* * *
Everyone was asleep but Jessie. He sat up against the headboard of the huge bed, trying to enjoy the gentle lines of Helena's nude body as she lay outside the covers: slightly sagging breasts, deep insweep of waist, thrust of hip, undulating curves of thighs and calves and ankles…. But he couldn't keep his mind on her; his thoughts kept returning to the suicide report. When he found himself staring at her flat belly but thinking about the olive envelope, he knew it was time to read what Tesserax had given him. He had thought out all the other points.
He got up, slipped into his robe and went into the main drawing room, pulled the bedroom door shut and sat down at the dinner table which the robot had cleared. He tore open the envelope, separated twelve sheets of print and began to read.
When he was half finished with the report, Pearlamon or Gonius or one of the other gods staying on the second floor staggered out of his room, moaning loudly, cursing Hogar. Jessie ignored the hysterical cries for help, and they soon ceased. He kept reading. When he finished and considered what he had read in conjunction with what else he had heard and seen, he knew he had the answer. He knew what and why the murderous beast was….
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brutus returned with Tesserax, who closed the door and joined Jessie, Helena and the service robot at the table in the middle of the room. 'Is it true — you know what the beast is?'
'Yes,' Jessie said.
'And you know how to destroy it?'
'I believe so,' the detective said. 'I'll have a chance to prove that tonight. If I'm right, the beast knows we're here and it will be coming after us, before dawn.'
Tesserax was unsettled by this revelation. He fluttered tentacles before his own mouth, smoothed his robes, patted the top of his head. 'Well! Well, then we best unpack the EmRec.' He turned to the service robot and gave that order.
'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
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
