"So who actually did it?" said Stephen.
"Damned if we know," I said, draining my beer and standing up. "We've spent enough time arguing about it over the years. It haunts us. We haven't even worked out quite how the trick was done."
Fred rubbed his jaw. Looked thoughtful. "I think I know. But I also need to relieve some bladder pressure," he stood up, and we headed for gents on our regular pilgrimage like a pair of women.
"So who was it?" I asked as we walked. "And how the hell was it done?"
"Sometimes we're so busy playing devious tricks and looking for them that we miss the straightforward," he said. "I think I understand why you were chosen now."
"Chosen . . . ? That's blood!" I gaped at the redness that had puddled around the feet that still protruded from under the door of the cubicle in the gents. I tried the door. It was soundly locked. Still said "occupied." I grabbed the top edge of the door-frame and hauled up and peered over.
The sprawled body of a faceless man lay there. I mean faceless. Someone . . . or something had pulled his face off.
I dropped back. "Holy shit," I whispered. "He's dead."
Fred looked as calm as if this happened every day. "I think we'd better leave."
"L . . . leave?!" I stuttered, incredulously. As a biologist I had seen more gory things than most people, but this was horrific. "We'd better call the cops. I was here when he was killed. I thought he was just being sick!"
"Exactly," said Fred. "You were on the scene of the crime. Your finger-prints are all over the place. In this country several people are bound to have seen you and remember you going into the toilets. And unless I am very much mistaken you don't have any documentation and you're in a foreign country. How are gong to explain how you got here? "
"Er . . . yes. But we have to tell the police. They'll think I did it otherwise. We need to give them some help," I said, my voice becoming a little hysterical.
"Calm down," he said forcefully. "What does the phrase 'assisting he police with their enquiries,' mean to you?"
He had a point. It probably meant being questioned until you gave the right answers. "Yes, but . . . we ought to turn ourselves into the police."
"That would be convenient. We could solve the crime then. Unfortunately it's a bit late. Too many of the local enterprising lads already turned themselves into the police years ago. They don't want more." He steered me by the elbow. "Let's pick up Stephen and go. Quickly and quietly."
We walked back to our table where Stephen was just checking if there was anything in any of the bottles on our table.
"Your friend is feeling very unwell," said Fred. "We need to take him to lie down. Give me a hand."
Stephen was unimpressed and unsympathetic. "Can he not feel unwell when I've had another beer or two? Then I'll feel unwell at the same time. Economy of scale, see."
"No. We must go now," said Fred.
I could see by the expression on Speairs face that it wasn't penetrating. "Girls. And lots of free booze. There is a room party upstairs," I said.
"Why didn't you say so! Lead on, McDuff." He said loudly and got to his feet.
With any luck the cops would be looking for someone called McDuff.
We got to the elevator. Never had such an iron contraption looked so promising. "I think we should rather walk up the stairs," said Speairs coming to a dead halt in front of it. "That thing isn't safe."
I caught a glimpse of some uniforms behind us, at the front desk. "Get in," I hissed at him
"No fear. Last time was like being digested, Dexter."
"And you say here and you'll be arrested. The guy in the john was dead, Stephen. Murdered," I said, pushing him forward. Fred came up behind me, closing the cage door.
"What was the last thing you heard from the victim, he asked—putting his hands over the buttons.
"Nyarl something-or-other."
He nodded grimly. "Nyarlhotep. Well, that's it. We'll have to seek shelter in R'lyeh. It's about the only place he can't actually come and get you." He pressed buttons. More than one of them. With an asthmatic creak and a shudder the elevator began to move. I expected a cop to show up and stop us, any second. Instead the elevator went . . . down. Must be to the basement or something.
"R'lyeh. Where is that?"
"An ancient volcanic harbor formed from a crater blowout long eons ago. On an island In the midst of the uninhabited and wild southern oceans."
"New Zealand. Sounds like Christchurch. They have an Antarctic research place we spent a few months at on the toothfish program."
"No. Ph'nglui mglw'nafn Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," intoned Fred.
"There you go again. What's it supposed to mean?
"In R'lyeh where dead Cthulhu lies dreaming," he said, his voice oddly flat.
The elevator lurched and seemed to twist. So did we. Not like we did last summer, but in a way that left my stomach 90 degrees dislocated from my body and my mind a further 90 out. Yes. I know. That's just about exactly what happens when you forget your age and try to "twist again." This felt like we'd end up groaning in the ER too. If anything, it was worse than initial snatch when we'd seen the yellow submersible. This time I saw squid. Well. Something like squid. With a few extras. Not squid, but something with more tentacles and worse texture. Green and slimy.
Then the door clacked open and I stopped screaming to get the tentacles away.
Outside was a strange and desolate landscape. Buildings, odd, rounded seaweed encrusted buildings, hung over the bowl of a harbor. The water in the harbor moved like half-set jelly, and was the color of tea, under a leaden sky. It reminded me of a certain North-East England town (which had better remain nameless in case I have to go back there) but without the negative aspects.
The only difference was the rounded buildings. There wasn't a straight or parallel line in the place.
I though about how we'd got here. "Last time the yellow submersible. This time the tentacles," I said. "You know, I actually prefer the churnel. And that's saying something."
"The Viagron is always associated with matters on your mind. In this case it was probably my mind," apologised Fred. "I need to explain. I am an agent of the Divine Ammonoidian Monarch. We have a mutual defense pact with the Ancient Latimerian Collective. They are, as Stephen correctly surmised a communal intelligence. The agents of Cthulhu have been obliged to act in their defense."
"Ammonoid." I said thinking about my now rusty paleontology. Ammonoids had been extinct a long time. Well, so had Coelacanths . . . apparently.
"Well, not so much 'am annoyed', as mildly pissed off," said Stephen. "Where is the room party?"
"It was a ruse to get you here. We were in danger of being arrested. Or murdered. So we brought you here, to R'lyeh. To the city of the ancient God, Cthulhu," explained Fred. "Nyarlhotep will not come here."
"But what does this have to do with the yellow submarine?"
"The movement of huge squid were presumed to cause tidal waves. And the suckers of Architeuthis leave marks on the skin of sperm whales. The suckers on the tentacles of the ancient ones can strip paint, and the beak shear through metal on things with hides tougher than that of whales."
"Wales. Bloody hell. I think I preferred Wales," said Speairs looking around. "I never though I'd say I liked Wales, but compared to this . . . Any chance of a pub in this place?"
"Whales?" Fred's posture, moments ago relaxed, altered. "Did you say whales?"
"Yeah. We've just been there," said Speairs, apparently oblivious to the change in Fred. "Nice and warm and the beer wasn't bad."
I saw tentacles come snaking out something I had assumed was a house. Many tentacles. Green and slimy tentacles.
"The whales are our ancient enemy," said an enormous high-pitched echoing hollow voice, booming through my head . . ."
Not explaining that were not in Wales, but actually in Mozambique, had seemed a good idea at the time.
To be continued (with apologies to H. P. Lovecraft)
&
nbsp; * * *
Mrs. Schrödinger's Cat
Written by Gary Cuba
Illustrated by Luis Peres
Annemarie Schrödinger kissed her husband's forehead on her way out of their Oxford house to do the day's market shopping. Herr Doktor Professor Erwin Schrödinger smiled innocently and bid her goodbye.
It was a crisp autumn day in 1933, and the moist English chill made him miss his native Austria. But Herr Hitler and his anti-Semitic rants had lately tainted the spirit of his homeland, and Schrödinger had seen the way the political cards would soon fall. It was a timely and propitious move for him to come to England; as a new Fellow of Magdalen College, he had been recently honored with a Nobel Prize for his earlier work on quantum mechanical theory.
The front door closed behind Annemarie, and a devilish sparkle came into Schrödinger's eye. The three physics honor students in his parlor, having risen in deference to the lady's presence, sat back down and returned their attention to their Professor.
"Meine students, we now have at least two hours to conduct our experiment! Klaus, die Katze, please grab him."
Claude, a blonde-haired boy from Coventry, responded. He imagined Professor Schrödinger still calling him "Klaus" twenty years from now, after he had won his own Nobel for some as yet unknown conquest of physical theory. He slowly approached Mrs. Schrödinger's male white Persian, LauLau, snoozing peacefully on the sunlit end table, and scooped him up in his arms. The cat looked up at him sleepily, his face wearing an expression of minor irritation.
They all descended the narrow steps to the cellar. The apparatus they had clandestinely constructed over the last week sat on a worktable there, dimly illuminated by the single light bulb on the ceiling. It consisted of a box, surrounded by a complex arrangement of mechanical devices.
"Franz, have you tested well the random generator?" Schrödinger asked.
Frank, a tall, swarthy boy from Dublin, moved to the table and pulled a Shilling from his pocket. One side of the coin had been anodized, its surface made flat black compared to the lustrous silver surface of the other side. He dropped the coin into a chute near the box. It tumbled down a series of nails protruding into the container, flipping the coin end over end until it reached the very bottom, hidden from view by a slat of wood.
"I did five hundred trials, Professor Schrödinger," Frank said. "The coin odds are dead even, figured at a 99.9% confidence level. The photo-eye detector discriminated the correct coin side without fail."
Schrödinger took a sealed glass vial from a closet and bent over the apparatus, affixing it to the interior of the containment box. He cocked a small spring-loaded plunger that would smash the vial the moment a control solenoid received an electrical signal. All was ready.
"Wilhelm, will you kindly verify the status of die Maschine?"
William, a slight, unhealthy-looking lad from London, checked the setup.
"Looks ready to me, Professor," he said.
By this time, Claude was having a bit of a problem with LauLau.
"Would one of you colleagues please open the box now so I can put. . . this. . . angry cat in it, please?"
The cat yowled and struggled out of Claude's clutching arms, disappearing into the unlighted depths of the basement. Claude yowled too, as the cat's claws ripped the flesh of his right arm.
They spread out and searched for LauLau. It was inconceivable that a longhaired white cat could evade them as it did in this dark basement. Frank finally spotted it, huddled behind the hot water heater. He grabbed the cat by the neck ruff and lifted it clear. The cat's appendages made wild arcs in space, in a vain effort to wreak more havoc. Frank carried the clawing banshee over to the containment box, jammed him into it, and slammed the door shut.
"Sehr gut! Ready are we," Professor Schrödinger said. "Let us review what will happen. The coin, she flips. The photo-eye, she detects. If heads, die Katze will die; if tails, he lives. But before the apprehension, he is in an eigenstate, neither dead nor not-dead. Not until we look inside the box, will the result be known. Before then, die Katze, he will be in superposition."
He dropped the anodized shilling into the slot. It tumbled, rolled, cartwheeled to the bottom of the track. The photo-eye sensed the state of the coin. It either sent or didn't send the signal to the plunger. The plunger either crashed or didn't crash into the cyanide vial inside the soundproofed containment box. But LauLau was neither dead nor alive. He was both. They stared at the box.
Claude spoke up. "Professor, it occurs to me that you also are in an eigenstate: one who is going to have dinner and sleep with your wife tonight, and one who is going to sleep on the sofa without dinner because you killed your wife's cat."
"An excellent physical assessment, Klaus," Schrödinger replied. "Excellent, except for the fact that to kill my wife's Katze, I could never do. I did not place cyanide in the box; only water was in the vial. A benign demonstration is what I had in mind."
Frank cleared his throat. "Not exactly so, Professor," he said. "I noticed that you had taken a vial of ordinary water out of the closet. I assumed it was a mistake on your part. I replaced the vial with one containing cyanide."
"Scheisse."
"All is not lost, Professor," said William. "I saw Frank replace the vials, and I switched them back around."
"Sehr gut!"
"Wait just a minute," Claude said. "The containment box has no air holes in it. We've been talking about this for a long time. Surely the cat has suffocated by now."
William coughed quietly in the background. "Not to worry about that," he said. "I let the cat out of the box while you all weren't watching. I couldn't stand the thought of killing poor LauLau."
Frank replied. "I saw William let the cat out, and so I caught it and put it back into the box. So the experiment stands as it was."
The complexity of the eigenstates put Schrödinger into a daze. They heard the front door of the house open and close. Annemarie had returned. They all stared at the containment box.
* * *
Squish
Written by S. E. Ward
Illustrated by Mike Rooth
I was at the commercial end of the spaceport, clearing Orion Roaches, when they opened the cargo bay doors on the Paul Bunyan and the Ant tumbled out. It sat there a moment—stunned, probably; I couldn't quite remember where I'd seen a blue Ant species before—and ran back into the ship before anyone could step on it.
Crap, I thought. There went my long weekend with Günther.
See, once upon a time, I was an entomologist. Sarah Smith-Schmidt, Ph.D., lover of insects across the span of the explored galaxy. Fangs? Beautiful. Eyes? The more the merrier. Multi-segmented bodies for which I had to create brand-new nomenclature? Be still my heart.
And then, on a Martian layover (with Günther, our second honeymoon), one of the little buggers bit me. Rodmov's Weevil. Green with tiger stripes. Cute as the dickens. Stowed away on a shipment of hydroponic cellulose. (Well, we thought it was hydroponic.) Toxin that corrodes steel.
I woke up two weeks later with a robotic leg, a case of arthritis that made solar flares worse than tax time, and an altered opinion of Rodmov's Weevil. I was grounded. Earth. The next time I saw a weevil, I squished it. With the robotic leg.
It felt good.
For a moment, I glared at the cargo ramp. If no one else had been watching, I might get through at least one sweaty, Ant-free night with my husband before anyone set the quarantine. But Mike, the bay supervisor, lifted his eyebrows in that "what are you standing there for?" look he always gives me when I've got things I'd rather be doing.
I held up my hands. "Mike, Günther's coming in from the Ceres Research Station tonight, okay? I haven't seen him in three months. Just quarantine the ship. I'll get to it on Monday."
"And what do I tell Fred Gold when he comes in on Monday to pick up his electronics shipment? 'Sorry, Fred, you've got Ants. Sarah? Oh, sorry, she couldn't stick around. She had to go and—'"
The screech of
the ship's quarantine doors drowned his voice. I saw his lips moving. Didn't help.
The doors closed. "'—So I guess you'll have to call her in bed on my videophone!'"
I stared. Mike stared back. The little vein on his temple started to throb. I could get rid of the Ants, or I could find myself locked in a cargo bay until Monday.
I sighed. "Let me call Günther."
Mike let me use his videophone. It rang four times, and the screen blipped to life. I cringed at the tanks and tanks of insects lining the wall behind Günther's desk; if they were on the transport ship, their residents would be staying with us until he went back to Ceres.
Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 2 Page 29
