The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington)

by Alan K Baker

  ‘Splendid! I trust you are familiar with the work of Dr Castaigne?’

  ‘Intimately,’ Blackwood lied, hoping that his frenzied reading of the Fantasmata two days ago would see him through. ‘I’m looking forward to hearing his theories on the plurality of inhabited worlds…’

  Fforbes-Maclellan frowned. ‘Theories?’

  Dash it all! Blackwood thought. My first faux pas of the evening. ‘Forgive me, Worshipful Master, I’m still wearing my Special Investigator’s hat. I was merely speaking in those terms with which I am most familiar in the pursuance of my day-to-day duties on behalf of the Crown.’

  Fforbes-Maclellan beamed at him once again. ‘Not at all, Mr Blackwood. I quite understand, and I would be the first to express my thanks and admiration for the fine work you and the Bureau do on behalf of Her Majesty and the Empire. It is important to remember, however, that Dr Castaigne has seen with his own eyes the wonders he will share with us tonight. His work is based much more on direct observation than abstract theory.’

  ‘Quite so, and I stand corrected.’

  Fforbes-Maclellan deftly lifted two glasses of champagne from a tray carried by a passing Apprentice and handed one to Blackwood, who nodded his thanks and said, ‘Tell me, sir: have you known Dr Castaigne for long?’

  ‘Oh my, no! In fact, I barely know him at all. It was a most unexpected honour when he contacted us and asked us if we would like to host his lecture.’

  ‘Then his reputation for reclusiveness is well-founded?’

  ‘I should say so. From what I can gather, his journey through the Orient affected him most profoundly. He has few friends and seems to have divorced himself almost completely from the run of humanity, preferring to devote himself exclusively to his research.’

  ‘An unusual fellow. Does anyone know how he manages to send his mind through the Luminiferous Æther?’

  ‘I don’t believe he has ever divulged that particular piece of information.’ Fforbes-Maclellan gave him a sudden, keen look. ‘I don’t suppose you know…’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Blackwood replied. If Dr Castaigne wanted the source of his singular ability to remain a secret, Blackwood would oblige. It had already occurred to him that the Taduki drug could become a powerful tool of espionage for the Empire. Properly trained in its use, a spy could send his mind to any part of the globe without detection; the potential for information gathering was boundless – if the secret of Taduki could only be discovered…

  ‘Where is your illustrious guest at present?’ Blackwood asked.

  ‘In the quarters we have prepared for him. In fact,’ Fforbes-Maclellan added, taking out his fob watch and consulting it, ‘I believe it is time we made our way to the lecture theatre.’ He turned away from Blackwood and addressed the other guests, some of whom were milling around, while others gathered in small groups, conversing quietly yet excitedly with each other. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have your attention. Dr Castaigne is due to begin his lecture in five minutes. If you will kindly follow me…’

  With the other guests in tow, Blackwood followed Fforbes-Maclellan along a wide, brightly-lit corridor towards a set of double doors, which gave onto the lecture theatre. As he entered the room, Blackwood saw that the word ‘theatre’ was something of an exaggeration. In fact, the forty or so guests had trouble fitting into what was in reality little more than a large drawing room crammed with uncomfortable-looking high-backed chairs. A glance at several depressions in the carpet told Blackwood that the normal furnishings had been removed to make room for the gathering. On the far side of the drawing room, a plain wooden lectern stood like a lonely sentinel.

  At Fforbes-Maclellan’s invitation, Blackwood seated himself beside the Worshipful Master in the front row, and a few moments later, a door behind the lectern opened, and Simon Castaigne entered the room.

  As he joined in the polite applause, Blackwood took in the man’s appearance, which was in fact quite impressive. He was a shade under six feet in height, and although he appeared quite thin, it seemed to Blackwood’s well-practiced eye that this was due more to a healthy asceticism than poverty of diet. In fact, Castaigne moved with a lithe and languid elegance which hinted at considerable physical power held in check. If the stories which were told of his exploits in the Far East were even half true, it was a fair bet that he could acquit himself favourably in a scrape. His high-cheekboned face was as thin as his wiry frame, but his skin glowed with health and vigour, and his neatly-trimmed goatee was of the same raven hue as his thick, slightly unruly hair.

  Castaigne gave a slight bow in acknowledgment of the applause, which died down as he reached out and laid his hands upon the lectern, assuming a relaxed pose. For a recluse, thought Blackwood, he appeared remarkably at ease in front of an audience.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began in a quiet yet subtly commanding voice. ‘May I first of all thank Worshipful Master Fforbes-Maclellan for allowing me to visit this most august society, and for extending to me the hand of friendship and hospitality. The title of my presentation to you this evening is “The Plurality of Life on Other Worlds”, and yet I must confess that the title is not entirely accurate, for it is not of worlds in the plural I wish to speak, but one world in particular. And the name of that world is… Carcosa.’

  Crouched beside the bathroom door, hardly daring to breathe, Sophia continued to press her eye to the keyhole. One of the men had produced a camera from a small valise he was carrying and was taking photographs of Dr Castaigne’s notes, while his accomplice held one of the ampoules up to the light and peered at it.

  ‘What do you think this is?’ he asked quietly. ‘Opium?’

  The other man stopped what he was doing and gave the ampoule a cursory glance. ‘Don’t know,’ he replied in an equally hushed tone. ‘Looks a bit like it. We’ll take one of those with us. Whatever the stuff is, Exeter will want a sample.’

  Exeter! thought Sophia. A wave of realisations flooded her mind. Grandfather was right: clearly, there was much more to the railway magnate than met the eye. In fact, she now realised, he obviously knew the identity of the strange symbol embossed on the terracotta tile, even though he had not mentioned it to her. Exeter had made the connection between the events on the Underground and Carcosa; he knew of Castaigne’s knowledge regarding the distant planet, and had sent two lackeys to gather some more information. The question was: why be so underhand about it? Why not simply approach Castaigne openly? Sophia was quite certain that, despite his reputation for reclusiveness, the occultist would not forego the opportunity to investigate the recently-discovered chamber for himself. If Exeter wanted information on what his workers had inadvertently discovered, there could have been no more qualified man to talk to than Simon Castaigne.

  And yet, he had not done so. Instead, he had sent two of his own people to steal that information.

  Why?

  The man with the camera continued to take pictures of the notes, while the other placed the ampoule in a pocket and looked around the room. ‘I’m going to check the rest of the place,’ he said. ‘There may be something useful in his luggage.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said the photographer, without pausing in his task.

  Sophia felt her fear tighten its grip upon her heart as she watched the man walk across the sitting room. ‘The rest of the place’ consisted of the bedroom – and the bathroom in which she was hiding. It would only be a matter of moments before the intruder discovered her, and then…

  She glanced around wildly, her eyes darting here and there in the gloom, but there was nowhere she could go – apart from a small window with frosted glass which was set high in the wall next to the bath. She hurried to it and reached up towards the latch, but it was too high, and so, gathering her skirt, she climbed onto the rim of the bath and tried again.

  Balanced precariously, the heels of her boots hardly suited to such a position, Sophia managed to undo the latch and pull the window open. Gripping the sill with both hands, she then hauled h
erself up until she was halfway through, but then she looked down, and stopped, panting, her heart withering with despair.

  She had hoped and expected there to be a ledge beneath the window, onto which she could lower herself. But there was nothing of the kind on this side of the building: it was a sheer drop of sixty feet or more to the street below.

  Suddenly, the idea of being discovered by the hotel manager seemed like the most blessed of reprieves.

  Sophia lowered herself from the window and turned to face the bathroom door. There was no escape. In another few moments, the intruder would complete his search of the suite by coming in here. What would happen then, she dared not contemplate.

  She crouched once again and looked through the keyhole. She saw the man approaching the bathroom door. Desperate to delay her discovery by even a few moments, she instinctively thrust the key back into the lock, quickly turned it and withdrew it again so that she might continue to view what was happening on the other side of the door. The man stopped suddenly and turned to his accomplice.

  ‘Great God!’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s someone in the bathroom.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I tell you there’s someone in the bathroom!’

  Sophia backed away from the door, looking wildly around for something, anything, which she could use as a weapon. Her eye fell upon Castaigne’s shaving case, which lay upon a shelf above the sink. She opened it with trembling hands and seized the straight razor which she found inside. It would be little help against two large male adversaries, she knew, but it was something.

  The doorknob rattled as one of the intruders tried it.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked a voice.

  ‘We should get the door open and see who’s in there,’ replied the other in an exasperated tone.

  Sophia gave a silent gasp, and took a step back from the door.

  ‘Castaigne?’

  ‘It’s not him. He’ll be at his lecture by now.’

  ‘A chamber maid, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps… or perhaps not.’

  ‘What do you mean? We should leave.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of…?’

  ‘Whoever’s in there heard you use his name. We’ll have to take them with us. There’s a fire escape at the end of the corridor outside; we’ll take them that way.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘We’ll get rid of them. We can’t risk exposing him. Damn it, you shouldn’t have used his name!’

  ‘I didn’t know there’d be someone here!’

  ‘Never mind that now.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing? I’m picking the lock.’

  As the voice said this, Sophia heard a soft scratching and clicking coming from the keyhole. She took another step back, clutching the handle of the razor and looking down at it, wishing it were a revolver.

  ‘Got it,’ said one of the men, and Sophia’s heart jumped into her throat as the doorknob turned once again.

  ‘I see by your expressions that you are familiar with the name Carcosa,’ Simon Castaigne said, as he regarded his audience. ‘No doubt because you have done me the honour of reading my privately-published treatise describing my travels through the Luminiferous Æther, during which my mind voyaged to many worlds. I need not dwell on the means by which I am able to effect this singular mode of travel, nor will I waste time describing the worlds I have seen – save Carcosa… for it is of Carcosa alone that I wish to speak to you this evening.’

  Castaigne hesitated, and Blackwood noted that the blood seemed to have drained from the occultist’s face, while a dark and pensive frown crept across his brow. What’s up with the fellow? he wondered, glancing at Cuthbert Fforbes-Maclellan, who merely offered him a small shrug.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Castaigne continued, ‘I beg your forgiveness, for this is not easy for me to talk about – and yet talk about it I must, to the only people in the country who will believe me, and who will take heed of the warning I bring tonight.’

  A warning? thought Blackwood. A warning about Carcosa?

  ‘I am certain that you came to this gathering with the expectation of hearing of the new wonders I have encountered during my latest travels,’ the occultist said with a great sigh. ‘And while it is true that I have seen much to wonder at, I have seen a great deal more to make the heart tremble – the very soul, in fact!

  ‘To begin with, allow me to reacquaint you with Carcosa. It is a world which orbits not one sun, but two, in the group of stars known by astronomers on Earth as the Hyades. Its parent stars form a binary system known as Theta Tauri and are more than nine hundred trillion miles from Earth – an unthinkable distance, to be sure, but one which, as I hope to demonstrate to you this evening, is in reality as insignificant as the distance between each of you and your neighbours.

  ‘Theta Tauri are ancient stars, of far greater age than our own Sun, and Carcosa is therefore an equally ancient world. It is mentioned occasionally in some of the less reputable of humanity’s myth cycles, and has even made an appearance in modern literature. Those of you who are familiar with the work of that admirable curmudgeon Mr Ambrose Bierce will be aware that he could not resist penning a fragment, in which he hints at Carcosa actually being an ancient city on Earth, but that was only because even that great disliker of humanity could not bring himself to utter the truth: that Carcosa is in reality an entire world drifting through the dark depths of space, and that it contains secrets that no sane man or woman would do well to contemplate.’

  Castaigne paused to pour himself a glass of water from a small jug which had been placed on the lectern for him. Blackwood leaned forward in his seat, fascinated. As he waited for the occultist to continue, he mused briefly that it was a shame Sophia could not be present, and then all thoughts of her and their unfortunate disagreement left him as Castaigne continued.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have come here this evening to tell you of the last journey I made to Carcosa and of what I learned there. It was just a few days ago that I made the usual preparations for the voyage and then lay upon my bed while my consciousness made ready to leave my physical body behind.

  ‘I closed my eyes, and almost immediately became aware once again of my surroundings, with the eyeless sight of the unfettered mind. I rose from my body towards the ceiling of my bedroom and then through it and upwards through the roof of my house and into the boundless sky above.

  ‘Unencumbered by physicality, my mind soared away from the Earth, leaving our beautiful blue-green world far behind and plunging into the star-strewn void of the Luminiferous Æther. According to the means by which I am able to induce my mental travels, I found the route to the Hyades with great swiftness and felicity and passed across the countless leagues of space as easily as one passes from one room of a house to another.

  ‘I watched the flight of the stars in rapture, for you may believe that one never gets used to the vastness and ineffable splendour of this universe of ours. Like fireflies in the darkest night they hurtled past me – or rather, I hurtled past them, on and on through the great Æther, overwhelmed by my contemplation of the vast spray of light which extended in every direction, on and on into eternity beyond eternity.

  ‘And then, presently, I came to my destination: the giant twin suns of Theta Tauri, smouldering baleful in the infinite night, seething and muttering in their unthinkable age, and there beside them, Carcosa, with its four strange moons, which do not behave as moons should.

  ‘I entered the atmosphere and descended towards the great Lake of Hali, vast and mysterious, whose surface is covered with the clouds which break like waves upon its shores, where stand the last of Carcosa’s cities, Alar, Hastur and Yhtill, and I watched the moons rise in front of the cities’ towers, for those moons are bound by no physical law which pertains to the ordered cosmos.

  ‘I swept across the surface of Hali, not daring to contemplate what lay beneath, towar
ds Yhtill, the largest city, while above me the stars shone blackly in the dead grey sky and the mad moons circled, at once far away and near. I rode the cloud waves as they surged towards Yhtill’s vast ramparts, which are featureless and windowless, for no one who lives in the last cities of Carcosa ever looks willingly upon the Lake of Hali.

  ‘And as I flew on, I noted a curious difference in the quality of the lake’s surface. It roiled and bubbled in a way I had never seen before, as though some great and powerful disturbance were occurring far below in its profoundest depths. That roiling and bubbling terrified me, and I increased the speed of my flight so that I might leave the lake and its secrets behind as quickly as possible.

  ‘As the cloud waves broke upon the ancient stone walls, I flew over them and down into the streets of Yhtill, where I wandered among the cheerless, ragged people, unseen, my existence unsuspected, and I listened to what they said, as I have always done in the past. I have visited Carcosa on many occasions, and over time have managed to learn a great deal of their language, but it was not their words which first alerted me to the fact that something was amiss: it was the expressions on their faces. Every man, woman and child I encountered in the streets of Yhtill looked… terrified.

  ‘For many hours I wandered amongst the people of Yhtill, through the city’s winding streets, into houses and to the tops of its windowless towers, eavesdropping on conversations, trying to uncover some clue to the cause of this new terror which had augmented their general despair. Eventually, I discovered it. “The time of his emergence is approaching,” they said. “He is preparing to come out of the lake, and when he does, our final doom will be upon us. The lake can no longer contain him. It knows that he is preparing to leave his castle and wishes to be rid of him. He will emerge soon, and all who look upon him will die!”

  ‘For many hours I lingered in Yhtill, listening to the words of its people, and from their conversations I was able to piece together the facts about the King in Yellow and the final doom which now hovers like a carrion bird over the ruined world of Carcosa. Indeed, that doom is not theirs alone, but ours also, for when the King in Yellow emerges from the Lake of Hali, the Earth will fall beneath his power just as surely as Carcosa!’