Asimov's SF, January 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  III. The Mystery

  I was walking back to the cottage from Red Row when it happened. It was a warm evening, and Mr. Russell had let me off work early so that I could have dinner with Betty at her dorm. We'd sat out on one of the picnic tables for a little while afterward, but since she had to get up early the next morning for her job at the club, I'd kissed her goodnight before heading back to Riverside. So I was outside, and thus saw the whole thing.

  An abrupt boom from somewhere high above caused me to stop and look up. My first thought was that it was thunder, yet the sky was clear, with no signs of an approaching storm. As it so happened, I was on one of the footpaths between the cottages, out from beneath the trees that would have otherwise interfered with my view, and thus I was able to see the fireball that raced across the starlit sky.

  I'd seen meteors before, of course, on those rare occasions when my family escaped from the city for a weekend in the Catskills, yet what I saw was nothing like that. Larger and brighter than any falling star, it raced westward across the heavens. In less time than it takes to tell, the object vanished behind the trees ... and yet, in the instant before I lost sight of it, I had the distinct impression that it slowed down, almost as if it was somehow braking its descent.

  From somewhere nearby, I heard voices raised in astonishment. I'd barely realized that I wasn't the only person to witness this phenomenon when, in the far distance, another sound reached my ears: a second boom, not as loud as the first but nevertheless quite audible, as if something had impacted the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of the island. Then nothing, save for a soft, warm rush of air that stirred the tree limbs, as if the object had caused a strange wind to fall across the island.

  Again, I heard voices. Looking down, I noticed for the first time a number of people standing in the gardens of the nearby Crane Cottage. Apparently the incident had drawn the attention of those attending an outdoor party. Against the cottage's lighted windows, I saw several silhouetted figures gazing up in amazement, with some pointing to the sky.

  Yet I thought little of what I'd seen, other than to consider myself lucky to have spotted a larger-than-normal meteorite on its way to the earth. I made a wish—that Betty and I would somehow stay together, as I recall—then continued my walk back to Riverside. At least I'd have a story to tell Mr. Russell when I saw him again in a few minutes.

  Once I reached the cottage, though, I found that my employer wasn't around. His hat and coat were missing from the rack by the front door, so I figured that he must have stepped out for the evening. Perhaps he was at the party I'd seen. So I puttered around in the kitchen for a few minutes, straightening up a bit, then fetched a bottle of beer from the brand-new refrigerator and took it to my room. The night was still young, and I decided to write a couple of pages before Mr. Russell came home, when he'd want his customary hot chocolate before bedtime.

  Yet I'd barely written more than a few paragraphs when I heard the front door bang open, and a moment later Mr. Russell rushed into my room. Wild-eyed and out of breath, it appeared as if he'd run all the way back to the cottage.

  “My God, Sol,” he exclaimed, “did you see that?”

  I didn't need to ask what he meant. “I certainly did, sir,” I said, calmly smiling at him from behind the typewriter. “Wasn't that a hoot?”

  “A hoot?” He regarded me with astonishment, as if I'd just witnessed a herd of wild elephants stampeding down Fifth Avenue and could only say, Well, isn't that a stitch? “Is that all you...?” Then he shook his head as he cast his eyes around the room. “Never mind. Isn't there a flashlight around here?”

  “Yes, sir ... in the utility closet.” I pushed aside my folding table. “I'll find it for....”

  “I'll get it myself.” He turned away from me, darting in the direction of the closet where I kept the household tools. “Go upstairs and pull out my outdoor clothes. That includes the swamp boots and my cap. Hurry!”

  I'd seldom seen him quite so impatient, not even when running late for some social event. And never before had he ever rushed out at this late hour, save perhaps the time Mrs. Russell had been found by the New York police sitting astride one of the Public Library lions with a bottle of Scotch in hand. But it wasn't my place to ask why, only to do what I was told. So while he turned the utility closet upside-down searching for the flashlight, I went up to his bedroom and laid out the canvas trousers, denim shirt, waterproof knee boots, and fisherman's cap that he wore when hunting. I'd scarcely placed them on the bureau when he jogged up the stairs and, throwing off his evening clothes, put on the outdoor gear as hastily as if the house was on fire.

  When he sat down on the bed to pull on his boots, I ventured the obvious question. “Mr. Russell, if I may ask...?”

  “It came down on the other side of the island,” he snapped. “Of that, we're quite positive. You mean you didn't see ... I mean, hear ... it?” Before I could respond, he went on. “Renny, Phil, and I are going out there at once. If it's a meteorite and it hit the beach, we may be able to locate it while the tide is still low.”

  I couldn't help but smile when he said that. Perhaps I hadn't gone to college, but I'd learned enough about meteorites during my high school science classes to know that their chances of finding a newly fallen space rock were remote at best. Even if the meteorite had hit dry land, and not simply been swallowed up by the ocean, in all likelihood it would be so small as to be indistinguishable from any other random object one might find on a beach.

  Yet I didn't say anything. Mr. Russell and his friends—Arleigh Renwick, Phillip Sidwell, perhaps a few other club members he'd neglected to mention—were obviously spoiling for an adventure. Over the last few months, they'd whiled away the time with golf games and tennis matches, and perhaps they'd become bored with all that. So here was something new: a late-night sortie to the island's uninhabited Atlantic side, in search of a trophy more exotic than another buck head. Far be it from me to ruin their fun with some inconvenient facts.

  An automobile horn honked just outside the cottage. Mr. Russell yanked his left boot the rest of the way on, then snatched up the flashlight and bolted from the room. “No need to wait up for me, Sol!” he yelled over his shoulder as he dashed down the stairs, taking the risers two at a time. “I'll be back late!”

  “Very good, sir,” I replied, but I don't think he heard me before he charged through the front door. When I went down to close it behind him, I caught a glimpse of the headlights of Mr. Renwick's old Model-T “island car” heading down Riverview Drive.

  I went to bed shortly after that, and didn't hear Mr. Russell return. But when I rose early the next morning, I found him in the living room. He'd fallen asleep on a couch, still wearing his clothes; his boots were caked with moist sand, as were the knees of his trousers. He'd apparently been too exhausted to go upstairs to bed, so I laid a blanket across him, then went to the kitchen to make coffee.

  He slept through the better part of the morning, and when he finally woke up, he said very little to me, but instead went upstairs to take a bath. I had just made a late breakfast of bacon and eggs when he reappeared. Wearing only his robe, he took a seat at the dining room table and wolfed down his food. He said nothing about where he'd gone or what he'd done. Figuring that he was in one of his moods, I went about my chores without trying to make conversation.

  I'd just collected his soiled clothes and was about to add them to the laundry hamper when he stopped me. “Don't bother,” he said. “I'll be wearing them again today.”

  “Very well, sir.” I turned to carry them back upstairs, then my curiosity got the better of me. “Did you find the meteorite you were searching for?”

  Mr. Russell said nothing for a moment. “Sol ... how well can I trust you?”

  That stopped me. This was something he'd never asked before, perhaps because he'd never had reason to question my loyalty. In the four years that I'd lived and worked in his household, I'd become privy to most of his secrets: his underworld connectio
ns, his wife's bad behavior, the rocky state of his finances, even the rumor that he was actually a Jew. But I'd never revealed anything that I'd learned about his private life, and there was an unspoken agreement between us that I never would. So it was odd—and, yes, a bit of an insult—that, after all this time, he'd actually come right out and ask whether he could trust me.

  “Implicitly, Mr. Russell,” I replied, looking him straight in the eye. “You should know that by now.”

  He slowly nodded, apparently satisfied by my reply. “I thought so,” he said. “I think...” Another pause, as if he had some final reluctance that he needed to overcome. “I think I need your assistance,” he went on. “A matter of a rather ... well, unusual nature.”

  My curiosity became greater. “The meteorite, sir?”

  The slightest of smiles. “There was no meteorite. We found something else entirely. I'm going back there today, and I'd like you to come with me. I think you may ... ah, be able to offer certain insights as to what we've discovered.”

  He wouldn't tell me more, though, but instead asked me to put his outdoor clothes back where I'd found them, and instructed me to dress in the same fashion. So I returned his clothes to his room, then went to put on the clothes I usually wore for cutting the grass or trimming the hedges. I'd just put together a picnic lunch when he came back downstairs, again dressed the same way as he had been before. As an afterthought, he added a notebook and a couple of pencils to my picnic basket, and then we left the cottage.

  I'd assumed that Mr. Renwick would be picking us up in his car, so I was surprised when we set out on foot instead. An unpaved automobile road led across Jekyll Island to the Atlantic side, but once we reached the golf course, we left the road and cut across the fairways. At one point, we spotted a couple of club members on the ninth hole green; although Mr. Russell recognized them, he quietly insisted that we cut through the woods to avoid being seen. I followed him through the thickets until we reached a bridle path that eventually brought us to the dirt road that ran parallel to the beach.

  Noticing fresh tire tracks, I figured that this was the way Mr. Renwick had driven the night before. But Mr. Russell didn't say anything about this as we followed the road for a couple of miles, heading toward the island's remote southern tip. We'd almost reached Jekyll Point when the tire tracks abruptly left the road, leading into the scrub-covered dunes that bordered the beach. We followed the tracks, and fifty feet from the road came upon two automobiles—Mr. Renwick's Model T and a Chrysler roadster I recognized as belonging to Cecil Hadley—hidden behind a dense wall of brush.

  “Damn,” Mr. Russell murmured upon seeing them. “The others are already here.” He turned to me. “Remember, Sol ... no matter what the others may say, you're with me. You're here as a consultant, not as my valet. Understand?”

  Mystified, I nodded. “Understood, sir.”

  He hesitated. “And one more thing ... what you're about to see is a secret of the highest order. You're to never, ever, speak or write about this without my express permission. Can I count on you to be quiet about this?”

  “Yes, sir, you can.”

  He must have noticed the nervous tremor in my voice, for a smile crossed his face. “If this works out, your silence will be amply rewarded.” I nodded again, and he gave me what was meant to be a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Very well, then ... come with me.”

  * * * *

  IV. The Horror

  Following the footprints left behind by the others, we made our way through the dunes until we came to the beach. About sixty yards away, several men had gathered around an enormous object that lay at the water's edge. Dark gray, about seventy feet in length, it rested upon the white sand like some giant mollusk that had been washed ashore by the morning tide. My first thought was that it was a beached whale, but as we came closer, I saw that it wasn't that at all.

  It was a creature, all right, but unlike any that I'd ever seen before. Lying prone on the beach, with its head and forequarters upon the sand and its feet and tail in the surf, it resembled some prehistoric beast that had emerged from time's abyss after a long sleep of countless millions of years. Its long arms lay at its sides, exposing long-fingered claws large enough to seize a full-grown man, while its legs were muscular and forward-jointed, obviously capable of standing upright. Rising from the great hump of its back was a serrated dorsal fin that tapered off at its long neck, at the end of which was a triangular, serpent-like skull, with a lipless mouth beneath a blunt snout and small eyes—both closed, thankfully—set deep within a ridged forehead.

  In all, the creature looked a bit like a tyrannosaur ... and yet, as soon as I saw it, I knew that it hadn't evolved on our world. Perhaps it was only intuition, but I realized that no paleontologist had ever discovered fossil remains of anything like this in the Black Hills of North Dakota. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't from Earth.

  The men who'd come here earlier had brought one of the club's picnic tents with them. They had erected it a short distance up the beach from the monster; a couple of lawn chairs were set up within its shade, and it appeared that they'd brought their own wicker basket as well. Someone had even gone to the trouble of collecting driftwood for a small bonfire, although it hadn't been lit yet. A half-dozen club members stood around the creature; dressed in seersucker jackets and straw boating hats, they could have been having a midday clam bake. As Mr. Russell and I approached them, Mr. Sidwell raised his hand in greeting while the others simply stared at us.

  “For God's sake, Bill,” Mr. Renwick said once we joined them. “Didn't we agree to keep our mouths shut about this?

  He didn't look directly at me as he said this, but I had no doubt that I was the object of his disapproval. The others glared at me; it was obvious that a lowly manservant was the last person they wanted to have join their party.

  “Relax, Renny.” My employer favored him with an easy-going smile. “Sol has been sworn to secrecy. He has certain expertise in such matters, and I thought it wise to bring him in.”

  I almost laughed out loud when he said this. My formal education had ended with a high school diploma; I was an expert only in how to knot Mr. Russell's dinner tie. Before I could say anything, though, Mr. Russell put his arm around my shoulder. “Gentlemen,” he said, addressing the group as a whole, “if you haven't met him before, this is Mr. Solomon Hess. Sol's presently employed as my valet, yes, but he's also a writer, and I've read enough of his work to know that he's an astute thinker in subjects of a speculative nature.”

  Which was a roundabout way of saying that I wrote science fiction. Yet it seemed to disarm the men standing before me, because they each stepped forward to shake my hand, albeit reluctantly. I was already familiar with them, of course—Renwick, Sidwell, and Hadley, and also George Collier, Lester Smith, and Byron DuMont—but until then I'd been an invisible man, someone beneath their notice. Yet if Mr. Russell was willing to vouch for me, they had little choice but to acknowledge my presence.

  “Well then, Sol,” Mr. Hadley said, once the introductions were made, “perhaps you can shed some light on our little mystery.”

  His words were pleasant enough, but he was obviously testing his friend's claim that I was some sort of great scientific thinker. From the corner of my eye, I could see Mr. Russell watching me expectantly, perhaps hoping that I wouldn't embarrass him in front of his friends. I don't know what it is either was the truthful response, but it was also the one that simply wouldn't do.

  I didn't respond at once, but instead approached the creature. It lay inert upon the beach, with no visible movement whatsoever, yet as I came closer, I noticed something peculiar. Although seagulls and terns wheeled about it, squawking as they pirouetted overhead, never once did they alight upon its head or back.

  “You found it last night?” I asked.

  “Just as you see it.” Mr. Russell stepped away from his friends to join me. “We thought at first it may have been a meteorite, but when we got close to it...” He g
rinned. “Well, it's no meteorite, that much is certain.”

  “And it hasn't moved since then ... um, sir?”

  A couple of smiles from Mr. Collier and Mr. Hadley; they hadn't missed the deferential way in which I'd addressed Mr. Russell. “No, not at all,” he said. “Don't worry. It's quite plainly dead.”

  I looked up at the circling birds. “I don't think so. If it were, then the gulls would be all over it.”

  No one said anything, but I couldn't help but notice that a few of the men took a nervous step back. Mr. Hadley remained skeptical. “I don't care what it looks like,” he said. “It's not an animal, either dead or alive. See for yourself ... place your hand on it.”

  I was reluctant to do so. If this thing had come from outer space, then there was a chance that it might be radioactive. But there was no Geiger counter on hand, and I was being put on the spot, so I had little choice but to walk up to the creature and gently lay my palm against its side. I was surprised to find not the warm flesh of a mammal, or even the cool skin of a reptile, but instead a cold surface that was flexible yet nonetheless vaguely metallic. And when I peered more closely at the creature, I noticed what appeared to be seams between its shoulder and biceps, and also at its elbow; the same for its lower neck, and also the hinge of its jaw.

  At the time, I hadn't yet encountered industrial-grade plastics; in hindsight, that may have been what it was made of. The fact that the thing had distinct junctures at its joints hinted that it was not organic in nature. And yet, as my hand lay upon its side, I felt a faint, almost rhythmic vibration from deep within its body, much that which I would expect from a slumbering animal. Despite what Mr. Hadley said, I had the distinct impression that this was a living machine.[6]

  “Well?” Mr. Russell stood behind me, awaiting my verdict. “What do you think, Sol?”

  I stepped away from the creature. “I'm not sure, but this may be some sort of robot.” Noticing his uncomprehending expression, I tried to explain what I meant. “An automaton, that is ... a device deliberately built to resemble a living creature.”