The Weird Company (32 page)

It was in a way humanoid, as it stood on two legs and possessed two arms that ended in delicate digits that I would dare to call hands. Its skin was a pale blue, like the eggs of a robin, and curiously dry looking. The head was massive with a huge bulbous cranium, a large lipless mouth and three blood-red eyes that stared out at the world with nothing but hate. Atop the head, where a man would have hair, there were instead a collection of fat worm-like protuberances that moved independently, their tiny mouths opening and closing in the most sickening of ways. When it opened its mouth to speak it issued forth the most horrendous of sounds. There was something malevolent about that sound, something empty and hollow, like the wind blowing through a dead tree, and it made me cringe to hear it. As this call reverberated through the room the seven humanoid creatures stalked out of the small room through the shattered door and left us alone.

Whatever that eerie tone had meant, it was clearly some sort of communication, for in response to it the other creatures in the great room lumbered off in various directions and resumed working on the assembly of the ship. Two creatures, their resemblance to pill bugs unmistakable, made a slow and methodical beeline toward where we had sought refuge. Its intent was clear, we were to be engaged once more, this time by an enemy who seemed more intelligent and capable of using its unique abilities than our previous opponent. Hartwell handed me a weapon, and checked his own. Fighting the previous shoggoths had been easy, they had been stupid. This one had already killed one of us and was in our minds mere moments away from accomplishing its goal. It didn’t need to kill us, or defeat us, it only had to delay us, keep us occupied long enough to finish and launch the ship. Once they were away, our mission would be failure.

Returning to a position where I could see what was going on, I took a quick assessment of the creatures in the room. Five of the creatures were busy making final adjustments, mostly at the direction of the blue-skinned, three-eyed giant who was supervising and assessing the workmanship of the craft itself. The giant armored pill bug was plodding toward us, while an eighth dark, vaguely humanoid creature was dashing across the floor, also heading in our direction but at a much more rapid pace. At first I was confused, I had no idea where the new creature had come from and at first assumed that another shoggoth had joined the fray. But my survey of the situation revealed an even more depressing explanation. The glob of shoggoth matter that had dissolved Asenath, which I had supposedly put down with the energized staff, was no longer there. All that remained were a few charred and cracked bits, like broken egg shells. Given the speed and intent that the creature was moving with, it was clear to me that my previous encounter with it had done nothing but make it angry.

As I watched, the tank-like creature lumbered forward, reared up and spread its armored plates, like a cobra getting ready to strike. The great mass of shoggoth matter that had held us at bay quickly withdrew, coiling out of our nearly useless shelter in a matter of moments. Beyond these things the vaguely humanoid thing sped to the side, launched itself into the air and vanished from my line of sight, but I heard the soft thud as it impacted against the wall. Seconds later the massive armored shoggoths fell against the failed door and gap in the wall. In seconds both holes had been sealed, first by flesh, and then quickly by a pale green stone that grew like crystal. Before we could realize what was happening, it was clear that we had been contained while work on the ship continued, without our annoying interruptions.

And yet there was something more. For in the place on the wall where I had heard the other shoggoth hit I could hear the thing drilling a new entryway, and this was much faster than the previous attacks had been. We kept a watch on the place on the wall from which the rapid boring sounds were coming. Hartwell had done what he could for Elwood, and was busy checking his tanks of reagent and the spray guns. More than a quarter of the material had been used already. As we talked and plotted, we were also aware that our time was limited, for we could hear the smaller creature boring away, working its way toward us, much more quickly than the other had. Furthermore, there was now a low vibration filling the air, one that I recognized as being generated by the magnetic engines of the ship. Time was running out.

Across the room Elwood was stirring; whatever Hartwell had done, the young man seemed to have gained some strength back. Cautiously I stepped back toward them and helped the young man to his feet. “How did you get here so fast? It doesn’t seem like you had enough time to gather what you needed.”

“I warped time a little,” confessed Elwood. “Which was probably a mistake. A hound caught my scent and did what came naturally.” He gestured in Hartwell’s direction. “He fought it off, saved both our lives.” Hartwell said nothing in response to this praise, and Elwood let it drop.

As the three of us gathered what we could together and prepared to defend ourselves, the wall suddenly split. A great rent opened up with a tremendous, spine-tingling crack. A spider web spread out from a single point and then powder began to fall. The sandy material was quickly followed by pebbles, and then fist-sized rocks. A round section of wall about four feet in diameter bulged out and then collapsed down, cascading onto the floor like water.

Startled we took a defensive stance and aimed our weapons at the tunnel, prepared for whatever monstrosity that dared to come rushing through, or so we thought. For as we watched and waited there was no attack. No tentacle sprang forth to envelope us, no mass of eyes or weird sensors tried to pinpoint our location. No, what emerged from that hastily dug tunnel was a hand, a human hand, held in a position that suggested that it was surrendering, that we should hold our fire. The rest of the creature crawled forward, and where I had expected a horrific proto-simian thing, there emerged the lithe and naked form of a young woman. She crawled out and slid down the wall. We were both too stunned to react, for it was no stranger that stood before us, it was someone we knew, someone we had watched die moments before. There in front of us, monstrously reborn, stood the woman known as Asenath Waite!

It took us a moment to recover from this profound shock, and another moment to cobble together an outfit with which to cover her naked body. She thanked us, though to be honest I didn’t think she cared much that she was nude, but dressing her made Hartwell and me feel better. Afterwards, as she finished lacing up Elwood’s boots, Hartwell pressed for an explanation on how she survived the shoggoth.

“I didn’t,” she shot back. “The creature devoured me, dissolved my body and brain completely, and absorbed me completely. It assimilated my knowledge, but it also tried to assimilate my mind. And I think this was a conscious decision. I think it made a choice to try and assimilate my mind, my personality, so that it could imitate me. I think they have done this before, or tried to, maybe with members of the Miskatonic Expedition. They’re trying desperately to be us. I caught a flash of memory from the creature, an idea really, that each mind they absorb becomes a facet of the whole, and when needed can become dominant, completely suppressing the other facets.” She cast a quick look in my direction. “When the mass that devoured me decided to assimilate my personality, it assumed it would be just adding my mind to those that were already part of it, or more precisely the greater whole from which it had sprung. It hadn’t expected for my mind, my personality, to be so strong. I overpowered its relatively primitive and rather subservient neural system, and became the dominant mentality. I’m in complete control of this body now, and since this was the only human form it knew how to generate, this is the form it has assumed.”

Hartwell pointed at the hole. “How were you able to dig through the wall?”

Asenath nodded. “I’m not sure. When I was thinking about reaching the rest of you my hands became something like digging hammers that secreted a kind of acidic compound. As soon as I finished they reverted back. I may have the ability to control my shape, like a shoggoth, but that whole concept makes me nervous. I know you can’t tell, but in my mind I am fighting a battle of my own. The shoggoth personality may be weak, but it is stubborn, and it’s been here for a lot longer than I have. It knows things, tricks, which I don’t. I sequestered it away, locked it up inside a mass of tissue like a cancer. I’m afraid that if I use the metamorphic ability that I’ll lose control and the thing will return. Staying human keeps me in control.”

Suddenly, the engines seemed to power up. The humming air changed pitch, and once more metallic objects began to be impacted by the electromagnetic forces in play. “We have little time, the ship is preparing to launch. It’s drawing energy from the very air itself. If they reach the sea they’ll have won.”

“Where’s Carter and Ys?” Hartwell shouted. “Where’s the help they went to find? Are there any Progenitors left? Will they help us?”

Asenath was scrambling back up the wall trying to see what was happening out in the assembly hall. “I doubt it. Oh for certain there are still dreamers left amongst the Q’Hrell: Lilith, Bast, Voyrvatass, to name but a few, but these are not beings that we should expect to be favorable to our cause. There are others, more inimicable to man and earthly life, but can they find the avatars of such entities, and convince them to aid us?”

Asenath eyes grew wild and she began to babble. “There are cohorts that are even more ancient than this city, those who had come here, to this world when it was barren, and began the seeding of this place. They had retired from the world eons before man was given his current shape, content to let their descendants rule in their sted. These are not the gods men know. These are not the Other Gods that walk the Earthly Dreamlands and play at the games of Mao and Zhen. These are Elder Gods whose avatars stalk the universe in search of sport. Even great Cthulhu trembles at their name. I warned Ys and Carter not to approach them unless it was absolutely necessary. Kept talking about gestalt interferences, and modeling probabilities. May the Progenitors have mercy on us all if he awakens them.”

Hartwell had apparently had enough of Asenath’s vague references. “Who is down there Waite? What titan does Ys attempt to release on our behalf? Tell us so that we at least know what to prepare for.”

She turned and faced us, crouching in the hole she herself had dug just a few moments earlier. “The Grey Hunter!” she screamed. “Ys and Carter go to ask Nodens for help, as if he had any fondness for men.”

CHAPTER 21

From the Dictation of Randolph Carter Who Is Zkauba, Warlock of Yaddith
“Randolph Carter in Ulthar and What He Did There”

Mister Olmstead has taken to writing a tedious account of our adventure in the realm of the Progenitors, and has spent considerable time and effort pestering me for an account of what had happened to myself and Mister Ys when we entered the Dreamlands. I had refused him. It is not practical for me in my current condition with these earthly writing instruments to take pen to paper, or even use a typewriter, but when he finally offered to let me dictate the story, and set it down word for word, I finally acquiesced. This then is a brief detail of pertinent events.

I will not bore the reader with the details of our descent and travels in the lands beyond sleep, but I will reveal our failures. Five times did I plead my case before the Other Gods, and five times were my ministrations rejected. The last time, the divinity in question, a blue-skinned youth with three faces on his head, took pause to mock me and the alias I had used, Swami Chandraputra, noting that it was little more than a phonetic anagram of my human name

I

WAS

M

RANDUPH CARTA

Afterwards we left the palace that stood above the peak of Kadath in the Cold Waste and journeyed to the marvelous city of Ulthar where we could drown our sorrows in the beauty of the city, and its curious inhabitants, the cats that roam its streets. Celephais may be more beautiful and more welcoming, but I had no desire for the company of men, or women. Instead the three of us, Mister Ys, myself and the mewling thing that had appeared when we crossed into the Dreamlands, sat in an alleyway drinking wine and commiserating with a multitude of cats and kittens. I was human once more, restored to my dream state by the magics of the reality I and Ys had descended into. Those magics had also separated Zkauba and me, transforming the once mighty wizard of Yaddith into a tiny, larval thing akin to something that combined features of a seal and a beetle. Surprisingly Ys had also been transformed, which was in itself unexpected, but he had assumed a form that was neither human or Q'Hrell, but rather a form that I knew to be that of a species indigenous to Mars.

That Ys had not reverted to something other than what I had expected intrigued me, and in my misery I finally broached the subject. He was reticent at first, but as we had little else to talk about, and it seemed the destruction of our world was imminent, he finally chose to speak of it. It was true that the original Yith had been a branch of the Q’Hrell, but one that had drifted further and further from their nearest neighbor, at last settling on a rogue planet on the outer edge of the galaxy, one that orbited counter to the rotation of the galaxy. As they built their colony, each passing year took them farther from their own kind, as did their exploration of the arcane and eldritch technologies. Until last, they were too far away both physically and philosophically. Their studies led them to discover the secret of moving through time, and when their own shoggoths revolted they fled through time and space. They had found another world with a species with a civilization which could be co-opted for their own purposes. They fled en masse, and in their new home built a society which integrated with that of their host. For a thousand years the two species dwelt together, but when the rebel shoggoths filtered down from the sky seeking revenge, the Yith fled. They did not go alone, they took with them the brightest and most talented of those with whom they had dwelt.