The Perfect Host (12 page)

They went into the office, through the door in the shower stall. The doctor, all aglitter in his brother’s jacket, went first. There was a man standing just by the outside door. He had a black cloth over his nose and mouth and a silenced automatic in his hand.

The colonel, his smock flapping, pushed past his brother and walked out into the room. The man shot him twice and disappeared through the door.

“Leroy! Who did it, kid?”

“I did,” said the colonel. “
No!
No doctor. Too late. Stay—”

“You … oh.
Oh!
That bullet was meant for me. The jacket switch! But why? Who was it?”

“Never mind … him,” said the colonel. “Hired. Psychoed. Whole thing planned. Foolproof escape. All witnesses called away. He doesn’t know you. Or me. My idea. Was very … careful.”

“Why? Why?”

“Found out you … work with … enemy—” His voice trailed off. He closed his eyes sleepily and lay still for a moment. Then, his face twisted with effort, he sat suddenly upright. His voice returned—his normal, heavy, crackling tone. “I had proof—proof enough that you were a traitor, Muscles. I was afraid you’d get clear if you got a chance to work on a court. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill you with my own hands. I figured it out this way.”

“So he’d be there, and shoot me when we came out of the office. But why didn’t you call him off?”

“Couldn’t. He had orders to shoot the civilian. You were an officer for the moment. He didn’t know us, I tell you. I radioed to a third party, who knows nothing. He gave this hood the starting gun.” He raised his left hand. On the wrist was the miniature transmitter.
“I called him when you admitted you worked with the Outsiders … then you explained … and I couldn’t call back; he was on his way here.”

“Leroy, you fool! Why didn’t you let him go ahead? Why did you make that silly switch? My work’s done. Nothing can change it now.”

“Muscles … I’m … old-line Army. Can’t help it … don’t like this … brave new … never could. You’re fit for it. You made it; you live in it. Besides, you’ll … appreciate the joke better than … I would.”

“What do you mean, kid?”

“You underestimated … you thought you’d be dead when the … spacemen heard your recording.” He laughed weakly. “You won’t be, you know. Things’re moving too fast.”

There was a sudden, horrible spell of coughing.

And then Dr. Simmons was alone, holding his dead brother’s head in his arms, rocking back and forth, buffeted and drowning in an acid flood of grief.

And behind it—far, far behind it, his articulate mind said dazedly,
Great day in the morning, he’s right! What’ll they make of me—a saint, or a blood-red Satan?

W
ARNER STEPPED OUT
over the moon-washed outcropping and cast about for the Danby Trail. Fellow trotted past him, stood and sniffed the hot, dark air, and looked up and back at Warner.

He leaned down and clapped the collie’s shoulder. “You know where it is, dogface,” he grinned. “Quit stalling. Let’s go!”

The dog waited, and when he took a step forward, ran ahead to the black mouth of the forest trail. “Half hound, half homing pigeon,” muttered Warner, and followed.

He stepped into the shadows and hesitated a moment, blinking, shifting the strap of his carbine to let his sticky shoulder breathe. “Fellow!”

Fellow’s rumbling growl answered him.

Warner was quite familiar with Fellow’s vocabulary; there were barks, yaps, whimpers and growls, and variations of all. He had heard this growl before—not often, but not to be ignored. Once it was a wildcat flattened on a limb above him. Once it was an impending ice slide. And once it was a man, crouched in the shadows of his porch, waiting for him after one of these night hunts. All three were killers. Warner was still very much alive.

Eyes wide, pupils round in the velvet dark, Warner stepped forward with the sliding, silent stride of the forester. His toe touched the dog. Slowly he half-knelt, and ran his hand over Fellow’s quivering back. The collie was tense, low on the ground. Warner’s hand felt the flattened ears, the curled lips.

“What is it, boy?”

Again there was the ominous rumble. Warner strained his eyes in the direction indicated by the dog’s straining, sensitive nose. There was nothing to be seen but blackness, and a faint oval of moonlight somewhere off the trail.

Fellow inched forward, then was still again. Warner looked uselessly down at him, and, because it was the only thing to look at, back at the patch of light.

It moved.

Warner’s back hair prickled. His tongue drove against his lower teeth, his nostrils flared, and a cold ball of terror nestled below his heart.

Moonlight has no face. Moonlight does not move toward you silently, taking shapes as it passes underbrush. Moonlight does not stand before you, looking like a naked man.

It stood looking at him, glowing softly. It was six and a half feet tall, too wide at the shoulder, too narrow at the hips, with arms and legs too thin and a head not too large, but too high.

But its face …

It wore an expression of indescribable grief. Its face spoke of loss too great to bear, of the incontrovertible end of some great, sustaining hope. The despair was lined and underlined by the strength of that face. It was the face of a conqueror and of a sage, molded of the clay of power and understanding. And it was utterly defeated.

Warner was not an imaginative man, and he was schooled to danger. His frozen mind broke free almost instantly and told him
it’s a ghost!
—for there was no time for any careful analysis, any testing of improbabilities.

“Control it,” said the ghost, and pointed at Fellow, who snarled.

Warner’s mind was more free than his tongue. His mind formed a demanding question, and his mouth managed only an interrogative grunt. And before he could lick his lips and reform them, Fellow was away from him and in midair, his long jaws hungry for the phantom’s throat.

The apparition turned easily, bent backwards from the hips, and Fellow hurtled by, his teeth castanetting together. He squirmed around and landed facing the ghost, which watched calmly. Fellow snarled softly—it was like a purr—and bunched his feet together. The ghost braced its legs, ready for another spring. But Fellow did not spring. Close to the ground, he charged at the long, slender legs. The ghost
dodged the dog’s teeth, but could not move quite fast enough to avoid the furry flank, which thumped the calf of its leg.

Fellow spun to attack again—and kept spinning. He yelped and snapped viciously at his side. Close enough to the glowing figure to be visible by its strange light, Fellow bent like a caterpillar with a fire ant in its side, and crabbed away into the darkness, biting himself with teeth afroth in sudden foam; and he whimpered like a sick and pain-racked child.

“Fellow!”

The dog cried, somewhere in the darkness. Warner leapt toward the sound, caught his foot in a root and fell heavily. Oddly, his right hand turned under him and was driven into his solar plexus as he fell on it. The breath rushed out of him, and for seconds he lay helpless, frightened and furious, saying, “Uh! Uh!” through his knotted windpipe.

Then he could see again, because the specter had moved between him and the dog. Fellow was on his back, kicking feebly. The dog turned on his side once more, bit again at his quarter, and suddenly lay still. His eyes were open and rolled up, his tongue out, bloody, bitten half through.

Warner got to his knees.

“Do not touch it,” said the ghost warningly.

Warner looked up at it. “You killed him,” he whispered, and in one smooth motion shouldered out of the strap of his carbine and raised it.

The ghost disappeared.

I’ve gone blind
, thought Warner. He stood up, knees flexed, head low, the carbine at the ready, prepared to snap a bullet at anything, or the sound of anything.

His chest began to hurt, and he remembered to breathe.

There was silence, and blackness, fear and fury, and the warm barrel on the heel of his left thumb, the formed grip of the stock embracing each of three right fingers. He turned his head slowly, turned from the waist, from the ankles, around and back, waiting, tense. The blackness was too much, too close. He raised his eyes up, and farther up, until he could see the ghostly second reflection of
moonlight on the roof of leaves above. The dim, elusive light was good.

There was a faint sound to his right. The carbine breech came up to his cheek. Silence.

He blew from his nostrils. “
Move
, damn you!”

Something moved. Something whirred and thrashed in the underbrush. Warner fired three times, the gun snuggling more affectionately to shoulder and cheek each time.

Silence again. He lowered the gun to be free to turn his head. It was wrenched out of his unsuspecting fingers. He grabbed wildly at it, clutching nothing, and staggered. He whirled, whirled again, all but seeing the certain flash, feeling the inevitable thump of his own lead into his body. He dropped, then, and lay still, the way he had done at Tulagi.

There was light behind and above him. He cringed from it, gasping, dove for a dimly-seen trunk, and crouched behind it, not looking at the light until he had cover.

The ghost was standing twenty feet away, holding his carbine easily, watching him. He ducked back. Nothing happened. The light did not waver.

He peeped out again. The ghost stood there watching him with its tragic, wise eyes. It held the carbine at its hip, not aiming directly at him, certainly not aiming away. He knew it saw him, but it made no move. Looking at the strange, sad figure, Warner felt that it would wait there all night—all week. Time seemed to have nothing to do with that not-old, not-young, infinitely patient face.

Warner pressed his lips together, cleared his throat.

“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

The ghost answered, “I am—” It paused, searching Warner’s face, hesitating as if choosing exactly the right word. “I am—regret.”

“Regret?” Wild, extraneous references tumbled through Warner’s brain.
“I am the ghost of Christmas Past”
—the masks of Comedy and Tragedy painted on the proscenium of his college auditorium. Mister Coffee-Nerves. What mummery was this?

The ghost was trying again. Warner could sense the effort for
accuracy. “Not regret. I am—sorry. I am sorry your dog is death. Your dog is dead.”

“Who are you?” barked Warner.

The ghost again searched his face. “I am you,” it said, and waited. “No,” it said, and muttered to itself, “I, you, he. It.” It looked at Warner. “It is I,” and it struck its chest with the carbine barrel.

Warner licked his lips. He could not know what this glowing thing was, but it was obviously demented. He asked: “Are you going to shoot me?”

“Shoot,” said the ghost. “Shoot me.” It looked suddenly at the carbine, as if it had just understood the reference. “Not shoot. Not you dead. Not … shoot … you … dead.”

That’s nice to know
, thought Warner sardonically.
It’d be even nicer if he put the gun down
.

“Yes,” said the ghost. It turned, leaned the carbine carefully against a tree, and walked a pace or two away. “Now you—” and it pointed to the ground in front of Warner’s tree.

“You want me to come out?”

“Come out.”

Warner considered carefully. He had no idea of the capabilities of this weird creature, but it seemed human, or near enough to being human that it might be possible to fool it. If he could keep it in conversation long enough, he might be able to edge over and get his hands on the carbine and, in two senses, put an end to this nightmare. He came out.

“You not. You not … can not … get gun, get the gun. A, an, the, some, them, those,” said the ghost. “What those? What are those?”

“What?”

“A, an, the, and those.”

“Oh. Articles, I guess you mean. You don’t speak much English?”

The creature made that strange search of his face again. “Specific,” it said suddenly. “Make general. What are ‘a, an, the, dog, gun?’ ”

“Words,” said Warner after a puzzled pause.

“Words,” said the ghost. “Good. Words. Say me … say to me … tell … teach words to me.”

Warner looked briefly at the carbine leaning against the tree. Fifteen, sixteen feet … a sudden lunge might do it. He might have to grapple for a second, but—

“Do not touch gun,” said the ghost.

In spite of himself, Warner almost grinned. “What are you—a mind reader?”

“I read. I hear-see-read. Mind, yes. I read mind. I read your mind. You make … make—” He gazed at Warner’s face. “You think, I read. Yes.”

“Telepathy,” said Warner informatively.

“Yes. Telepathy. You send, I … I—”

“Receive?”

“Yes. You send, I receive. I send, you not receive.”

“Why?”

“You not … not … you can not. I can. You … man? Yes. You are a man. I are … am … I am not a man.”

Warner’s unquenchable humor curled to the surface. “You’re kidding,” he said, and to his astonishment the creature laughed uproariously.

“Give me general word, man.”

“Gen … oh. Human.”

“Yes. You are human. I am not human.”

“What are you?”

Again one of those searches. “Different,” it said finally. “Human, but different … kind.” It turned suddenly and pulled up a shrub, deftly stripping it down to a stem and a fork. It searched him again—the process was quite without sensation to Warner—and, pointing to the stem, said: “This is primate.” One long luminous finger ran up a side branch. “This is human, you.” Indicating the other branch, “This human, me.”

“Oh. You’re a mutation.”

“Yes. No.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe. Maybe you are a mutation.”

“I don’t understand.”

The creature put its finger on the crotch of the stick. “Fifteens—fifteen hundreds generations past … back … ago.”

“You mean the race branched fifteen hundred generations ago?”

“Yes. My generations. Long ones. One of me is three of you.”

Warner translated this for himself: “Forty-five hundred generations ago the human race branched into your kind and my kind. That right?”