After the End of the World (Carter & Lovecraft)

by Jonathan L. Howard

  “Slippery slopes never look that bad, or else they’d be cliffs.”

  “That’s deep.”

  “Thanks.”

  She crossed her arms on the tabletop and rested her chin on the uppermost. “Okay, if you won’t look, I’ll try to explain. There’s a lot between the lines—that’s the quick way to describe it. Not subtext, though. Not the way we usually mean subtext, anyway. I’d put money on most people reading the Necronomicon and coming away afterward no wiser, no more or less sane, no different than they were before. It’s a weird book. Anecdotal, and metaphorical, and kind of a bestiary in places, and it’s all mixed up. A real mess. Old man Alhazred, the guy who wrote the original, was nicknamed The Mad Arab. Not by other Arabs—that would have been weird—but even they thought he was mad. The original edition, the Al-Azif, doesn’t do a thing to change anyone’s opinion of Alhazred. Thing about occultists is that they don’t write a thing that isn’t obscure. I bet they write shopping lists as acrostics. They’re paranoid about their discoveries being stolen, or falling into the wrong hands, or whatever. Doesn’t matter whether they’re writing truth, near truth, or utter bullshit, they hide stuff. Sometimes it’s in cipher, sometimes it’s by using coded language. The Necronomicon reads like a lot of random garbage from the mouth of a medieval lunatic, unless you happen to know or at least have a good idea of the truth behind it. Then it decodes, right there in your head. Like decompressing a file. It’s the damnedest thing. That’s what a proper, honest to god”—she corrected herself—“gods revelation feels like. I was reading some stuff about birthlines which seemed totally irrelevant to anything and then suddenly the image of the Fold jumped into my head, Boom! sharp as the day we saw it in the flesh. Before it was just a lot of light floating there, but now I understood it. Early days, but I think I understand it better than Colt ever did already.”

  Carter felt uncomfortable hearing it. The knowledge William Colt had possessed had proved dangerous for everyone including, ultimately, Colt. “Are you telling me you can pull the sort of shit he did?”

  She grinned. “Nope. Wrong side of the Fold for that, and if I was on the right side, I wouldn’t do it, because that’s a good way to end up back on this side. And this sucks, apart from this house. I really like this house.”

  * * *

  All the cops looked the same to Billy Hoskin. Now that he’d had a chance to calm down a little and what he’d seen in the alley off Havilland was becoming distant to him because his mind knew better than to dwell on it, he’d realized that he was in a police station and cops kept talking to him. They mostly wanted to know where he’d got the money and who he’d got it from, but his mind didn’t want him thinking about these events for its own good, so the memories were vague and frustrating to the cops and, to a lesser extent, himself. He kind of wanted to remember, and he really kind of didn’t. It made his mind itch.

  They kept saying, “Well, it’s a federal case now,” and “Wait til the Feds get here, then you’ll wish you’d talked to us,” but he didn’t really understand why the Feds would take an interest and how they could be worse than the police. He knew he wasn’t the smartest guy around, but he was smart enough, and he should have been able to understand it. It didn’t help that his mind kept itching.

  They were keeping him at the precinct until something happened. He’d been charged with some kind of currency felony, and was just waiting until the mythical Feds arrived to make something of it. He’d lawyered up straight away, because that’s what smart people do, but the lawyer had just looked at the indictment and seemed out of his depth. His plan was, “Let the Feds talk to you. They’ll find there’s no case and walk away. Then the police will have to let you go.” That was easy enough for him to say, but Hoskin had never been in trouble like this before, so he didn’t have much choice but to do what the lawyer said. He sat in his cell under the ancient police station, and waited for the Feds to arrive.

  Two cops arrived before them. They walked in off the street and made straight for the cells as if they were very familiar with the place, but they were strangers there. They wore their caps the whole time and, later, when the surveillance recordings were examined, no one recognized them. The shadows under the brims of their caps were very deep, very dark, and their faces were obscured.

  Those that saw them didn’t notice the shadows. They didn’t notice anything at all. They had things on their minds, or something distracted them as the cops went by, or they simply decided to close their eyes for a few seconds. Just to rest them, you understand. There was nothing suspicious about the cops. They belonged. They just felt like they belonged, and noticing them would be like noticing a particular light fixture, or a scuff on the floor, or a scratch on the wall. They belonged. They were of and with the building. Why would anyone notice them?

  They walked in a steady, unhurried walk, but nothing slowed them. You might call it inexorable. When they arrived at the elevator, the elevator was waiting for them. Later, when they left, it was waiting then, too.

  Hoskin looked up from where he lay on his cell bunk as the door swung open. It took him by surprise; the viewing slot was invariably opened before the door to make sure he was on the far side of the cell and not ready to jump anyone. But this time he hadn’t even heard the door unlock. A cop stepped into the cell and stood over him. With the light above him, the shadow his cap cast made his face invisible. Hoskin just had a vague impression of eyes.

  “You’re being transferred,” said the cop.

  “What?” Hoskin sat up. “Where to?”

  “You’re being transferred.”

  “Does my lawyer know about this? I want to speak to him.”

  “You’re being transferred.”

  Every time the phrase was repeated, the tone and intonation was identical. By the second repetition, Hoskin thought it sounded like a recording.

  “I ain’t going anywhere until I talk to my lawyer. You don’t just get to move me around without anyone knowing where I am.”

  The other cop stepped forward. “The charges have been dropped,” she said. “You’re free to go.”

  “You’re being let loose,” said the first cop.

  Hoskin looked from one to another. The guy sounded like a heavy from a fifties gangster movie. The woman sounded husky, with a Midwest accent. Both of their faces were in shadow, but that didn’t matter because they were letting him go. There were no charges to answer.

  “So what was that about me being transferred?” he asked.

  The cops said nothing, but stepped out into the hallway and waited.

  Hoskin had based an entire career on never looking a gift horse in the mouth, even if it turned out that his definition of “gift” was pretty much synonymous with “belonging to somebody else.” The cops said he could go, so he was all set to go. He walked out of his cell.

  Fourteen minutes later, the duty sergeant found the cell empty, and the alarm was raised. It didn’t take long to find Hoskin. Even as cops were running around the police station to find the missing man, a patrol who’d been called out to an incident at the Chapman Park projects found him.

  The responding officers made their way to the top of a four-story block and into the roof space. Most all buildings, new and old, in Arkham had tiled roofs by local ordinance, and this was no exception. The officers found a hole smashed through, shattered tiles scattered near and far. In the middle of the debris lay Billy Hoskin, staring up at the starry night sky. He seemed to have fallen a long way, although where from was a difficult question. Whether the fall would have killed him was moot; being frozen solid had ended his life long before he ever hit the ground. How this had all happened within the eight minutes between the moment he walked off the surveillance recordings and the moment he hit the rooftop was the sort of question for which Arkham PD had no answers at all.

  * * *

  Carter was a hero. This came as a surprise for him when he was asked back to Miskatonic University. He had been told to go directly to
the high-energy physics building to meet the sarge, and on walking in, he found a bunch of scientists applauding him. Dr. Malcolm of the U.S. contingent walked straight up to him and shook his hand. “I have never been happier to have somebody turn up early for a shift,” he said, smiling and shaking Carter’s hand with both of his.

  The shock of seeing two people shot to death in front of them was clearly still with them, and Carter noted that many of the scientists there were not ones who’d been at the incident, while half of those who had were absent. Dr. Giehl read out an official communique from the Reich’s science minister commending Carter’s actions and character, which Carter made a mental note never to tell Lovecraft about as she would surely mock him for the rest of his life.

  Some halfway decent wine, apparently direct from the German consulate, appeared, and people took it as an opportunity to blow off some steam. That the focus seemed to slide off Carter pretty quickly after the speeches was both a relief to him and also made him wonder what else was going on that was absorbing all the scientists so much.

  He found out when Giehl took him to one side. “Lukas’s death is doubly painful, Mr. Carter. The very next morning we received confirmation that the project has achieved its aims, and is going to the next stage.” She glanced over to the knots of scientists, and Carter could see that they were talking shop with more enthusiasm than he’d seen so far. “He would have been so happy. We’re scaling up. Making the first moves toward seeing if zero point energy can deliver power on a practical level. We could be on the verge of freeing ourselves from all other forms of energy forever. A whole new world.” She looked down into her wineglass. “Poor Torsten.”

  Carter did not trust himself to offer his views on waking up one morning to a whole new world. Instead he said, “When you say scaling up, you mean how much bigger than that thing?” Carter nodded at the column of the ZPE device. “Will you have enough room here?”

  She laughed at such naïveté. “It is vastly larger than this. No, it will be built elsewhere. We shall be leaving Arkham. The construction will not take very long. Most of the component parts have already been built by my country in response to how encouraging the results were here right from the beginning.”

  “You’ll be setting up in Germany? Are the American scientists still involved?”

  “Oh, yes. You need have no fear of your country suddenly being cut out of the project, Mr. Carter. For one thing, the new test rig will not be built in Germany. The measures we used to cut out extraneous interference here will not scale up economically, so we must build the rig a long way from civilization.” She looked seriously at him. “We considered New Jersey.”

  Carter couldn’t keep a flicker of a smile from the corner of his mouth. “Why, Doctor, I do believe you just made a joke.”

  “No need to call attention to it. It will pass. No, the project is moving to one of the farthest islands in the Aleutian chain. There is a former military base there, part of the early-warning radar network from the days of the Cold War. There is a concrete dome there that is in very good condition and will house the new ZPE device easily. We’re all going.” She looked at him seriously. “I would like you to go, too.”

  Carter blinked. “Me?” was all he could manage.

  “Certainly. We will need a head of security. What happened the other night showed you take your responsibilities seriously. Also, surely your Uncle Sam would like some official presence on site?”

  Carter belatedly remembered he was supposed to be a secret agent. “I’m barely on payroll,” he said, looking for an out. “Moonlighting as a campus constable at Miskatonic U is one thing, but—”

  Dr. Giehl said a number that stopped him in his tracks. “That is per week,” she clarified. “In dollars. Berlin thinks you would be an asset to the project. Yes,” she said, noting his raised eyebrows, “I’ve already discussed it with my superiors. We know all about you, Mr. Carter.”

  Carter was confident that, no, they didn’t. He changed the subject. “The Aleutians really are at the back of beyond. I’m not sure there are any animals bigger than seabirds on them. Why do you need security?”

  “Jenner isn’t the only person out there who hates us. There are whole countries who would happily steal the research. Being in ‘the back of beyond’ makes us as vulnerable as it does secure. If anything happens, we’d be a long way from help.”

  “If I do accept, you said I’d be the ‘head’ of security. How many others would I have? I mean, I’d have to sleep sometime.”

  “We have the budget for one more, but they’d have to be good at other things, too. Administrative skills would be useful. We generate a lot of information, and we have to keep two governments happy with reports. Do you know anyone?”

  Carter was thinking of Harrelson. The detective had been talking about taking some leave. “How long will this take?”

  “The equipment will be there when we arrive. A week to set up, a fortnight to test and calibrate. A month of actual experimentation. Perhaps eight weeks altogether. We should have some solid results at the end of that time.”

  Carter considered. Harrelson would need to negotiate a sabbatical with his captain to get that kind of leave. He also wondered where she’d picked up such an English word as fortnight. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Well, don’t think too long.” She went back toward the other scientists. “This facility is being dismantled. We leave in ten days.”

  Chapter 17

  THE CASTLE ON THE HILL

  “Me?” Lovecraft echoed Carter’s astonishment. “I can’t! What about the bookstore?”

  “It’s just for two months. We don’t get much walk-in traffic, anyway, and the place has Internet so—”

  “Which is where?”

  “The Aleutians.”

  “The Aleutians?” She leaned back from the table and Carter knew he was about to get hosed down with industrial-strength scorn. “The Aleutians? The fucking Aleutians? Have you looked at a map? Do you know where they are sending you?”

  “Of course I know where they’re sending me. It’s in the North Pacific.”

  “No! It’s on the edge of the Pacific! Right on the other side of those islands is the Bering Sea. It is cold, miserable, and remote, Dan. And, as I don’t think UPS does regular pickups from there, it’s a shit kind of place to run a mail company from. ‘The Internet,’ he says, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Find somebody to run the place, then. You were saying your friend was between jobs.”

  Lovecraft paused, unwillingly considering the suggestion. “Petra’s got sense and, Jesus knows, she could use a paycheck. Why me, though? You must have some ex-cop friends somewhere who’d be happy to go to a cold, wet rock at the edge of creation if the money’s so good.”

  They were at Lovecraft’s house once more, drinking tea in the kitchen. She had been doing half days at the store, mainly to clear mail orders, but wanted to carry on working on the model of the Fold. That she was controlled enough to be able to walk away from it for hours at a time was a relief and a consolation to Carter. She wasn’t about to go full-on Cthulhoid cultist on him if his brief readings of H. P. Lovecraft’s works were to be believed. He wouldn’t get another chance to read them unless they managed to refold the world, though; on this side, H.P.L. was only famous for a series of pulp high-fantasy stories. Lovecraft had shown him an entertainment news story that a big budget film was in development based on his character Randu the Swordmaster. “I don’t get a penny,” she’d ruefully admitted. “The old bastard’s copyrights lapsed years ago.”

  On this side of the Fold, the only people who’d heard of the Cthulhu mythos other than Carter, Lovecraft, and Harrelson were dangerous people, and—Lovecraft hinted—some of them weren’t people at all.

  “I asked Harrelson if he could take some time off, but he just laughed at me. The APD is buzzing right now and he’s leading on a bad case.”

  Lovecraft was interested despite herself. “What kind of bad
case?”

  “You know that story about somebody hiding in the wheel well of an airliner and falling through a roof in the projects?” She nodded; everyone had heard that story. “Yeah, well, half of it’s bullshit. What really happened is a guy was taken illegally from holding at the main precinct house in Easttown, then frozen to death, then shot into a roof in Chapman, and whoever did it did it all in less than ten minutes. Christ only knows how. Harrelson was talking about hunting down any ‘renaissance faire’ nuts who might have a siege catapult and access to liquid nitrogen. I’m not sure he was joking.”

  Lovecraft ruminated for a long second. “Ever read any Algernon Blackwood?”

  “Should I have?”

  “Yep. I was going through a collection of his stories a week ago. One was missing. Probably his most famous. So I looked it up and it doesn’t exist here. It’s called ‘The Wendigo.’ Just…” She wafted a hand with frustration, took up the empty cups, and carried them to the sink. “I can’t recall it well enough. Something about frozen bodies falling from the sky. Something like that. I wish I’d read it more recently. But the idea of the Wendigo being a conceptual monster and part of the mythos has been around a good while. And the story doesn’t exist here—that’s significant. It must be. For one thing, it predates the original Fold, which probably happened somewhere around 1927. Of course, time is kind of a flexible concept to some of the things we’re now sharing a universe with. The Fold covered up a lot of old shit and just left echoes.” She put the cups back on their hooks and turned to Carter. “Why the Aleutians?”

  “Doc Giehl told me it was to get away from interference. I guess she was talking about radio and TV waves. Cell phones, that kind of thing.”

  “Plenty of deep mines here and in the Reich. Wouldn’t those do the job just as well?”

  Carter shrugged. “I think there’s an economic factor. Attu had an old military base. It’s perfect for the experiment. Just means they don’t have to build any facilities, I guess.”