Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories

by Alex Shvartsman

  “That’s my thinking, yes,” said Jenkins.

  “And then they can go and do it again, somewhere else. A devious but effective way to tie up our resources.” Nakamura got up and paced across the infirmary while she processed the new information.

  “Will you tell the Sgovari to go to hell, then?”

  “And tip our hand to the Swarm? Absolutely not.” Nakamura smiled. “Now that we know what they’re up to, the right move is to play along and look for ways to turn this to our advantage.”

  “This war is going to get even more dangerous now that the Swarm is learning subterfuge,” said Jenkins. “Deviousness is a concept that must not come easily to a hive species. But they found the perfect tutors when they met us.”

  “On one hand, you’re right,” said Nakamura. “However, there’s a significant bit of good news buried in all of this. The Swarm must be stretched as thin as we are to be trying new tactics. We’d suspected they must be, but this is an important confirmation. They’ll be popping champagne at headquarters when they get our report.”

  Jenkins nodded again.

  Nakamura left promptly, no doubt eager to begin another round of spy games using the new information. Jenkins lay back in bed and stared into the ceiling. Every time he closed his eyes the images of the burning Swarm planet returned unbidden into his mind.

  This story, published in Interstellar Fiction, is the sequel to “The Dragon Ships of Tycho.”

  My plan is to continue writing stories in this universe (in fact, I just finished the third one) and eventually expand them into a novel titled World Burner.

  A GNOMISH GIFT

  Time passes strangely under the hill. For those who dwell there a moment of joy can stretch into a week, and the briefest of smiles warms the heart for an entire day. But the grief —the grief can last almost forever.

  Not so long ago, Raultwiss the gnome considered himself to be the luckiest of creatures. His wife Brightmorrow was with child, a rare blessing among the Hidden Folk. Together they marveled at the spark of life that was growing within her womb and made glorious plans for the future. When she miscarried, both were devastated beyond words.

  Forlorn, Raultwiss looked into a magic mirror. “Show me someone, anyone, who is more miserable than I am right now,” he demanded. For if he could abate someone else’s suffering, thought Raultwiss, perhaps he could also soothe his own.

  He saw a vision of a young human woman named Louise, crying alone in a barren room, atop a small pile of straw. Raultwiss flexed his magic and stepped through the mirror. He greeted Louise gently, and asked of her troubles.

  “My father,” she said, “is a liar and a braggart, who always reaches above his station.”

  “This is a common enough vice for a human,” said Raultwiss. “What of it?”

  “His tales grow ever more outrageous when he drinks,” said Louise. “One night at the tavern he claimed that I could spin straw into gold. He even bragged to all who would listen that I was a match worthy of the king himself. A king’s servant overheard him, and brought word of his claims to court. The king is not kindly predisposed to drunken louts playing matchmaker. I was locked in this room and ordered to spin the pile of straw into gold by morning; else my head is going to roll. So, you see, my father’s fabrications will be the death of me.”

  “You are in luck, young lady,” said the gnome. “I can transmute this straw into gold for you.”

  Louise wiped her tears. Her face showed great relief, and yet some reluctance.

  “I’ve been warned about your kind,” she told the gnome. “What price will you demand for your help?”

  Raultwiss resented the implication. How dare this youngling presume that he sought to profit from his offer of kindness? He studied her for a moment, his gaze settling on a string of pearls around her neck. If she expected to pay, then so be it.

  “Your necklace. A fine bauble I can offer my wife. A gift, to cheer her spirit.”

  And so the bargain was struck. Louise had her gold and Raultwiss traveled back under the hill. He presented a necklace to his wife. Brightmorrow rewarded him with a weak smile, but the gift failed to assuage her grief.

  Raultwiss spent an entire week at his beloved’s bedside. Unable to stand watching her suffer any longer, he once again ventured into the world, where only a single day had elapsed. On an impulse he decided to see if his help had gotten Louise out of trouble. He found her locked in the same room, next to an enormous stack of straw.

  “The king is a greedy man,” she told him. “Once he laid eyes on yesterday’s gold, he demanded I spin ever more, to fill his coffers.”

  Raultwiss transmuted the straw for the second time. He returned under the hill with an intricate silver bracelet for his wife. Again, the gift did not lift her spirits.

  The next time Raultwiss visited Louise, her room was stacked almost to the ceiling with straw. Desperate to help Brightmorrow, whose condition was not improving, the crafty gnome came up with a plan.

  “I can rescue you from this predicament,” he told Louise. “But this time the price will be steep indeed.”

  “Anything,” she said. “I will pay whatever price you demand.” And so another bargain was struck.

  “I will turn all this straw into gold,” said the gnome, “but you tell the king this is the last time. If he wants any more gold, he will have to marry you, just as your father wanted. The king’s greed is insatiable, and what dowry could possibly compare with the ability he believes you to have? Make him fall in love with you before he uncovers the deceit, and you should be safe.”

  Louise did as the gnome told her, and it worked. The king came to love the young woman for more than just her gold. She became queen and soon was with child. Louise enjoyed her newfound family and station, and forgot all about the mysterious gnome.

  A year in the mortal world equals seven under the hill. Brightmorrow remained bedridden and miserable. Raultwiss brought her exotic potions, fine gowns and delectable sweets from the four corners of the world, but none of these gifts could break her melancholy. And although Raultwiss suffered also, he remained steadfast as he waited patiently for his bargain with Louise to bear fruit. On the day after Louise gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Raultwiss arrived at court.

  “I am here to demand the agreed-upon price,” said Raultwiss, “to collect your firstborn son.”

  “Please, sir gnome,” begged the queen, “there are riches aplenty in the palace. Take anything, but do not seize my baby, whom I love more than anything in the world.”

  So great was her distress that Raultwiss almost relented. Then the image of Brightmorrow wasting away in her chambers strengthened his resolve.

  “You foolish, ungrateful human,” said Raultwiss. “You were happy enough to promise me anything when your life was in danger. I saved you thrice, yet you did not so much as ask my name.”

  “I will give you a sporting chance,” he offered. “If you can guess my true name in three days’ time, then I shall allow you to renege on our deal.”

  Confident that a human could never guess a gnomish name, Raultwiss hurried back home to Brightmorrow’s side.

  “Rejoice, my wife, for I bring good tidings,” he told her. “My previous gifts were mere trinkets, but soon I shall deliver to you a child, a healthy human boy to replace the one we lost.”

  Brightmorrow stared at her husband, aghast.

  “Wherever will you find us a child?” she asked. He told her everything.

  Brightmorrow rose slowly from her bed. For the first time in over seven years she stood up straight of her own volition, staring Raultwiss down with tears in her eyes.

  “I have no special love for humankind, my husband,” she said. “But I could never subject another woman to a terrible heartache of losing her child, of suffering the way I’ve suffered. I couldn’t bear it.”

  They held each other tight, sharing the pain of a loss that could never be replaced with any gift. And although she still felt the grief acut
ely, Brightmorrow’s constitution began to improve, and she was no longer bedridden. Perhaps it was the shock of how far Raultwiss would go out of love for her, or maybe the strength and wisdom she had to draw upon in order to turn down his gift. Whatever the cause, it turned out to be just what was needed for her to finally begin healing.

  Raultwiss was conflicted. He was glad to see his beloved recovering. Still, he had made a deal with the queen, and few things are more sacred to a gnome than a sealed bargain. He watched through the magic mirror as the king and queen desperately tried to learn his name. They summoned those who claimed to be experts on gnomes and sent messengers into the countryside, all to no avail.

  The gnome came up with another plan. He conjured a small hut in a place where one of the search parties was sure to come across it. When the king’s men arrived, he stepped out into the clearing. They watched from the shadows as Raultwiss danced in front of his hut, singing:

  “Today I brew, tomorrow I bake;

  And then the Prince child I will take;

  For no-one knows my little game

  That Rumplestiltskin is my name!”

  The messengers had what they came for, and when Raultwiss returned to the palace, the queen confronted him.

  “I know your name,” she said. “It is Rumplestiltskin.”

  “Impossible!” shouted Raultwiss, feigning surprise. “You have guessed it, somehow.” Of course, Rumplestiltskin was not his real name at all, but what self-respecting gnome would reveal his true name to a human, let alone the entire royal court full of them?

  The gnome made a show of fuming, stomping his foot angrily, and glaring at everyone, but he was bound by his own promise. Smiling surreptitiously into his beard, Raultwiss stormed out of the palace, never to return. He rushed back to his home under the hill, where Brightmorrow was waiting. There was no better gift the two of them could share than each other’s company.

  This story was originally published in Weird Tales. It was a really close call as to whether to include it in the printed collection or not. Is it better than some of the stuff I included there? You decide.

  PEL’S CRUSADE

  It was a glorious battle. General Pel sounded the call and the tribes rose up as one to repel the invaders. We gave up no ground, and those of us who survived are already composing songs to honor the fallen. Back home, we march triumphantly past our welcoming compatriots and soak up their adulation. In the midst of his warriors, Pel is brooding, unsatisfied.

  “We paid with too many lives for our victory,” Pel reports to the Elders when they arrive to greet him in person. They each want their subjects to see them standing close to a war hero.

  “The cost of always reacting is too high.” Pel addresses the Elders, but it is the crowd that he is really speaking to. “We must take the fight to the enemy. We must defeat them once and for all, to prevent any future attacks.”

  Pel is young for a general. He is skilled and brave, but he is also impulsive and temperamental. His superiors perished in battle after battle, and he found himself in command too soon. He is dashing and boastful, and he brings victory, and the crowds cheer him. This affords Pel the ability to speak his mind, even if the words are heresy.

  “We are not aggressors,” say the Elders. “We pick up arms only when threatened. It has always been so. We have defended our home for countless generations, and we have never been conquered. Not once in our recorded history did we venture beyond our borders.”

  Pel speaks passionately of changing times and shifting priorities. An army can travel outward and ambush our enemies. The Elders may not like it, but he has stirred the imagination of the masses and he knows it. The Elders argue that the plan is too dangerous; an army marching off into lands unknown would leave the tribes exposed and vulnerable. They may be right, but it is already too late. The prize of a definitive victory is most alluring, and there is no shortage of volunteers.

  The preparations are thorough but brief. We assemble at dawn, the greatest army ever raised by the tribes. We march outward, ready to make history.

  “It’s quite strange,” said the attending physician, flipping through the printouts. “Mr. Hamilton has been recovering steadily over the last couple of days, but according to the test results his white blood cell count dropped drastically overnight.”

  “Oh my,” Mrs. Hamilton, the patient’s wife of almost fifty years, covered her mouth with a cupped hand. “That sounds dreadfully serious.”

  “It’s not so bad,” the doctor said. “White blood cells are what our immune system uses to defend the body against disease. However, low counts are not uncommon. I already prescribed a booster that will help him replenish the cells. We’ll monitor for recurrence, but in a week or so Mr. Hamilton should be right as rain.”

  And he was. Mr. Hamilton recuperated and moved back home. Over time the nursing staff came to think of the hospital room he vacated as lucky. Patients who stayed there often felt better and recovered sooner than expected. Just a little bit sooner – not enough to raise any red flags. No one thought, for instance, to examine the room thoroughly. This was unfortunate, because they would have been quite surprised to find it almost entirely devoid of viruses and bacteria.

  This very early attempt at humor flash was published in Golden Visions Magazine.

  A BETTER TOMORROW

  The spaceship was losing water fast. A Better Tomorrow spewed half a dozen thin plumes of vapor from its side into vacuum, like a wounded animal leaving a trail of blood as it runs for safety.

  Inside the control module, a spacesuit-clad man clumsily typed commands into a console. Another astronaut hovered over his shoulder trying to keep up with the data being displayed on the screens. Both men stole nervous glances at the oxygen level readouts blinking red on the edge of peripheral vision within their helmets. The man at the console entered the final set of instructions into the ship’s computer and launched the program he had been writing. The module went dark.

  It took Brett Cole a few moments to convince himself it wasn’t a drill when his tablet went crazy with every possible alarm and warning. There were so many different drills back on Earth. Each member of their small crew had endured physical and psychological tests until surprise drills were anything but. This was too chaotic though—it did not feel like an exercise. Surely the Captain would not waste what little time Cole had left with the active pods.

  He checked the diagnostics and then walked around the chamber to make certain the pods were all right. A hundred and twenty coffin-sized capsules cradled the colonists, who were sleeping away their journey to Mars. Pods made it possible to transport large groups of people without the necessity of loading up the ship with four months’ worth of air, food and water for every passenger, but they did require constant and careful maintenance.

  This afternoon the finicky hardware was behaving itself rather well, affording Cole the chance to spend a few hours tinkering with the one empty pod that was brought along to run some experiments. A chance to field test some of the features outside a lab, during an actual space flight, was what drove Cole to undertake the trip in the first place. It was a slow, precise process, and the interruption was entirely unwelcome.

  Cole was just finishing his inspection, satisfied that the pods were unharmed, when the Captain’s override broke through with a voice message.

  “I need everyone’s status and location.” Captain Ryan Anderson did not bother to recap their situation. Everyone had access to the same data on their tablets.

  “Ric and I are at quarters,” said Janet. “We were off shift,” she added apologetically, as if the emergency was somehow her fault. Janet Saravia and Ricardo Perez became an item during flight training. Cole envied the fact that it made their journey to Mars a heck of a lot more interesting than his.

  “I’m by the pods,” said Cole.

  “Roger that. I’m in the control module. Everyone make your way over here, stat.” Of the four of them, Captain Anderson was the only career military
officer. Cole heard that, back on Earth, Anderson lobbied hard to be put in charge of this mission. Once aboard, he remained distant and aloof. In the first couple of weeks, Cole and others had made some half-hearted attempts to befriend the man, or at least include Anderson in their conversations, but the old soldier found little in common with his crew of three scientists.

  “On our way.” Perez sounded out of breath. “Some of the modules have been breached. Don’t open any doors before you suit up.”

  Cole was able to put on a space suit relatively fast as hours of training kicked in, overriding his instinct to panic. With magnetic boots on he had to walk rather than swim through the air toward the transfer compartment – a sensation that felt a little strange after weeks spent in zero gravity.

  Having sealed the pod module behind him, Cole entered the compartment. He pressed the control keys by the entrance to the next module and as soon as the door began to slide open, all the air rushed out of the small chamber.

  A few steps into the next module, Cole was able to visually confirm the breach. There was a jagged hole the size of a quarter in the outer wall. On impulse, Cole reached out and touched the edge of the hole with his gloved hand. This was the closest he had ever been to open space. In fact, this was the first time he’d ever needed to suit up, outside of simulations and a brief shuttle ride into orbit. Cole pulled himself together and continued on toward the control module. He made it there just moments behind Perez and Saravia, who arrived through the crew quarters door on the opposite end of the module.

  Captain Anderson looked up from his tablet when the three of them entered the control module. “Perez, check the data and figure out just how bad things really are?”