The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) (28 page)

His familiarity with engineering principles told Exeter that the shape of this thing was a hexagonal trapezohedron, but its shape was the only thing remotely understandable about it.

‘The Anti-Prism,’ Exeter whispered.

replied the voice of the King in Yellow.

‘How… how does it work?’

Exeter sensed contemptuous amusement from the thing in his mind.

As the Servitor surged forward with its awful cargo, the voice of the King in Yellow thundered through Charles Exeter’s mind.

Blackwood was pacing back and forth impatiently upon the main deck of the
Aurelius
, periodically checking the waterproof fob watch which was part of his environmental suit’s equipment. Every few minutes, he went to the balustrade, leaned over and gazed into the lightless depths of the castle entrance.

‘What the blazes are they doing down there?’ he said. ‘They must have reached the throne room by now.’

‘It’s a fair bet that they’re encountering resistance,’ replied Castaigne. ‘We must give them time.’

Blackwood sighed and shook his head. ‘Time is not something we have in great supply, Dr Castaigne. If the King in Yellow manages to complete his transit to Earth, it’s all up for the human race!’

‘I understand, my friend,’ said the occultist. ‘But there’s nothing we can do except wait.’

Blackwood nodded and then glanced along the deck to where Sophia was standing alone. He switched his radio communication device to a private channel. ‘I’m worried about her, Castaigne,’ he said. ‘There’s something she’s not telling us.’

‘About what?’

‘Herself – what happened when she encountered the King in Yellow after taking your Taduki drug. Something’s wrong, I’m sure of it.’

‘Do you think her mind might have been… damaged?’

‘No, I don’t think it’s that – not quite; after all, the symptoms of such a derangement would be quite unequivocal. It’s something else… but I’m dashed if I can put my finger on it.’

At that moment, a faerie crewman approached them, and Blackwood switched his radio back to the common channel.

The crewman was carrying something which looked like a large, folded-up sheet of pale green linen, which he handed to Blackwood.

‘What’s this?’ asked the Special Investigator.

‘There has been a change of plan, Mr Blackwood,’ the faerie replied. ‘King Oberon wishes you to bring this to him.’

Blackwood took the sheet, and was surprised to find that it was virtually weightless. ‘Then he and his men have gained the throne room?’

‘They are approaching it as we speak.’

‘Good show!’ Blackwood exclaimed.

‘Are we ready?’ asked Sophia, who had joined them.

‘It looks like it, my dear,’ Blackwood replied. ‘You’re sure you’re able to guide us through the castle?’

‘Believe me, Thomas, every twist and turn is etched in my mind.’

Oberon’s voice suddenly flashed through their minds.

I am both gratified and saddened to hear it, Sophia
.

‘Oberon!’ she said. ‘Are we to join you now?’

Yes. You must come immediately. Descend from the
Aurelius
into the castle. By the time you reach the throne room, we will be there. Thomas, do you have that which I instructed my crewman to give to you?

‘Yes, I have it,’ Blackwood replied. ‘But what is it?’

Something without which our mission will most certainly fail!

Blown by the wind from distant suns, the Wanderer entered the Solar System. Through the vast outer cloud of comets it flew, and then on through the great ring of asteroids beyond the orbit of the tiny ninth planet, which would not be discovered by human astronomers for another thirty-one years.

It detected the presence, far off in the infinite night, of two ice giants, and further on towards the distant yellow sun which shone brightly, as yet unsuspecting the calamity which was about to befall it, the haloed jewel of a beautiful ringed planet.

Conserving its energy, the Wanderer headed for a larger gas giant whose striated surface was marred by a vast storm of rotating red clouds. Complex celestial calculations were conducted instantaneously in the Wanderer’s partly organic, partly mechanical brain, and it swung beneath the vast world, altering its trajectory at precisely the correct moment to catapult it at yet greater speed on a precise path towards the tiny blue mote which drifted serenely through the inner system, which was called by its inhabitants Earth.

The Wanderer scented the Luminiferous Æther in that direction but was unable to detect any trace of the yellow blasphemy from beyond the stars.

It was satisfied: the thing had yet to arrive, and when it did, the Wanderer would be waiting for it, for the Wanderer had received a message from Carcosa’s twin suns upon its entry into that system: once again, it was too late to save a world and its people from destruction, but the suns had told it of a conversation they had had with a transmundane being from a nearby system.

This system…

Presently, the Wanderer spread its vast, membranous wings to catch the rays of the sun and began to decelerate in preparation for its final approach to the tiny blue world…

The newly excavated tunnel suddenly exploded with a cacophony of gunfire.

‘This must be the place,’ Sergeant Clairvaux quipped as he and de Chardin hurled themselves into the nearest bolthole, while Queen Titania paused and stood tranquilly amid the storm of bullets. As before, the ones which struck her bounced off and fell harmlessly to the ground.

A Templar Knight behind her was too slow to seek cover and staggered backwards as a hail of bullets struck his cuirass. Before he hit the ground, Titania flew to him in a lilac blur, picked him up and flung him into a bolthole. His grunt of thanks was lost in the continuing thunder.

‘Your Majesty!’ cried de Chardin. ‘There must be a dozen men up there – a score! They’ve got us well and truly pinned down!’

Beside him, Clairvaux unslung his Maxim and began to return fire. From boltholes and corridor entrances, the rest of the Templar Knights were doing the same, but they were firing into near total darkness, and their expert marksmanship was all but wasted.

‘It’ll take too long to gain the Void Chamber like this!’ de Chardin continued.

‘Don’t worry, Detective,’ Titania replied in a quiet, gentle voice which nevertheless – incredibly – reached the Templar’s ears in spite of the thunderous racket. ‘I will see to them. You and your men prepare to make for the Void Chamber on my command – and remember, if your gaze falls upon the Servitor for more than a moment, your minds will be undone.’

‘Did you hear that, men?’ shouted de Chardin.

The Templar Knights shouted back that they did.

Once again, Titania vanished.

Once again, brief screams were heard as the darkness was illuminated by the ruby fire from Titania’s faerie carbine.

‘By God and all His angels,’ said Clairvaux, ‘what a fine lady!’

‘We’d have been in a deep ditch without her, that’s for sure,’ de Chardin replied.

In another few moments, the enemy’s gunfire had completely ceased. The resulting silence, however, was broken by a sound which made the Templars’ relief short-lived indeed.

‘What the deuce is that noise?’ demanded de Chardin.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Clairvaux. ‘I’ve never heard the likes of it before.’

‘Must be that infernal gadget – the Anti-Prism. Exeter must have switched it on!’ De Chardin turned to the rest of his men. ‘Come on, we’ve not a moment to lose!’

When the gunfire ceased, Exeter glanced up at the entrance to the tunnel leading from the sanity of Bond Street to this chamber of ultra-dimensional nightmare. Could his men have defeated the invading force so quickly? Could they themselves have succumbed?

What’s happening?
he wondered.

answered the voice of the King in Yellow.

Exeter turned away from the entrance and transmitted the last of the mental commands he had learned from the King in Yellow.

The Servitor complied immediately. Its hideous, writhing mass seeped through the air to a position directly above the glowing Anti-Prism, and from it sprouted five thick tendrils, like the legs of some gigantic arthropod.

The tendrils descended towards the five stone monoliths which surrounded the central pit. At the instant they made contact, the pulsating electrical sound grew yet louder, the yellow glow emanating from the tiles grew brighter, and the monoliths vibrated visibly, so that to Exeter’s eyes they lost focus, becoming hazy and indistinct, as if a sheet of frosted glass had suddenly been placed around them.

And then another sound came to Exeter’s ears, a sound he knew would haunt him for the rest of his days, in spite of the power and riches he was about to attain.

It was the sound of ten thousand screams.

It was the sound of the souls held within the Servitor being discharged into the Anti-Prism.

The five thick tendrils pulsated obscenely in peristaltic waves as the psychic energy passed through them from the Servitor to the monoliths, which then directed it in the form of five painfully bright beams of light into the centre of the hexagonal trapezohedron which floated in the air at the centre of the Void Chamber.

The screams grew louder and louder, until Exeter could stand it no more and threw himself to the floor with his hands clasped over his ears. It was useless, however, for that tormenting sound was more than the mere vibration of air molecules; it drove like a lance into his very soul, a single howl of anguish from a profane limbo – desperate, terrified, accusing,
insane
.

‘May God forgive me,’ Charles Exeter whimpered as he lay writhing upon the glowing tiles of the floor.

said the voice of the King in Yellow.

The entity known as the King in Yellow was glad to be leaving Carcosa. For ten thousand years it had fed on the minds and bodies of the planet’s inhabitants, and now the larder was almost empty. The population had dwindled from more than five thousand million to a mere handful, a few huddled dregs lingering on the surface of a blasted orb that had been drained of all animal and vegetable life. But the King in Yellow had taken its fill, and now it was time to move on to a fresh world, filled with ripe and unsuspecting minds and overflowing with the diversity of biological life.

The need for sustenance was not the only reason to abandon Carcosa, for the King in Yellow had heard the song of the Hyades and knew that the trembling stars were calling out into the galactic night for aid. Its ultra-dimensional mind had scented the Æther, and had detected the approach of its enemy, the biomechanical construct which had been half built, half grown in the aeon-long past by the scientific geniuses of a distant, dead world.

Their eventual understanding of the entity’s origin and nature had come too late for them, but they had created a legacy for the galaxy and a great inconvenience for the King in Yellow: a being capable of detecting, enveloping and destroying the invader from beyond space.

That world had been among the first upon which the King in Yellow had descended, and it had made a serious misjudgement in choosing such an advanced race on which to feed. Ever since that time, the entity had been careful to choose only those worlds whose science was not up to the task of offering effective resistance.

Carcosa had been such a world, for although it was well advanced in age, its civilisation had long ago passed through the era of great technological endeavour and had returned to the simplicity of a pastoral existence, its scientific advances abandoned and forgotten. Carcosa was thus at the perfect position in the great cycle of advancement and contraction which seemed to pertain on worlds throughout this galaxy.

And what a galaxy it was! What a universe! Plump with matter and energy and life! An infinite source of nourishment.

The King in Yellow had travelled to many universes upon leaving its own realm beyond the ramparts of ordered space and time, and it had found that most were either empty or contained matter and energy in forms which were unpalatable to it, for what it craved most of all was the delicate psychic energy of intelligent minds, and it had found them in abundance in this universe.

As it awaited the arrival of its Servitor, which would pump the Carcosan souls it had gathered into the Anti-Prism in the throne room of the Castle of Demhe, the King in Yellow thought of the million other Anti-Prisms which its avatars had seeded on worlds throughout the galaxy, and which would facilitate rapid transit between those worlds, and it pulsated in awful anticipation of the feasting to come.

Oberon and his faerie warriors followed the Servitor along the warped and twisted corridor leading to the throne room, noting with both compassion and profound distaste the remnants of the lake’s aquatic life which moved sluggishly through the tainted water. The misshapen swimming things paused occasionally to inspect them with distorted, gelatinous organs that might once have been eyes, before drifting away into the surrounding darkness.

What a mockery you have made of this once-beautiful world
, thought Oberon, as he watched the poor creatures’ pained movements.

said the voice of the King in Yellow.

If by ‘symmetry’ you mean order, rationality and beauty, then we are in agreement, for they are things of which you clearly know nothing!

BEAUTY
, THAN ANYTHING OF WHICH
YOU
COULD CONCEIVE.>

And do you come from one of those regions?

You speak in riddles, beast. What are you? Why have you befouled this universe with your presence?

Oberon sensed amusement as the King in Yellow replied, MY
DIMENSION. LONG AGO, BEFORE YOUR WORLD WAS EVEN A CLOUD OF DUST AWAITING THE GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE WHICH WOULD FORGE IT INTO A SPHERE OF ROCK, I LOOKED DOWN INTO THIS UNIVERSE, THIS LAKE, AND SAW THAT IT WAS BRIMMING WITH LIFE. AND SO I CAME TO GATHER THE FOOD WHICH FILLS IT SO ABUNDANTLY. AND BELIEVE ME, OBERON, I WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO UNTIL I HAVE EMPTIED THIS LAKE OF EVERYTHING THAT LIVES AND BREATHES WITHIN IT!>

They had reached a great arched opening, beyond which was the throne room, once occupied by the royal family of Carcosa, but now home to the tattered monstrosity that had brought death and madness and irrevocable ruin to that unhappy world.

And tattered it was, Oberon noted with disgust. Strangely ragged was the outline of the vast thing which squatted at the centre of the chamber. Strangely did the flaps and folds undulate in a hundred putrid shades of yellow. Truly did Queen Cassilda write of ‘the tatters of the king’.

For the first time, Oberon fully appreciated the fact that this creature hailed from beyond the ordered universe, that it was nothing which should be suffered to exist among the stars and planets, the light and the life, of known space and time.

said the voice of the thing.

I can see why they describe you as yellow, but I fail to see why they call you king.

I live and breathe and think,
retorted Oberon.
And I see you as nothing more than a foul disease
.

We shall see
, said Oberon, brandishing his carbine.

The Servitor moved quickly, but it was not to attack Oberon or his warriors; instead, it bestrode the glowing object in a far corner of the chamber. Instantly, Oberon swung his weapon around and fired, but he was too late, for the Servitor had already thrown out a gelatinous film to protect both the Anti-Prism and the five monolithic stone structures which surrounded it.

At that moment, Oberon and his warriors dropped their weapons and clutched at their heads as the sound of Carcosan souls being discharged into the Anti-Prism drove like an iron spike into their awareness, while the throne room glowed brightly with the energy being transferred from the Servitor, through the prismatic monoliths, to the transportation device. The pain, terror and anguish was an unendurable agony to them, and they dropped to their knees, their faces contorted, their eyes tightly shut.

The vast, ragged mass of the King in Yellow split apart like a pustulent wound, and as Oberon forced his eyes open and looked at what lay within – at the writhing tendrils whipping and curling around the frothing, bubbling nucleus that was composed of nothing remotely akin to matter – the Faerie King screamed with a terror and despair he had never known, had never even realised he
could
know.

The horror surged forward towards the Anti-Prism.

it said.

Slowly, painfully, Charles Exeter lifted himself off the floor of the Void Chamber and gazed up at the Anti-Prism. The Servitor had completed its task: the psychic energy of the souls it had gathered had been fully utilised by the device, which now appeared to be operating at full power.

It began to turn upon its vertical axis, slowly at first, but then rapidly increasing in speed until it became little more than a crimson blur.

The Servitor withdrew and crawled sluggishly to the edge of the chamber, and Exeter had the impression that it was dying.

Exeter staggered back from the whirling Anti-Prism and prepared himself to meet his god.

On Carcosa, the Servitor edged away as a perfect circle of darkness opened above the Anti-Prism in the throne room. Framed by a strange distortion of the surrounding water, it expanded to perhaps ten yards in diameter and hovered in perfect stillness.

Like a vast, rotten egg sliding down a plughole, the King in Yellow heaved its amorphous bulk through the opening and was gone.

Blackwood!
called Oberon silently.

‘We’re here, Oberon!’ came the reply.

The Faerie King turned to see the three humans standing in the entrance to the throne room.

Shut your eyes!
he commanded.

They obeyed him without hesitation as he hurried across the chamber and seized the sheet of green linen which Blackwood was holding. Then he turned and, unfolding the sheet, made for the Servitor which was undulating slowly near the entrance to the tunnel through space. He offered one end of the sheet to one of his warriors, who took it, and together they rose upon their wings and covered the sanity-blasting form of the Servitor.

Instantly, both it and the sheet vanished from view.

Blackwood, Sophia, Castaigne
, said Oberon.
Open your eyes and come forward
.

‘Where is the Servitor?’ asked Sophia as they entered the throne room.

The object I asked you to bring is the Cloak of Invisibility, one of our most precious artefacts,
Oberon replied.
The Servitor is still here, but you are now shielded from its aspect, even from its outline. You have your weapons?

In reply, the three humans unslung their Maxim machine guns, which had been specially adapted by the technicians at Station X to fire explosive rounds in an underwater environment.

Oberon held up his hand.
Do not fire yet, for we must time this perfectly.

He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind across the nine hundred trillion miles of space separating Carcosa from Earth.
Titania, my love, are you ready?

I am ready, my husband
, Titania replied.

She and the Templar Police were standing on the floor of the Void Chamber. As soon as they had descended the ladder leading down from the entrance, two of the Templars had moved to apprehend Charles Exeter, who was standing still, gazing up at the wildly spinning form of the Anti-Prism. He didn’t seem to notice their presence until they seized him by the arms. As they did this, they took care not to look in the direction of the Servitor, which now squatted, unmoving, on the far side of the chamber.

‘Charles Exeter,’ said Detective de Chardin, ‘I am arresting you in the name of Her Majesty for the crime of treason against your country and your world…’

He hesitated as Exeter began to laugh.

‘You
arrest
me?’ said the railway magnate. ‘Very well, arrest me. I assure you that you will be releasing me from your custody very shortly, once the King in Yellow has drunk your soul!’

‘Yes, well, we’ll see about that,’ de Chardin replied, glancing at Titania. The Faerie Queen nodded, and in a loud voice which echoed around the Void Chamber, he said to his men, ‘Ready your weapons and take aim!’

The Templar Knights, who had taken up positions around the Anti-Prism with their backs to the Servitor, raised their Maxims.

De Chardin looked again at Titania, as a perfect circle of darkness appeared at the centre of the Void Chamber…

Oberon
, she said.
Give the word
.

FIRE!

Oberon’s command was directed both to the humans who stood beside him in the throne room of the Castle of Demhe, and to Titania, who relayed it instantly to the Templar Knights.

Simultaneously, Blackwood, Sophia, Castaigne, de Chardin, Clairvaux and their men all fired at the two Anti-Prisms.