A Plague of Demons

'Some friends.' He put a hand up, touched the bruise, pronounced a couple of Arabic curses in a soft voice. 'What the devil's up, John? I let you out of my sight for an hour or two, and the whole damned official apparatus goes into a Condition Red flap.'

'I used the gear. I tracked a Bolo down a side trail, about three miles off the battle map. I saw things-things I'm going to have trouble telling you about.'

Felix was looking at me keenly. 'Take it easy, old man. You look as though you'd had a bit of a shaking.' He got to his feet, wavered for a moment, went across to the bar.

'No lights,' I said.

'Who're we hiding out from?' He got out glasses and a bottle, poured, came back and sat down. He raised his glass.

'Confusion to the enemy,' he said. I took a sip, then a gulp. The Scotch felt as smooth as cup grease.

'I'll try to take it in order,' I said. 'I watched the tank stop; the driver got out-and fell on his face.'

'No shots, signs of gas, anything of that sort?'

'Nothing. I was fifty feet away, and felt nothing, smelled nothing, saw nothing. Of course the field-'

'Wouldn't stop a gas, or a vibratory effect. Was there any fluorescing of the field interface?'

I shook my head, went on with my story. Felix listened quietly until I mentioned the poisoned dart I had fired.

His face fell like a bride's cake. 'You must have missed.'

'After about two minutes, it got the message; yelped a few times, chased its tail, had a modest fit, and died.'

'My God! The thing must have the metabolism of a rock crusher. Two minutes, you say?'

'Yep.' I went on with the story. When I finished, he frowned thoughtfully.

'John, are you sure-'

'Hell, I'm not sure of anything. The easiest hypothesis is that I'm out of my mind. In a way, I'd prefer that.' I fumbled, brought out the ear I had cut from the dead alien.

'Here, take a look at this and then tell me I sawed it off poor Bowser, who just wanted me to play with his rubber rat.'

Felix took the two-inch triangle of coarse-haired gristle, peered at it in the near-dark. 'This is from the thing in the canyon?'

'That's right.' I tried another pocket, found the printed hieroglyphics I had taken from the creature's pouch. 'And this. Maybe it's a simple Chinese laundry list-or a Turkish recipe for goulash. Maybe I'm having delusions on a grand scale.'

Felix stood. 'John…' He eyed me sharply. 'What you've turned up calls for special measures. We can't take chances now-not until we know what it is we're up against. I'm going to let you in on a secret I've sworn to protect with my life.'

He led me to a back room, moved a picture, pressed unmarked spots on the wall. A trap slid back in the floor.

'This is the Hole,' he said. 'Even the CBI doesn't know about it. We'll be sure of avoiding interruption there.'

'Felix-who do you work for?'

He held up the severed ear. 'Suffice it to say-I'm against the owner of this.'

I nodded. 'I'll settle for that.'

Three hours later, Felix switched off the light in the laboratory and led me into a comfortable lounge room with teak paneling, deep chairs, a businesslike bar, and wide pseudowindows with a view of a moonlit garden, which helped to dispel the oppressive feeling of being two hundred feet down. I sat in one of the chairs and looked around me.

'Felix, who built this place? Somehow, this doesn't look like a government-furnished installation to me. You've got equipment in that lab that's ahead of anything I've seen. And you're not as surprised at what I've told you as you ought to be.'

He leaned over and slapped me on the knee, grinning his Mephistophelean grin. 'Buck up, Johnny. I sent you out to find an explanation of something. You've found it- with bells on. If it takes a few devil-dogs from Mars to tie it all together, that's not your fault.'

'What the hell did I stumble into last night?'

He finished mixing drinks, sat down across from me, rubbing the side of his jaw. The air-conditioners made a faint hum in the background.

'It's the damnedest tissue I've ever examined. Almost a crystalline structure. And the hairs! There are metallic fibers in them; incredibly tough. The fluid was a regular witches' brew; plenty of cyanoglobin present.' He paused. 'Something out of this world, to coin a phrase.'

'In other words, we've been invaded?'

'That's one way to put it-unless someone's invited them.' He put his glass on the table at his elbow, leaned forward.

'We know now that whatever it was that was attached to the ear is responsible for the disappearance of men from battlefields-and other places. From the number of such incidents, we can surmise that there are hundreds-perhaps thousands-of these creatures among us.'

'Why hasn't anybody seen them?'

'That's something we have to find out. Obviously, they employ some method of camouflage as they go about their work.

'Secondly, they've been busy among us for some time; missing-persons figures were unusually high as far back as World War One. The data for earlier conflicts are unreliable, but such as they are, they don't rule out the possibility.'

'But why?'

'Apparently, these creatures have a use for human brain tissue. From the description you gave me, I surmise that the organ was in a nutrient solution of some sort- alive.'

'My God.'

'Yes. Now, we're faced with not one, but two varieties of adversary. It's plain that our former associate, General Julius, was something other than human.'

'He looked as human as I do-maybe more so.'

'Perhaps he is; modified, of course, to serve alien purposes. Some such arrangement would be necessary in order to carry on the day-to-day business…'

'What business-other than brain-stealing?'

'Consider for a moment: we know they've infiltrated the UN, and my hunch is we may find them in a lot of other places as well. From the speed with which they worked, it's obvious that they have a large, well-integrated operation-and methods of communication far more subtle than the clumsy apparatus we employ.'

'There are five million people here, Felix; fifty governments are represented. I've only seen a couple of these supermen.'

'True. But they say for every rat you see in the barnyard, there are a hundred more hiding somewhere.' He looked almost pleased. 'We're on our own, John. We can't shout for a policeman.'

'What can we do? We're holed up under a hundred feet of shielded concrete, with plenty of food, liquor and taped tri-D shows-but we might as well be locked in a cell.'

Felix held up a hand. 'We're not without resources, John. This hideaway was designed to provide the most complete and modern facilities for certain lines of research and testing. We know a few things about our aliens now-things they don't know we know. And I'm sure they're puzzling over your dramatic appearances and disappearances, much as we're pondering their capabilities. They're not super-beings. My little stinger killed one; you eluded others. Now that we know something of the nature of the enemy, we can begin to design counter-measures.'

'Just the two of us?'

'I didn't mean to imply that the enemy controls everything, John. It wouldn't be necessary; one or two cowboys can control quite a large herd of cattle…'

'Why herd us at all? Why not just round us up, chop out our brains, and let it go at that?'

'Oh, many reasons. Conservation of natural resources, ease of harvesting-and then, perhaps, we might not be quite safe, if we were once alerted to what was going on. Cattle have been known to stampede…'

'So-what do we do?'

'We leave Tamboula. Back in America, we make contact with a few individuals known to us personally. I'd steer clear of Barnett, for example, but there are a number of reliable men. Then we construct a counter-alien organization, armed and equipped-and then-well, we'll see.'

'And how do we go about leaving Tamboula? I have an idea the whole scheme breaks down right there.'

Felix looked sober. 'I'm afraid our old friend Bravais will never be seen departing from these shores.'

A small grin was tugging at the corners of his mouth. 'I think he'll have to disappear in much the same manner that Major de Salle of the UN medical staff dropped from sight-and as one H. D. Brown, who leased the same house, will vanish one day soon.'

'Behind a false beard and a set of brown contact lenses?'

'Nothing so crude, my dear fellow.' Felix was positively rubbing his hands together in anticipation. 'I'm going to give you the full treatment-use some of those ideas they haven't been willing to give me guinea pigs for, up till now. You'll have a new hair color-self-regenerating, too-new eye color and retinal patterns, an inch or two difference in height, new finger- and dental-prints…'

'None of that will do me much good if some curious customs man digs under the dirty socks and finds that piece of ear. That's all the evidence we've got.'

'Never fear, John. You won't be unprotected.' There was a merry glint in his eye. 'You won't merely have a new identity-I'm going to fit you out with full PAPA gear. If a General Julius jumps out at you then, just break him in two and keep going.'

Chapter Six

I was sitting on the edge of a wooden chair, listening to a thin humming in my head.

'Tell me when the sound stops,' Felix said. His voice seemed to be coming from a distance, even though I could see him standing a few feet away, looking hazy, like a photograph shot through cheesecloth. The buzzing grew fainter, faded…

I pressed the switch in my hand. Felix's blurred features nodded.

'Good enough, John. Now come around and let's check those ligament attachments.'

I relaxed the muscles that had once been used to prick up the ears, thus switching my hearing range back to normal. I made a move to rise, and bounded three feet in the air.

'Easy, John.' Felix had emerged from the cubicle with the two-inch-thick armorplast walls. 'We can't have you springing about the room like a dervish. Remember your lessons.'