Of course, there was a second option. Depriving Ole, Refn, and their cronies of the political points her public trial would bring was a proposition too tempting to pass up, interdimensional, reality-shattering horror be damned. Pipaluk smiled to herself, shaking her head, and stepped into the shallow pool of shimmering metal. Just as she put her hand on the portal, however, a cry came from just behind her. Spinning around with the olid-pistol primed, she saw Professori Laila rising from behind a softly-chanting stalagmite, the camouflage of her suit falling away as she willingly revealed herself.
“Wait!” Laila repeated. “Don’t!”
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Pipaluk, dialing the gun down to Reek. She wanted Laila alive and sane enough to stand trial, after all. Pipaluk might be going down, but it wouldn’t be alone. Then she remembered the portal just behind her, her potentially suicidal resolution of moments before, and she cocked her head curiously. “What are you doing here? I thought the whole point was to go through the Gate, not get your team killed just to skulk about some ruins.”
“The point was to determine if the Gate could be safely used,” said Laila, crossing her arms. “Just as I always said. You were the one who insisted I was trying to enter the damn thing.”
“Right,” said Pipaluk. “Sure. So, you’re telling me you didn’t have any of your team go through?”
Laila winced. “Most of them didn’t make it this far. Those fail-safes were—”
“Most. But you made it. And so did…?”
“A couple of grad students.” Laila shivered. “Their names aren’t important now. They’ll come up at the trial, I’m sure, and—”
“What happened to them!” Pipaluk barked. “You crazy kanaak, what happened to them?!”
“They went through.” Laila looked down at the blurred shadow of her reflection in the metal pool. “Dorthe went first. She was supposed to return immediately, if she could. When she didn’t, after a day, Nivi went and—”
“A day,” Pipaluk groaned. “Those toe-dragging fools on the Quorum.”
“More like two,” Laila said sheepishly. “No sign of either of them. Which, well, isn’t surprising—the portal is older than we could date. Even if it still leads to Cykranosh, there’s no telling what might be on the other end by now. Maybe the Gate projects you into solid rock, the bottom of an ocean. Maybe the planet’s shifted so much it just dumps you into space.” The Professori shuddered. “None of the probes we sent through came back, observation cables were severed as soon as they crossed over, remotes failed, blah blah blah, and so those two volunteered. And now we know—it’s not safe, anymore. If it ever was.”
“Maybe,” said Pipaluk thoughtfully. “Maybe not. Surprised you didn’t take your chances with it when you saw me coming. Surprised you warned me off it.”
“Despite your slanderous campaign of character assassination, I’m a devout Klarkashian,” said Laila, straightening her shoulders. “I would never allow a fellow servant of the Sleeper of N’Kai to unwittingly fall into that devil Hziulquoigmnzhah’s realm without a sure means of escape. I told you and I told the Quorum time and again, I’m not a heretic. I’m just—”
“Hush!” said Pipaluk, her com-membrane rippling. The second airlock had just been activated. The politibetjents were coming to arrest them. “They’re coming. For both of us—I violated orders by pursuing you and got a few subgineers killed in the process. That puts us in the same bath, so let’s make a break for it. I’ll take a possible death of my own making over a certain one of theirs.”
“Pipaluk, Pipaluk, Pipaluk,” Laila chided. “Where is your faith? There is nowhere to run. We have committed crimes, you and I, and must be taken to the Eiglophian Plains for punishment. It is written that they who err in the service of the slothful ebon god shall be forgiven, so long as they are purified by a sacrificial death. I go willingly to my justice and suggest you—blargh!”
Laila doubled over in agony, retching into her bio-helm. A faint wisp of stench danced at the end of Pipaluk’s pistol as she tucked the hot weapon into her belt and went to the incapacitated Professori. The final airlock was beginning to open as Pipaluk hoisted her former adversary and shoved her headlong through the Eibon Gate, the back of the hinged metal panel banging softly against its gneiss setting as the Voormi disappeared into the misty haze that obscured whatever lay on the far side. Without a backward glance at her pursuers, Pipaluk hoisted herself up and squirmed after, through the door to Saturn.
V
The team of politibetjents and formless spawn sent to capture Pipaluk waited for days in the mossy ruins, neither wishing to follow the Ingeniøri through the mysterious portal, nor daring to leave in disobedience of Provost Ole’s orders. At length, they were recalled, but the result of the whole affair was highly regrettable from the standpoint of the Quorum. It was universally believed, due to a leaked bio-helm file here and an uploaded simcreation there, that Professori Laila and Ingeniøri Pipaluk had not only escaped, by virtue of the luminous science they had learned from Hziulquoigmnzhah, but had made away with a dozen formless spawn commandos and fail-safe behemoths in the bargain. As a consequence of this belief, the public’s trust in the Quorum declined and there was a widespread revival of the dark worship of Tsathoggua’s paternal uncle throughout Mhu Thulan in the last century before the onset of the great Solar Firestorms.
THE DEEP ONES
By Bryan Thao Worra
Bryan Thao Worra is an award-winning Lao American author whose work has appeared in Illumen, The Book of Dark Wisdom, Tales of the Unanticipated, Mad Poets of Terra, Historical Lovecraft, Innsmouth Free Press, and G-Fan. His books include On the Other Side of the Eye, BARROW, Winter Ink, and the Tuk-Tuk Diaries: My Dinner with Cluster Bombs. You can visit him online at: http://thaoworra.blogspot.com.
THE LABYRINTH OF SLEEP
By Orrin Grey
Orrin Grey was born on the night before Halloween, and he’s been in love with monsters and the macabre ever since. Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, his first collection of supernatural stories, is coming soon from Evileye Books. You can find him online at: www.orringrey.com.
BEYOND THE WALL, the first moon has already risen. Kendrick stands still for awhile, getting used to the changes to air, to gravity. He can taste the last bitter dregs of the cigarette he stubbed out just before hooking up to the machine, can still smell the antiseptic tinge of the room he’s left behind, as a breeze perfumed by distant and unnamed glades carries it away.