'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
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.'
'Never mind that,' Tesserax said, impatiently, snapping all six of his right-hand tentacles rapidly, making a
