Terrors

by Richard A. Lupoff

  One of the Macrotech executives remarked on Tark’s classical name.

  Armbruster explained that he was descended from ancient old earth Roman nobility. He was one of a family that had produced Roman senators, Italian doges, and Catholic popes. Among his illustrious ancestors, Tarquin mentioned—yes—you guessed it!

  Just as Tarquin Armbruster spoke those portentous words, Pope Innocent the Sixth, Golda and Amy hove into earshot.

  Again Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu’s face sagged for the barest instant.

  Gold hissed, “Quick, Amy! What’s your project?”

  “Uh—high-tech food-processors. But –”

  “Vera Hruba Ralston!”

  “Instant communication.”

  “Amy, that’s it! Grab your partner. You two and Tarkie and I have got to have a private conference, fast!”

  Mere hours later, Tarquin Armbruster IV, Golda Abramowitz, Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu, and Alexander Ulianov were aboard the Clare Winger Harris and that little ship was making its way from Dinganzicht back to Starrett and Hollywood-between-the-Stars.

  It had taken some time to hire Al-Khnemu and Ulianov away from Macrotech Associates. Basically, Tarquin Armbruster had offered fat pay checks, full support for their research projects, and a major participation in any product they developed in behalf of Colossal Galactic.

  Getting them away from Dinganzicht, physically, had been an equal challenge. Macrotech didn’t want to let them go. There was no legal way the corporation could stop Amy and Alex from leaving, but they used every bit of moral suasion, economic arm-twisting, and psychological pressure available.

  Biff Connaught even tried pulling a gun, believe it or not. But when Amy threatened to blurt out the real meaning of the P. H. in P. H. “Biff” Connaught with her dying breath, Biff subsided.

  Cyndora Vexmann tried some of her hypnotic-conditioning type manipulation, but Amy and Alex were on their guard against that and Cyndora couldn’t bring it off.

  There was even a squabble at the Dinganzicht portal about Customs and Astrogation clearances, but Tarquin Armbruster IV had the right combination of nerve and smarts to get them through that.

  So here was Clare Winger Harris shussing merrily along, the yellow, cerise, and green of Fornax 1382 behind it, the metallic shape of Starrett looming in its radar-telescope, and its four occupants chatting in the cabin while the shuttle coasted along. Amy and Alex mainly listened; for all their engineering know-how and scientific prowess, they felt themselves to be planetbound rubes in the presence of these members of the interstellar set.

  “I don’t really understand, Tarquin, why you’re so interested in this instantaneous communication project. Are you planning to give up flix for the commo business?”

  Tarquin peered through the space telescope at Starrett. He turned and re-lit a soggy, half-smoked Havana Perfecto. “Darling, let me tell you something. Gold dear, you are a wonderful production chief, you know all about old movies and all about new flix. You are terrific at your job plus having the prettiest green skin and white fur of anybody I know, Golda darling.”

  Golda flushed blue. (That’s how Formalhautans blush or flush.) “We were going to Dinganzicht for some help with the special effects. With the Whateley twins. That isn’t what we got.”

  “Darling,” Tarquin said, “what we got here, I tell you, is worth thirty yukky monsters. No, thirty thousand.”

  “I know you really mean, that, Tarquin. You always start sounding like a character out of Yiddish theater when you’re sincere, which isn’t often.”

  “Golda you can say such a thing to me, to Tarquin Armbruster IV?”

  “But what good will a super space telegraph do Colossal Galactic?”

  “Golda, sweetheart, listen to an old man what has seen it all, that that would make you blush like cobalt. Golda, when we make a show, like Suicide Ranch starring Buck Longabaugh, may he rest in peace poor Buck, how many times did we sell Suicide Ranch? To how many planets, do you remember? For how much gelt?”

  “That one I know, Tark. We’ve sold it a hundred eleven times. The flik made production costs on the sixty-third sale, total nut on the ninety-sixth. Now it’s a nice little money-maker.”

  Tarquin drew on his Perfecto, blew a perfect smoke ring, and winked in the direction of Amy and Alexander. “And by the time we finish selling Suicide Ranch, Golda sweetheart, how many times do you think we can sell it? A hundred fifty? Two hundred? Before it’s too old and creaky and we got to put it on the art-house circuit which pays, may my worst enemies make only art-house fliks, practically nothing?”

  “I guess about two hundred.”

  “But if we didn’t have to wait for Starrett to visit each world? If we could send holo images like the old teewee pix, only instantly not at light speed, darling? If we could offer, say, The Dunwich Horror all at once to everybody while it’s brand new? If we could make for it a galaxy-wide simultaneous premiere with spotlasers and celebrities on every civilized planet in the galaxy—how many times could we sell it then? Hah?”

  Golda opened her lips to answer, but before she could get a syllable out, Tarquin continued.

  “Don’t interrupt your elders, darling. Think of me, and old man. Soon I’ll be dead and gone, so le talk please while I can. Thousands of planets we could sell to, thousands. What will we make from The Dunwich Horror I’ll tell you, Gold, a fortune. A positive fortune. That’s why I hired these two big domes, you should pardon my bluntness, Dr. Al-Khnemu, Dr. Ulianov. So –”

  Tarquin leaned back in his chair and grinned. “What do you think of that, hey?”

  Ch-ch-ch Junior found itself back inside Starrett and felt a pleasant sensation that it might have known as the warmth of homecoming, had it ever heard of such a thing. The little ship Clare Winger Harris entered Starrett via Kaspak Portal and then skimmed its way across the center of the tincan toward Hollywood-between-the-Stars.

  En route, the shuttle zipped through the null-g zone and bits of Ch-ch-ch Junior were scraped off, reattaching themselves to Ch-ch-ch Senior, transferring their recollections with them. Simultaneously, bits of Ch-ch-ch Senior adhered to the rough surface of Harris (said roughness consisting of Junior!) and remaining with the ship as it dropped toward the wall of the world.

  The Harris made berth at Hollywood-between-the-Stars, midway between Mix Mesa and Lugosi Lagoon. Tarquin Armbruster IV and Golda Abramowitz, Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Alexander Ulianov set out for Tarquin’s office to talk business. They didn’t even look back as they moved away from the Harris. They didn’t see the translucently thin, greenish coating slide from the shuttle and begin to slither across the ground.

  They didn’t see the greenish stuff that initially resembled nothing more than a cloudlet of thin, blowing dust moving across a drought-parched swamp-bed.

  Ch-ch-ch Junior felt itself picking up the mental emanations of the numerous carpenters and technicians, lighting operators and camerapersons, costumers, directors, assistant directors, makeup men and women, set movers, sound-effects operators, musicians, holo mixers, scent-and-taste sprayers, animal handlers, animals, actors, extras, and hangers-on who populated the Colossal Galactic lot.

  Bits of what had looked like dust, blowing in what seemed an otherwise unpredictable, even undetectable, breeze, moved here and there around the lot.

  One wisp of dust swirled through the Miskatonic University Library set, then swirled away and rejoined a larger cloudlet of the oddly greenish stuff.

  On the set, Josephine Anne Jones consulted her chrono-tempometer and yelled peremptorily, “Time! Places, please!”

  Gaza de Lure II costumed as Sally Sawyer set herself behind the old-fashioned New England librarian’s desk.

  Karlos Karch, long overcoat hanging to his high-shoed ankles, took position at the cast-iron door. He faced back toward Gaza, a look of desperation on his distorted, almost acromegalous features.

  Gaza threw her hands in the air and screamed.

  Karlos lurched toward her.

 
Gaza screamed again and pointed toward Karch and the cast-iron gate.

  Josephine Anne Jones signalled directions.

  Cameras rolled.

  Gaza leaped across her desk and headed away from Karlos, toward the dark alcove that represented the opening to the library’s vault. She disappeared through the alcove and out of camera range.

  Karlos Karch halted in puzzlement.

  Josephine Anne Jones yelled, “Cut! Cut! What the hell’s the matter with Gaza? What’s her blocking? Doesn’t anybody here know anything?”

  Karch turned back to face Josephine. His eyes widened in horror. The sight that he beheld, moving toward the set, was one that had been seen before by the human imagination, first by the strange scrivener of College Hill in the City of Providence on old earth. It was a sight that had been reproduced in the imaginations of generations of readers who perused the prose of that scrivener.

  It was a vision that had challenged—and defied!—the pens, brushes, and hands of generations of illustrators and sculptors who had attempted to render in ink, oil, or clay the vision as the gaunt dreamer had described it.

  It was Wilbur Whateley’s unnamed fraternal twin, the twin who had resembled old Lavinia Whateley’s alien mate more nearly than he did the pitiful albino Lavinia.

  Karlos Karch’s voice rang out. That voice which had chilled myriads of thrill-seekers, armies of audiences, who had come, over the years, to associate the very name Karlos Karch with shuddering, chilling paralyzing fear and revulsion.

  But never, never in a career that had spanned both decades and light-years, had Karch delivered a line the way he uttered these words:

  “Oh, oh, my Gawd, that haff face—that haff face on top of it … that face with the red eyes an’ crinkly albino hair, an’ no chin, like the Whateleys … an octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ ting with a haff-shaped man’s face on top of it, an’ it looks like Wizard Whateley only it’s yards and yards acrost …!”

  And the thing, the nameless monstrosity that lurched and oozed through the bars of the cast-iron door, responded: “Ygnaiih … ygnaiih … thflthkh’ngha … Yog-Sothoth! Y’bthnk … h’ehye-n’grkdl’lh!”

  The monster billowed and bulged, swelling to engulf almost the entire library. Karlos Karch, screaming hideously, was engulfed, disappearing utterly beneath the tentacles, claws, gullets, eyes, fangs, speckles, tympanum-like disks, and indescribable horrifying miscellaneous organs of Ch-ch-ch Junior.

  Josephine Anne Jones bolted from her director’s chair, leaped to one camera operator after another, commanding each of them frantically to keep rolling, keep rolling, whatever might happen and at whatever cost life, limb, or expensive studio-owned equipment—keep rolling!

  Only when the shooting was finished and a degree of calm—a very small degree of calm, it should be noted—had returned to the set, were the cameras finally shut off.

  There now assembled the cast and crew of The Dunwich Horror.

  Karlos Karch, still in full Wilbur Whateley makeup and costume, sat as best he could in a prop library chair. Opposite him, quite indistinguishable except in size from its former horrifying appearance, sat Wilbur’s twin brother, Ch-ch-ch Junior. Somehow, among Junior’s apparently limitless powers of self-shaping and coloration, was the ability to expand or to contract itself to any desired density or size. Junior was now precisely the same size (although not the same shape) as Karlos Karch.

  Marvin van Buren MacTavish, the master copy of The Dunwich Horror script literally shredded in his hands, paced back and forth, unable to remain in a seat. “It’s great!” Martin kept repeating. “It’s great! It’s stupendous! It wasn’t what I wrote, but we can work around it! It’s the most gloriously gross and terrifying scene ever filmed, taped, crystalled or acted live! Oh, even the old boy himself would have loved it. He would have loved it!”

  He halted opposite Ch-ch-ch Junior.

  “You splendid old monster, however the hell you managed that, I love you!”

  And Martin van Buren MacTavish ran to the most hideous being in the history of Colossal Galactic or any of the studios in any of the Hollywoods in history and gave it a mighty hug and a resounding kiss, smack in center of one of its most disgusting (but indescribable) organs.

  Two weeks later (Starrett standard calendar) The Dunwich Horror was finished.

  Two months later the El-Khnemu/Ulianov Instantaneous Communicator was put on sale by Colossal Galacti Enterprises Unlimited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Colossal Galactic Studios.

  The first big promotion carried out through the new communications system was the initial release of the Colossal Galactic production of The Dunwich Horror, starring Karlos Karch, Gaza de Lure II, Nefertiti Logan, and, making its holoflix debut, the newest and greatest horror star in history, billed (for obvious reasons) as the protégé of the veteran Karch—Ch-ch-ch Junior.

  The Dunwich Horror opened simultaneously on 4,888 planets. It had the largest single-performance audience of any production in the history of the galaxy, and was the biggest money-maker as well.

  There was a huge celebration on the Colossal Galactic lot. Junior, of course, was wildly lionized. Amy 2-3-4 Al-Khnemu and Alexander Ulianov floated about, bemused. Gaza de Lure II made a pass at Karlos Karch who brushed her off and carried a plate of hors d’oevres to share with his wife of some twenty-six years.

  There was hardly a lull in the course of the party, but at one point the noise level and frenetic activity did lessen a bit. It was at this point that Golda Abramowitz used her towering green-skinned presence to beat a path to the side of the cheerfully gloating Tarquin Armbruster IV.

  “Tarquin,” Golda asked sweetly, “now that The Dunwich Horror has made us one of the biggest fortunes in the history of the universe –”

  “Us?” Tarquin interrupted her. “Us? What this us business? I own Colossal Galactic, darling, don’t forget.”

  “All right,” Golda went on undaunted. “Now that you own one of the biggest fortunes in the history of the universe, scattered over some 4,888 planets … tell me, Tarkie, how are you going to collect it?”

  Tarquin Armbruster IV blanched.

  In fact, there was a way. But that was another matter, and the telling of it is another story.

  The Turret

  I was not really surprised when my employer, Alexander Myshkin, called me into his office and offered me the assignment to troubleshoot our Zeta/Zed System at the Klaus Fuchs Memorial Institute in Old Severnford. The Zeta/Zed System was Myshkin Associates’ prize product, the most advanced hardware-software lashup in the world, Myshkin liked to boast, and the Fuchs Institute was to have been our showpiece installation.

  Unfortunately, while the Zeta/Zed performed perfectly in the Myshkin lab in Silicon Valley, California, once it was transported to the Severn Valley in England, glitches appeared in its functioning and bugs in its programs. The customer was first distressed, then frustrated, and finally angry. Myshkin had the Fuchs Institute modem its data to California, where it ran perfectly on the in-house Zeta/Zed and was then modemed back to England. This was the only way Myshkin could placate the customer, even temporarily, but we knew that if the system in Old Severnford could not be brought on-line and into production, the Institute could order our equipment removed. They could replace it with a system from one of our competitors, and further could even sue Myshkin Associates for the lost time and expense they had put into our failed product.

  “Park,” Alexander Myshkin said to me as soon as I entered his office in response to his summons, “Park, the future of this company is in your hands. If we lose the Fuchs Institute, we could be out of business in six months. We’re hanging onto that account by our fingernails. You’ve got to get that system running for the customer.”

  I asked Myshkin why our marketing and technical support teams in the UK had not solved the problem. “We have good people over there,” I told my employer. “I know some of them, and I’ve seen their work.”

  Myshkin said, “You’re right
, Park.” (My name is Parker Lorentzen; Lorentzen for obvious reasons, Parker in honor of a maternal ancestor who actually hailed from the Severn Valley. I had never seen the region, and was inclined to accept the assignment for that reason alone.)

  “You’re right,” my employer repeated, “but they haven’t been able to solve it. Somehow I don’t think they like visiting this account. They don’t like staying anywhere in the Severn Valley and they absolutely refuse to put up in Old Severnford itself. I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve seen the pictures, as I’m sure you have.”

  I admitted that I had.

  “The countryside is beautiful. Rolling hills, ancient ruins, the Severn River itself and those smaller streams, the Ton and the Cam. I’ll admit, a certain, well, call it sense of gloom seems to hang over the area, but we’re modern people, enlightened technologists, not a pack of credulous rustics.”

  “True enough, chief. All right, no need to twist my arm.” I gazed past him. Beyond the window the northern California hills rolled away lush with greenery. I found myself unconsciously touching the little blue birthmark near my jaw-line. It was smaller than a dime, and oddly shaped. Some claimed that it resembled an infinity sign; others, an hour-glass; still others, an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of immortality. My physician had assured me that it was not pre-cancerous or in any other way dangerous. Nor was it particularly unsightly; women sometimes found it fascinating.

  My mother had had a similar formation on her jaw. She called it a beauty-mark and said that it was common among the Parkers.

  “Thanks, Park,” Alexander Myshkin resumed. “You’re my top troubleshooter, you know. If you can’t fix a problem, it can’t be fixed.”

  Within twenty-four hours I had jetted across the country, transferred from my first-class seat in a Boeing jumbo to the cramped quarters of the Anglo-French Concorde, and left the Western Hemisphere behind for my first visit to England, the homeland of half my ancestors.