by Martha Wells
A forsaken mining road that old maps catalogued as Red Lane twisted around Darkmans Mountain. A granite cliff loomed on the passenger side and descended vertically toward the forest canopy on the driver’s side. Mac hugged the cliff face. Rock scraped paint from Dred’s door. The elder Tooms brother didn’t feel much concern. He’d spent several weeks of his short life driving trucks loaded with purloined jungle artifacts along the dreaded Yungus Road in Bolivia.
Soon, the way broadened and leveled and Mac hooked left at a fork. He rolled through a thinning stand of pine and parked in a clearing that gently angled toward the summit. This was Darkmans Henge, neutral parlay site of the Toomses, Labradors, and other powerful families and institutions. It had served as such for generations. Nature, ever at work reclaiming its haunts from the domesticating hand of man, obscured the ancient henge with dislodged boulders, thick clumps of brush, and moss. Dr. Souza claimed that a culture far older than the Seneca carved the henge and worshiped in the caves riddling Darkmans Mountain, which was a sister geographical feature to Mystery Mountain in Washington State and a peculiar obsession of numerous esoterically minded scientists.
Cassius Labrador and a pair of subordinates awaited them atop the outer retaining wall of the henge. Labrador hadn’t grown any prettier since last the brothers saw him during an altercation aboard a cargo ship as it sank into the depths of the Yellow Sea. Blond hair hacked short, pock-marked cheeks from a bad childhood in South America, and long, angular limbs. He dressed the part of an urbane explorer in a bomber jacket and khakis.
Young Dr. Howard Campbell stood to his left. A gangling, buck-toothed man not long graduated from university, the scientist wore a tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses. The third member of the Zircon contingent lurked just within earshot, a Winchester 70 with a scope slung over his shoulder and the butt of a revolver jutting from its armpit holster. Errol Whalen acted as Labrador’s latest bodyguard. Small and sallow, yet dangerous as any true predator, the Marine lieutenant of distinction had plied the mercenary trade in a score of international theaters of war prior to signing the dotted line for Zircon’s dirty work. He dressed in a slouch hat, black glasses, and a dark, loose coat.
“Good afternoon, boys. We meet again.” Labrador gave the brothers a jaunty wave. “This is Howard Campbell.”
“I’ve read your thesis,” Mac said to Dr. Campbell. “Impressive stuff with antediluvian mounds in New Guinea. You’re working for the wrong company.”
“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Dr. Campbell smiled awkwardly and patted his sweaty forehead with a cloth.
“Be at ease, Howard,” Labrador said. “This is hallowed soil. Nobody’s shooting anybody for the moment.”
“Mr. Labrador, don’t jinx it,” Whalen called in a raspy, nasally voice. The book on Whalen was that he craved the frequent bloodletting his occupation required and at which he excelled. The boys had yet to see him in action, although neither doubted the rumors as they watched him creep around the perimeter, hunched and sniffing the earth like a hound. He peered through a set of binoculars. “No enemy movement along the road. I don’t like it, though. Somebody was moving around in the woods at the base of the mountain earlier. The kids are being tracked, guaranteed.”
“Mr. Craven died aboard the Night Gaunt,” Mac said, recalling the bald, musclebound Englishman who’d valiantly tried to take his head off with a fireman’s axe moments before the boilers blew and water flooded the hold of the ship and all was darkness and chaos split by bursts of flame from the muzzles of Sten guns and the shrieks of men in extremis. Exciting times. “I’d hoped he made it.”
“Thanks, Macbeth. Civil of you.”
“Ain’t that a bite?” Dred said, rolling his eyes. “Enough buttering up. The limey was an ape and I bet my bottom dollar your new stooge is more of the same. Who are these goons you speak of, and how much should we thank Zircon for our troubles?”
“The lad takes after his father,” Labrador said behind his hand to Campbell. He cleared his throat and nodded to Dred. “Let us set aside the fact that during our previous encounter, you boys were hijacking a ship under a Zircon flag. Matters escalated as they are wont to do in this cutthroat business climate. Bygones be bygones. Obviously, the cultists are interested in acquiring data from NCY-93. Especially the flight recorder, which I trust you’ve either destroyed or secured. I’m betting on secured. Mom and Dad are on vacation and Granddad Tooms is a frightful proposition. You haven’t decided what to do with the material and now cultists are after your hides, and here we are.”
Mac was far too wary to admit one way or another what he’d done with the data cores. “You’ve spied on Sword Enterprises in violation of at least eight articles of the treaty. Arthur said Zircon intercepted a radio transmission from these cultists. That explains some, but not everything. How did they acquire information regarding Nancy?”
“Information even you didn’t have until a few hours ago when you spied on them, you dirty sneaks,” Dred said.
“Presumption is a leading cause of death,” Labrador said. “Are you aware of NCY-93’s intended destination?”
“Why do I suddenly have a premonition you’re going to tell me something other than ‘to photograph Pluto?’” Mac said.
“On the contrary. That is precisely the mission the probe will embark upon in T-minus six days. Continuing with the thesis we are describing a hypothetical event… Unfortunately, NCY-93 never arrives. Her sublight accelerator, based upon oscillation technology your grandfather shamelessly stole from Tesla, malfunctions. Cavitation causes a cascade failure in the onboard computer. The probe catapults beyond our solar system and, as far as we can recreate these circumstances, she careens into the event horizon of a black hole, and from there, plunges into the Great Dark.”
“The great dark?” Mac said.
“Eh, your parents haven’t…? You don’t know…?” Labrador appeared embarrassed. “Extend my apologies. This is as bad as inadvertently disabusing a child’s faith in Santa. Suffice to say, the probe pierces the membrane between this particular universe and a larger, blacker cell of the multigalactic honeycomb. She tumbles in freefall for centuries until a decidedly inhuman intelligence—the aforementioned Azathoth—snatches her from the ether as a spider nabs its prey. This intelligence returns NCY-93 to Earth orbit via unknown means and you are there for the rest.”
“Heck of a tale, sir. Which leads me to ask, how did you arrive at this theory?”
“Alas, that involves proprietary technology.”
“Holy Toledo,” Dred said. “Zircon has an AI too!”
“The mouths of babes,” Dr. Campbell said.
“Fuck,” Labrador said.
Cult of the Demon Sultan
Dr. Campbell blushed. “Excuse me sir, it’s not an incredible leap of logic for young Tooms to deduce—”
“Hit the deck!” Labrador dove for the dirt in the shadow of the retaining wall.
Mac and Dred heard a thin, monotone grumble of an approaching aircraft. A bi-wing fighter emerged from a cloud and drifted toward the henge. Metallic crackling harmonized with the engine as the forward-mounted machine gun began to churn. Bullets pinged into rocks and dirt. The brothers went flat and tried to make themselves as small as humanly possible behind a shrub.
The fighter overflew the henge by a half mile, banked into a wide turn, and closed in for another strafing run. Whalen hopped atop a boulder and took aim with his rifle. He fired, worked the bolt to eject the shell, chambered a fresh bullet, drew a bead, and took another shot. The Model 70 made a racket.
The fighter wobbled and screamed past without engaging the machine gun. It picked up speed as it disappeared into the trees. A few seconds later there arose a muffled thud and the clatter of shearing metal.
“These usually come in squadrons,” Whalen said as everyone stood and shook the dirt from their clothes.
“I guess that settles it,” Mac said. “They aren’t keen to interrogate us.”
“No,�
�� Labrador said. “The cultists will be perfectly satisfied to loot your corpses. My presence doubtless alarms them. Sword Enterprises and Zircon allied in common cause would be enough to unnerve any foe.”
“Easy, Mr. Labrador. Carts before horses, etcetera. I’d like to know who these guys are. Awfully well organized for a group I hadn’t heard of until today. Who funds them? Where do they headquarter? What do they want with Nancy’s data?”
“Best we repair to a more secure location. Follow me, there’s plenty of room in the Crawler.”
The boys grabbed their emergency rucksacks from the car. Labrador led them down the hill into the trees where he’d parked an enormous all-terrain vehicle.
The Crawler resembled a hybrid of a construction skidder and a tank with laminated treads, a bubble dome operations deck, and portholes. Sword Enterprises’ own all-terrain semisubmersible exploration vehicle currently resided in production limbo, but the boys recognized nearly all its features as they buckled into their seats and glanced around the cramped passenger compartment. Labrador’s driver, a nondescript man in a Zircon jumpsuit named Tom, got them out of there. The Crawler proved an impressive, diesel-powered beast—why go around small trees and large boulders when you could plow over them?
Mac said, “I realized why Azathoth seemed familiar. I’m not a Lovecraft man, as I prefer Clark Ashton Smith. Dred?”
“Azathoth is a mad god who boils and bubbles at the center of the universe like a big old puddle of nuclear sludge,” Dred said. “I’ve read every H.P. Lovecraft story—Azathoth is mentioned in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. These loons? Cult of the Demon Sultan? Nonsense. About as useful praying to the Old Testament God. Which is to say, not very.”
“They are fanatics, not loons,” Labrador said.
Mac laughed. “Lovecraft had a wild imagination that did him little good. He died a penniless hack. Try telling me he was Nostradamus Jr. and faked his death to avoid retribution from the elder monstrosities and I’ll jump out the porthole.”
“Of course Lovecraft is dead, silly boy,” Labrador said. “We store his body in the Ice Room with a bunch of personalities. H.P. wasn’t prescient, except in the sense that any logical and imaginative mind might theorize the existence of beings more powerful than ourselves in the context of an infinite multiverse. The notion of monstrous alien life forms worshipped as deities predates the Man from Providence and his scribbling by epochs.
“Our models posit this: a powerful extraterrestrial being, imprisoned, or immobilized, millions upon millions of light years distant from Earth, yet merely an arm’s length away. The creature adores our legends, our myths, and our terrors much as we delight in the antics of industrious insects. It devotes a fragment of its consciousness to examining our world, to toying with us as a child might interfere in the lives of an ant colony and with no greater purpose than fleeting diversion from an eternity of boredom. The entity may not have a name, not by human standards, but it loves Lovecraft and it explores us through the author’s warped narratives. Wolfmen do not stalk the moors. Nor vampires, nor devils, nor demons. Certain malign and inhuman interlopers enjoy manipulating such legends to humankind’s detriment. There is no such thing as Azathoth either. However, the thing that masquerades as Azathoth most definitely exists.”
“An entity who reads pulp fiction,” Mac said.
“An entity who reads Lovecraft, listens to our music and television shows and leads soft-minded mortals around by their noses in the interest of performing its own theater. Yes, exactly.”
“What of this cult? Their provenance, their goals?”
“The Cult of the Demon Sultan is disparate and scattered. It hasn’t operated for long, yet it may have infiltrated various governments and corporations, including our own. In that light, reporting to Sword HQ with data in hand is fraught with peril. Should key personnel be compromised, you might find yourself chloroformed and bundled into a small room with the concrete walls sliding together.”
“Yes, I’d hate it,” Mac said.
“There’s another thing you’re liable to hate,” Labrador said.
“Oh?”
“We are no longer on neutral ground. The accord does not apply. Mr. Whalen?”
Whalen pressed the barrel of a Colt revolver between Dred’s shoulder blades.
Labrador said with an avuncular smile, “Boys, you’re perfectly safe as long as you remain calm. No hijinks, please.”
“Please, hijinks,” Whalen said. “Dusting baby psychopaths is God’s work.”
Every jounce of the vehicle swung the occupants in their seats. Mac kept his hands on his knees and watched for an opening.
Labrador gestured and Dr. Campbell passed him the boys’ rucksacks. “Quantum entanglement is a tricky business and the laws of physics have more loopholes than the Bible. Both you and your brother are contaminated, albeit far less thoroughly than Arthur.” The Zircon CEO sniffed at the knives, canteens, and miniature bottles of booze. He hefted Black’s case in his hand and quirked his lips in satisfaction. “Whatever have we here?” Snick went the catch and he withdrew the diamond and studied it intently.
“Shall we get this over with?” Mac said. “Neither my father nor grandfather will concede to ransom demands. It’s against corporate policy. I can’t imagine what you hope to gain.”
“As it happens, I’m holding Drederick hostage. His fate does not rest with corporate policy or Grandpa Danzig’s whims. Brother Drederick’s fate rests with you. Say, Dr. Campbell, is this what it appears to be?”
Dr. Campbell nodded. “Yes, sir. Type X crystalline structure. Almost identical to—”
“Thank you, doctor. Mac, I suppose this explains how you meddling children were able to track the probe and anticipate its reentry coordinates. Where was I? Ah, right. Mac, I have no idea who at Sword Enterprises or Zircon might or might not be a fifth columnist in service of the cult. As I said, we own a proprietary technology that performs calculations based upon quantum physics. Our system requires a mere scrap of information and, voila, it tells us when, where, and what accuracy to the nanosecond and millimeter. Everything we know regarding Nancy’s fateful voyage we learned in the last few hours as the result of a computer model.”
“Peachy.” Dred scowled and crossed his arms. He hid a flat shiv up his sleeve and the action got him closer to drawing it smoothly.
“Maybe you’ll win a prize,” Mac said blandly as he continued to weigh his alternatives. Better than even odds he could dispatch Whalen with a chop to the vagus nerve. Much worse odds of striking the revolver aside before the soldier’s reflexive convulsion caused him to squeeze the trigger and ventilate Dred.
“This is fascinating. My God, the implications.” Labrador ran his thumb over the onyx diamond, exploring for a node or a seam. “I want the flight data from Nancy. The probe glimpsed unholy sights and I blanch to contemplate what she brought back in her memory banks. Once Tom reaches the perimeter of your property, we’ll permit you to fuck off wherever you’ve stashed the material and fetch it back to a specified location at a specified date. We shall then exchange Drederick for the material and part amicably. Fail to retrieve the data, or should you alert your grandfather, father, or other representatives of Sword Enterprises, it’s curtains for your brother. While Sword Enterprises refuses to negotiate with kidnapers, it is my fervent hope you are young enough to possess a flicker of a soul and some rudimentary twinge of compassion.”
“Seems as if you’ve got me over a barrel, Mr. Labrador. I’ll make the trade, but I have to know what you intend to do with the data.”
“Do? Study it, destroy it, lock it in a safe and sink it to the bottom of the Atlantic. Pretty damned much whatever I please. The cultists communicate with Azathoth through crude and esoteric methods. I wager Nancy’s data cores are packed to the gills with nasty technologies that could be used for all sorts of mischief, perhaps even a means to make direct contact with the alien lifeform. Mainly, I wish to deprive your awful grandfather of this di
scovery. The old bastard would love nothing better than to become hierophant to a malevolent god.” Labrador shook the diamond in frustration. “Blazes! How does this device work, anyway?”
“Free us and I’ll activate Black.”
“Nice try, no cigar, kiddo. Be a sport and give me a hint.” Labrador nodded at Whalen. Whalen’s free hand darted and he stabbed Dred’s shoulder with a pocket knife. Dred flinched, but he choked back a full-fledged scream and settled for a stream of curses.
“This can’t be the Sword AI,” Dr. Campbell said, oblivious to the blue language and blood flowing from the younger boy. “Unless, unless… Astonishing. Your AI operates on the micro and multiple scales. Does this fragment possess sentience as well?”
“Why am I always the one to get tortured?” Dred said. “I’m younger and more malleable. You should be torturing Mac to manipulate me!”
“I read your file,” Labrador said. “You have the empathy of a turnip.” He gestured to Whalen. Whalen flicked blood from his knife and leaned forward.
“All right,” Mac said. He made a wooden mask of his face. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll cooperate. Black, resume active function.”
The diamond hummed briefly. Hello, Macbeth Tooms. Hello, Drederick Tooms. Hello, Mr. Labrador. Hello, Dr. Campbell. Hello, Mr. Whalen. Hello, Tom. Black hesitated. Macbeth Tooms, several individuals present are designated enemy operatives. Mr. Labrador is not authorized access to my system.
“Electromagnetic modulation to vocalization!” Dr. Campbell said, giddy as a drunken schoolgirl. His expression changed quickly with dawning realization. “Mr. Labrador, you need to drop the AI before—”
Mac said, “Black, pacify nonauthorized individuals.” He hadn’t a clue as to whether Black was capable of molding electromagnetic energy into an offensive weapon.
Affirmative, Macbeth Tooms. Assume crash position.
