The Haunted Earth

'Just as well,' the hound said.

Jessie said, 'After fifteen hundred years, he was weary of his duties in Hell, and he began to roam the Earth, seeking the unique and the titillating, anything short of the reincarnation which was his due.'

'It'd be a drag to be human again,' Brutus said. Galiotor Fils looked from the man to the hound, back and forth, as if watching a tennis match.

Jessie said, 'Nine years ago, a year after you people first made contact with Earth, I quit my job as a narcotics agent with Interpol, and I advertised for a supernatural partner to go halves in the establishment of a detective agency. Brutus answered the ad.'

'And we've been busy every since,' the hound said. He chuckled, deep in his throat. 'You people caused more trouble than a thousand detectives can handle.'

Galiotor Fils shifted uneasily in his chair, laced his twelve tentacle-fingers together, unlaced them, blinked his amber eyes and said, 'I hope you aren't — well, prejudiced against the maseni race. I am aware that some of you people feel you would have been far better off—'

'No, no,' Blake said. 'You misunderstand my colleague's meaning. We are glad you came to Earth; we thrive on the chaos. Ordinary detectives, those who work on cases involving only human beings, make very little money, but those of us specializing in human-alien and human-supernatural cases do well. Quite well.'

'I see,' the maseni said.

'Not everything, you don't,' Jessie said. 'Mr. Galiotor, my pleasure with your people's arrival on Earth is not strictly financial in nature. You see, before that time, ten years ago, I was twenty-seven years old and bored to tears with nearly everything: my job with Interpol, food, liquor, books, films, getting up, going to bed…. The only things I wasn't bored with were marijuana and women; I smoked the former and balled the latter, and I was an enthusiast of both. However, it was a shallow life. Then the maseni came, and everything changed. Mind you, life would have been lively with one set of aliens to deal with — but you brought two, yourselves and your supernatural brothers. And you introduced us to a third set of aliens that had been with us all along, our own supernatural brothers. In the following decade, I have not only earned considerable money, but I have suffered very damn few dull moments.'

'Until recently,' Brutus added.

'Yes,' Blake said. 'Until recently. Recently, it seems one case is like the last — a wife trying to run off with a vampire; a husband ignoring his own wife but taking a contract with a succubus; banshees involved in real-estate swindles, trying to scream down the value of a house or tract of land; A ghoul interested in robbing graves unsanctioned by the government… Both Brutus and I need a change, and we're hoping, quite frankly, you're the one to give it to us.'

'Well, it may be nothing, sir,' the maseni said.

'Whatever it is,' Blake said, 'it's obviously unusual. So far as I know you're the first maseni ever to contact a human detective, for aid.'

'Most likely,' Galiotor Fils agreed. He looked at both man and hound, in turn, while he played six tentacles over his open mouth. At last, he dropped his hand to his lap and said, 'I am most distraught, sir. My brood brother has died, and there has not been a proper ceremony.'

Blake and Brutus exchanged a glance, and the detective rose from his chair to pace behind his desk. 'Brood brother?' he asked. 'That would mean another maseni, like yourself, born in the same brood hole on the home world, in the same familial mud as yourself?'

'Even more than that,' the maseni said. 'In this case, Tesserax was of the same Birthing as I, from the very same egg batch. We were the same age, by a hatching day, and we were close.' Fat, yellow tears hung at the corners of the alien's eyes, trembling like liquid jewels, and the corners of his lipless mouth turned down.

'Tesserax? That was his name?'

'Galiotor Tesserax,' the maseni said, nodding.

He was barely able to control his grief, but he held back the threatened tears and covered up the sorrow in the line of his mouth by raising a hand and playing six small tentacles there.

'How did he die?' Blake asked.

'I have asked the highest officials in the maseni diplomatic mission,' Galiotor Fils said, 'but I have been unable to get a good answer. Invariably, they tell me the same thing—'of natural causes'—which is to tell me nothing at all. They commiserate with me in a false manner, saying what they do not feel, saying they knew him well and miss him too, saying they suffered much grief themselves…. Lies. I see through that.'

'What reason would they have to lie to you?' Jessie asked, pacing yet, not looking at Galiotor Fils, not able to look at him because of those yellow tears trembling on those thick, wiry lashes.

'I believe that they were somehow involved with his death,' the alien said, his sorrow slowly turning to anger, the tone of his voice subtly different as he spoke.

'The maseni at the embassy?'

'Yes,' Galiotor Fils said. 'Tesserax worked there; indeed, he was the deputy chief of the embassy staff, the second-ranking maseni on Earth. He was of high position, respect, dignity, with a great future.'

'No history of illness?'

'Nothing worse than an occasional tentacle infection,' the maseni said, looking at his own hands. 'He was a sexually unrestrained fellow, you see, and he often indulged in spur-of-the-moment — ah, you'd call it 'petting' without first lubricating his tentacles against infection. Our tentacles, you see, are by far the most delicate portions of our anatomies.'

'How old was Tesserax?' Blake asked, looking at the maseni's twelve little tentacles from the corner of his eye.

'Eighty-six Earth years,' Galiotor Fils said. 'But since we are much longer-lived than you, I must translate that — as, say, early middle age.'

'Not quite old enough to just drop off,' Blake said.

'Hardly,' Galiotor Fils said.

Blake said, 'But surely the men he worked with at the embassy were the cream of maseni society. Your diplomatic staffs aren't thugs, mugs, thieves or murderers, are they?'

'No, no!' Galiotor Fils said. His yellow face took on the subtle, greenish hue which indicated embarrassment. He was clearly upset that the detective could even suggest such a thing, as if it were not merely a slur on the diplomatic staff, but on the race itself, and on Galiotor Fils as well. 'They are gentlemen of the first mud, I assure you, all intensively tested for psychological abnormalities. Their function is a very delicate one, after all: the introduction of maseni civilization, the establishment of trade and philosophical relations with inferior and superior and equal galactic races. They must be of sound mind.'

Jessie returned to his desk and gripped the back of his shape-changing chair with both hands; it molded around his fingers. He said, 'Then how can you suspect these people of murder?'

'I said I thought they were somehow involved in his murder, but I did not say they performed it.'

'Call a spade a spade,' Brutus growled.

Galiotor Fils looked at the hound and said, 'What?'

'Make yourself clearer,' Jessie suggested.

'I think my brood brother died in some unconventional manner, and that the embassy is trying to cover it up.' The alient shifted in his chair, too big for it, and said, 'Is that better?'

Blake chose not to answer that, but began pacing again. In a few moments, he said, 'Thus far, you've given us no reason to believe the people at your embassy were lying to you. Certainly, you choose not to believe that he died of natural causes, but that seems to be only opinion. Mr. Galiotor, when one loses a loved one, grief sometimes makes the acceptance of reality too hard to bear, and fantasies of paranoid—'

'There are a number of reasons why I suspect that I am not being told the truth about Tesserax's death,' the maseni said, a bit angry.

'Name one,' Brutus said.

'I am stationed on Earth for the purpose of sociological research, along with several hundred colleagues. A group of your scientists have been taken to our home world, in exchange for the privilege of unrestricted study here on Earth. Tesserax and I saw each other frequently. Everyone at the Los Angeles embassy knew I was here, who I