Koontz, Dean R. - The Haunted Earth (v2.0)

by Koontz, Dean R.

  "EmRec?" Jessie asked.

  The service robot opened a large trunk which they had brought with them, pulled an airtight plastic seal away and activated the machine that waited inside.

  "EmRec means 'Emergency Recording System'," Tesserax explained. "It's a device adapted especially for this case."

  A four-foot-high robot, in maseni form, waddled out of the trunk, swiveled its head to look at each of them, and toddled to the only empty chair, dragged itself into the seat and said, "I'm ready."

  "You'll notice how compact the EmRec is," Tesserax said. "It has only stumpy legs, stumpy arms, and no differentiating 'neck' between its head and body."

  "Yeah," Brutus said. "It looks like a dwarf robot."

  "This compact design, in addition to the thick armored plating that covers the EmRec's taping areas, makes it nearly indestructible. It can 'live' through one of the beast's attacks. If the rest of us should perish, it will have a record of our progress to pass on to the next team of investigators, so they need not start from scratch."

  Helena said, "But why such an elaborate machine? Would a regular, micro-miniaturized, armored recorder have done as well, one that didn't walk and talk?"

  "No," Tesserax said. "The EmRec not only records, but makes comments on the tapes about facial expressions and gestures—comments we won't hear, but which those who later listen to the tape might find valuable." Tesserax sat down and looked away from the EmRec. "Shall we get on with it, then? What is this beast that's killed so wantonly, Mr. Blake?"

  Jessie cast one last glance at the stumpy EmRec, then began his detailed explanation. "You thought my alien viewpoint might give me a fresh enough slant to solve this puzzle where your best minds could not, and you were correct. The clues were obvious. Some of them, however, were things you were so accustomed to that you took them for granted. I didn't; they were unique things to me, and I employed them in seeking a solution."

  "Excuse me," EmRec said.

  Jessie looked at the metal dwarf. "Yes?"

  "Would say your expression, there, was one of smug self-satisfaction or a more mild and simple pleasure at your supposed success? That is to say, can we assume your explanation is untainted by egotism, or is there a shading element of the ego involved?"

  Tesserax said, "Some ego, clearly. But I believe Mr. Blake's facial expression was more simple satisfaction that smugness."

  "Proceed," the EmRec said.

  Jessie gathered his wits and said, "First of all there was your new myth figure—the Drunken Driver. I was aware that new myths are constantly generated, but not that cross-racial myths could spring up. From the moment I realized this possibility, I kept it in mind throughout the interviewing of other witnesses, in weighing everything I saw and heard. Your own people wouldn't have considered it particularly relevant. Next, I considered how rough the supernaturals have played to keep us from learning anything about this affair. It seemed to me that they were aware of a new myth, springing from maseni-human cultural interaction, but were desperate to keep its nature unknown for fear of losing something. When I talked with the mist demon Yilio and his angel wife Hannah, I suspected that what they feared was a law—or an Earth government partial to such a law—that would forbid marriage between maseni and human supernaturals. The only thing that could generate the demand for a law like that would be some calamitous result of interracial, supernatural breeding. In other words, if a maseni-human supernatural couple produced offspring that was dangerous, the Pure Earthers might get enough power, from public fear, to force through a law forbidding all interracial marriages."

  Tesserax was impressed. "Then you think this beast is the offspring of the coupling of maseni and human supernaturals?"

  "Excuse me," EmRec said. "Mr. Galiotor Tesserax, is that a look of awe on your face or merely one of surprise? It is difficult for me to give it a certain interpretation. I apologize for the interruption, but I think one of my sight circuits was jolted loose during shipment."

  "It was surprise and awe," Tesserax said.

  "Thank you. Proceed."

  Jessie took a moment, recovered, and said, "Yes, your beast is the child of an interracial, supernatural marriage. And I believe I can explain why this marriage produced an insane myth creature, a killer. You'll remember our discussion of the Protector in the space port when we landed. You said some people felt that those invading aliens, centuries ago, had not been able to live on this planet because some quirk in its geography, in its natural magnetic forces, was deadly to them."

  "I recall," Tesserax said.

  "Isn't it also possible," the detective went on, "that the same quirk might affect the offspring of certain supernatural marriages. Mind you, I'm not saying that all Earth myths who couple with maseni myths will produce unruly monsters. But isn't it feasible that one particular maseni species, matched with one particular Earth species, could produce an insane child by reason of your world's magnetic make-up, whatever that may be?"

  "Perfectly possible," Tesserax said.

  "Gentlemen," the EmRec said, "I wonder—"

  "It was awe, this time. No surprise, just awe," Tesserax said.

  "Thank you," the dwarf robot said. "Proceed."

  Jessie said, "Finally, the suicide report convinced me that I was on the right track. Two unprecedented incidents, so close together in time and space, seemed more than coincidental to me. I felt the suicides were somehow tied in with the marauding monster. Now, I believe that the couple who took their own lives were the parents of this killer plaguing your people. In horror at what they had unleashed, they took their own lives in a sort of warped atonement for the deaths of those people in the ruined villages." He picked up the suicide report, referred to it. "If the suicides were the parents of this monster, then its mother was Kekiopa, a little-known Carribbean storm goddess elemental worshipped by a small voodoo cult. And the father was a maseni myth figure, Ityitsil the Reptile Master."

  "Fascinating," Tesserax said.

  "EmRec," Brutus said, "you can describe me as awe-stricken, too."

  "Proceed," EmRec said.

  Tesserax said, "How do you propose to locate this beast, this cross-bred monster?"

  "It will locate us," Jessie said. "Part of the myth of the storm goddess is that she knows what transpires in every nook and cranny where her breezes blow. If the child inherited this mythical omniscience, it has known about all our comings and goings today. It will seek and destroy us. It knows we're here, just as it knew to avoid those traps your people set for it in the past."

  "But if it knows we're here," Tesserax said, "it also knows we might be able to destroy it. It knows that you've plumbed its secret."

  "It can't know that," the detective said. "It can't, because its many breezes do not reach inside four walls; indoors, it has no powers of observation, no ears and eyes."

  Helena said, "Then, if it's on its way, we should be looking for some way to deal with it."

  Jessie smiled, started to speak, turned to EmRec and said, "Yes, my ego is showing. I am smugly satisfied with myself."

  "I thought you were," EmRec said. "I already commented to that effect, on my inner tapes." It waved one stubby hand again. "Proceed."

  Jessie said, "I cracked my mythology books and found out how to destroy, how to disintegrate the souls, of each of the monster's parents."

  "But they're already dead," Tesserax said.

  It was Helena who was smiling smugly now. "Yes, they are, Tessie. But what Jessie means is—if we go through the rituals for dissipating both the mother and the father, the combination ought to dissipate the child—the beast."

  "Exactly," Jessie said. "Now, to destroy the storm goddess, one has only to repeat this voodoo chant—" he tapped an open book, "—and throw a few drops of fresh human blood into her winds. To dissipate a Reptile Master, one must merely repeat a certain maseni prayer and pierce him with a silver shaft."

  "Therefore," Helena continued, "when we confront this beast, one of us will say the voodoo
thing and throw blood into the wind, while someone else repeats the maseni prayer and fires a silver shaft into the creature's hide."

  Tesserax got to his feet, patting the top of his head excitedly. "Two questions come to mind, straight off. First, where will we obtain this silver shaft, on such short notice?"

  Jessie said, "I have a dip of silver narcotics darts which I use in my pistol on Earth when I know I might have to shoot werewolves as well as human beings. There's not enough silver in the darts to kill a supernatural like a werewolf, but it stings them badly and keeps them back. And, judging from what I've read of your Reptile Masters, a few silver pins should turn the dissipation trick."

  "And what about the human blood?" Tesserax asked.

  "The service robot operates a roboclinic out of one of these trunks he brought along, doesn't he?" the detective asked.

  "Yes. On any dangerous mission, a roboclinic—"

  Jessie interrupted: "We can have him take a blood sample from me, and I can throw that into the air."

  "Will that be sufficient quantity of blood to meet the myth requirements?" the maseni asked.

  "Yes, according to this UN text of mine."

  Excitedly, Tesserax said, "Then we are ready for it—or nearly so! If it should come after us tonight—"

  He was interrupted by a long, blood-curdling scream, a roaring, a thundering voice that shook the windows in their panes and made the mythical inn tremble violently on its mythical foundation.

  "Already?" Tesserax asked.

  Jessie said, "We had best move fast."

  EmRec said, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but would you say that scream was merely one of rage—or was it touched by madness? I think maybe my audio receptors were jarred a bit, in transport, in addition to my scanners."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The home world's two large moons shone down on the detective, the woman, the hell hound, Tesserax, the service robot, EmRec, Hogar the Poisoner, and a couple of giant, loin-clothed maseni gods as the group gathered behind the inn, facing the dark snow forests on, the higher slopes of Piotimkin. The booming, inhuman voice came from that direction. Soon, the thing would appear.

  "Anyone like a cookie?" Hogar asked. He passed a box of them around; the box came back to him, still full.

  EmRec said, "Mr. Hogar, sir, is that some form of mad expectancy on your face, or do you suffer from indigestion?"

  "Drop a bolt," Hogar snarled.

  The stubby robot said, "I wouldn't have to ask if my sight circuits and interpretation nodes hadn't been badly jarred in transport."

  "Strip your threads," Hogar said, meaner than before.

  Now, from upslope, came the sound of the giant conifers splitting apart like tiny saplings to make way for the monster. Trees crashed down, colliding noisily with other trees. Frightened woodland animals called out and rushed forth into the open meadow that separated the inn from the trees.

  "There!" Helena cried.

  Something enormous reared out of the last of the pines. Trees fell before it, revealing it in the pale moonlight.

  "Ugly bastard, isn't he?" Brutus asked.

  A core of violent winds, churning like beater blades on a mixmaster, whipped the trees and tore up the meadow sod and hurled it skyward in fist-sized chunks. The animals that had run into the meadow now ran out again, screeching shrilly, bellowing in terror. At the center of the maelstrom lay the more concretized aspect of the beast: a thirty-foot lizard which looked much like its father but was twice as large as a Reptile Master and a thousand times meaner. It turned green eyes on them and ran a pebbled tongue over rows of sabrelike teeth, started lumbering in their direction. Each of its six feet left barrel-sized depressions in the earth.

  "I can't interpret the monster's facial expressions at all," EmRec said. "And considering that its bellows really convey no meaning, I should really get something down here, I don't suppose one of you gentlemen is in the mood to assist?"

  "Pop a rivet," Hogar snapped, still holding his big boxful of poisoned cookies.

  "I didn't think you'd be in the mood," the metal dwarf said.

  Helena had begun the voodoo chant, while Brutus began to read the maseni prayer that would help dissipate the father's heritage. Jessie held both the vial of blood and the narcotics dart pistol loaded with silver pins.

  "Blood," Hogar said, sarcastically. "Everyone derides me. But I'll tell you one thing—poisoning is at least neat."

  The gargantuan had crossed a third of the meadow and was picking up speed, bearing down on them with the determination of a wounded bear and the momentum of a freight train.

  The maseni gods began to nonchalantly back away from the scene, their eyes wide in terror but not yet terrified enough to soil their godly reputations with a display of cowardice.

  "Hurry with the chants!" Tesserax cried.

  "That was raw fear," EmRec said, smugly. "That was the clearest expression of naked terror that I have ever seen, Mr. Galiotor."

  Tesserax did not respond. Indeed, he had not even heard the dwarf, for his own loud screaming.

  The earth shook with the dragon's approach. The force of the winds hit them and pasted their clothes tight against them; Tesserax's orange robes splashed out colorfully in his wake.

  Jessie threw the blood into the wind as Helena finished her chant, then dropped to one knee and fired a dozen silver darts at the dragon's belly just as Brutus came to the final verse of the maseni prayer. The effect was quite dramatic. The charging beast jerked, staggered clumsily to the side, fell down and rolled past them, into the back of the inn. Mythical boards burst, and mythical windows shattered....

  "It worked!" Tesserax cried.

  "Elation," EmRec said. "Or is it surprise? It might even be relief of a sort...."

  The dragon wailed and writhed, trying to regain its feet. But there was no use to its struggles. The winds around it had abated. Already it was becoming transparent, like a milk glass novelty in the pale moonlight.

  A few minutes later, Tesserax said, "It's gone. We did it, Blake! Or, rather, you did it, my friend."

  The animals, having fled to the far edges of the meadow, came slowly back toward the trees, now, sniffing the air where the beast had once walked.

  "This calls for a celebration!" Hogar said. "Food, wine, candies and spices! All on the house, of course."

  Pearlamon said, "I must admit, Mr. Blake, that many of us knew what the beast was. But we hoped to find a way to destroy it ourselves, without letting the secret out." He was munching on some peanuts which he had taken from a pouch in his loincloth, and his words were somewhat slurred. "But now that you and your brave companions—" He stopped, looked startled, dropped the peanuts and grabbed his throat. "Ach!" he said.

  Hogar giggled.

  "Ach, ach, ach," Pearlamon choked.

  Jessie turned away from the god as he fell onto his back. To Brutus, the detective said, "You know, you were right when you said I had a latent fear of becoming a Shockie like my folks. I don't have that fear any more. If I can keep my perspective in the midst of this crazy gang, I know I can adjust to anything at all."

  "I never was afraid of change or of danger or of crazy creatures," Helena said. "Excitement always makes me horny, that's all."

  "Ah, hah!" EmRec said. "I recognized that expression. Boy oh boy! Your face was a mask of sheer lust." The metal dwarf looked at Jessie and said, "Oh, and yours too, yours too!" He paused. "Or maybe yours isn't lust Perhaps you're constipated? I have a faulty visual node here, and I can't tell for sure. Is it, maybe, a tick in your cheek? Or could it be... No. I think what it is, you have had a religious revelation, a miraculous... No, not that either. Your expression is more one of... Or is it? Well now..."

  scan/proof note: I left the spelling errors in as there is not much between them and the correct spelling. As this book is over 25 years old, I thought it would be appropriate this way.

  Scan/Proofed : April 27, 2002 to v2.

    Koontz, Dean R., Koontz, Dean R. - The Haunted Earth (v2.0)