He felt that his
archetypal Entity could at will send him bodily to any of these phases
of bygone and distant life by changing his consciousness-plane, and
despite the marvels he had undergone he burned for the further marvel
of walking in the flesh through those grotesque and incredible scenes
which visions of the night had fragmentarily brought him. Without definite intention he was asking the Presence for access
to a dim, fantastic world whose five multicolored suns, alien
constellations, dizzily black crags, clawed, tapir-snouted denizens,
bizarre metal towers, unexplained tunnels, and cryptical floating
cylinders had intruded again and again upon his slumbers. That world,
he felt vaguely, was in all the conceivable cosmos the one most freely
in touch with others; and he longed to explore the vistas whose
beginnings he had glimpsed, and to embark through space to those still
remoter worlds with which the clawed, snouted denizens trafficked. There was no time for fear. As at all crises of his strange life, sheer
cosmic curiosity triumphed over everything else. When the waves resumed their awesome pulsing, Carter knew that his
terrible request was granted. The Being was telling him of the nighted
gulfs through which he would have to pass, of the unknown quintuple
star in an unsuspected galaxy around which the alien world revolved,
and of the burrowing inner horrors against which the clawed, snouted
race of that world perpetually fought. It told him, too, of how the
angle of his personal consciousness-plane, and the angle of his
consciousness-plane regarding the space-time elements of the sought-for
world, would have to be tilted simultaneously in order to restore to
that world the Carter-facet which had dwelt there. The Presence warned him to be sure of his symbols if he wished ever to
return from the remote and alien world he had chosen, and he radiated
back an impatient affirmation; confident that the silver key, which he
felt was with him and which he knew had tilted both world and personal
planes in throwing him back to 1883, contained those symbols which
were meant. And now the Being, grasping his impatience, signified its
readiness to accomplish the monstrous precipitation. The waves abruptly
ceased, and there supervened a momentary stillness tense with nameless
and dreadful expectancy. Then, without warning, 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 which smote and hammered and seared
unbearably in the now-familiar rhythm of outer space, and which he
could not classify as either the blasting heat of a blazing star, or
the all-petrifying cold of the ultimate abyss. Bands and rays of color
utterly foreign to any spectrum of our universe played and wove and
interlaced before him, and he was conscious of a frightful velocity of
motion. He caught one fleeting glimpse of a figure sitting _alone_ upon
a cloudy throne more hexagonal than otherwise....




                               CHAPTER 6


As the Hindoo paused in his story he saw that de Marigny and Phillips
were watching him absorbedly. Aspinwall pretended to ignore the
narrative and kept his eyes ostentatiously on the papers before him. The alien-rhythmed ticking of the coffin-shaped clock took on a new and
portentous meaning, while the fumes from the choked, neglected tripods
wove themselves into fantastic and inexplicable shapes, and formed
disturbing combinations with the grotesque figures of the draft-swayed
tapestries. The old negro who had tended them was gone--perhaps
some growing tension had frightened him out of the house. An almost
apologetic hesitancy hampered the speaker as he resumed in his oddly
labored yet idiomatic voice. "You have found these things of the abyss hard to believe," he said,
"but you will find the tangible and material things ahead still
harder. That is the way of our minds. Marvels are doubly incredible
when brought into three dimensions from the vague regions of possible
dream. I shall not try to tell you much--that would be another and very
different story. I will tell only what you absolutely have to know." Carter, after that final vortex of alien and polychromatic rhythm,
had found himself in what for a moment he thought was his old
insistent dream. He was, as many a night before, walking amidst
throngs of clawed, snouted beings through the streets of a labyrinth
of inexplicably fashioned metal under a blaze of diverse solar color;
and as he looked down he saw that his body was like those of the
others--rugose, partly squamous, and curiously articulated in a fashion
mainly insect-like yet not without a caricaturish resemblance to the
human outline. The silver key was still in his grasp, though held by a
noxious-looking claw. In another moment the dream-sense vanished, and he felt rather as
one just awakened from a dream. The ultimate abyss--the Being--the
entity of absurd, outlandish race called Randolph Carter on a world
of the future not yet born--some of these things were parts of the
persistent recurrent dreams of the wizard Zkauba on the planet Yaddith. They were too persistent--they interfered with his duties in weaving
spells to keep the frightful Dholes in their burrows, and became mixed
up with his recollections of the myriad real worlds he had visited
in light-beam envelopes. And now they had become quasi-real as never
before. This heavy, material silver key in his right upper claw, exact
image of one he had dreamt about, meant no good. He must rest and
reflect, and consult the tablets of Nhing for advice on what to do. Climbing a metal wall in a lane off the main concourse, he entered his
apartment and approached the rack of tablets. Seven day-fractions later Zkauba squatted on his prism in awe and half
despair, for the truth had opened up a new and conflicting set of
memories. Nevermore could he know the peace of being one entity. For
all time and space he was two: Zkauba the wizard of Yaddith, disgusted
with the thought of the repellent earth-mammal Carter that he was to be
and had been, and Randolph Carter, of Boston on the Earth, shivering
with fright at the clawed, snouted thing which he had once been, and
had become again. The time units spent on Yaddith, croaked the Swami--whose labored voice
was beginning to show signs of fatigue--made a tale in themselves
which could not be related in brief compass. There were trips to
Stronti and Mthura and Kath, and other worlds in the twenty-eight
galaxies accessible to the light-beam envelopes of the creatures of
Yaddith, and trips back and forth through eons of time with the aid of
the silver key and various other symbols known to Yaddith's wizards. There were hideous struggles with the bleached viscous Dholes in the
primal tunnels that honeycombed the planet. There were awed sessions
in libraries amongst the massed lore of ten thousand worlds living
and dead.