Future Lovecraft (7 page)

Mesfin’s voice had the kind of calm that you only get by doing a real good job of pretending to be calm when you’re not. “What do you think, Moremi? Do you think there are instructions for this?”

I didn’t want him to see my lip trembling. Like a little kid. “You’re the psychiatrist. Make something up.”

“I hear the voices, too, Moremi. Maybe they’re the stars. Maybe they’re a projection of my unconscious mind. My temporal lobes constructing a presence to block out the emptiness that’s really out there. How can I know? And if I don’t know, how can I give advice? Won’t I simply be repeating what the stars tell me? How can I say anything?”

“People are writing on the walls in blood. How can you
not
say anything?”

“I can’t say anything.” I expected him to show some emotion, to start waving his hands or trembling. He just sat there. Repeated it over and over. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

I stormed out. I cried in my cabin for a minute or two.

But so what? He showed me what not to be. I refuse to sit there, expressionless, while things fall apart. Even if my memory’s going and the stars are loud in my ears, I have to do something so we survive until Barnard’s Star. I have to, so I can.

Harmony I: Day 645

I am going to have a talk with Captain Hao.

It will be delicate. I can’t do it when someone else could be watching. And her door isn’t open, anymore. When I come by, she waves pages of Mandarin paperwork in my face. I have to wait for the right moment.

It’s awful, waiting. It drove me to distraction all day. Finally, I gave up and went to Henri.

He smirked the way he always smirked. “Ah, yes, love. I’ll give you something else to think of.” He pulled me close without waiting to see if I liked the idea or not. Half of me hated him for it and half of me wanted to kiss him until speech was not an option. I went with the kissing. Henri’s not all bad. His jaw is a good shape. His skin tastes salty, alive.

I’d kissed halfway down his neck before I realised I wasn’t thinking of those things. And, this time, not about Captain Hao, either. I was thinking of the pulse in his throat. Strong, heady, rhythmic, saltier than skin. The red, the life, hiding inside him. I wanted to touch that. To taste it.

I pulled back abruptly. Henri raised an eyebrow, not moving. He’s learned not to push.

You are ours,
said the stars, suddenly loud in my ears.
We can use you.

I put my hands over my ears. Henri tilted his head. “Moremi, what...?”

I shoved him away and ran back to my room.

I’m not crazy. Captain Hao’s the crazy one. I’ve always had these little uncomfortable moments. One time, I had a girlfriend back in Johannesburg who—

I don’t remember her name. I don’t remember what she did.

I remember it was awkward, though, and I came home and told Onalenna about it. Once told, it was funny. We laughed and laughed, and Onalenna said—

What did she say?

I can’t picture my sister’s face, anymore. I don’t know what she said. I don’t remember our mother’s name, only the stick of her wrist as she hugged me goodbye. I remember Onalenna’s last words to me:
Don’t look back, Moremi. I’ll miss you, but....

But what?

I think I remember her voice. I think I remember it cracking. But I don’t remember my sister.

Harmony I: Day 646

I don’t remember what I said when I got Captain Hao alone. Just the feeling of blood pounding in my ears. I felt sick, but I had to say it, or be like Mesfin forever.

She stared at me. Not a caught-in-the-act stare. Not a repentant stare. She stared like she’d never believed an African cleaning lady could be so stupid.

“Dr. Maele.” Her voice was ice. “Can’t you
read?
”

I’d pictured her screaming, attacking me in a blood-writing homicidal haze. This was worse.

“Not Mandarin,” I said helplessly, my eyes frozen to hers. “Not very much of it. I can speak Mandarin and read English and, for a non-Chinese citizen, that was enough for—”

“I know the personnel requirements of my own ship, Moremi. Fine. Since you’re so concerned, let me educate you. The words I’ve been writing on the walls? They say,
Keep out.
”

I stared.

Captain Hao clasped her gloved hands and spoke the way you’d talk to a brain-damaged 12-year-old. “The stars speak to me most of all, as is fitting. They wish to use me, and my ship, for their own ends. I will not let them. They understand blood more than anything else. So, I use blood to let them know they are unwelcome. Haven’t you noticed that, when I do this, the voices lessen, if only for a while? Or does the University of Johannesburg give doctorates to those who don’t understand covariation?”

I was frozen down to my belly. She was right, and I hadn’t noticed.

We will use you,
said the stars.
We will use her. Soon, you will see.

“Captain?” I said. “What do the stars say to you?”

She pointed. “Out.”

Call me a coward, but I left.

Harmony I: Day 647

I stewed all evening and all morning, all through my cleaning time. I couldn’t calm down. When the
Harmony I
was spotless, I collapsed into Henri’s bed.

He didn’t seem surprised. “Your little panic attack is over, then?” I was past caring. With him, at least, I could stop thinking for a minute.

The voices slithered into my ears. I kissed him and kissed him. He pinned me against the cabin wall. His skin grew hot with surface blood. The voices sang. I didn’t care.

Kisses.
Blood.
The stars. Captain Hao.
Blood.
I was past thinking. I still saw them.

Henri was already inside me when the voices coalesced into words. Too loud to ignore, not even there and then. So loud they drowned out Henri’s moans.

He is ours. His blood, his life, they are ours. You will give him to us.

For a split second, I could see it: His limbs splayed, his eyes glassy, red everywhere. The stars laughing.

My stomach turned to ice. The vision, and the voices, went away. He was alive and moving, kissing me, cursing in French. Should I have told him to stop? Should I have pushed him off of me?

He took a few minutes of afterglow before he realised I still wasn’t moving. “Love? Are you all right?”

I managed to make my mouth work. “I think so.”

“Come here.”

I sat on the cot beside him and he wrapped me in his arms. They were not comforting.

“It’s the voices,
oui?
”

“
Ee,
” I agreed. He knew as many words of Tswana, by now, as I did of French.

“Poor thing. They speak to me, too, you know.”

It was the sort of inane thing Henri would say. Did he think there was anyone who didn’t hear them? But, out of some perverse impulse, I asked, “What do they say?”

“They say that I am not worthy of them. That I must die and my blood will consecrate the ship.” His fingers tightened in my hair. “But it is foolishness. I have never been suicidal, even out here, and I find them easy to ignore. If they want me to kill myself, they will have to try harder, hmm? So, what do they tell you?”

I was silent.

“Poor little Moremi. Don’t think of the stars. Think of home. Old lovers, drinking companions, colleagues, that sister you love so much. Remember we are doing this for them.”

I thought of them. Or I tried to.

I could not think of anything. At first, I thought I was still paralysed from the vision. But I could think of Henri, Captain Hao, Mesfin, Suardana, all the rest of them.

I could not think of my sister. Nor my parents. Nor anyone on Earth I had ever known. I could not remember my alma mater, my hometown, my religion—if I had one. I could not remember veldts or rivers or cities. And I had not even noticed them go.

“Did I have a sister?”

“Of course you did. You always used to talk about her. Her name was... Oh, let me see...It’s coming to me....”

He trailed off and went very pale. We looked in each other’s eyes for a moment. Then he put a hand to his forehead and began murmuring to himself in French, too low and too fast for me to make anything out.

I was in no shape to comfort him. I made an excuse and went back to my room. I read the scant lines in this notebook, over and over again. ‘Onalenna’—that was her name. But I only know it because it is written here. It does not ring a bell.

I think we are all going to die out here. I hope we will die.

Harmony I: Day ???

How long has it been since I wrote in this notebook? A day? Five years?

It must have been a long time. Everything is in disarray. Wails and screams echo through the metal halls.

I remember nothing. I am not even completely sure that I am Moremi Maele. My only memory—recent? Or old?—is this:

I held a human heart in my hands.

Blood covered my fingers and stained my jumpsuit. I knelt and held the heart up to a woman, speaking words I no longer remember. She was cold and indescribably beautiful.

I remember a split second of revulsion on her face. And then a change, a sort of crumbling. In that moment, as I knelt before her, she
gave in.
She began to laugh. The stars laughed around us. I felt an odd, surging joy. We were theirs, now. Together, we had crossed the point of no return.

That is all I remember. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if it is a real memory or a false vision. I don’t know for sure whose heart it was, though I think I know. Call me cowardly. I can’t bring myself to go look in his cabin. Instead, I sit with this notebook. Waiting, though I can’t say for what.

Is Henri dead?

Is Moremi Maele, in any sense, still alive?

THE COMET CALLED ITHAQUA

By Don Webb

Don Webb
began writing in a class at Texas Tech University in 1983. Since then, he has had fifteen books in English and one book in German in his name. He teaches creative writing on-line at UCLA. His next two books are a nonfiction book, dark esoterica
Uncle Setnakt’s Nightbook
from Runa Raven Press, and a collection of vampire stories,
A Velvet of Vampyres
from Wildside Press.

THE FIRST TIME, it was necessary.

It was centuries ago, during the Belatrin Wars. We were on the scoutship
Fulton
. One of our robots was a Belatrin spy with cunningly faked asimovs. It smashed our hydroponics, our communications, our Dirac drive. Melting it to slag relieved little of our anxiety. Two days without food honed our anxiety to high sharpness. None of us had ever been hungry before. Hunger was an impersonal, historical, statistical thing—so many million in Ethiopia in the 20th century, in Brazil in the 21st, on Mars in the 25th. The personally-new phenomenon of hunger displaced the transpersonally-new phenomenon of civilisation very quickly.

Doc talked about it first. She was probably the bravest of my shipmates. She’d spent hours trying to repair the hydroponics with the few tools the robot hadn’t managed to dump. She had also repaired one Cold Sleep unit.

“One of us could take the Cold Sleep. The rest could kill themselves painlessly,” she told us afterward.

“Or eat each other,” said Vance.

“I’m not getting into the Cold Sleep,” I said. “Any of you could raise the temperature a little and provide several kilos of meat.”

“Several kilos,” said Roxanne, patting my paunch. Captain Oe silenced us with one of his deep-space glares. Captain Oe was always on a distant planet, his quiet voice coming across cold light years. Why didn’t he make with the bread-and-fishes routine? Isn’t that the function of captains?

Killing Vance was easy. He was bending over a circuit tracer, building a simple radio. He thought the folks back home should know that the valiant
Fulton
was lost. I drove a microsolder into the nape of his neck and out through his Adam’s apple.

Captain Oe discovered the body. His mineral calm hid any reaction. I think Doc suggested we cook him. Doc and I did the honours, producing a very serviceable sweet-and-sour Vance.

No one wanted to begin. The Captain ordered us to it. It was difficult to keep the meat down. We had diced the flesh well, so no part would be recognizable. No one mentioned that Vance had obviously been killed. Thus, we became murderers all.

Doc and I had removed Vance’s liver and lungs. She feared they might be poisonous—contaminated by Vance’s addiction to tobacco.

By our fourth meal, I had overcome my nausea. I viewed everyone else as items for future menus. They were too affected by disgust to notice my change. I left the meal still hungry, still empty, and tried to sleep on my bunk.

I kept thinking of the liver and lungs. Doc had refrigerated them, since we lacked means of recycling our wastes. The refrigerator could only hold so much. The
Fulton
stank like a sewer. If I ate the inner organs, I would either die or be sated. Either would end the gnawing pain of my stomach.

I crept to the medical room to remove the meat. I let it thaw on the surgical table. I collected some of Doc’s tools—they might be useful later. I watched the dim light of Aldebaran through the port, wishing the scene would magically change to the grey of hyperspace.

When the liver was fairly well-thawed—juicy on the outside and crunchy ice crystals in the middle—I bit into it. Unfortunately Doc entered the lab at this moment.She viewed the blood streaming down my cheeks with something less than affection. I put the liver down. I pleaded, “Help me.” She moved forward and I turned on a scalpel. Laser scalpels only cut a few centimeters, but this is adequate when the heart is your target.

I quartered her and hauled the bits to the in-system probe. I sealed us off. I activated all the sensors.

I felt no need to refrigerate the corpse and, in fact, enjoyed it more as it began to ripen.

They began pounding on the bulkhead hours later. First, they demanded that I surrender. A day later, they demanded their share of the meat. I watched my telemetry, ate, and slept. I did not dream. Dreaming was the first facet of humanity I lost.

Two days later, as I sliced some of Doc’s hams—I still used instruments in those days—a green light blinked out. I would need to act fast or I would lose out on the kill. Had Oe honorably committed seppuku? Or had his martial training removed Roxanne as Executive Officer? Or had Roxanne, herself, mastered the murderous act?

The
Fulton
smelled very bad. A hint of sesame oil overlaid the stench—Oe preparing a delicate Oriental dish. Moo-Shu Roxanne? I went deep into engineering. I activated one of our dumbest robots and told it to walk into the kitchen. I called Oe up, told him I would surrender to him.

I followed the robot. The kitchen portal dilated and Oe fired. He must have been crazed. No one would use a ranged weapon within a spaceship. Fortunately, the robot’s body absorbed most of the blast and no exterior bulkheads were breached.

The energy weapon triggered internal security. Poor Oe. If he’d only reasoned. Microsolders and scalpels are not weapons. Scores of idiot robots came to restrain him. In the brig, he decided to join his honourable ancestors.

Weeks later, when my meat supply was exhausted, I completed Vance’s radio and put myself in Cold Sleep. Fifty-six years passed in the twinkling of an eye. The rescue team was very, very understanding. There had been cases of survival cannibalism in the past. Of course, I would have to undergo therapy to expunge the terrible guilt I must feel. Then I could join the service, again. Of course, I could live pretty well on 56 years of back pay, as well.

They sent me to Tarsis Hospital on Mars. Within a week, I knew three things: 1. Therapy consisted of producing the “right” answers to an AI’s endless questions—a job even a moral moron could fake. 2. Their pills—which they gave me in great, multicoloured fistfuls—had no effect on me. 3. I couldn’t eat the food they provided. I wasn’t hungry or in need. I’d grown a thick layer of fat on the
Fulton
. I vomited up the first few meals and then I asked if I could take my meals in private. Understandingly, they agreed. I kept the food until it was moldy—then I could at least bear to eat it. But it didn’t satisfy. Something was missing.

As my therapy progressed, I was allowed the freedom of the city. A small congregation followed the teaching of the blessed Zoroaster and placed their dead in a Tower of Silence, to be devoured by genetically engineered buzzards. I visited the Tower by the light of the double moons to cut hunks of flesh from the Zoroastrian dead. I couldn’t eat them there in the thin Martian atmosphere, but carried the slices back in my total environment suit to the domed city. Needless to say, I shot all the pseudo-buzzards. Who needs competition?

The hospital had a huge library. I read endlessly about cannibalism and ghouls. Certain Arabic texts were helpful. I wasn’t alone. There was little biology—no clear information to aid me in my survival. What were my vulnerabilities? What were my strengths? If I wrote a manual for future ghouls—who would publish it?

One legend touched me more than the others. It turned me as I have never been turned before. Certain Amerindians spoke of the Wendigo.

A party of hunters becomes lost in the snow. They find a cave. Eventually, they must kill one another for survival. One of the party loses his disgust at eating long pig. He warns the other survivor(s), “You must go. I am a Wendigo.” They flee in pious terror. The rogue warrior lives on, becoming like a wild beast—long of tooth and claw. Eventually, the tribe destroys this raider with many arrows.

Other legends said that the Wendigo was Ithaqua the Wind Walker, a terrible god of storms and ice. This being could only be bought off with human sacrifice. They would lead the wretches deep into the snowy forest and leave them there to freeze. The remains were found miles away. Fiery, cold eyes could be seen among the trees, the true spirit of deep space—of pure Hunger as a ball of mind-wrenchingly-
cold
fire.
Iä Ithaqua!

There was no attempt to match the legends of Arab ghouls and Canadian cannibals with whatever lived in my soul, but I felt they were connected.

I began to use makeup to cover the dull grey of my complexion. Bright light—a blessedly rare commodity in the domed cities of Mars—discomforted me greatly. I thought I might have a mutated form of pellagra, a disease that causes its victims to desire blood, but decided I suffered from a deeper spiritual change. Unlike most spacefarers, I had no mystical side, no prayer, no meditations—I had an emptiness inside where the Cold Hungry One could live. It ate my soul in the Great Dark and now, it would eat everything. I was happy. I finally had a purpose.

I had no social life, but my warders felt that was because I was a man of the last century—I simply had no one to talk to. Would that my estrangement from humankind were so simple! I began to stalk the streets at night, but I knew this was only a temporary solution. My killings didn’t fit in their computer yet, but as the problem expanded from computer to computer, my research would be discovered.

I visited the Tower of Silence, having noted the death of a Parsi merchant in the weekly data. As I sliced into his corpulent paunch, I knew I was not alone. I looked up.Far away—to the west—I saw two carmine stars where no stars should be. A red haze swirled about them. It was Ithaqua, my soul. I removed my respirator.I could breath the thin Martian air. I thanked my new god as I greedily feasted on the corpse.

An opportunity arose soon afterwards to ship out on a deadliner ship. With my seniority, I got on easily. A “deadliner” is a term invented by the 20th century philosopher Barrington Bayley. It’s a spaceman gone for decades at a time, a victim of time dilation who has become totally removed from human warmth and kindness. When they’re in port, they know everyone they see will be dust before they return. I felt at home among those dead souls. Deadliners go deep into the galaxy, further than I’d ever been. Some of the crew actually had birthdates decades before mine. In a ship of such individualists, I could stalk easily. I signed on as ‘Albert Donner’, a famous miner and cannibal of the 19th century. Even a ghoul can have his little jokes.

A light month past the solar system, I began to let my claws grow. They were semi-retractable. I could pass in human society. Especially in deadliner society—for deadliners never look too closely at their shipmates. They’re always spiraling inwards.

A young-looking computer tech with magnificent red hair would be my first target. I stalked her quietly, waiting for my moment. When the moment came, I ripped her tender, white throat open with my claws. I carefully placed the bleeding body on plastic to avoid telltale bloodstains.

I hadn’t taken the security of a deadliner ship into account. These people often kill each other. The stresses of the long voyage overcome all of their civilised traits. The ship was ready. It snared me in hundreds of tiny robot arms.

They didn’t give me a trial, didn’t ask me anything. They came into normal space and shoved me through the airlock.

I felt all the air sucked from my lungs. I screamed the call in the silence of airless space. Ithaqua came and filled me and changed me.
Oh, my burning feet of freezing fire!
As the ancient wind god, long since banished from the Earth by disbelief, filled me, he changed me into a burning ball of hunger and hate.

I travel through the void at great speeds. I will return to Earth. I will eat you all, every one.