Ernest came up with a perfect plan. The orderly would simply act as guard one night when the captain was away. Ernest would open the safe by removing it from the wall with a saw. He would open the back of the safe with a diamond drill borrowed from the machine shop. He would take the valuables out, and then replace the safe. Unless the captain inspected the safe closely, it would go undetected for weeks. They could sell the diamonds or rubies or platinum to a French fence and be on their way to the good life before anyone was the wiser.
The night came. The captain had taken an interest in a beautiful blonde American and was visiting her in her quarters. The orderly kept watch. The tiny hand-held saw, made from one of the new metals discovered last year, cut through the aluminum wall that held the safe like a hot knife through butter. Ernest MacVeigh lifted the safe out and applied the drill to the back. It seemed to take forever, each moment he was expecting the captain to show up. Who knows? Maybe the captain would be intrigued enough by the tale to at least find out what was in the safe. How could he live with such a grueling mystery. In the objective world it took less than twenty minutes to make a hole large enough to draw the goggles from the safe. My god, John was right. Ernest put the safe back into the wall. Only the smallest of cracks showed that the safe was no longer a permanent fixture. He slipped the goggles in his pocket and began the second half of his scheme. He walked out of the captain's quarters and told the orderly that the safe had been empty. The orderly immediately suspected that Ernest was cheating him -- Ernest challenged him to search him. The orderly did so. He found the goggles in Ernest's pants pocket, but goggles are clearly not an item to life-changing value. Ernest re-pocketed them. The orderly began cursing and pummeling Ernest. As expected the noise attracted other workers. The crazed orderly was quickly subdued. He couldn't very well say that he had been part of a plot to steal from the captain. In less than twelve hours the orderly was fired and left in Paris.
Ernest wore the goggles every chance he could. For months he saw nothing. Perhaps John had been crazy, perhaps reading about John's madness had merely infected his brain. Hysteria could be catching according to alienists. Then one moonlit night as the Balmoral sailed over New York, he saw a floating city. Ernest watched through the thick quartz of an observation porthole in the lower decks,
John had wisely not tried to describe the floating madness. The city bristled with waving spires of living metal in a thousand colors of gray and a dozen colors that Ernest could not name. Parts of the fliers, themselves a horrible mixture of lobster, beetle, and slimy fungus were welded into some of the walls. The city had angular mouths with triple rows of obsidian teeth that bit at the fliers. It had exposed wiring and gears and vents that released steam, and mechanical eyes and organic eyes. It had gutters running with pulsing green fluid that bore tiny red flowers. It had living slow moving statues of creatures untouched by the sane symmetries of Earth. It had glaring searchlights that flashed unknown messages to the Cosmos. Human parts had been welded into the living walls as well -- and Ernest knew this had something to do with the myth of the twelve men and women sacrificed to the minotaur in his labyrinth -- and he knew if he understood exactly he would go painfully mad. The shape of the city was a Symbol, a Hieroglyph. It would make any true sentient creature have certain thought and Ernest realized that the divided brain of humans, the brain of yes and no, was NOT a brain of a truly sentient creature. Ada Lovelace's difference engine was a sort of joke on humans -- a bad binary brain to simulate bad binary consciousness. The human brain with its Evil/Good, Love/Hate, Right/Left was bad mock-up of the real brains of the crustacean Outer Ones : it was a useful device for making fear and anxiety -- and his last clear thought before he tore the goggles from his face was that if humans ever became thinking and correlated the contents of their mind -- the pains of hell would not be myth.
Ernest fell against the observation porthole. John must have managed because he was smarter. He had always been the stronger one. Mother’s favorite. Simple truths like the latter can keep minds intact that look upon things not meant for humans. They found him in the hallway as the Balmoral floated above the stockyards of Chicago. Ernest kept saying, “It's all stockyards. Everything is stockyards." They put him off the ship, and the kindly officials of the city of big shoulders put him an asylum.
For the first years he could not talk. He kept a pair of unusual goggles with all the time, finally an official from the British Dirigible Company came and retrieved the glasses. When 1900 came and the great war had not come, Ernest began talking about hysteria and anxiety and the shape of human brains. When the Russians put a man on the moon in 1901, he predicted the end of the world -- but everyone was making that prediction. By 1903 so many people had a paralyzing madness because of the rate of change of life and warfare capacities Ernest wasn't considered special enough to be kept in an asylum. There were now seven great powers instead of four -- China, Turkey and America had joined the club with the power to end organic life on this planet. Each of them had their own terror weapon. There were skirmishes. French germ warfare versus Chinese mechanical men in in Vietnam. German trolls overran Greenland and renamed it Mhu Thulan.
He took up his old job of being a waiter at a rundown cafe near Hull House. He visited mom in Kansas, and his uncles in Texas. He got used to the killing summer and the sharp winds off the Lake Michigan in winter. He tried to write down some of the revelations that crowded his brain when he had looked upon the floating city of the fungal fliers -- and with an irony he was sane enough to appreciate -- he crafted them into pulp stories. He could spot here and there -- others that knew. It didn't matter, these fragments of truth made for more fear as well. Everything he could do served the Churning Darkness, everything anyone could do served this Force. Millions of years of breeding made the fake brains that humans have, he couldn't change that. Laws of society and the rules of civilization laid down in the dark dynasties of shadowy Khem made humans the cattle of the gods.
In his last year 1913, when the British placed a military base on Venus, Ernest took to spending all of his free moments in the stockyards. He would talk freely to his fellow cattle. He sang to them often -- especially William Blake's hymn, "Jerusalem." He thought for a long time that the fliers would kill him, but he had not been a threat like John. The world was far too rotten with nervousness and hysteria to note yet another fool blaming it on the powers of air and darkness. Just another cow walking up the shoot to the slaughter . . .
(For Howard Waldrop)
Don Webb has over 40 stories in “Best of Year” lists in the last 24 years. Winner of the Fiction Collective and Death Equinox Awards, Don is pleased with his secret chili recipe. He teaches Science Fiction writing at UCLA Extension – and lives in the very Lovecraftian city of Austin, TX (as do William Spencer Browning, Lawrence Person and Walter DeBill). He’s a graduate of the University of Texas. Go Longhorns!
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/english/clf/n2_r1.html
Story illustration by Robert Elrod.
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Verbapeutic
by Joe Nazare
That freaking ditz had done it to her again.
That’s what Serena couldn’t help but think as she stood whipping her straw through the red slush of her drink. Twenty minutes late and counting. She had purposely called Nicole at the nail salon this afternoon to verify that they were still on for tonight. “Absotively. I’ll meet you there at 9:30,” Nicole had promised, and ever the foolish friend, Serena had believed her.
“There” was The Port of Call. Potted palm trees, big three-sided tiki bar, carnival lights lining the walls: about as close to a Margaritaville vibe you could get without violating a trademark. The Friday night throng that had pushed Serena about ten feet out from the bar made her even more conscious of her own solitude—of the glaring lack of acquaintances that at the same time kept her from being left alone. She felt like 122 pounds of chum, attracting every toothy shark in the vicinity. Swear to God,
she was going to pepper-spray the next guy who got up in her face and said she looked like she could use some company.
As if the situation weren’t frustrating enough, Serena couldn’t even text Nicole to find out if she was stuck in traffic or had just flaked out on her. The manicurist didn’t believe in cell phones, refusing to expose herself to the “harmful aura.”
Serena tried to occupy herself by staring at the big-screen plasma hanging behind the bar. The world news played soundlessly, and from what Serena could gather, a quake had hit somewhere off the coast of Sydney. She watched a muted Aussie mouth his solemn report from a squall-wracked beach. Eventually the video cut back to the Boston news studio, to the female meteorologist pointing to a weather map of the U.S. A swirl of grayed cotton candy churned its way up the Atlantic seaboard, animate icon of an apparent hurricane. Meantime tiny clouds aimed individual squiggles of lightning down at most of Massachusetts. Most of The Port of Call’s patrons reveled on obliviously.
Then Serena ignored the forecast herself, her attention diverted by the pony-tailed redhead in the gleaming silver shirt who’d just climbed down from his barstool and sauntered shamelessly over to the dance floor. Serena moved twice as fast to claim the vacated space.
Ironically, after all the unwanted attention she’d been getting, it was a man’s utter disregard that caught her interest. As she squeezed up to the narrow opening at the bar, her extroverted breasts reached out and rubbed the shoulder of the guy seated to the right. Most of the males there would have readily interpreted such contact as a nonverbal mating call, but this one seemed too focused on what he was writing to even register the contact. He sat hunched over the bar with his left elbow hooking out, like a student who didn’t want you copying off his paper.
A big, beer-bellied galoot, working to maintain his physique by curling a bottle of Corona to his lips, stood close to the right. Olive-skinned, with a frizzy bale of brown hair shooting high up from his head, he had on a tie-dye shirt whose bright Rorschach made Serena think of a splatter of neon barf. By contrast, the seated writer appeared slimly built, and wore a Navy blazer over a white dress shirt. His blond hair, though thinning up top, was neatly trimmed and styled. These two would make for a couple of strange bedfellows, alright—assuming that’s where their evening was headed.
The blond guy bent to his task for the next several minutes. Finally, he nodded in seeming satisfaction, leaned back and put down the black felt-tip pen he’d been using. He handed over something small and flat. Serena only identified it when Tie-Dye Guy held the cardboard coaster up in front of his face.
Squinting, he tilted his head and read aloud from the inscribed backside. “Dirigible,” he recited. “Aphrodisiac. Gulch. Thermometer. Innuendo. Salami. Slapdash.” He stopped and looked at the author of the bizarre sequence. “Awesome.” He waggled the coaster. “I’m def’nitely gonna try this out. Hey, thanks a lot, man.”
“Thank you,” the other spoke as Tie-Dye Guy turned to leave. “Good luck, Leandro. I certainly hope to hear from you.”
Serena’s next-stool neighbor was still smiling to himself as he swiveled his head around to the left. Serena recoiled, realizing she’d been caught eavesdropping.
“Sorry,” she blurted.
“Please,” he waved off any need for apology. “This place is a glorified sardine tin tonight.” His bespectacled eyes studied her. “But I bet you’re wondering what that was all about just now.”
Well, since he’d brought it up… “Honestly, yeah. For a second there I thought that guy was speaking in tongues.”
“It’s hardly as crazy as it sounds,” the stranger assured her. Like her, he didn’t seem to be a native New Englander; he lacked the r-torturing accent. Come closing time, he wouldn’t be one of the drunken idiots trying to remember where they pahked their cahs. “Before I go launching into an explanation, though, I probably should introduce myself: Bryce Ambrose.”
Sounds like he belongs on a soap opera, Serena inwardly reacted to the name. Then again, with that set of ears winging out from his head, Ambrose wouldn’t be getting a casting call anytime soon for The Bold and the Beautiful.
She set down her drink so she could shake the hand Ambrose extended. “Serena.”
“Wow, that’s a terrific name. Nice to meet you, Serena.”
“So tell me,” her curiosity spurred her. “What was the Deadhead so grateful for?”
“Oh, Leandro and I are seeing if we can help each other out. I work as a graduate assistant in the linguistics department over at the University.” Serena’s eyes flashed to the class ring Ambrose sported, onyx-stoned with a large “M” dominating one side of the silver band. “I’ve been working on a special project, trying to gather the data to support my theory.”
“Of?” she took the bait.
“The euphonic effect of select words in the English language,” Ambrose promptly and proudly recited. “Words that are simply pleasurable to hear. I believe that the practiced articulation of a prescribed list of such words can give the speaker a significant psychological boost. Take, for instance, an everyday word like ‘arithmetic.’ There’s some real pizzazz there, if we just stop to appreciate the pronunciation. A-rith-me-tic,” he repeated, accenting each syllable. “These kinds of words, they flow from our lips, slip right back in through our ears, and slide into our brains. They’re like mental lubricant, helping the machinery run more smoothly.”
“Hmm,” Serena responded, not knowing what else to say. Like most hyperintellectuals, Ambrose came across as a bit of a kook. He seemed a decent enough guy, though. Hadn’t once sent his gaze plumbing her cleavage, not even when he thought she wasn’t looking.
“You might say I’m exploring the interzone where poetry meets physiology,” Ambrose continued to chew her ear. “Of course, my colleagues”—he dabbed air quotes around the word—“dismiss my work as New Age nonsense. They scoff at my assertion that words are the ultimate key to unlocking the doors of perception.”
“Well,” Serena had to admit, “it does kinda sound like you’re trying to get people stoned on vocabulary.” An old joke popped into her head: Your mama is so stupid, she sent you to rehab when she heard you’d gotten Hooked on Phonics.
Ambrose wagged his index finger in gentle disagreement. “Not exactly. A drug like marijuana blunts cognition. What I’m admittedly pushing is a healthier, more stimulating sense of euphoria. A natural verbal dose of bliss, if you will. Let me be clear, though: I’m not talking about any of those silly words that bring out the giggling kid in all of us. Words like ‘gobbledygook’ or ‘chitchat.’ ‘Nincompoop.’”
Apropos of something, maybe, Lady GaGa’s latest hit presently blared through the Port of Call’s speaker system.
“The rhyme or rhythm of the syllables isn’t the reason the words I’m talking about sound pleasing. Short words work just as well. ‘Spritz.’ ‘Drawl.’ ‘Thatch’”—here Ambrose pointed to the bar’s shaggy canopy. Then he waved an open palm, presumably indicating the song playing: “‘ditty.’ ‘Yogi.’”
Serena grinned. “Cute little old guy who does all those commercials.”
“Actually, I was thinking of any guy who practices yoga. But you bring up another important point: the euphonic effect has nothing to do with denotation. A person can have only a vague sense of what a word really means and still relish its sound: ‘verisimilitude’; ‘boondoggle.’ Or a word can be indisputably negative in its definition—‘misogyny,’ for example—and yet make for a positive pronunciation. As long as the speaker is willing to let go and just listen. Sadly, though, most people struggle to do just that. Which is also the reason why I avoid employing proper nouns in my study—I don’t want to increase the chance of a personal association skewing the subject’s reaction. A shame, really, because imagine all the wonderful names that could be invoked. ‘Palahniuk.’ ‘Dunedin.’ ‘Rastafarianism.’”
Ambrose paused at last to take a sip from his coke, which Serena started to suspect was hardly Bacard
i-free.
His whistle wetted, Ambrose resumed: “Fortunately, the English language, great linguistic melting pot that it is, gives me plenty of material to choose from. So many euphonic words from foreign languages have worked their way in. From Spanish, we get offerings like ‘aficionado’ and ‘guacamole.’ French gives us ‘dossier,’ ‘abattoir.’ Greek: ‘hermaphrodite,’ ‘hyperbole.’ Not to mention all those terrific items of Native American origin, like ‘wampum,’ and ‘sequoia.’ But really the influx is from the whole world over.” He fired off a crackling string to prove the point: paparazzi; origami; aardvark; babka; yeshiva; fez; doppelganger.
“Wow. So what do you, like, spend all your time studying the dictionary?” Serena kidded him.
Ambrose shrugged his shoulders, curled the left side of his mouth into a smirk. “A good scientist delves into his research,” he said. “Speaking of which—care to try a little exercise?”
Serena sipped her drink. “Um, no, I—”
“Oh, c’mon. I can tell you still need convincing about my theory.”
“What is it you want me to do?” she asked, wary that his next words would be “look deep into my eyes.” Was this guy making a strange play for her, hoping to geekspeak his way into her panties? Up to this point he’d shown no more interest in her than he had in Leandro. His passions seemed limited to the work he discussed.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2013 Page 12
