Carter pondered in the mighty silence that followed that statement; and bit by bit, its implications became explicit. And he knew that if he had understood aright, he would in his very body be able to do that which theretofore he had done but in dreams.
He sought to test his understanding by putting it into words.
“Then if my section-plane be shifted in its angle, can I become any of those Carters who have ever existed? That Carter, for instance, who was imprisoned eleven years in the fortress of Alamut, on the Caspian Sea, in the hands of that one who falsely claimed to be the Keeper of the Keys? That Geoffrey Carter, who at last escaped from his cell, and with his bare hands strangled that false master, and took from him the silver key which even now I hold in my hands?”
“That, or any other Carter,” pronounced the Presence. “They are all — but that you know, now. And if that is your choice, you shall have it, here and now….”
Then came a whirring, and drumming, that swelled to a terrific thundering. Once again Carter felt himself the focal point of an intense concentration of energy that smote and hammered and seared unbearably, until he could not say whether it was unbelievably intense heat or the all-congealing cold of the abyss. Bands and rays of color utterly alien to any spectrum of this world played and wove and interlaced before him; and he was conscious of an awful velocity of motion….
He caught one fleeting glimpse of one who sat alone on a hexagonal throne of basalt.
Then he realized that he was sitting among crumbled ruins of a fortress that had once crowned this mountain that commanded the southernmost end of the sombre Caspian Sea.
Geoffrey Carter, strangely, retained some few vestigial memories of that Randolph Carter who would appear some 550 years later. And it was not utterly outrageous to him, this thought of remembering someone who would not exist until five centuries after the Lord Timur had torn the castle of Alamut to pieces, stone by stone, and put to the sword each of its garrison of outlaws.
Carter smiled thinly at human fallibility. He knew now why that castle of Alamut was in ruins. He realized, too late, the error that Randolph Carter had made — or, would make? — in having demanded a shift of the Carter-plane without a corresponding shift of the earth- plane, so that Geoffrey-Randolph Carter might seek this time to do what he had once failed of doing: riding in the train of that brooding, sombre Timur who had terribly destroyed Alamut, and liberated him.
Geoffrey Carter remembered enough of Randolph Carter to make his anomalous position not entirely unbearable. He had all the memories that Randolph Carter was to have, five centuries hence; and what was most outlandish of the paradox was that he, Geoffrey Carter, was alive, in a world five hundred years older than it should be. He sat down on a massive block of masonry, and pondered. At last he rose, and set out on foot, and empty-handed.
“This,” said one of those assembled in a certain house in New Orleans, “is plausible to a degree, despite the terrifically incomprehensible be-scramblement of time and space and personality, and the blasphemous reduction of God to a mathematical formula, and time to a fanciful expression, and change to a delusion, and all reality to the nothingness of a geometrical plane utterly lacking in substance. But it still does not settle the matter of Randolph Carter’s estate, which his heirs are clamoring to divide.”
The old man who sat cross-legged on the Bokhara rug muttered, and poked absently at the almost dead bed of charcoal that had glowed in the bowl of the wrought-iron tripods.
And then he spoke: “Randolph Carter succeeded in groping into the riddle of time and space, to a degree, yet his success would have been greater had he taken with him not only the silver key, but also the parchment. For had he but pronounced its phrases, the earth- plane would have shifted with the Carter-plane, and he would have achieved the unattained desire of the Geoffrey Carter that he became, instead of returning to the world-section 550 years after the time he wished.”
Then said another: “It is all plausible, though fantastic. Yet unless Randolph Carter returns from his hexagonal throne, his estate must be partitioned among his heirs.”
The old man who sat cross-legged glanced up; his eyes glittered, and he smiled strangely.
“I could very readily settle the dispute,” he said, “but no one would believe me.” He paused, stroked his chin for a moment, and then resumed, “While I am Randolph Carter, come back from the ruins of Alamut, I am also so much Geoffrey Carter that I would be mistaken for an imposter. And thus while my due is the estate of two Carters, my portion unhappily is neither.”
We stared, regarding him intently; and then the learned chronicler, who stared the longest, said half aloud, half to himself, “And I thought that a new king reigned, in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad.”
The Warder of Knowledge
RICHARD F. SEARIGHT
The following record has been compiled from various sources, of which the most important are Doctor Whitney’s elaborate journal and the remarkable psychic impressions received in Whitney’s bedroom by Professor Turkoff of the university psychology department. The contents of the neatly typed manuscript, found in a drawer of Whitney’s library desk, may be dismissed as the ravings of an unbalanced intellect, or the fantastic flights of a gruesome imagination. In spite of the nature of Turkoff’s clairvoyant impressions, the shocking allusions and appalling inferences with which its pages are filled can hardly receive the credence of an impartial reader. Indeed, those members of the university faculty who saw it were unanimous in their opinion that it was the work of a madman familiar with peculiarly repellent variants of primitive folklore and certain ancient legends; and while these members did not have access to Whitney’s journal, which I appropriated at the time for fear its disclosures might indeed reflect positively on the sanity of my friend, I shall not attempt to refute their conclusions.
It seems that even as a young child Gordon Whitney had been oddly different from his associates. From the age when reason assumed control, an insatiable desire for knowledge had obsessed him. Of course, this was partly the normal, questioning curiosity of childhood — but it went further. He was not satisfied by sketchy outlines of facts; his craving was for the most complete and detailed information available on every subject that his busy mind encountered. Even at this early age he was harassed by a restless, driving urge, without motive or practical goal, to crowd into one mind all the vast aggregation of discovered scientific fact as well as the limitless secrets still undisclosed to research. And as he grew older, and absorbed what seemed to him the superficial teachings of orthodox education, the urge within him clamored more and more loudly.
There was no especial reason behind his selection of chemistry as a life work. He might have chosen any one of half a dozen sciences, particularly paleography, into which he probed as deeply as his diffused energies would permit. But organic chemistry, with its incredibly huge store of proven fact and the staggering array of half-guessed and wholly unsuspected truths which he felt must still be unrevealed, offered an inexhaustible outlet for his ambitions. The tireless enthusiasm with which he threw himself into these studies impressed his instructors; and when he received his doctor’s degree, he was offered an instructorship at Beloin University, the small mid-western seat of his education. This he accepted gladly, since it provided an atmosphere in harmony with his longings as well as the material means of pursuing them.
It was during the period immediately ensuing that he began his delving into the occult. The strange quirk in his nature that would not let him rest was responsible for this series of studies, also; and it had been suggested and stimulated by ambiguous references and obscure quotations in the more standard writings. Thus it was that he spent shuddering, horror-ridden hours perusing the Latin version of the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Al-Hazred. Later he read with revolted fascination the equivocal disclosures and incredible inferences of the Book of Eibon; and finally terminated the studies on a gusty November night by turning white-lipped and shaking from his uncompleted translation of the cryptic and half- decipherable Eltdown Shards. After that his leisure was again directed into conservative channels; but the outrageous suggestions implanted in his mind had left an ineradicable imprint.