But too far… we were never meant to voyage so far. I understand that, now. There’s no place for us out there. The gulfs of space are too deep… deeper than our poor minds can comprehend. The universe is too big for us, too old, too uncaring. The stars, the nebulae, the molecular clouds… they know and care nothing for us. The universe is unaware of us… or at least it
was
, until we made the terrible mistake of reaching out from our familiar, safe little world.

PELLIN: Why was that a mistake? Thorne… why? Was it because of the dreams?

SMITH: The dreams didn’t tell us, but we reasoned it from them. From the things they showed us… or maybe the things that spoke to us through them.

PELLIN: What did they say?

SMITH: Say? They didn’t
say
anything, not as such. They still don’t. Images, that’s all they are, but images that seem to
imply
.

PELLIN: What happens in the dreams?

SMITH: We fall… through abysses of twilight, of colours that are not colours and sounds that are not sound. But we don’t fall because of gravity: we’re… pushed, or pulled, I don’t know. We look at our arms and legs, but they don’t look right. It’s as if they’re distorted somehow, warped by some strange rearrangement of perspective. And the abysses through which we fall… they’re not empty, but are crowded with angled masses of substance, alien-coloured… some organic, some inorganic. Some of the organic masses seem to awaken memories in the backs of our minds, but we can’t form a conscious idea of what they represent.

PELLIN: What do these things, these ‘masses of substance’… what do they look like?

SMITH: They’re difficult to describe – impossible, really: it’s as if they won’t fit into our minds, or as if our minds are seeing them in an incomplete way. Our minds are not…
big
enough to comprehend them as they really are. The inorganic masses are prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and Cyclopean buildings. The organic things are like groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindu idols and complex, animated arabesques.

PELLIN: And what’s your reaction to seeing these things? How do they make you feel?

SMITH: We have the impression of menace… horror, and sometimes, when one of the organic entities appears by its motions to notice us, we feel absolute terror.

PELLIN: How do the entities move? What’s their means of locomotion through these… abysses?

SMITH: I don’t know: it’s impossible to say. But some of them appear out of empty space, or disappear with no trace, as if they’re winking in and out of existence. And while all this is happening, there are the sounds, shrieking and roaring, filling the abysses, and yet changing with the movements of the entities. I think…

PELLIN: Go on, Thorne…
what
do you think?

SMITH: I think that the abysses are part of another dimension… or an
additional
dimension at right-angles to our own three dimensions… or perhaps
between
our dimensions. And then there is another…

PELLIN: Another?

SMITH: Another entity… but this isn’t like the others. It’s dark, vaporous, made of whipping tendrils of smoke; it moves quickly, like the winds of a hurricane or a tornado. It moves through the abyss, parts of it appearing and disappearing, darting in every direction with such horrible rapidity that it’s as if… as if it
occupies
every direction at once. And then it stops, as if its attention has been seized by something… and it turns towards a circle, faint, cloudlike, hanging in the abyss…

PELLIN: A circle?

SMITH: A world. Mars. The planet Mars as seen from this higher-dimensional vantage point. The planet has…
appeared
to it, flowering into its horrible awareness. The thing…
hungers
for it, for what it contains; it wants to consume it, like some obscene cosmic tumour. And then… and then a door opens…

PELLIN: A door?

SMITH: A portal between dimensions, a path leading from these higher spaces to our own realm of three dimensions. And the thing squirts itself towards the door and…

PELLIN: And?

SMITH: It eats the planet!