Sara Yamaguchi said, “The universal bruising is understandable now. The shape-changer enfolded its victims, squeezed them. So the bruising came from a brutal, sustained, universally applied pressure. That's how they suffocated, too — wrapped up inside the shape-changer, totally encapsulated in it.”
“I wonder,” Jenny said, “if maybe it produces its preservative while squeezing its victims.”
“Yes, probably,” Sara said, “That's why there's no visible point of injection in either body we studied. The preservative is most likely applied to every square inch of the body, squeezed into every pore. Sort of an osmotic application.”
Jenny thought of Hilda Beck, her housekeeper, the first victim she and Lisa had found.
She shuddered.
“The water,” Jenny said.
“What?” Bryce said.
“Those pools of distilled water we found. The shape-changer expelled that water.”
“How do you figure?”
“The human body is mostly water. So after the thing absorbed its victims, after it used every milligram of mineral content, every vitamin, every usable calorie, it expelled what it didn't need: excess amounts of absolutely pure water. Those pools and puddles we found were all the remains we'll ever have of the hundreds whore missing. No bodies. No bones. Just water… which has already evaporated.”
The noises on the roof did not resume; silence reigned. The phantom crab was gone.
In the dark, in the fog, in the sodium-yellow light of the streetlamps, nothing moved.
They turned away from the windows at last and went back to the table.
“Can the damned thing be killed?” Frank wondered.
“We know for sure that bullets won't do the job,” Tal said.
“Fire?” Lisa said.
“The soldiers had firebombs they'd made,” Sara reminded them, “But the shape-changer evidently struck so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that no one had time to grab the bottles and light the fuses.”
“Besides,” Bryce said, “fire most likely won't do the trick. If the shape-changer caught fire, it could just… well…
“Explosives are probably useless, too,” Jenny said, “I have a hunch that, if you blew the thing into a thousand pieces, you'd wind up with a thousand smaller shape-changers, and they'd all flow together again, unharmed.”
“So can the thing be killed or not?” Frank asked again.
They were silent, considering.
Then Bryce said, “No. Not so far as I can see.”
“But then what can we do?”
“I don't know,” Bryce said, “I just don't know.”
Frank Autry phoned his wife, Ruth, and spoke with her for nearly half an hour. Tal called a few friends on the other telephone. Later, Sara Yamaguchi tied up one of the lines for almost an hour. Jenny called several people, including her aunt in Newport Beach, to whom Lisa talked, as well. Bryce spoke with several men at headquarters in Santa Mira, deputies with whom he had worked for years and with whom he shared a bond of brotherhood; he spoke with his parents in Glendale and with Ellen's father in Spokane.
All six survivors were upbeat in their conversations. They talked about whipping this thing, about leaving Snowfield soon.
However, Bryce knew that they were all just putting the best possible face on a bad situation. He knew these weren't ordinary phone calls; in spite of their optimistic tone, these calls had only one grim purpose; the six survivors were saying goodbye.
Chapter 35
Pandemonium
Sal Corello, the publicity agent who had been hired to meet Timothy Flyte at San Francisco International Airport, was a small yet hard-muscled man with corn-yellow hair and purple-blue eyes. He looked like a leading man. If he had been six foot two instead of just five foot one, his face might have been as famous as Robert Redford's. However, his intelligence, wit, and aggressive charm compensated for his lack of height. He knew how to get what he wanted for himself and for his Clients.
Usually, Corello could even make newsmen behave so well that you might mistake them for civilized people; but not tonight. This story was too big and much too hot. Corello had never seen anything like it: Hundreds of reporters and curious civilians rushed at Flyte the instant they saw him, pulling and tugging at the professor, shoving microphones in his face, blinding him with batteries of camera lights, and frantically shouting questions. “Dr. Flyte…” “Professor Flyte…” “… Flyte!”
Corello took the microphone and quickly silenced the throng. He urged them to let Flyte deliver a brief statement, promised that a few questions would be permitted later, and introduced the speaker, and stepped out of the way.
When everyone got a good, clear look at Timothy Flyte, they couldn't conceal a sudden attack of skepticism. It swept the crowd; Corello saw it in their faces: a very visible apprehension that Flyte was hoaxing them. Indeed, Flyte appeared to be a tad maniacal. His white hair was frizzed out from his head, as if he had just stuck a finger in an electric socket. His eyes were wide, both with fear and with an effort to stave off fatigue, and his face had the dissipated look of a wino's grizzled visage. He needed a shave. His clothes were rumpled, wrinkled; they hung like shapeless bags. He reminded Corello of one of those street corner fanatics declaring the immanence of Armageddon.
Earlier in the day, on the telephone from London, Burt Sandler, the editor from Wintergreen and Wyle, had prepared Corello for the possibility that Flyte would make a negative impression on the newsmen, but Sandler needn't have worried. The newsmen grew restless as Flyte cleared his throat half a dozen times, loudly, into the microphone, but when he began to speak at last, they were ended within a minute. He told them about the Roanoke Island colony, about vanishing Mayan civilizations, about mysterious depletions of marine populations, about an army that disappeared in 171 I. The crowd grew hushed. Corello relaxed.
Flyte told them about the Eskimo village of Anjikuni, five hundred miles northwest of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost at Churchill. On a snowy afternoon in November of 1930, a French-Canadiantrapper and trader, Joe LaBelle, stopped at Anjikuni — only to discover that everyone who lived there had disappeared. All belongings, including precious hunting rifles, had been left behind. Meals had been left half-eaten. The dogsleds (but no dogs) were still there, which meant there was no way the entire village could have moved overland to another location. The settlement was, as LaBelle put it later, as eerie as a graveyard in the very dead of night. LaBelle hastened to the Mounted Police Station at Churchill, and a major investigation was launched, but nothing was ever found of the Anjikunians.
As the reporters took notes and aimed tape recorder microphones at Flyte, he told them about his much- maligned theory: the ancient enemy. There were gasps of surprise, incredulous expressions, but no noisy questioning or blatantly expressed disbelief.
The instant Flyte finished making his prepared statement, Sal Corello reneged on his promise of a question- and-answer session. He took Flyte by the arm and hustled him through a door behind the makeshift platform on which the microphones stood.
The Newsmen howled with indignation at this betrayal. They rushed the platform, trying to follow Flyte.
Corello and the professor entered a service corridor ' where several airport security men were waiting. One
