The Haunted Earth

in the abdomen. She slumped down on the thick carpet and went to sleep. She snored.

'Jesus, what a bore!' Brutus growled. He had no compunctions about using the Lord's name, in vain or otherwise, though Blake had never heard him use it otherwise. He padded to the sofa, jumped onto it, curled up with his big, hairy paws hanging over the edge of the cushions. 'It's one infidelity case after another, these days,' he complained.

'Boring but safe,' Blake said. He went to the vid-phone, punched out the number of their office and waited for Helena to answer it.

'Hell Hound Investigations,' she said, almost five minutes later.

'You're a poor excuse for a secretary,' Blake said. She blinked her long-lashed, blue eyes, pushed a strand of honey yellow hair away from her face. 'Yeah, but I'm stacked,' she said.

He could see her swelling bosom in the vidphone screen, and he could not argue with her. He said, 'Okay,' and he sat down, a bit overwhelmed by mammary memories. 'We've got Renee Cuyler safe and sound. I want you to call her husband and send him over here.' He gave her the address of the hotel, and the suite number.

'Congratulations,' she said, smiling. She had ripe lips and very white teeth. She should have made commercials for unnatural sex acts, Blake thought. 'Oh,' she said, 'you've received four calls this morning from a potential client.'

'Who?'

'Galiotor Fils,' she said.

'A maseni?'

'With that name, what else?' she asked.

'What's he want?'

'He'll only talk to you.'

Blake thought a moment. 'I'll be back in the office in an hour and a half, if you get to Roger Cuyler right away. If this Galiotor Fils can be there, I'll talk to him.'

'Right, chief,' she said.

He winced and didn't have a chance to reply before she snapped off, her perfect face and better bosom fading from the screen.

'Looks like you got your wish — for something interesting to happen,' Blake told the hell hound.

Brutus climbed off the couch and shook his head, his ears slapping against his skull, and he said, 'Did I hear right? A maseni for a customer?'

'You heard right.'

The hound said, 'That's a first. What problem could a maseni have that his own people couldn't solve, that he'd need a human detective for?'

'We'll know in an hour or so,' Blake said. 'Let's get our equipment out of the closet and ready to go, before Mr. Cuyler gets here to collect his wife.'

Chapter Two

With a six-inch tentacle as thick as a pencil, which passed for his forefinger, the maseni tapped the glass front of Blake's battery calendar. He looked hard at the detective, his deep-set yellow eyes intense, his lipless mouth expressing obvious disapproval, and he said, 'Your calendar ran down three days ago, sir. The date is not October 3,2000, but October 6,2000.'

'Only four days short of the tenth anniversary of the initial maseni landing on Earth,' Blake said, leaning back in his shape-changing chair and staring across the desk at the alien.

Galiotor Fils blinked, surprised. 'True enough, sir. But I fail to see what that has to do with your inefficiency.'

'And I fail to see what my calendar has to do with your visit to my office, Mr. Galiotor.' Watching the alien, Blake could almost understand why the right-wing Pure Earthers were so rabidly anti-maseni. Galiotor Fils was not the most pleasant sight: nearly seven feet tall, as were most of his kind, dressed in amber robes that matched the color of his eyes, he looked like something made of wax drippings — yellow skin with a glistening look to it, lumpy and yet graceful, with a ballooning forehead, those deep-set yellow eyes, the squashed nose, the lipless slash of a mouth, hands composed of those thin tentacles instead of fingers….

Galiotor Fils said, 'If you're inefficient in your daily office routine, perhaps your work as an investigator would be equally sloppy.'

'Did you just choose my name from the phone book, or did I come recommended?' Blake asked.

'Oh,' Galiotor said, 'you came recommended, sir. Highly recommended.' He nodded his bulbous head, as if agreeing with what he said, but the effect was that of a puppet being jerked on strings.

'Then I suggest we get on with the business at hand. If you will just tell us your situation, what you would like us to do for you, we can—'

The maseni interrupted. 'Excuse me, but must this animal remain in the room, sir?' He pointed an undulating tentacle-finger at Brutus, who had curled up on the only other easy chair in the room, only a half dozen feet from Galiotor Fils, himself.

'Him?' Blake asked. 'Of course he has to stay. He's my partner in Hell Hound Investigations. In fact, it's from him we get our name.'

'This is an intelligent creature?' the maseni asked.

'How would you like a couple dozen canine incisors in your ass?' Brutus inquired of the alien, his voice like gravel sliding down a sheet of tin.

Galiotor Fils shifted uneasily in his seat. 'I see,' he said. 'One of your supernatural brethren.'

'Exactly,' Blake said.

'Your myths contain some very strange creatures,' Galiotor Fils said. 'Of all the races we've met, of all those we've introduced to their supernatural world-mates, I don't think I've ever seen a collection so colorful—'

'You're pretty colorful yourself,' Brutus said. He had raised his big head from his paws. 'In fact, you're downright disgusting.'

The maseni made a throat clearing sound like a cat wailing in hunger. 'Yes,' he said, 'I suppose it's all a matter of perspective.'

Brutus lowered his head to his paws again.

Jessie, aware that the maseni was still uneasy about Brutus, decided that a reassuring little speech, now, would save them time later. Until he was put at ease, Galiotor Fils was going to be a difficult client. A difficult potential client. At the moment, Jessie didn't think they would take the case; both he and Brutus were well-off enough to be choosy, and they were both in need of something to stir the blood, something exciting. Galiotor Fils did not seem to be the type to change their luck. Still, on the off chance that he might be what they were looking for, Jessie decided not to send him away at once but to try to placate him, if possible.

'Mr. Galiotor,' he said, 'I assure you that you have nothing to fear from my friend, Brutus.'

'Nothing,' Brutus grumbled.

Jessie said, 'Two thousand years ago, Brutus was a man much like myself, a man who had sinned and who, upon death, went straightaway to Hell. There, he was changed into the hound you see before you, and he was given certain duties to perform within the hierarchy of file nether world.'

'Interesting duties,' Brutus said, grinning widely, almost slavering.

Galiotor Fils shifted uneasily in his chair.

'Brutus's duties were so interesting, by his way of thinking, that he chose to continue them even after he had spent enough time in Hell to redeem himself.'

'Five hundred years,' Brutus said.

'At the end of five hundred years, having served his time, Brutus could have opted for either permanent death or reincarnation. He rejected both and simply remained a hell hound.'

Brutus still grinned wickedly. 'It was delightful.'

'After a second five hundred years, ten centuries after his death, Brutus had forgotten his old persona. He could not recall who he had been when he was a man, or what he had done.'