The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington)

by Alan K Baker

  ‘It is the scent of the Luminiferous Æther, the very atmosphere of Space. This vessel has spent many thousands of years plying the gulfs between the planets and stars.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘For the same reason humans are building Æther zeppelins: exploration. We are as curious about the cosmos as you.’

  ‘If you’ve been exploring for thousands of years,’ said Sophia, ‘you must know much more about the universe than we.’

  Oberon’s smile faded. ‘Yes… we do. But come: the ship is ready to depart.’

  They followed him from the reception room into a long, wide corridor which led to a vast staircase of the kind one might find on an ocean liner – albeit one that was at least five times larger than any conceived on Earth.

  When they emerged on the main deck, they were stunned anew by the vessel’s enormous scale. Blackwood estimated the breadth of the Aurelius to be more than two thousand feet. The four masts rose from the forecastle, main deck and aftcastle like gigantic trees in a gently sloping field, and he felt himself grow dizzy as he peered up at the crow’s nest, which must have been a quarter of an acre in area, sitting atop the mainmast nearly a mile above his head.

  ‘How big a crew is required to operate this vessel?’ asked Blackwood, as Oberon led them towards a balustrade of intricately-carved oak running along the length of the main deck.

  ‘On long voyages, the Aurelius may carry many thousands,’ came the reply, ‘but in truth the ship could sail quite easily by herself, for well she knows the ways of the Æther.’

  Nonplussed by this rather cryptic response, Blackwood nodded and said nothing.

  ‘And the ship’s name?’ said Castaigne.

  ‘She is named after one of your greatest philosophers,’ said Oberon. ‘A man whose genius allowed him a small glimpse of the true nature of the universe.’

  A crewman approached and said, ‘Your Majesty, we are ready to make way.’

  Oberon nodded, and the faerie withdrew.

  Immediately, they felt the deck surge beneath them, and the ground, already a thousand feet below, grew more distant as the Aurelius rose into the air.

  Sophia drew closer to Blackwood, and again he offered her a comforting arm. ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she replied quietly. ‘It’s just that this sensation reminds me of…’

  When she hesitated, Castaigne glanced at her. ‘Of your previous journey?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I fear that there’s nothing I can say to comfort you, your Ladyship.’

  ‘There’s nothing I require you to say, Dr Castaigne,’ she replied. ‘It was my choice… and I must live with the consequences.’

  ‘Consequences?’ said Blackwood. ‘What do you mean, Sophia?’

  ‘There will be consequences, Thomas. I can say no more than that.’

  ‘Why not?’ he persisted. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us? Something that happened to you while your mind was on Carcosa?’

  Her only response was to draw away from him, to walk a little way along the balustrade and stand alone, watching the rapidly diminishing landscape below.

  Blackwood was about to go to her, but he felt a powerful hand on his shoulder and glanced back to see Oberon shaking his head. And then Blackwood heard the Faerie King’s voice echoing subtly through his mind. Did you really think she could be in the presence of a being such as the King in Yellow and remain unscathed?

  How could I know? he replied. I have no idea what kind of being the King in Yellow is. But what are the ‘consequences’ of which she speaks?

  I am uncertain, came the reply. But I believe we will find out before this is over.

  The Aurelius continued its ascent, until the ground was lost beneath the thick, grey clouds, and the sky above, at first bright and blue, gradually darkened into the obsidian blackness of space. As the concept of altitude lost its meaning and became, instead, distance from the planet, the three humans looked out at the unthinkable profusion of stars, which no longer twinkled as they did when viewed from the surface of the Earth; instead, they were diamond-hard pinpoints of crystalline light which shone with a brightness and constancy which was both delightful and unsettling to behold.

  Castaigne took hold of Blackwood’s arm and pointed to the Moon, which was emerging from behind the Earth’s limb. Divested of the atmosphere’s impeding effects, the satellite shone with astonishing clarity, as if painted by some ultimate master of depiction on a sheet of glass separating the observers from the infinite gulfs beyond.

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ Blackwood said to Oberon, ‘that the Luminiferous Æther was breathable by humans, for we must be far beyond the Earth’s atmosphere by now.’

  ‘We are,’ the Faerie King replied, ‘and it is not. For your protection, we have cast a shield around the Aurelius, maintaining the atmosphere of Earth in close proximity to the ship.’

  Sophia, still standing a little way off, caught the exchange and moved to rejoin them. ‘What form of propulsion does the Aurelius employ?’ she asked. ‘How are we to cross the trillions of miles of space to Carcosa?’

  ‘We could not do so,’ Oberon replied, ‘at least, not in normal space, for although our Æther galleons can catch the breath of stars in their sails and ride it between worlds, for voyages between the stars themselves, another method is required.’

  And then the Faerie King pointed out from the balustrade across the fathomless depths of space, and said, ‘Behold the Pneuma.’

  As the humans watched, the crystalline stars became warped and twisted, as if a distorting lens had been placed in front of them, smearing them into long, curving threads of light. At the centre of the distortion, something like a hole appeared – if a hole could be said to exist in space – and then it seemed to the observers that it was not so much a hole as the entrance to a great shaft, perhaps fifty miles across, which was lined with mottled silver, and extended not through space, but through something on the other side of space.

  Blackwood tried in vain to comprehend this bizarre affront to the laws of geometry and physics, and felt his mind rebelling against the impossibility of what he was seeing. ‘What is that?’ he murmured.

  ‘It is the entrance to the Pneuma: a hypertube extending through non-quotidian space,’ replied Oberon. ‘It is the means by which we travel between the stars.’

  As the Aurelius turned her prow towards the vast circular entrance, Sophia asked, ‘What is non-quotidian space?’

  ‘A higher dimension: one of the ætherial planes which exist alongside the physical world with which you are familiar,’ came the reply, ‘and in which the speed of light cannot be exceeded. But inside the Pneuma, the speed of light is meaningless – so meaningless, in fact, that it makes no sense even to say that it can be surpassed: it simply does not exist.’

  ‘A realm in which velocity has no meaning,’ marvelled Blackwood. ‘Why, it’s utterly fantastic!’

  Oberon smiled. ‘In centuries to come, humanity will learn how to navigate such hypertubes with vessels of their own, and the era of ultimate exploration will begin.’

  ‘Centuries is right,’ observed Castaigne with a wry smile, ‘for I can’t even begin to conceive of the physics required to manipulate space and time in this fashion. How do you do it, Your Majesty?’

  Oberon glanced at him, and his smile grew broader as he replied, ‘If you cannot begin to conceive of the physics involved, what would be the point in my telling you?’

  As the Aurelius passed across the threshold and into the mouth of the shaft, the humans looked down and saw that the Pneuma was actually a liquid – or something that behaved as if it were a liquid – which roiled and fizzed, turning back chaotically upon itself like immensely powerful waves vainly assaulting an invisible and impregnable circlet of rock.

  Once inside the hypertube, the great vessel descended until its immense keel cleaved the churning cylindrical ocean, and then it settled upon it like a shi
p of Earth upon an ocean of Earth. Behind the towering aftcastle, the colossal paddle-wheel, fully a quarter of a mile in diameter, began to turn, raising soft mountains of foaming liquid as it splashed into the Pneuma.

  The vessel surged forward, its prow slicing through the ocean which roiled and bubbled and undulated around it.

  ‘What’s this stuff made of?’ asked Blackwood, as he gazed out and up at the monochromatic grey substance arcing over their heads.

  ‘I’m not certain that I could explain it to you in a way that would make any sense,’ Oberon replied.

  ‘I’d consider it a great favour if you tried nevertheless.’

  Oberon smiled and shrugged, and his great dragonfly wings fluttered briefly behind him. ‘Very well. It is the membranous essence of the dividing veil between the material and ætherial planes, warped and liquefied to allow passage through an additional dimension intersecting both.’

  ‘I see,’ said Blackwood with all the authority he could muster, which in truth wasn’t very much.

  Oberon continued, ‘It may help you to think of the Pneuma as a transit system, similar to your own London Underground. If you wish to travel from one part of the metropolis to another, you descend into the ground and step aboard a train which moves rapidly through the earth, taking no account of the topography of the surface – the buildings, streets and so on – since they occupy another layer of space which the Underground train never encounters. It is the same with the Pneuma hypertubes, which are unaffected by the topography of normal space and time.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Blackwood, ‘that does help rather.’

  ‘I am glad to oblige, Thomas,’ said the Faerie King.

  ‘How long will it take us to reach the Hyades, Oberon?’ asked Sophia.

  ‘No more than a couple of hours,’ he replied.

  ‘Great God!’ Castaigne exclaimed. ‘We must be travelling at thousands of times the speed of light!’

  ‘In relation to normal space, we are travelling more than half a million times faster than a beam of light moves,’ Oberon said. ‘Although, as I have already mentioned, it means little to speak in such terms when describing movement within the Pneuma.’

  Blackwood turned to his human companions. ‘In any event, we should take this time to unpack and prepare our equipment for use. Oberon, may we be shown to our quarters?’

  Oberon accompanied his guests to the adjoining cabins which he had ordered to be prepared for them – although to call them ‘cabins’ was to do them a grievous disservice, for they were more like vast chambers in some exotic palace than any ship’s cabin the human passengers had ever occupied. Each room, while furnished in a style which Blackwood and Sophia instantly recognised from its elegant Art Nouveau lines as belonging to the Realm of Faerie, was decorated with artefacts which clearly had no connection whatsoever with Earth, and with paintings depicting scenes of such alienness that their hearts trembled with astonishment and wonder.

  ‘Are these some of the worlds you have visited?’ asked Sophia, as she and Castaigne stood in Blackwood’s cabin examining some of the paintings, which were executed with such delicacy and detail that they had to stand within an inch from them to establish that they were indeed paintings rather than photographs.

  ‘They are,’ replied Oberon.

  ‘I have visited many worlds in non-corporeal form,’ said Castaigne, ‘but never have I seen anything remotely like this.’

  ‘They are very far from Earth,’ said the Faerie King. He indicated one painting, which showed a forest of vast towers, clearly miles high, strung with glittering metallic tubes like hanging vines, their surfaces glowing with iridescent greens and blues and purples and flecked with thousands of lights.

  ‘These are the spire-cacti of Lambda Velorum,’ Oberon explained, ‘which orbits a star near the edge of the Aquila Rift.’

  ‘It looks almost like a city,’ observed Sophia.

  ‘That is precisely what it is.’

  ‘What are the inhabitants like?’

  ‘They are gentle and noble.’

  ‘What do they look like?’

  Oberon gave a soft chuckle. ‘Dear Sophia, were I even to describe them to you, you would be haunted by nightmares for the rest of your life.’

  Sophia gave a small start. ‘Are they so very different from us?’

  ‘Very different.’ He turned to Castaigne. ‘And you, Doctor, do not know how lucky you have been so far, in encountering worlds and beings whose aspect your mind is capable of withstanding.’

  Simon Castaigne paled a little at this, but said nothing.

  Oberon indicated another painting, showing a vast cloudscape containing thousands of objects which resembled mustard-coloured puffballs mottled with irregular patches of glowing magenta. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are the singing fungi of Eibon Prime, which orbits a sun on the far side of the Orion-Perseus Discontinuity.’

  ‘The clouds,’ said Sophia. ‘Why are they so flat along their tops? It looks like someone has taken a huge knife and sliced away their upper reaches.’

  ‘They are flattened by their collision with the Luminiferous Æther beyond Eibon Prime’s atmosphere. The singing fungi are highly intelligent, as are the clouds through which they move. Long ago, we established beyond any reasonable doubt that the clouds and the fungi communicate with each other – although we have tried in vain to interpret their cacophonous, radiation-fuelled dialogue. We have never been able to penetrate the meaning of the eternal byplay of information. Some have suggested that they are engaged upon a never-ending discussion on the ultimate nature of the Æther, or perhaps are sharing secrets too strange to be comprehended by any minds but theirs. But that is mere speculation: the true meaning of the conversations between the clouds and the fungi remain for them alone, and probably always will.’

  Blackwood listened with interest to all this while he unfastened the sturdy clasps on their suitcases, took out the contents and laid them upon the vast bed at the centre of the cabin.

  Oberon came over to join him, followed by Sophia and Castaigne. ‘Ah, your survival equipment,’ said the Faerie King. ‘Fascinating… and rather attractive, I must say.’

  ‘Well,’ mused Blackwood, ‘I wouldn’t wear it to the opera, but I suppose it does have a certain aesthetic appeal… if you like that sort of thing.’

  Fortunately, the scientists at Station X in Bletchley Park had been able to accommodate Blackwood’s request in pretty short order. They had been experimenting for some time with various means of keeping the human body alive and functioning while on excursions away from the protective atmosphere of Earth – specifically the first lunar zeppelin flight, which was scheduled to depart the following year – and had several working environmental protection suits of various sizes to hand.

  The suits were wonders of technological innovation: each was composed of a padded leather overall covered with a thick outer layer of black Martian rubber, which completely sealed it and maintained the body heat of the wearer while in cold environments. Should the ambient temperature rise, a set of frond-like heat exchangers could be extended from the shoulders to maintain a comfortable temperature within the suit. Secured to the back by a combination of brass studs and leather straps was the breathing apparatus, which operated by means of a miniaturised version of the great Vansittart-Siddeley Ultra-compressors which supplied propulsive power to the new atmospheric system being installed on the London Underground.

  The apparatus was connected by a reinforced rubber pipe to the suit’s combined helmet and chest-mounted control unit, which was dominated by a large, circular panel of polished brass containing several dials, pressure gauges and switches whose function was to monitor and regulate the flow of oxygen through the suit. The helmet was a tall bubble of specially strengthened glass (tall enough to accommodate a top hat if necessary, according to the suit’s designer), on either side of which was mounted a powerful electric light.

  When he had first set eyes on the contrivance, Blackwood had bee
n reminded of a deep-sea diver’s suit – although this was intended for use in the ocean of space, an ocean far deeper and more perilous than any on Earth…

  Blackwood ran a check on the electrical systems of each suit to make quite certain that it was in proper working order. As he did so, he checked with Sophia and Castaigne that they recalled the all-too-brief lecture they had received at Station X on the suits’ operation. When he was satisfied that they had absorbed the salient points, he switched off the systems of each suit, and turned to Oberon.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘all that remains is for us to complete our journey to Carcosa.’

  CHAPTER THREE:

  The Lake of Hali

  A pinpoint of blue-grey light appeared in the void above the dying planet. Against the backdrop of infinite, star-speckled night, the point rapidly increased in size until it was tens of miles in diameter. Had anyone on Carcosa been looking in that particular direction at that particular moment, it would have seemed to them that an infinitely deep shaft had appeared out of nowhere; a shaft whose single circular wall was composed of glistening grey liquid.

  But no one in Carcosa’s last cities was looking up, for the sky held little interest for them: their attention was focussed solely on the slowly-churning waters of the great lake around which Alar, Hastur and Yhtill stood. The King in Yellow, that ravenous, tattered blight from the nethermost regions of space and time, was preparing to emerge from the lightless depths beneath Hali’s sweeping cloud waves. The last remnants of Carcosa’s once-teeming population knew it – or believed it – for what other reason could there be for the unsettling of Hali’s ancient waters?

  Their final doom was upon them; the King in Yellow was about to emerge and absorb the silent vestiges of a once-great civilisation: a piece of bread mopping up the last scraps of a meal that had lasted for millennia.

  And so the last inhabitants of Carcosa stayed within their homes and did not look out at the moons that had gone insane, or the stars that had turned to black bruises in the sky… or the vast celestial ship whose prow cleaved the thrashing waves of the Pneuma hypertube as it soared out into open space…