The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort) (4 page)

He rolled another cigarette, his eyes never leaving the photograph as he did so. ‘Where are you?’ he repeated. ‘And
what
are you?’

CHAPTER 4
The Science of Anomalistics

There was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ Fort muttered distractedly.

Penny Malone opened the door and leaned in. ‘Mr Lovecraft is here, Mr Fort,’ she said.

Fort smiled at the formality. ‘Shoo him in, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Shoo him in.’

The man who walked into the inner office was tall, a shade over six feet, and thin in an awkward, gangly sort of way. His suit, while clean and pressed, had clearly seen better days, and his expression as he clutched his Homburg in both hands against his chest reminded Fort of a child who had grabbed a bag of candy and was refusing to let it go. His face was long, thin-lipped and a little gaunt, and there was a slight sallowness to the skin, which suggested that he hadn’t had a decent meal in quite a while. But the man’s eyes were quick and intelligent, and Fort detected a kind of decency in his bearing.

A good guy who’s fallen on hard times
, he concluded.
But where have I seen him before?

The answer came to him almost immediately. Of course – he was the fellow who had sat next to him in the drugstore that morning.

‘Come in, Mr Lovecraft,’ he said, standing.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Lovecraft replied, stepping forward as Penny closed the door behind him. He offered Fort his hand, which Fort shook while he noted the look of recognition on Lovecraft’s face. ‘And thank you for agreeing to this interview.’

‘Miss Malone arranged the interview, not me. But still… have a seat.’

Lovecraft sat in the high-backed wooden chair which faced the desk. Fort noted that he was still fiddling with his hat, and gestured for him to put it on the desk. Penny was right, he thought: his accent was that of a New Englander.

‘Sorry about your breakfast,’ he said.

Lovecraft gave a small, diffident smile. ‘It was hardly your fault. And in any event, I wasn’t particularly hungry.’

Fort doubted that. He rolled himself another cigarette, and offered the pouch to Lovecraft, who shook his head. ‘I neither smoke nor drink, Mr Fort,’ he said, a note of pride in his voice.

‘Good for you,’ Fort said.

‘I… er… that business with the zombies… I do hope it was nothing… unpleasant.’

‘Much as I appreciate the sentiment,’ Fort replied with a humourless grin, ‘did you ever hear of any business to do with zombies that
wasn’t
unpleasant?’

Lovecraft lowered his eyes. ‘Ah… I suppose not.’

‘So… what made you reply to my ad?’

Lovecraft looked up again, clearly relieved at Fort’s reluctance to discuss the morning’s events, and replied: ‘I believe that we find ourselves at a fortuitous confluence of circumstances, sir.’

Fort paused in the lighting of his cigarette, the match held halfway to his mouth. He raised his eyebrows.
A fortuitous confluence of circumstances?

‘That’s quite a turn of phrase you’ve got there.’

Lovecraft gave a quick, embarrassed laugh. ‘I’m a writer… an amateur, to be sure, but a writer nonetheless.’

‘What kind of stuff do you write?’

‘I have written many travelogues and a great deal of journalism – I am an active member of the United Amateur Press Association,’ (Fort smiled at the renewed pride in Lovecraft’s voice) ‘but my greatest love is for the weird and the fantastic…’

‘You’re in the right town for that,’ said Fort.

Lovecraft’s mouth twitched, and a slight frown crept across his brow as he continued: ‘In any event, I consider the weird tale to be my primary mode of artistic expression.’

Fort nodded. ‘Published anything?’

‘I’ve had the good fortune to see my work in print on occasion.’

‘Really?’ said Fort, who had never heard of Howard Lovecraft. ‘Books? Magazines?’

‘Er…
Weird Tales
, mostly…’

‘Ah, the pulps, eh?’

Lovecraft lowered his eyes and gave a brief nod.

‘I’ve seen
Weird Tales
on the newsstands. Can’t say I’ve ever read it. Real life is weird enough.’

‘Indeed,’ Lovecraft replied quietly.

A pulp writer who can’t make enough to live on with a typewriter
, thought Fort.
So he’s come looking for a job with me. Yeah, real life is weird enough
.

‘So… let’s talk about this “fortuitous confluence of circumstances” you mentioned. What do you think they are?’

Lovecraft replied: ‘Your advertisement stated the following: “Charles H. Fort, Private Investigator, requires research assistant to aid in the investigation of criminal and other cases of a supernatural or otherwise paranormal nature. Long and irregular hours guaranteed, but pay highly competitive. Only those with an in-depth knowledge of such matters need apply”.’

‘Good memory,’ said Fort.

‘Thank you.’

‘And you think you’re the man for the job.’

Lovecraft glanced at his hat, and Fort guessed that he’d have liked to fiddle with it some more. ‘A bit nervous, aren’t you, Mr Lovecraft?’

‘My apologies, sir, but I am not exactly in my element. I am descended from a New England family of means… although the world of business and finance has not been particularly kind to us. I have been able to survive in modest comfort on the residue of earlier successes, but…’

‘But your funds are running out,’ nodded Fort. ‘Yeah, I understand. So tell me, what qualifies you for this job?’

‘In order to create a genuinely terrifying and convincing weird tale,’ Lovecraft replied, ‘one must first acquaint oneself with all manner of research into both scientific fact and occult lore. Only then will one possess the tools necessary for the composition of fiction which is both shuddersome in its implications and authentic in its background.’

Oh, Jesus
, thought Fort.

‘For this reason, for the sake of my art, if you will forgive the presumptuousness, I have made just such studies over many years.’

‘Is that a fact?’ said Fort, taking off his glasses and polishing them with his handkerchief. In spite of his caution, a tiny smudge of Penny’s lipstick found its way onto one of the lenses. He tutted and polished anew.

‘Yes, Mr Fort, it is. In fact, I would have to say that I believe myself to be just the man for whom you are looking…’

‘Do you always speak the way you write?’

‘I… I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Never mind.’

In spite of the man’s awkwardness, Fort found himself warming to Howard Lovecraft. He seemed so completely and utterly…
inoffensive
, not to mention polite; and politeness in New York City was about as rare as a plutonium sandwich.

Fort finally got the lipstick off his glasses, put them back on and saw that Lovecraft was gazing in unabashed curiosity at the enormous bank of file cabinets. He glanced at his host and gave a quick, nervous smile.

‘Do they pertain to your cases, Mr Fort?’

‘Some. Most are what you might call private research.’

‘May I enquire along what lines?’

‘The same as my professional work: unexplained events, strange phenomena…
weird
stuff, if you like.’

‘Really?’

Fort nodded. ‘In my spare time, I collect accounts of such things…’

‘Which things in particular?’ asked Lovecraft, leaning forward a little.

‘I’ve made a careful examination of pretty much every field of human enquiry – astronomy, biology, chemistry, sociology, psychology, history, geography, exploration, you name it – looking for the phenomena that don’t fit…’

‘That don’t fit?’ echoed Lovecraft. ‘That don’t fit into what?’

‘Our view of the way the world works – or
should
work. Put it this way: we
know
that the supernatural exists; we see it every day. Ghosts, zombies, vampires, demonic entities, angelic entities, spontaneous teleportation, strange lights in the sky, all the things that shouldn’t exist according to the rules of science, but exist nevertheless. Science is unable to explain them, so it ignores them. I believe that’s a narrow-minded approach.’

‘I would have to agree,’ said Lovecraft, ‘although science has been struggling towards a unified theory of the supernatural for two hundred years…’

‘And it’s come up with doodly-squat so far. It’s like Einstein and the unified field theory. You can talk about quantum mechanics, and you can talk about gravity, but you can’t talk about them together. It’s the same with the natural world and the supernatural world: no one can find a way to make them fit together. There’s a new paradigm of reality out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered, and science has given up on finding it.’

‘But you haven’t,’ said Lovecraft.

Fort looked at the bank of file cabinets. ‘No… at least, not yet. But sometimes I wonder if I’m wasting my time. I’ve spent half my life in the world’s greatest libraries, collecting data from newspapers and scientific periodicals, not to mention the notes I’ve made on the phenomena I encounter in my day-to-day work. I call it the “science of anomalistics”, when I’m in a good mood.’

‘And when you’re not in a good mood?’

‘I call it damned data.’

‘Damned?’

‘Excluded. Ignored. A procession of the damned: livid and rotten. Battalions of the accursed, you might say. Things that don’t fit. Phenomena that shouldn’t exist, but do.’

‘But is it entirely true that science ignores such phenomena?’ countered Lovecraft. ‘Many universities have supernatural faculties: Harvard, Princeton, Miskatonic here in America; Oxford and Cambridge in England; the Sorbonne in Paris; the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. There
is
work being done on the problem of the paranormal.’

‘Yeah, but like you said, that work’s been going on for the last two hundred years, and what have we got to show for it?’

Lovecraft smiled. ‘I admire your ambition, sir. Perhaps you should write up your research in a book.’

‘I am, in my spare time. I call it the
Book of the Damned
.’

Fort took in the smile and realised that he’d told Lovecraft more about himself than he’d intended. Suddenly, he felt like he was the one being interviewed. He should have been annoyed, but somehow he wasn’t.

‘What do you know about Mars, Mr Lovecraft – and the Martian Falcon in particular?’

Lovecraft raised his eyebrows in surprise at the sudden change of direction. ‘Well… I know it was stolen last night.’

‘Yeah, you and the rest of the country. What else?’

‘It’s an artefact created by the civilisation that once existed on Mars, about five million years ago. We believe that the Martians became extinct as a result of catastrophic changes in the climate of their world – at least, that’s the conclusion drawn by the NCPE following their examination of the data gathered by the X-M expedition… although I have to say I’ve wondered about that, in view of the problems suffered by the crew upon their return.’

Fort nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ve wondered about that myself.’

‘And then there are the rumours concerning the hieroglyphs…’

Fort regarded Lovecraft in silence for a moment. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘As a member of the United Amateur Press Association, I am in contact with a great many correspondents, from all walks of life – including those of academia. Many have commented on the failure to translate the hieroglyphs discovered in Cydonia…’

‘It’s understandable enough, though, isn’t it?’ said Fort. ‘There’s no Rosetta Stone on Mars – at least, none that was discovered by the crew of the X-M.’

‘Ah!’ said Lovecraft, leaning forward again, a sudden look of excitement animating his gaunt face. ‘That’s where the rumours come in. Some of my correspondents have speculated that the expedition may indeed have discovered something like the Rosetta Stone – or at least something which allowed the NCPE to begin proper translation work on the hieroglyphs found in the city… and
especially
those found in the chamber where the Falcon was discovered.’

‘Interesting,’ said Fort slowly. ‘And you’re suggesting that the NCPE doesn’t like what the hieroglyphs say and have suppressed that information, right?’

‘Not me – my correspondents.’

‘But you think there might be some truth to the rumours.’

Lovecraft shrugged. ‘One is forced to wonder why the crew of the X-M dropped out of the public eye so suddenly, amid suggestions that they were suffering from mental difficulties, and why the Falcon was the only artefact brought back from Mars that was placed within a lead-lined receptacle prior to its transfer to the Metropolitan Museum… not to mention why it was stolen. Now, I admit that there is no link between those questions and my correspondents’ speculations on the possible translation of the Martian hieroglyphs…’

Fort held up a hand. ‘Okay, I accept that… but it’s intriguing nevertheless. Who are these correspondents of yours? What are their credentials?’

‘Their credentials are impeccable, I assure you,’ said Lovecraft, and Fort marvelled at his ability to convey simultaneously both enthusiasm and mild offense. ‘George Angell is Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island – my hometown, incidentally – and Dr Albert Wilmarth teaches history and folklore at Miskatonic.’

‘They sound like an impressive enough pair,’ conceded Fort, ‘but what makes them think that the NCPE has secretly managed to translate the Martian hieroglyphs?’

‘There’s one intriguing thing which set their speculations in motion; not exactly evidence, I must admit, but…’

‘What’s that?’

‘I take it you listened with fascination to the dispatches from Mars during the expedition.’

‘Of course I did, along with half the world.’

‘Do you recall Captain Smith’s statement that they had retrieved nine samples of hieroglyphs from the city – the so-called rock books – and that they would be bringing them back to Earth?’

Fort nodded, his fingers tapping impatiently on the desk blotter.

Lovecraft leaned forward a little further on his chair. ‘And do you also recall how many rock books were transferred to the Metropolitan Museum for display to the public?’

Fort’s fingers stopped tapping. ‘Eight.’