The Haunted Earth

by Dean R. Koontz

  A tone of exasperation crept into the computer's voice. "No, sir, you are not, despite how you may feel. As I have already explained, you are in the protective-custody wing, not in the prison itself."

  "What am I being protected from?" he wanted to know. He saw there was no handle on the inside of the door, no way to open it except from the hall beyond.

  "Yourself," the computer said.

  "I'm being protected from myself?"

  "Yes, sir. It's felt that you've generated an enormous amount of violence these last two days, most of it directed against yourself, in the end."

  "You have to let me out," Jessie insisted, pushing uselessly at the door. "How can you protect me from myself if I'm in here with me?"

  The computer was silent.

  "Well?"

  When it spoke, it chose to change the subject. "Would you like to watch some of the Pritchard Robot Show, sir?"

  Sighing, the detective turned and faced the Tri-D set, saw the world-famous features of Pritchard Robot, studio lights gleaming dully on the burnished, metallic head as the simulacrum leaned across his desk and pointed a ball-jointed, five-inch finger at his guest. "Who's he interviewing tonight?" Jessie asked.

  "Right now, he's talking with God," the computer said. "From monitoring other cells and the reactions of the prisoners viewing the show, I'd say this is one of his most successful interviews."

  Jessie sat down on the edge of his bed and stared morosely at the bright Tri-D screen. "Bring up the sound," he said.

  "I know you'll enjoy it, sir," the computer said.

  On the screen, Pritchard Robot looked at his guest with the same, flat, unchanging metallic expression he had been built with, and he said, "You do not purport to be the ultimate God, the all-powerful God, the number one world master, the big boy in the sky, the hot shot universe builder?"

  The camera cut to a large, muscular man with rich white hair and an enormous, flowing beard. He was handsome in spite of his age, filled with an obvious vitality. "I've never claimed any such thing, as you must well be aware, Pritchard."

  "Call me Mr. Robot, please," Pritchard said.

  Oh boy, Jessie thought, it's one of those confrontations, is it? He felt sorry for God, but he leaned forward, anxious to see what Pritchard would do to the old goat.

  "Tell me, Mr. God, is it not true that you are both the god of the Jews and Christians alike?"

  "I'm only a third of the Christian pantheon," God said, obviously stung by the interviewer's personal rebuke.

  "But you do serve a purpose in both theologies?" The harsh, yet winning, voice of Pritchard Robot brooked no debate.

  "Yes," God said.

  "How is it possible to be both a god of wrath and a god of mercy?"

  "Now wait just a minute," God said.

  "Aren't you deceiving either the Jews or the Christers?" Pritchard Robot wanted to know.

  "It was human beings who wrote the Bible, flesh-and-blooders who said these things. They're the ones who created the conflict, not me. I was an innocent party." The old man brushed at his beard. "I had no say in what I was to be, as you know."

  "Did you also have no say in the atrocities you forced mankind to suffer for so many centuries?" Pritchard Robot asked, his voice rising. "Are you going to try to tell me, and my vast audience, that you were forced to bring the Great Flood to the Earth?"

  "Well, no," God said, subdued. "But once they'd created me as a god of wrath, I was forced to live up to the billing."

  "Don't you think — won't you admit, Mr. God — that you more than lived up to your mythical role? Didn't you use that role in a most cynical and ruthless fashion, use it to excuse the most vicious, sadistic acts ever recorded in the annals of the written word? Didn't you go overboard, Mr. God, in fulfilling your myth role? Didn't you willfully and demonically desecrate the Earth? Didn't you perpetrate these crude and malicious atrocities solely because they excited and gratified your own sick mind?" Pritchard Robot was smoking around the ears by the time he had delivered this sharp accusation.

  "You're exaggerating and being totally unfair," God said. "As I said before, I'm only one of many gods. Others have had to live up to their myth requirements. My requirements were harder than most, that's all."

  Pritchard Robot said, "Then you think the Great Flood was not an overreaction to tie requirements of your myth role?"

  "I think it was within bounds." God shifted in his chair, putting his robes in place. "I was then only a wrathful god, and I needed to punish mankind to fulfill my role."

  "Punish mankind,'' Pritchard Robot said.

  "Yes."

  "For what sins?"

  "Orgies. Disrespect for parents. A rise in the overall crime rate, an increase in warfare."

  "And your idea of punishment, of teaching mankind a lesson, was to wipe out the entire race except for one single family — the Noahs?"

  "At the time, it seemed proper," God said, running a finger around his ecclesiastical collar.

  Pritchard Robot said, "Tell me, Mr. God, are there no orgies in Heaven?"

  "Well, occasionally, as you can read in the Bible…" He coughed and wiped perspiration off his face. "Well, after all, some of those angels are as stacked as…"

  "And are you not, yourself, responsible for the rape of a woman, one whose last name is unfortunately lost to history, a woman we shall call Mary of Nazareth?"

  "Well, rape is a strong word," God said.

  "Did she not have a child by you? And was this child not conceived out of wedlock? And did you not, later, even forsake this child? And when you made Mary of Nazareth with this child, did you not come to her at night while she was quite alone and defenseless, and threaten her with your godly position and your almighty power — which is nowhere near so almighty as was once thought?"

  "Well…" God said, weakly.

  "And having done all of this," Pritchard Robot said, "you have the unmitigated gall to sit there and say you reasonably punished humanity with the Great Flood. For things you had done yourself!"

  "Uh—" God said.

  "We must break now, for a commercial," Pritchard Robot said. "When we return, we'll be talking with our second guest for the evening, a mythical creature we all enjoy when he has time to be on the show: the Honest Politician. Now, for this word from—"

  The Tri-D picture clicked into two:dimensions then suddenly darkened altogether as the panel concealing the screen slid into place and locked, all this command by remote control.

  In that same old-maid-school-teacher-from-Altoona voice, the prison computer said, "I'm sorry to have to interrupt the Pritchard Robot Show, sir, but you have an official visitor. I thought that should have preference."

  Jessie turned away from the featureless blue wall where the Tri-D screen had been and got quickly to his feet as the padded door swung outward and a maseni bureaucrat, dressed in flame-orange robes and a black necklace, swayed into the cell.

  "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Blake."

  There was something naggingly familiar about the alien, though Jessie could not place just what it was. When he couldn't identify it, he dismissed the thought and said, "I'd like to see my secretary, Helena, and my partner, to be sure they're okay."

  "Oh, they're fine," the maseni said, patting the air with one long-tentacled hand. "There were no illegal bites or unauthorized disintegrations last night."

  "Still, I'd like to see them."

  "Of course you would," the maseni said, bowing slightly from the waist, his head nearly brushing the ceiling when he stood erect again. "Your secretary has been awake for some three hours now, and she has expressed similar desires. And your Mr. Brutus has been in a foul mood ever since you were rescued last night, demanding this and that, refusing to understand that it was best for you to sleep off the drug — to give us time for certain special arrangements—"

  "I've heard about these special arrangements before," Jessie said, "from the prison computer. Just what were you rushing around about whi
le I was unconscious?"

  "For one thing," the lanky alien said, "I had to be spaced back from the home world, by an express ship, so that I could make a number of explanations."

  "Explanations?"

  "Yes," the maseni said. He extended a six-tentacled hand and said, "I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. Blake. My name is Galiotor Tesserax."

  Chapter Sixteen

  "But you're dead!" Helena said, when Jessie introduced her to Galiotor Tesserax some ten minutes later.

  "That was merely a convenient lie," the maseni said, smiling, blinking his beady yellow eyes.

  "But how—"

  "Before we get into all of that, shall we sit down and make ourselves more comfortable?" He extended a hand toward the shape-changing chairs which were arranged around the conference table in the warden's private consultation room. "I've taken the liberty of ordering drinks, all around, to take the edge off this meeting," the maseni said, nodding nervously at each of them.

  The consultation room door slid open, and a robot clanked in, carrying a tray containing three liquors, two mixers, four glasses, swizzle sticks and orange slices. It bent awkwardly at its waist joint and put the tray down, turned the glasses over and said, "Be there will, sir, more anything?"

  "That's all, thank you," Tesserax said.

  "Please excuse my adjunct," the prison computer said, from its speaker in the ceiling. "With my budget slashed, I have to make do with damaged mechanicals."

  "You, sir, thank," the robot said to Tesserax, turned and clanked out of the room again.

  The maseni took their orders, mixed their drinks and saw that everyone was relatively content. He added a splash of bourbon to Brutus' dish when the hell hound complained that his drink was far too weak, and poured himself four ounces of Scotch and four ounces of vodka in the same glass, stirred them together without benefit of ice or mixer. He held this awful concoction tightly in his left hand and never took a single sip of it. That was just as well, Jessie thought, even though he did not know much about the flexibility or temperament of the maseni digestive system.

  "First of all," Tesserax began, "I must apologize for the way you three have been treated. My brood brother Fils should never have come to you in the first place. And once you were involved, you should have been contacted by the proper officials and informed of the falsity of my death certificate. You should never have been treated in the criminal manner you were. I am sorry, sir."

  "I accept your apology," Helena said, sipping her drink.

  Brutus raised his head from his bourbon and snorted to blow droplets of reddish-brown liquid from his muzzle. "I don't accept," he said.

  "Well, I do," Jessie said. "But I'm not satisfied with just an apology. I thought we were going to get some explanations."

  "Yes, sir, straight away," the alien said. "You see, six or seven weeks ago, a major crisis arose on the home world. This crisis was of a nature that demanded it be kept quiet. When the home world officials felt a few of the ranking embassy people here could help solve that problem, we were called away from L.A., secretly, and our absences explained by phony death certificates."

  "Was Pelinorie Mesa another maseni called home?" Jessie asked, remembering the brief conversation he'd had with chubby little Myer Hanlon, whom he'd used in the beginning of the case.

  Tesserax was nonplussed. He fluttered six gray tentacles across his gaping mouth to conceal his surprise. He didn't manage too well. "Then you know about the others?"

  "Some of them," Jessie lied, trying to make his meager fund of data seem like a comprehensive knowledge.

  "You're quite a talented man," the alien said.

  "Let's cut the crap," Brutus said. He was still in a foul mood, even though he had been reunited with Jessie and Helena and had a big dish of bourbon and soda in front of him. "What was the nature of this crisis of yours?"

  "I was getting to that," Tesserax said. He cleared his throat (it sounded like two cats were fighting under the table). Then he said, "On the home world, we have encountered a new species of supernatural — a creature which does not fit into our own mythology or the mythologies of any of the races we've come into contact with. Furthermore, our sociologists tell us that there has been no new mass superstition to account for the rise of this being."

  "What's it like?" Jessie asked.

  "We're not sure," Tesserax said. "Thus far, no one has seen it and lived to tell the story."

  "You mean it has killed maseni citizens?" Helena asked.

  "That's the situation," Tesserax said, looking glumly down at his untouched glass of Scotch and vodka. "Not only has it killed maseni flesh-and-blooders, but it has ruthlessly dissipated the ethereal essences of a number of our supernaturals as well."

  "But isn't that impossible?" Jessie asked. "A supernatural can't really hurt another supernatural."

  "We'd always thought that to be true, sir. Except, of course, for the sorcerers and their mythical equivalents. But this beast is no sorcerer. This creature smashes entire villages and leaves footprints as large as the bottoms of oil drums."

  "Have attempts been made to track it down?" Helena asked.

  "Yes," Tesserax said. "And traps have been set time and again. But it always strikes where least expected, leaves no survivors, and disappears. We've followed its prints a short way, but they always gradually fade out, until the trail is gone."

  "This is all rather horrible," Jessie admitted. "But why have you gone to such pains to keep it secret?"

  "If word had gotten out that we were having trouble with a murderous supernatural, after all we've told your people about how flesh-and-blooders can learn to live in harmony with supernaturals, your Pure Earthers would have had a field day. Maseni-human relations would have been set back nearly a decade by the hubbub."

  Jessie nodded. "True enough. But Slavek and his crowd went to extremes to keep us from—"

  "Oh, sir, you must not suppose that they were a part of the official plan to put a security blanket over this affair. They were acting on their own, all without the consent or even the knowledge of elected flesh-and-blood authority."

  Jessie finished his drink, twisted the glass in a tight circle on the wet tabletop. "But what have the supernaturals got to lose, from this, that would force them to such extreme measures?"

  "That's a question we've been asking ourselves, Mr. Blake," the alien said, rising from his chair, still holding his glass as he paced back and forth across the room, his head dangerously close to the low ceiling. "Every effort we've made, on the home world, to discover the nature and origins of this new beast has been opposed by our own supernaturals. And, here on Earth, both maseni and human-born supernaturals conspired to keep the secret from you. Obviously, they know more of this than we do, but they will not speak of it."

  "You've got yourself a dandy little mystery there," Helena said. She had finished her drink and was sucking on the orange slice that had been on the side of the glass.

  "That's it exactly," Tesserax said. "A mystery. That's why we decided to tell you the sutuation — and invite the three of you to come to the home world and investigate it."

  Jessie raised his eyebrows. "Hunt down this murderous beast that tramples villages?"

  "It will be dangerous," Tesserax conceded. "But we will pay well."

  Brutus said, "How well?"

  "Five hundred credits a day."

  "That's a flat fee, for all of us?"

  Tesserax clearly did not enjoy talking with the hell hound. He raised a hand to his mouth and cleared his throat — cats screaming — and said, "We thought that would be a fair—"

  "Make it five hundred a day, including travel days, for each of us," Brutus growled. "Then maybe we'll consider it."

  The alien looked at Jessie and said, "Does this… hound speak for you, Mr. Blake?"

  "He makes good sense, yes."

  Tesserax considered this and finally said, "Very well, then. Five hundred a day, for each of you — fifteen hundred a day in all." He returned to his
chair and folded up in it. "I assume the prison computer has recorded all of this."

  "Yes, Mr. Tesserax, I have," the computer said, sweetly.

  Tesserax rolled his amber eyes toward Jessie and said, "Will a print-out be sufficient contract for you?"

  "It'll do," Jessie said.

  "Did you hear that?" Tesserax asked the ceiling.

  The computer said, "I'll send an adjunct around with two print-outs in a minute, Mr. Tesserax."

  "Thank you."

  "It's nothing, sir," the computer said.

  Jessie looked at the speaker behind the ceiling light and said, "Do you mind telling me whose voice was used to make your tapes?"

  The prison computer said, "My tapes, which were provided as part of the overall computer package by Big Brother Building Systems Company, contain two hundred tapes with every sound that the human voice can produce, in addition to nearly two hundred thousand words in three Earth languages. My tapes were recorded by Miss Tessie Alice Armbruster, a retired school teacher from Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 9, 1987. The same woman made supplementary tapes for my system — in addition to supplementary tapes on the maseni languages which were fed to me earlier — on August 3, 1994 and again on November 1, 1999. Miss Armbruster's voice was employed because psychologists working with the Big Brother Building Systems Company felt that it had a range and modulation pattern that combined a lovable motherliness with an undeniable disciplinarian tone."

  Jessie said, "Is Holidaysburg near Altoona?"

  "Yes, sir, it is a suburb of the larger city," the prison computer replied,

  "You're amazing!" Tesserax said. "Simply amazing."

  The door opened. One of the computer's adjuncts tripped on the door sill as it entered the room, crashed flat on its face like a comedian taking a pratfall in some abominable old movie. Somthing shattered, and it made a gruesome, internal grinding sound.

  "If they slash my budget any further, I won't be responsible for what happens to the prison," Tessie Alice Armbruster said.

  The robot clambered to its feet and staggered forward a couple of steps until it got its balance. It said, "Me please gentlemen excuse."