Strange Eons (18 page)

“I wish it was that easy,” Mike said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mike rose, moved to the end table, extending his hand, and the recording service inside the drawer clicked off. “Dr. Lowenquist will be stopping by soon to check on how you’re doing. See if you can sleep now until he gets here.”

“Aren’t you going to answer my question?”

“As soon as Lowenquist says you’re ready to be up and around, we’ll set up a meeting.”

“Meeting?”

“With my people. That’s why they wanted you here in Washington—they have questions too.”

“But it’s answers I’m interested in.”

“So are we.” Mike nodded. “The problem is, there may not be any answers.”

The next morning Dr. Lowenquist gave the word and Kay got out of bed, pleasantly surprised at how well she felt. She was even more surprised to discover that her clothing and personal effects had arrived, neatly packed, awaiting her needs.

Any irritation at the invasion of her privacy was soon offset by the pleasure of selecting a fresh outfit and making herself presentable for the coming meeting. Mike Miller had notified her to be ready by seven that evening; he arrived promptly after she finished the meal brought in by one of the security men an hour earlier.

Strange how quickly she’d become accustomed to their presence and to living under such measures. It was only thanks to such measures that she was living at all.

Kay was suddenly aware that she’d never fully expressed her gratitude to Mike; she wanted to do so now, but sensed he was in no mood to listen. After their initial exchange of greetings he led her downstairs to his car and immediately switched on the radio, as though deliberately creating a barrier of sound between them. Something was troubling him, no doubt about that, but whatever it might be he seemed determined to keep it to himself.

Rain pelted the windshield as they drove out of the city, and Mike devoted his full attention to the evening traffic inching along the slick-surfaced expressway. Settling back in her seat in seeming surrender to the soft sounds issuing from the speaker, Kay stole a sidelong glance at her companion.

Questions and answers.
That had been the substance of their previous conversation together. But wasn’t it the substance of all conversation—the substance, really, of all relationships? Life itself was merely a brief period of speculation between the two great unanswerable questions; the mysteries of birth and death.

Nor was conversation itself a satisfactory medium of communication. Take Mike, for example: like most people he had not one, but several, mutually distinct modes of speech. At times he used the vernacular, much as she did herself. But he was capable of employing a totally different vocabulary when discussing Lovecraft’s work and Nye’s involvement with it.

Nye had the same verbal versatility, ranging from street talk to evangelical oratory or the scholarly terminology of Lovecraft himself.

How differently people spoke in plays or films! There a character was identified by the uniform consistency of his conversational style. But in reality one’s language, like one’s thoughts—like one’s actual personality pattern—was infinitely more complex.

Words offered only a partial clue, and were equally useful as a cover-up. Reverend Nye was a perfect example, with his role-playing; she had no idea what motivated the man, how much of what he said was true, how much of it he really believed in himself. For that matter, the same applied to Mike. Hadn’t he deceived her when they met? And later, pretending to be frank, he’d withheld most of what he knew about the danger.

But words aside, one thing seemed certain. The danger existed. And the question remained. Just what
was
that danger?

In Kay’s preoccupation she’d neglected to notice where they were going. Glancing up, she was surprised to see that they’d left the expressway and moved presently along a rainswept country road. Looming in the headlights before them was a wire-fenced area behind which she caught a glimpse of a one-story factory building. Now the car halted at a gate and Mike dimmed his lights in signal to the security guard who emerged from a cubicle to admit them. As the lights came up again they beamed across a wooden signboard lettered
Pinckard Salon Furniture.

The car rolled up the driveway beyond to halt directly before the building entrance. Mike left the car and Kay joined him as he crossed to the door and pressed a night buzzer. It swung open—activated, she realized, by electronic control—and he nodded at her to enter, taking her arm.

Again the thought of danger crossed her mind, but Mike’s grip was firm. She stared ahead into bright light, steeling herself against anticipation of sudden shock.

To Kay’s surprise she found herself in an actual furniture factory. There was no mistaking the nature of the lathes and machinery. Although the assembly-line was deserted, the smell of fresh sawdust attested to its recent operations, and behind a glass-walled section at her left she could see the cluttered confines of the upholstering department. Office cubicles lined the right wall, but Mike led her past them and down the aisle to a freight elevator housed in the rear wall.

“Aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?” she murmured, as they stepped onto the platform.

“Down,” he said.

The door clanged and they descended. Once more the question came—what
was
the danger?

Five levels below she found the answer.

The conference room was large, well-lit, and amply supplied with communications equipment. Kay noted the screen on the right wall for motion picture or slide projection, a screen on the left for closed-circuit television viewing. At the far end hung a huge map of the world; beneath it a recording console in which a tape unit spooled silently.

The long plastic-topped conference table in the center of the open floorspace had individual microphones set before each of the twenty seats bordering its circumference. Eighteen of these seats were already occupied save for two near the head; when Kay and Mike took their places the last vacancies were filled.

The steady drone of conversation was not interrupted by their arrival, nor did they seem to be the object of any special scrutiny. No introductions were offered or exchanged, and Kay could only glance curiously at her companions.

The inspection added to her confusion. She found no consistency in the appearance of those present—they ranged from men of Mike’s age to the very elderly, and there were two other women here, both gray-haired and rather dowdily dressed. No one’s garments offered any clues; if some of the men were scientists they weren’t the pipe-smoking, white-smocked types familiar to every viewer of monster movies. Several of them had the rigid posture and stern expressions associated with high-ranking military personnel, but they wore no identifying uniforms. And at least three of the younger men were as hirsute as any of Reverend Nye’s followers; their jackets and jeans seemed as nondescript as the drab business suits of the others.

Now she turned to question Mike, preparing to raise her voice above the buzz of conversation around the table. But suddenly the sound subsided to an anticipatory hush, broken only by a few nervous coughs.

A tall, bald-headed man, seated at the far end of the table beneath the wall map, now rose, rapping for attention. Any uncertainty as to his ranking position here was dispelled by the presence of an imposing array of file folders and bound documents heaped on the tabletop before him, and his words affirmed his authority.

“Most of you don’t know one another,” he said. “And quite a few of you don’t know me. But I’m not going to waste time on introductions.

“What’s important is that I know you—from your reports, transcripts, taped conversations, depositions and dossiers.” He gestured at the folders and documents stacked before him. “This is only a fraction, a small part of what we’ve processed over the past two years. The amount of material we discarded—the false leads, unsubstantiated testimony, hoaxes, crackpot ravings and outright nonsense—would probably fill this room, even on microfilm. But what remains has been studied, researched, computerized, subjected to every test of authenticity. And verified.

“That’s why you’re here. Because each and every one of you has contributed validated data to this investigation—an investigation many of you didn’t even know existed.”

The tall man’s eyes moved from face to face around the table as he spoke. “Some of you have academic backgrounds in a wide variety of disciplines—literature, anthropology, archeology, astrophysics, geology, advanced parapsychology. Each of you has done individual research, which has been brought to the attention of this agency. Because of the nature of that research, a number of you were called in, questioned, and asked to proceed with further study along the same lines. At the same time you agreed to refrain from airing or publishing your findings, to act in the utmost secrecy.”

There were involuntary nods and murmurs from a number of the listeners around the table as the tall man paused, then continued.

“Each of you who cooperated felt that your work was unorthodox, open to question by the so-called scientific establishment and, above all, unique in its field.

“And so it was. But what you didn’t know is that your companions here this evening—other scholars and researchers, working in entirely different and seemingly unrelated areas—were engaged on similar undertakings. And that their theories, their experiments, their experiences, all had a bearing on the same subject.”

More murmurs, this time indicating surprise, interrupted the speaker. He gestured for silence.

“One more thing your individual efforts had in common—the belief that you had, each in your own research, stumbled upon something not only new and unprecedented but also dangerous. In a word, a possible threat to national security.

“You were correct.”

The murmur rose again and the tall man rapped for attention.

“This is not an opinionated value judgment, a hastily determined conclusion. Your data, as it came to us and was fed through the computer, formed a growing pattern. But it was not a complete or even a recognizable picture. What we had, in effect, were a number of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that seemed to fit together. Even so, there were gaps, blanks, missing portions.

“That’s when the operation was upgraded, expanded to bring in military aid and the services of our own security personnel. What they found were the linkages—linkages in fields far beyond the scope of your own special attention. Linkages dealing with such seemingly disparate matters as international terrorist activities, political assassination, geophysical irregularity and upheavals, epidemics of psychosis, and the rise of religious cult movements such as those described on the taped conversation between a young woman and one of our agents, which was played for you here earlier this evening.”

Kay felt herself reddening as she realized the reference, but Mike’s hand on her arm offered reassurance.

“Two years of teamwork, two years of group effort, two years of fighting political and bureaucratic interference—but at last the pieces have come together and we’ve got a picture. A picture so disturbing, but so graphic and unmistakable, that there is no further doubt or dissent from official sources. They are fully convinced, as are we, that what has been shown them is the truth. A truth that must be faced without further delay.

“As a result you’ve been brought here as members of a special task force, part of an all-out operation now officially designated as Project Arkham.”

Arkham?
Kay tensed at the sound of the word. Wasn’t that—

“A stupid label.” The tall man shrugged. “Then again, perhaps not. Because it symbolizes the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, whose name and writings are familiar to you all.”

Again the speaker paused and again there was a reaction of surprise from his audience; a reaction shared by Kay. Was it true—did everyone here know about Lovecraft? And if so, how and why?

“From the very beginning, some of you who were already familiar with his fiction noted certain parallels with the phenomena you brought to our attention. This was our first inkling that all of the data submitted seemed to be part of a larger pattern. As we proceeded, additional reports were offered by people who knew nothing of Lovecraft. It became our policy to see that his work was made known to them—because what they offered as fact corresponded to what he had written as fiction.”

Kay glanced at Mike. He nodded, expressionless, as the speaker continued.

“Thus you’re all aware that Arkham is the name of the New England town serving as the background for many of Lovecraft’s stories. Like other place-names in his work—Dunwich, Kingsport, Innsmouth, Miskatonic University—it has no existence save in his imagination.

“The same holds true for the book of sorcery and black magic mentioned in his tales, the
Necronomicon.
Lovecraft himself denied its existence. But we cannot rule out the possibility that it did exist at one time—perhaps under another name, which Lovecraft concealed for obvious reasons. Of one thing we’re quite certain: he wasn’t writing fantasy, even though it appeared so at the time.

“Remarkable progress has been made in the physical sciences during the past half-century. Some of the people responsible for the most recent advances and discoveries are seated here at this table. Let me cite a few examples, without mentioning names.

“In his short novel,
At the Mountains of Madness,
Lovecraft describes an Antarctic expedition, which stumbles on the ruins of an ancient city in an unexplored mountain area—a city once seemingly inhabited by alien creatures who came from the stars.

“When he wrote this tale, Antarctic exploration had scarcely begun, and there was no reason to believe any advanced life-form had ever flourished in this frozen wasteland. Since then we’ve learned a great deal more about continental drift—massive disturbances that in remote times caused actual polar shifts; glacial epochs involving tremendous changes in climate; periods lasting millions of years, during which Antarctica was a tropical region. It is now accepted that life may have indeed existed here in prehistoric times, and in forms completely alien to our own. More recent surveys reveal the possibility of warmer regions still to be found behind mountain barriers, perhaps even under the polar ice cap itself.