Fourth in the series, the first set well after the death of HP Lovecraft, and after a bunch of real-world events that I would have loved to have seen his take on. Read after the break…
Insight
By Scott Lowther
Copyright 2019
1945, September: Denver
The Empire of Japan had signed the instruments of surrendered in Tokyo Bay yesterday, and the worst war in history was over. So the staff of the Office of Insight were letting off some steam.
Even though the war was over, the staff of Insight were still under a great deal of stress. It was said that everyone in the country did their part, but Insights direct contributions were seemingly few and entirely hidden. While the United States was busy fighting other nations, the agents, scholars and scientists of the Office of Insight worked to protect the country from far less conventional threats. And even though the fight against the Nazis and Imperial Japan was now over, Insights fight continued unabated.
So, Director Healy did not begrudge his staff a little celebration. For a few hours they ate and drank and patted each other on the back in the small nondescript office building on Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver. The office building was connected to a small factory which had produced components for chlorine and napalm aircraft bombs during the war; this provided adequate cover for the Office and its unusual work. People coming and going at all hours, having to pass through security, reluctant to talk to anyone on the outside about what they did… all perfectly normal for a wartime chemical weapons plant. But now that the war was over, who knew what would change. The Office had had to move three times since originally coming to Denver a decade earlier. Each time was a step up, but nothing ever felt permanent to Director Healy.
He joined in the celebrations, gamely gave a short speech about how great it was that the war was over and how the killing was done. And then he went back to his office, for the war, the real war, the war that could easily exterminate mankind, had not yet even begun. He had had a glass of champagne, but felt nothing from it; more than a decade and a half of self medicating with whisky had made him immune to champagnes charms.
So as the staff celebrated – even the anti-social, painfully shy and taciturn Dr. Felber was out there, awkwardly trying to chat up Miss Maria Jackson – Director Healy was at his desk, reading the latest transmissions from OoI agents in the field. Most were entirely routine… simple status reports, basically love letters back home to tell the folks “I’m still alive.” A few provided useful but non-actionable information… encounters with Polynesian worshipers of Deep Ones, reports of Mi-Go by crews flying the Hump, reports on Nazi occult researches. The latter topic had been of considerable interest during the war… it would certainly not do for one of Hitlers stooges to awaken Cthulhu or invoke Azathoth. But the Nazis, for all the famed German technical prowess and efficiency, had turned out to be shockingly incompetent at running major programs, and far too ready to accept any hand-waving booga-booga nonsense that was presented to them. That, Healy ruminated on, was one of Insights biggest successes to date, and would never be made pubic: they had fed Himmler a constant stream of important-sounding baloney. Stuff that, to a superstitious, gullible man like Himmler, sounded like the wisdom of the ancients but which was often enough dreamed up in a drunken stupor by one of the Office of Insights archivists. Vetted by sober staff scholars – it wouldn’t do to accidentally send the SS the keys to R’Lyeh – the false information kept the Nazi upper leadership wasting their time rather than calling up something they couldn’t put down.
The Office of Insight had not, perhaps, won any battles during the war… but they had certainly prevented the other side from starting problems that could have ended the United States. And that had to be enough for Healy and his team. It was a bit of a blow to the ego, but working in the shadows, unacknowledged and uncelebrated, was the business they chose. And now that the Manhattan Project was public – Insight had been aware of Manhattan, and had managed to sponge some funds off of it under General Groves’ nose – there would be thousands of folks formerly working in the shadows who would soon be getting directly into the limelight. Well, that was fine. Shine the light over there, at that guy, and we can stay in the dark and do our jobs.
Healy suddenly had a thought. With the war now over, there would undoubtedly be a vast amount of military materiel that would no longer be needed. Everything from guns to trucks to tanks to bombers would be scrapped, melted down to build the cars and airplanes and washing machines for what was sure to be a post-war boom. This meant that there would be a lot of hardware available for purchase at rock-bottom prices. The Office might have use for a whole armies worth of ordnance. He started to jot down a note.
His phone rang. It was an internal call from the communications office on the top floor. He listened for a moment as the agent on the other end read the decoded transmission, and suddenly his eyebrows shot up. This was truly a day of days. It seemed that just a few hours earlier, an aircraft on the usual monthly pass over the supposed site of Dyers “alien city” had found… Dyers alien city. For a decade all that any aircraft had ever seen was a flat field of snow. Now, it seemed, there were a few mountain ranges where none should be. Additionally, the aircraft took several hours longer than normal to get where it was going, and landed with almost empty fuel tanks. A second flight was underway now, and was reporting that the mountains were still there.
Healy drummed his fingers on the desktop. He had been waiting for this news since the Starkweather-Moore Expedition, but he’d have to wait more hours still before the photos would be wired in, and days before the actual photos would land on his desk. In the mean time, there were plans to make. Nobody else in the world now had anything like the ability to project power to try to claim the alien city if they even knew it was there, but that was no excuse for unnecessary procrastination. There was no way of telling how long the city might remain accessible.
Claiming the place, locking it down so that nobody else would get it, would be a major operation. That would be an operation beyond the Office of Insights fiscal means; it would have to be a part of something like a major US Navy operation. And that could not be hidden, so some sort of cover story – a Navy training exercise in the harsh Antarctic environment, say, testing out men and materiel – would have to be concocted.
Healy pondered that and who might be capable of pulling it off. A few ideas occurred. He reached into the garbage can next to his desk and fished out some personnel status reports that had seemed irrelevant a few minutes earlier. He flipped through them, finding the one he wanted. There it was: a listing of flag officers present at the Japanese surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri. The man he wanted was right there: Rear Admiral Byrd, famed explorer of both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Healy did not know him personally, which meant that Byrd was not read into the Office of Insight. But Healy did know Secretary of the Navy Forrestal. Perhaps it was time for a conversation.
Director Healy looked out at the party from his office. Almost as shocking as the news from Antarctica was the sight of Miss Jackson chatting and laughing with Dr. Felber. It was long known, and long laughed about, that the scientist was attracted to the buxom blond secretary. Hell, every man in the place was attracted to her, and she knew it. But Felber would never look a person in the eyes and would only speak when given the opportunity to launch into unstoppable monologues about his latest area of study. People avoided him. But there he was, apparently hitting it off with Miss Jackson. Healy smiled. Sometimes miracles happen.