Future Lovecraft

THE COMET CALLED ITHAQUA By Don Webb

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.