"Barlow, C S - Juxtaposed, Yet Infinitely Distant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barlow C S)
by C.S. Barlow
This is not fiction. I know that I will not be believed, but this is an account of actual events.
I will not be believed for I cannot prove my tale's factuality -- a mad woman's ravings and an old man's dreams are not evidence enough to sway mankind in his firm convictions concerning the ways of the universe. This work will be read as fantasy, this introduction viewed as an inexperienced author's employment of an age-old, completely transparent, plot device.
Perhaps -- and here another worn literary trick -- it is safer that way. You will sit, on finishing the story, and you will momentarily ponder over its content, shake your head at the author's warped imagination, and turn the page to begin the magazine's next true fable.
Yes, it is safer that way, for you will read of eldritch artifacts, monsters and abominations, so, if you do trust in their sincerity, who can foretell the possible consequences?
My name is Karl Stephenson; I am a professor of astronomy. It is unlikely you will have heard of me for I have made little contribution to this grand science's expansion, being more of a recapitulator than a thinker, though I live in hope that one of my students will manage to prove Le Verrier's Vulcan, or explain the dark night sky. However, you may know -- or know of -- the university at which I studied and now teach: the Miskatonic, at Arkham.
If you are ignorant of the place, then, almost undoubtedly, you have little interest in archaeology or the occult, and are unfamiliar with academia. Its centuries-old library, covering almost a quarter of the campus, houses one of the greatest publicly accessible collections of arcane literature and ancient history in the world. Hidden within the barely decipherable languages of some texts are references to certain gods and long forgotten cities that have been the basis of many a college-funded expedition to exotic, often hellish locations. Some were surprisingly successful, but an uncomfortable number also suffered considerable tragedy.
The university is well situated in Arkham in relation to its darker attributes, for the town has neighbours of mystery and unwholesomeness: around eighty miles westward rise the Appalachians, their lush and undulating forests long thought by the various insular communities of the area to be a veil obscuring unspeakable acts of devil worship and human sacrifice. Twenty miles northwards, all but severed from the rest of the area by marshland, lies Innsmouth; an ancient port where, in the winter of '27, a most peculiar and secretive Federal investigation took place in which a number of seemingly abandoned houses were unexplainidly dynamited, and a sizable portion of the town's populace arrested and seldom heard of since. And approximately twenty five miles northwestward is the village of Dunwhich, with its borders of thick forest and unnaturally regular, stone-crowned mounds, its tiny in-bred populace, and its past of witchhunts and legends of queer beings half seen between trees.
Being, therefore, almost a bastion of weirdness, Miskatonic University has always been a popular gathering ground for society's unconformists -- pale, sickly poets and artists plagued with terrifying nightmares; medical students with wild new notions; parapsychologists convinced they have discovered methods of communicating with the dead through telepathy; anthropologists certain that Darwin was wrong, that mankind's evolution was in fact contrived by fantastic interstellar races.
It was as just such an irregular that I first considered this story's subject, Stanley Connerly.
He studied archaeology, but during free periods often frequented my lectures on astronomy, exhibiting keen interest in virtually everything I talked of: Hubble's observations; Tombaugh's Pluto (he asked whether life could exist on that -- surely -- barren sphere); Saturn's rings. I would often come across him in the library nose-deep in some exotic volume, whereupon we would idly compare his knowledge of archaeology with mine of the stars and planets and debate the surprising number -- surprising at least to me, Connerly seemed to actually expect the various relationships -- of connections between modern astronomy's discoveries and ancient history's beliefs and predictions (of course, not all was congruent, one idea he possessed of a space beyond space, beyond angled space, as he put it, where monstrous nuclear entities existed, was obviously preposterous). It was during the course of these conversations that our friendship began.
As far as women were concerned, Connerly was little seen in their close company. He often received their attention (being, I suppose, quite handsome), but rarely returned it. "For some perverse reason, Stephenson, I love only unattainable women -- those elegant creatures seen in paintings or read about in fictions, or those long dead. I cannot help regarding reality's woman, on the occasions when I do feel the need to dally with them, as a substitute for these dreams. Hmph! I have always desired the impossible! I very much doubt that I will ever marry."
During the longer holidays (as he insisted on calling them), Connerly almost invariably crossed the Atlantic to Scotland and what had been his family home for generations, secluded Connerly House on the shore of Loch Morar. There he would stay with his octogenarian father (his mother died of a cancer in '25 at the age of fifty four), the Lord Henry Connerly, and discuss -- for they had similar interests -- the young man's studies.
On Connerly's return to Arkham after such a "holiday" he would, for a few days, study only as necessary, passing much of his spare time upon the Garrison Street bridge gazing up the Miskatonic River, or into its syrupy depths. His father's health was steadily failing, and on every visit there was some new deterioration: "He suffers wracking coughs, Stephenson, coupled with a 'complete lassitude of the bones' as he calls it, and is a-bed more and more often. Old-age grips him, and the loss of Mother has left him without any real fight. Doctors suggest warmer, drier climes to slow the process -- but he would never leave the House."
Yet soon, cold as you may consider it, the sight of some dusty tome in a darkened corner of the library, or the rumour of important discoveries at some far-off dig, would once again drag Connerly's veritable lust for knowledge above his paternal worries -- re-immersing him in arcania.
For almost a year, Connerly and a number of his fellow students and professors -- not purely archaeological; occultists, anthropologists, and historians were also involved -- had been attempting to persuade the university's senate as to the possible wealth of information and academic fame to be gained from an expedition to an unspecific site in the southwest corner of the Iren Tala Basin in Mongolia, north of the Yin Shan Mountains. The reason for their repeated requests was as follows: a relative of one of the campaigning archaeological professors, living in Egypt, had purchased from a Cairo bookshop some peculiar text fragments which he posted to the professor as a birthday gift, trusting they would prove of interest. Of unknown specific antiquity, written in an Arabic variant so singular it took months to translate, they appeared to be part of the of the diary of an extremely well-traveled Arabian tradesman. Mainly concerned with business transactions too patchy to offer much information, there was hidden amongst them this one incongruous warning: "True followers of Muhammad heed! Beware/avoid the village of the Worshippers/Lovers/Servants of The Unutterable Name. It is the doorway/passage to the Screaming Spheres!" Accompanying maps and symbols hinted at the rough position in the Gobi Desert as the place to circumvent.
Connerly explained the excerpt to me thus: "We are almost certain that 'The Unutterable Name' refers to Hastur or He Who is Not to be Named, an extremely powerful pagan deity supposed to reside near Aldebaran (a name you're doubtless familiar with, Stephenson). Concerning 'the passage to the Screaming Spheres' we're unsure, but I would think it simply implies that the village was the place of enrollment for all would-be Hastur cultists, an idea our journeying friend obviously, probably correctly, found abominable.
"Why correctly?" I asked.
"Ah. And what, exactly, are 'the Screaming Spheres'?"
"I don't know. We've never come across the phrase before. Depending on your point of view, they could be a Hell of some sort, or a Heaven. Perhaps they're a metaphor invented by the Arab. It's not impossible that they allude to worlds about Aldebaran."
"That's a concept well before its time, then," I scoffed, "As far as dating the fragments is concerned, you've already informed me that the best anyone has been able to do is place them no later than the 5th century, the opposite parameter being virtually the first written Arabic word! And from the 2nd century to the 17th -- though Arabs had no access to it until the 8th -- the foremost astronomical literature was Ptolemy's Almagest, and his theories left little provision for planets orbiting any stars other than our own!"
My friend looked at me with a raised eyebrow, a slight smile, and I recalled the curious affinities discovered during our conversations in the library. Peevishly not even admitting that his idea could, in view of this, be correct, I merely grunted.
He continued. "The senate must back us! So much could be learned!"
At last overcome by the intellectuals' fervour (having previously been adverse to risk necessarily large amounts of money on an aside buried amongst a few scraps of paper), the senate finally agreed to the proposals. Arrangements for the expedition, which would commence in April, 1932, and terminate in early October to coincide with the region's short summer, were executed.
1932
On the 3rd of September I received the following letter -- reeking of an unholy amalgamation of dung and coffee -- from my absent friend:
Dear Karl,
Today is 15th June. You must forgive me for not writing earlier, but time is most valuable here. You must also forgive my seeming curtness, and for the same reasons.
We arrived at Ulaanbaatar -- or Urga or Ulan Bator, depending upon whose maps you consult -- on 14th April, & by the 16th were well on our way along a road that, had we elected to follow it into China, would have taken us beyond Peking. However, at Saynshanda, we met our Kalmuck guides & turned SW -- the road continuing SE -- to begin the trek across the basin.
Tues. of the following week saw our arrival at what we believed the village's site (to within about seven miles), & we set up camp. The next day eight of us -- including myself -- divided into pairs, &, each pair accompanied by a Kalmuck guide, journeyed N, S, E, and W in search of signs of the ancient habitat. My group, heading E, discovered nothing, but on return we found that the N group had, within just three miles, happened upon a collection of curiously regular, sand-covered mounds (shades of Dunwhich, eh?). At the reappearance of the remaining scouting parties camp was immediately struck & we relocated to the site.
Then there were only three mounds, today we have exposed all five. They are about 3' high, covered over with complex but now eroded swirls, spaced 50' apart, arranged pentagonally, & cut -- in some unknown manner supplying us with a great deal of argumentative fuel -- from the underlying granite.
Excavations in progress at selected spots outside the pentagram are revealing much about living accommodations and conditions, as well as a fair amount of osseous material. But the dig of most interest to me lies at its focus where a deep concavity is being unearthed. This would undoubtedly have been the position of the object the cultists worshipped, the alter -- idol? Fetish? -- devoted to Hastur, & we hope against hope that it may yet lie there (as you may realize this is atypical -- in almost any other religion such objects are displayed prominently, not kept in holes! Perhaps the well served as a sacrificial pit, the object suspended above it on some long-since rotted scaffold? Or was it merely a safe haven for the artifact during storms? It's feasible there never was any 'object', or, assuming its existence, that it has long since been stolen. When one investigates ancient occurrences, possibilities become endless).
It is useless to attempt to keep you more regularly informed, Stephenson, As it is, this letter will probably reach you after my return! I will tell all when I next see you.
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