After the End of the World (Carter & Lovecraft)

by Jonathan L. Howard

  No, there was color. His gloved hands held color: the gun gripped in one was not the total black of the environment, but the black a gunsmith brings to metal. And there was Emily Lovecraft, looking astonished. Carter was reasonably sure he looked astonished too. And there was Henry Weston, and now Carter was positive he must be looking astonished.

  “What have you done?” said Henry Weston. His tone remained difficult to read. He could have been offering congratulations for the creation of a wonderful piece of art, or discovering that someone had just shat on his grandmother. He was looking at the blast wave emanating from the dome, the convulsed air, the concrete shrapnel hanging in the air, all rendered in hard white delineated by hard black.

  “I … don’t know,” said Carter.

  Weston frowned at him. “Not you.” He turned his attention to Lovecraft. “Her.”

  Lovecraft considered the question carefully, and shrugged.

  “Miss Lovecraft”—Weston’s tone was now peevish—“you have stopped time. I fear no shrug, no matter how eloquent, shall furnish me with significant explanation.”

  “Ah,” said Lovecraft, “I can’t have stopped time. How could we be seeing anything? Photons would have stopped traveling and we wouldn’t be able to see anything.” She raised her forefinger and wagged it at Weston. “Ah.” She was smiling, which was inappropriate, but Carter did not blame her for it. They were clearly all insane at that endless moment. He was mad, she was mad, they were all mad there.

  “Do you honestly think you’re seeing with photons right now, Miss Lovecraft?”

  Carter looked past him, and saw Corporal Barnaby crouched by one of the Kübelwagens, as frozen as anything else. At least he’d had the sense to take cover when the dome had started to collapse, and not stood there looking at it like a rube.

  “How are you here, Weston?”

  “When time ceases to be a consideration, one may be very nearly anywhere. I probably walked here. It’s unimportant.” He looked at the sky, and Carter and Lovecraft followed his gaze.

  The clouds had boiled back, clearing a column of clear air a couple of miles wide centered over the dome. Through this tunnel in the sky the stars were brilliantly visible. They did not twinkle, and they seemed so close.

  “Do you see Algol?” said Weston, and pointed. There were as many stars as grains of sand on the beach of the nearby bay, yet they looked, and they saw. “There is a body near it, astronomical in size if not nature. Tonight it glows a little dimmer there, because it glows so brightly here.” He lowered his hand and looked to the dome. He walked slowly toward it, the dripping concrete, the jets of destruction, the flying debris hanging, the shards of fire jutting.

  He paused by the three hapless scientists who had emerged from the generator shack just in time to be consumed by the explosion. One stood, mouth open, a chunk of concrete just protruding from his upper back to the left, pieces of scapula pasted across the shrapnel’s face. Another man had been standing a couple of paces closer and the fireball had partially consumed him. Weston paused by him and examined the man’s outstretched arm where it entered the fire, the interface of burning cloth and flesh, the fine tracery of vaporization, the just-visible stump of the bone drowned in incandescence like a charred stick in aspic. The last, a woman, was currently untouched, but stood a couple yards before the wall of waiting energy, her parka hood back, her eyes still focused on the dome that had ceased to exist a tiny fraction of a second before. Her face was a mask of wonderment, a child seeing her first firework. If and when time began again, her life would not last a single heartbeat.

  Weston examined them like waxworks in a museum as he spoke.

  “Miss Lovecraft, when I advised you read the Necronomicon—”

  “You didn’t advise me to do anything but sell it to you.”

  “What would I want a copy of the Dee edition for? Very well, then, when I induced you to read the Necronomicon, it was on the understanding that it would be as a useful primer in matters pertaining to your current situation. Not…” For once, he seemed short of words. He turned to Lovecraft. “Miss Lovecraft, how did you do this?”

  “It wasn’t really deliberate. You sure I did it and not Dan?”

  Weston spared Carter a withering look. “I would think not. Mr. Carter’s talents lie elsewhere. This is your doing. The principles lie within your Necronomicon, but I never anticipated you would understand them.”

  This rankled Lovecraft. “You saying I’m too stupid to understand it?”

  “Ms. Lovecraft, it is reasonable to say that your entire race—and to forestall a misapprehension I must emphasize I mean Homo sapiens sapiens in its entirety and not any particular racial grouping—is stupid. But then, stupidity is such a relative term. I speak from experience when I say that any number of people have read one or other versions of the Necronomicon, a handful have understood it well enough to gain some knowledge, rather fewer well enough to see opportunities to power in that knowledge, and a grand total of none have stopped time with it. How did you?”

  Lovecraft looked uncomfortable. “There was … maybe seventy pages in, there was a story about birds hiding in the grass. The way it was written, it got me thinking.”

  “And?”

  “So I made a diagram.”

  “Wait,” Carter said, “you got the idea to make that mess of string in your house from a story about birds?”

  “It’s not a story,” said Weston. His eyes never left Lovecraft. “It’s a metaphor.”

  Lovecraft scoffed. “Well, duh.”

  “Miss Lovecraft, I see I have sold you short. I never anticipated you being able to act upon some of the knowledge in that book, simply because nobody else ever has. That was an oversight. We now find ourselves in a unique situation.”

  “If Emily wasn’t supposed to really understand what the book was about and just use it as some sort of monster-spotting guide, we’d be dead by now,” said Carter.

  Weston nodded. “Yes.”

  “You motherfucker, Weston. You sent us out here to die.”

  The insult entirely went by Weston, who had never had a mother. “That’s not true, Mr. Carter. I expected you would probably die, but that’s hardly the same thing. And, really, isn’t ensuring that the Fold remains viable worth the sacrifice of a few lives?”

  “I notice none of them were yours.”

  Weston raised his eyebrows. “Well, of course not. What would the point of that be? I am far too important, Mr. Carter. I thought I had intimated that previously, but repetition can be so important. There are, to use a vast simplification, politics involved. I am doing my best to keep the situation here under control. I am personally very opposed to the extermination of the human race.”

  “Gee,” said Lovecraft. “Thanks.”

  “So, we’re just pawns?” said Carter.

  “No, no, no. They”—he indicated the Thule agents—“are pawns. He”—he walked over to the Kübelwagen behind which Barnaby sheltered and stood over him—“is a pawn. You two”—he considered for a moment—“are more in the nature of knights. Useful, if somewhat eccentric. Such an awkward situation. Still, a resolution is in the offing.”

  “A resolution?” Lovecraft glanced at Carter. “What sort of resolution?”

  “A negotiated one.”

  “You’re going to negotiate with somebody to stop us being blown to pieces by a ZPE explosion?”

  “Miss Lovecraft, I am currently negotiating exactly that. You are laboring under many misconceptions. Firstly, the ‘explosion’ is anything but. The device must have malfunctioned. It is currently acting as a gate, and an entity is in the process of being drawn through. It does not essentially wish that, so I am discussing options with its representatives to put it back.”

  “It can’t just … stop?” asked Carter.

  “It lacks the intelligence to do such a thing. With great power often comes great irresponsibility, a principle one observes often enough among people. Secondly, I am not going to perform
these negotiations, as I already am performing these negotiations. I appreciate that you are probably experiencing this conversation as a series of linear events, but we have always been talking and always shall, because time is at a halt. The negotiations to which I refer were concluded in the same instant they began. This instant. Presently, you will perceive me telling you that they were successful and you will be relieved, because it means this island will not cease to exist and you along with it.” He paused as if listening. “There we are. The negotiations are successfully concluded.”

  Carter looked at Lovecraft. She rumpled her nose. “A spoiler alert would have been nice.”

  “Now all that remains is that Miss Lovecraft undo what she did and the universe shall move on again.” He crossed his arms and looked expectantly at her.

  “I have no idea how I did that.”

  “I know. And you will have no idea how you undo it, either. It might take you a while, but, as you’ve seen, having all the time in the world and having none at all can be very much the same thing.”

  The light flashed into darkness, and—in the closing funnel of open sky, Algol seemed to grow a little brighter.

  Two of the Thule agents fell to the floor. Time was moving again.

  The last Thule agent stood gasping. “What happened?” She stumbled over her words. “What—”

  Henry Weston stepped up behind her and, with great economy of movement, snapped her neck. He turned to Carter and Lovecraft and raised his hands apologetically. “Part of the terms, I am afraid. No witnesses with the exception of yourselves. Bother.”

  Barnaby stood from where he had been crouched and leveled his rifle at the man in the staid yet expensive suit standing in the snow in his staid yet expensive Oxfords. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “La,” said Weston. “Kindly do not fire. I like this suit.”

  “Not him,” said Carter. “He’s with us.”

  “A deal is a deal, Mr. Carter. I cannot go chopping and changing as I wish. No witnesses to what has occurred here. The complications, the ramifications, hardly bear consideration. It is a necessity that Corporal Barnaby be collaterally damaged.”

  “No.” Lovecraft stepped into Weston’s path. “He helped me, I helped him. I didn’t risk my life just to stand by and let you kill him. Not happening, Weston.”

  “Him?” Barnaby raised his weapon and sighted on Weston. “Like to see him try.”

  Carter raised his hands in a warning motion to the commando. “Don’t man. Just don’t.”

  Weston looked at her sadly. “I am truly regretting ever encouraging you to study that book, madam.”

  “Tough shit. I’m not moving on this. You decollateralize him or you’re playing chess with a two-knight handicap.”

  “Be reasonable, Ms. Lovecraft. He is not even important.”

  “Importance is such a relative term.”

  Weston nodded, accepting the point. “As you wish, Miss Lovecraft, but he must come with me now. Now that we have time once more, it is short. The sun will rise soon and the site must look as if the ZPE device simply malfunctioned by then.”

  “What about the people at the settlement? They know the Thule people tried something.”

  “Well, yes, but that’s hardly of great moment. There will be strongly worded intergovernmental communiques and the Reich will look more closely at Thule infiltration of the Ahnenerbe. Hardly before time. The theory will be that some overenthusiastic Thule agents tried to weaponize the ZPE device and blew themselves up in the process. The Reich knows more of the truth, but not what actually happened here. As far as their government knows, this was a legitimate experiment to make zero point energy a viable asset and not simply a weapon they’re not supposed to have.”

  “I have to report in,” said Barnaby.

  “Of course you do, but let’s get you off the island, hmmm?” Weston went to climb into one of the Kübelwagens. “If you’re caught here, an unauthorized, armed British soldier on U.S. soil, think of the embarrassment to your country.” Barnaby lowered his gun. Weston opened the passenger-side door and patted the passenger seat. “Good. Now let’s hurry along, shall we? I’m not really meant to be here, either.”

  Lovecraft stepped forward. “You won’t hurt him? You promise?”

  “The corporal shall live, Miss Lovecraft. You have my guarantee. I have transportation already organized from the eastern bay. I shall leave the car parked by the old quay.”

  Before they could ask him what kind of transportation was waiting for him, Weston gave a wave and drove away. He took the first corner faster than Carter would have dared on snow, but the vehicle stuck to the surface as if glued to it, and was gone in a moment.

  They went to the cliff edge to watch the headlights swing around the mountaintop, and then descend the switchback to the road below.

  “We don’t know what the fuck he is,” said Carter.

  “No. We don’t. The only reason I can think of him kind of loosely as an ally is that he hasn’t killed us.”

  “Yet.”

  “Yet.” Lovecraft looked into the slowly brightening eastern horizon. “This was a weird night.”

  The world turned, and the new day began.

  Chapter 37

  FRAGMENTS IN THE AFTERMATH

  THE BANALITY OF EVIL

  Director Heinz Mühlan had spent a great deal of the telephone conversation saying, “Yes, Minister.” He concluded it with, “I shall look into it immediately, although frankly…,” at which point he paused because the minister had already rung off. He put the receiver down slowly and looked across the room at his secretary. She ignored him entirely, continuing to type as she had done without pause during the slightly fraught conversation he had just endured.

  “Irmgard,” he said quietly.

  The typing stopped instantly. “Yes, Director?”

  “Ask Obersturmbannführer Voight to meet me in the chamber, please.”

  Irmgard—dear, sweet, terrifyingly efficient Irmgard—was already reaching for the telephone as she said, “At once, Director.”

  Voight was already waiting, key in hand, by the chamber door by the time Mühlan arrived. He greeted him with a nod, unlocked it, and entered first. As he reached for the light switches, Mühlan said, “No, don’t bother, Axel. The windows and the flame will suffice.”

  He locked the door behind them as per routine, turned to take in the chamber, and sighed. “Take a seat. We have things to discuss.”

  Voight did as he was invited, sitting at one of the chamber’s twelve stations, taking his cap off and dropping it to the floor by the stone bench as he did so. “Seidr?”

  “Seidr.” Mühlan took a seat at the station to Voight’s right. “I have just had a very one-sided conversation with the minister of foreign affairs. It seems that the Americans are furious about the murder of one of their citizens on American soil by a member of the Reich’s contingent on the zero point energy project.” He said these last few words in a tone of high irony. “I gather they’re most angry that the guilty party then went up the mountain and blew him- or herself up—the murderer’s specific identity is unknown—along with most of the mountaintop.”

  “The device worked, then? Surely that’s all that’s important?”

  “The device detonated, but the causal ambiguity has not been closed. I do not know why, but, given that two of the American agents were overheard using a British intelligence term, we may assume that either they or a British team caused this disaster. The site itself is compromised, both in terms of security and esoterically. It is utterly useless to us now. We shall just have to find another, somehow. We shall seek”—his eyes sought out the flame—“guidance.”

  “I must admit, I was looking forward to the end of the monthly procedure. It’s very inconvenient.” Voight sighed. “Very well; I shall maintain shipments from the east. What about the Americans?”

  “Oh, they’ll bluster for a while, be given a few sweet things to help them get over it. You know what ch
ildren they are.”

  “No, I meant the American agents. What do we know of them?”

  “Oh, them? Apparently detached assets of the OSS, but our OSS sources say they’ve never heard of them or this ‘CIA’ they claim to belong to.”

  “Really?” Voight frowned. “You accept that?”

  Mühlan shrugged. “They’ve always been reliable before. They seemed bewildered even by the question. I would have assumed they were independent contractors, but if that’s so, their covers are remarkably deep and detailed.”

  Voight looked at him with interest. “What alternative is there?”

  Mühlan did not reply, but his troubled expression spoke of a forming conjecture. Voight understood then, and rested the back of his head against the wall, looking up into the middle distance. “Ah. Fuck. A war in heaven.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mühlan, although he believed it to be true. He looked at the flame. If one were to look into the night sky with a very good telescope and seek out Algol, one might see near it a glowing body of exactly the same color. “Perhaps.”

  IN SHALLOW WATER

  The scientific community on Attu Island was withdrawn at speed when the U.S. government was alerted to events there. There were no Germans left to evacuate, only the American contingent, one of whom left in a body bag. All German vessels were absolutely forbidden to enter into American territorial waters throughout the Pacific, a state of affairs that persisted for several weeks until matters were settled behind closed doors. The official story was that an argument had escalated until a member of the Reich’s group suffered some form of breakdown, killed one of the Americans, and then sabotaged the experimental ZPE generator housed at the summit of Mount Terrible, resulting in an explosion that killed the murderer and all of his compatriots. Research on ZPE was halted for the time being, it now being regarded as difficult to control and potentially highly hazardous.