The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) (24 page)

As the
Aurelius
turned her prow towards the vast circular entrance, Sophia asked, ‘What is non-quotidian space?’

‘A higher dimension: one of the ætherial planes which exist alongside the physical world with which you are familiar,’ came the reply, ‘and in which the speed of light cannot be exceeded. But inside the Pneuma, the speed of light is meaningless – so meaningless, in fact, that it makes no sense even to say that it can be surpassed: it simply does not exist.’

‘A realm in which velocity has no meaning,’ marvelled Blackwood. ‘Why, it’s utterly fantastic!’

Oberon smiled. ‘In centuries to come, humanity will learn how to navigate such hypertubes with vessels of their own, and the era of ultimate exploration will begin.’

‘Centuries is right,’ observed Castaigne with a wry smile, ‘for I can’t even begin to conceive of the physics required to manipulate space and time in this fashion. How do you do it, Your Majesty?’

Oberon glanced at him, and his smile grew broader as he replied, ‘If you cannot begin to conceive of the physics involved, what would be the point in my telling you?’

As the
Aurelius
passed across the threshold and into the mouth of the shaft, the humans looked down and saw that the Pneuma was actually a liquid – or something that behaved as if it were a liquid – which roiled and fizzed, turning back chaotically upon itself like immensely powerful waves vainly assaulting an invisible and impregnable circlet of rock.

Once inside the hypertube, the great vessel descended until its immense keel cleaved the churning cylindrical ocean, and then it settled upon it like a ship of Earth upon an ocean of Earth. Behind the towering aftcastle, the colossal paddle-wheel, fully a quarter of a mile in diameter, began to turn, raising soft mountains of foaming liquid as it splashed into the Pneuma.

The vessel surged forward, its prow slicing through the ocean which roiled and bubbled and undulated around it.

‘What’s this stuff made of?’ asked Blackwood, as he gazed out and up at the monochromatic grey substance arcing over their heads.

‘I’m not certain that I could explain it to you in a way that would make any sense,’ Oberon replied.

‘I’d consider it a great favour if you tried nevertheless.’

Oberon smiled and shrugged, and his great dragonfly wings fluttered briefly behind him. ‘Very well. It is the membranous essence of the dividing veil between the material and ætherial planes, warped and liquefied to allow passage through an additional dimension intersecting both.’

‘I see,’ said Blackwood with all the authority he could muster, which in truth wasn’t very much.

Oberon continued, ‘It may help you to think of the Pneuma as a transit system, similar to your own London Underground. If you wish to travel from one part of the metropolis to another, you descend into the ground and step aboard a train which moves rapidly through the earth, taking no account of the topography of the surface – the buildings, streets and so on – since they occupy another layer of space which the Underground train never encounters. It is the same with the Pneuma hypertubes, which are unaffected by the topography of normal space and time.’

‘Actually,’ said Blackwood, ‘that
does
help rather.’

‘I am glad to oblige, Thomas,’ said the Faerie King.

‘How long will it take us to reach the Hyades, Oberon?’ asked Sophia.

‘No more than a couple of hours,’ he replied.

‘Great God!’ Castaigne exclaimed. ‘We must be travelling at thousands of times the speed of light!’

‘In relation to normal space, we are travelling more than half a million times faster than a beam of light moves,’ Oberon said. ‘Although, as I have already mentioned, it means little to speak in such terms when describing movement within the Pneuma.’

Blackwood turned to his human companions. ‘In any event, we should take this time to unpack and prepare our equipment for use. Oberon, may we be shown to our quarters?’

Oberon accompanied his guests to the adjoining cabins which he had ordered to be prepared for them – although to call them ‘cabins’ was to do them a grievous disservice, for they were more like vast chambers in some exotic palace than any ship’s cabin the human passengers had ever occupied. Each room, while furnished in a style which Blackwood and Sophia instantly recognised from its elegant Art Nouveau lines as belonging to the Realm of Faerie, was decorated with artefacts which clearly had no connection whatsoever with Earth, and with paintings depicting scenes of such alienness that their hearts trembled with astonishment and wonder.

‘Are these some of the worlds you have visited?’ asked Sophia, as she and Castaigne stood in Blackwood’s cabin examining some of the paintings, which were executed with such delicacy and detail that they had to stand within an inch from them to establish that they were indeed paintings rather than photographs.

‘They are,’ replied Oberon.

‘I have visited many worlds in non-corporeal form,’ said Castaigne, ‘but never have I seen anything remotely like this.’

‘They are very far from Earth,’ said the Faerie King. He indicated one painting, which showed a forest of vast towers, clearly miles high, strung with glittering metallic tubes like hanging vines, their surfaces glowing with iridescent greens and blues and purples and flecked with thousands of lights.

‘These are the spire-cacti of Lambda Velorum,’ Oberon explained, ‘which orbits a star near the edge of the Aquila Rift.’

‘It looks almost like a city,’ observed Sophia.

‘That is precisely what it is.’

‘What are the inhabitants like?’

‘They are gentle and noble.’

‘What do they look like?’

Oberon gave a soft chuckle. ‘Dear Sophia, were I even to describe them to you, you would be haunted by nightmares for the rest of your life.’

Sophia gave a small start. ‘Are they so very different from us?’

‘
Very
different.’ He turned to Castaigne. ‘And you, Doctor, do not know how lucky you have been so far, in encountering worlds and beings whose aspect your mind is capable of withstanding.’

Simon Castaigne paled a little at this, but said nothing.

Oberon indicated another painting, showing a vast cloudscape containing thousands of objects which resembled mustard-coloured puffballs mottled with irregular patches of glowing magenta. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are the singing fungi of Eibon Prime, which orbits a sun on the far side of the Orion-Perseus Discontinuity.’

‘The clouds,’ said Sophia. ‘Why are they so flat along their tops? It looks like someone has taken a huge knife and sliced away their upper reaches.’

‘They are flattened by their collision with the Luminiferous Æther beyond Eibon Prime’s atmosphere. The singing fungi are highly intelligent, as are the clouds through which they move. Long ago, we established beyond any reasonable doubt that the clouds and the fungi communicate with each other – although we have tried in vain to interpret their cacophonous, radiation-fuelled dialogue. We have never been able to penetrate the meaning of the eternal byplay of information. Some have suggested that they are engaged upon a never-ending discussion on the ultimate nature of the Æther, or perhaps are sharing secrets too strange to be comprehended by any minds but theirs. But that is mere speculation: the true meaning of the conversations between the clouds and the fungi remain for them alone, and probably always will.’

Blackwood listened with interest to all this while he unfastened the sturdy clasps on their suitcases, took out the contents and laid them upon the vast bed at the centre of the cabin.

Oberon came over to join him, followed by Sophia and Castaigne. ‘Ah, your survival equipment,’ said the Faerie King. ‘Fascinating… and rather attractive, I must say.’

‘Well,’ mused Blackwood, ‘I wouldn’t wear it to the opera, but I suppose it does have a certain aesthetic appeal… if you like that sort of thing.’

Fortunately, the scientists at Station X in Bletchley Park had been able to accommodate Blackwood’s request in pretty short order. They had been experimenting for some time with various means of keeping the human body alive and functioning while on excursions away from the protective atmosphere of Earth – specifically the first lunar zeppelin flight, which was scheduled to depart the following year – and had several working environmental protection suits of various sizes to hand.

The suits were wonders of technological innovation: each was composed of a padded leather overall covered with a thick outer layer of black Martian rubber, which completely sealed it and maintained the body heat of the wearer while in cold environments. Should the ambient temperature rise, a set of frond-like heat exchangers could be extended from the shoulders to maintain a comfortable temperature within the suit. Secured to the back by a combination of brass studs and leather straps was the breathing apparatus, which operated by means of a miniaturised version of the great Vansittart-Siddeley Ultra-compressors which supplied propulsive power to the new atmospheric system being installed on the London Underground.

The apparatus was connected by a reinforced rubber pipe to the suit’s combined helmet and chest-mounted control unit, which was dominated by a large, circular panel of polished brass containing several dials, pressure gauges and switches whose function was to monitor and regulate the flow of oxygen through the suit. The helmet was a tall bubble of specially strengthened glass (tall enough to accommodate a top hat if necessary, according to the suit’s designer), on either side of which was mounted a powerful electric light.

When he had first set eyes on the contrivance, Blackwood had been reminded of a deep-sea diver’s suit – although this was intended for use in the ocean of space, an ocean far deeper and more perilous than any on Earth…

Blackwood ran a check on the electrical systems of each suit to make quite certain that it was in proper working order. As he did so, he checked with Sophia and Castaigne that they recalled the all-too-brief lecture they had received at Station X on the suits’ operation. When he was satisfied that they had absorbed the salient points, he switched off the systems of each suit, and turned to Oberon.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘all that remains is for us to complete our journey to Carcosa.’

A pinpoint of blue-grey light appeared in the void above the dying planet. Against the backdrop of infinite, star-speckled night, the point rapidly increased in size until it was tens of miles in diameter. Had anyone on Carcosa been looking in that particular direction at that particular moment, it would have seemed to them that an infinitely deep shaft had appeared out of nowhere; a shaft whose single circular wall was composed of glistening grey liquid.

But no one in Carcosa’s last cities was looking up, for the sky held little interest for them: their attention was focussed solely on the slowly-churning waters of the great lake around which Alar, Hastur and Yhtill stood. The King in Yellow, that ravenous, tattered blight from the nethermost regions of space and time, was preparing to emerge from the lightless depths beneath Hali’s sweeping cloud waves. The last remnants of Carcosa’s once-teeming population knew it – or believed it – for what other reason could there be for the unsettling of Hali’s ancient waters?

Their final doom was upon them; the King in Yellow was about to emerge and absorb the silent vestiges of a once-great civilisation: a piece of bread mopping up the last scraps of a meal that had lasted for millennia.

And so the last inhabitants of Carcosa stayed within their homes and did not look out at the moons that had gone insane, or the stars that had turned to black bruises in the sky… or the vast celestial ship whose prow cleaved the thrashing waves of the Pneuma hypertube as it soared out into open space…

‘This is incredible,’ said Simon Castaigne as he gazed down at the planet’s surface from the main deck of the
Aurelius
. ‘I had never thought to look upon the surface of another world with my physical eyes.’

Oberon looked at his human companions, who were now sealed tightly within their environmental protection suits, and gave the occultist a sad smile. ‘Would that it were a happier world you are looking upon, Dr Castaigne,’ he said.

‘Indeed,’ Castaigne replied in a quiet voice, as he continued to watch the blasted grey-black landscape roll past beneath the vessel’s great keel. Imagining what this world might have been like before the blasphemous hunger had descended upon it from the stars, he supposed that there must once have been fields and forests, snow-frosted mountains and glittering blue seas, and great cities teeming with people following the complex trajectories of their lives.

Now, though, there was nothing but twisted, ash-coloured rock and scarred, empty plains sweeping silently to each horizon, a place from which light, life, even the laws of physics had been banished. He imagined this happening to Earth and shuddered.

Oberon turned away from the melancholy scene and addressed the platoon of fifty faerie warriors assembled on the deck behind them. Each was dressed in glittering green armour and carried the same type of weapon which Blackwood and Sophia had seen used to such great effect during the affair of the Martian Ambassador a few weeks previously. The faerie carbines looked like long, slender tree branches which ended in many-petalled blooms rippling with strange colours. Their delicate appearance, however, concealed a vast and terrible power, for they were capable of disgorging beams of energy which nothing in the material world could withstand.

Spreading his iridescent dragonfly wings, Oberon said in a loud and powerful voice, ‘Today, we go into battle against that which does not belong in the sane universe, against a thing of madness and insatiable hunger which has destroyed countless worlds and threatens to destroy countless more, beginning with our own beloved Earth.

‘Beneath us lies the Lake of Hali, which the King in Yellow has made his home. Like a malignant disease, he seethes and writhes within the tortured walls of a once-proud castle that now lies in strange ruin on the lakebed. It is this castle which we must enter, this citadel of madness and chaos which we must conquer, to thwart the beast within.

‘It will be a great trial of our strength and courage, for the Planetary Angels of Carcosa have told me of the Servitor of the King in Yellow which inhabits those twisted walls, and which will defend its master to the last.

‘Our strategy will be as follows: we shall penetrate the castle first and clear the way for our human friends, who will then destroy the Anti-Prism while the King in Yellow is in transit between this world and Earth. While we are doing battle, Queen Titania, my beloved wife, will lead the assault upon the Void Chamber beneath London and destroy the companion Anti-Prism there. With his entry and exit points destroyed, the King in Yellow will be trapped forever outside the realm of ordered space and time. Am I understood?’

‘Yes, my King!’ cried the faerie warriors in unison.

‘Our human friends well understand the reason we must enter the Castle of Demhe first, and so should you. The Planetary Angels of Carcosa have told me much of the Servitor which dwells there with its master: a terrible cousin of the creature which haunts the train tunnels beneath London. We will have to destroy it before our friends enter the castle, lest they see it and suffer the same fate as poor Alfie Morgan. Then they will be able to perform their part and destroy the Carcosa Anti-Prism, while Queen Titania directs the attack by Gerhard de Chardin and his Templar Knights on the Anti-Prism installed within the Void Chamber. Thus will humans be the ones to rid the Earth of its approaching doom. Thus will our ancient Covenant with the universe be preserved!’

Oberon gave a signal to the helmsman standing upon the aftcastle, and immediately the deck inclined as the
Aurelius
began to descend towards the churning cloud waves of the Lake of Hali.

The waves parted before the prow of the faerie ship, and with barely a jolt, Oberon’s great vessel cleaved the waters of the lake and plunged beneath the surface. Blackwood surmised that the protective shield was still in place, for he had no doubt that he and his companions would otherwise have been swept instantly from the main deck as the ship submerged.

The world was transformed into a green-tinged darkness that pressed horribly all around them, as if it were a living thing, intent on absorbing and destroying this new interloper. The foul murk was, however, short-lived, for at numerous points upon the deck and the vast walls of the forecastle and aftcastle, faerie lanterns were lit, and their illumination, at once powerful and gentle, its hue like luminous mother-of-pearl, banished the gloom in the ship’s immediate vicinity.

Carried by radio waves, Castaigne’s voice crackled in Blackwood’s and Sophia’s helmets. ‘Can’t say that’s much of an improvement.’

‘Not really,’ Blackwood replied, gazing out at the featureless green void surrounding them. ‘Do you have any idea how deep the lake is?’

Castaigne shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’

‘I would estimate it to be about a thousand feet,’ said Sophia. There was a distinct tone of displeasure in her voice, and Blackwood quickly understood the reason.

‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said. ‘I should have asked you first, since you are the only one among us who has actually plumbed these depths.’

‘That’s quite all right, Thomas,’ she replied, somewhat mollified.

For several minutes they descended through the livid green of the lake, expecting at any moment to be confronted by some slimy denizen. Their descent, however, continued unchallenged.

‘This is too easy,’ muttered Blackwood.

Castaigne glanced at him. ‘How so?’

‘I can’t imagine that the King in Yellow is unaware of our presence, and yet he allows us to approach. Why?’

‘I’ll wager it’s because he’s so cocksure of himself that he thinks he’ll be able to dispatch us once we enter his castle.’

‘I suspect Dr Castaigne may be right,’ said Oberon as he leaned over the balustrade and looked down into the dark depths. ‘On the other hand, it may be that he is keeping his minions close to him, their numbers concentrated, so that they can protect him as he prepares to travel to Earth.’ After a short pause, he continued, ‘In any event, we shall soon find out, for we are nearly upon the castle. Look…’

The others looked down in the direction he was pointing.

Sophia shuddered and closed her eyes, while both Blackwood and Castaigne took an involuntary step back.

‘Great God!’ said Castaigne. ‘Are we really to go in there?’