For August Derleth and Bill Crawford, both gone but not forgotten
1
Horrors and monsters are creatures of the night that have no business being up and about on a bright, warm, sunny morning, or so most think. Few stop and think that should evil rest between dawn and dusk it would be a far simpler and less dangerous world.
As was his custom, Sir Robert McKenzie arose at half past six in the morning, showered, dressed, and went down to the Lodge dining area for breakfast. Because he owned the place, and everything that could be seen or heard around it, he could easily have had his breakfast delivered to him privately in his luxurious suite at the Lodge, but he disliked the very idea of it. A sociable man who thought of the Institute as a sort of surrogate family, he would never have dreamed of cutting himself off from that family, so long as he had any chance to spend time with its members.
But as was often the case, there were few about when he entered the dining room, and, seeing no one he really needed to talk to, he took a table by himself. Knowing he was a man of punctuality who insisted on routine, the staff had his two soft-yolk, sunny-side-up eggs, three fat sausages, toast, and strawberry jam ready for him, it being Tuesday. A staffer entered, went to him, and handed him a thick sheaf of computer printouts. It was virtually impossible to get newspapers delivered to this spot until they were long outdated, but his computer link gave him photostatic copies of the relevant sections compiled by his global staff. He lingered over juice and coffee as he read the items one by one. About halfway through the stack of papers he suddenly stiffened, frowned, then hurriedly polished off the last of his coffee and, tucking the papers under his arm, he left the dining room and went immediately out the front entrance of the Lodge.
He was a big man with thick snow white hair and a matching moustache, and he was never inconspicuous. Only Sir Robert would wear a finely tailored tweed suit, long sleeve shirt, and carefully knotted red necktie in this subtropical heat.
He paused to light a cigar and glanced over at two small electric cars that resembled orange-colored golf carts, but then decided to walk. Port Kathleen was about a two mile downhill walk, and either because he was enjoying the fresh air and sun or because he wished to think on some matter he decided that walking was the way to go. He often liked to walk down to the tiny little town that was the island's only harbor, although he joked to friends and associates that he was far better at his age walking down than walking back up. No matter. Both electric cars and horses were available for the trip back if he required them. After all, he owned not only the Institute but also the town and, in fact, the whole damn island, all 1.8 by 2.2 miles of it.
Allenby Island was the remnant of a long extinct volcano, one so old that little in the way of geography would tell the casual visitor its origins and nature. It was shaped somewhat like a teardrop with a ramp-like terrain; Port Kathleen, at the bottom, was virtually at sea level, while the Institute, at the far end, stood at an elevation of almost two thousand feet, making it a bit cooler and breezier than the area below, but not by much.
A lone road snaked back and forth down the vegetation-covered slope formed by an ancient lava flow to keep the trip from having too severe an elevation for the little electric cars to handle, though for those afoot or on horseback, there were all sorts of trails, old and new, and short cuts. Sir Robert kept to the road for almost half the distance down, though occasionally being passed by a cart going up or dbwn and politely nodding to them as they passed while refusing offers of rides.
He stopped for a moment at one worn trail head and then took it, instantly plunging into the dense tropical forest that was the island's true master and owner. The trail eventually reconnected with the road, but was hardly a short cut down; rather, it was occasionally used as a short cut to the beach, it being at the highest point up the mountain where it was possible to get down to the beach without plunging off a rock cliff.
A few hundred yards to the east of the road the trail suddenly broke into the clear, revealing a small, intimate meadow in which grew bright green grasses and flowers but, for some reason, no trees or vines or other large shrubs. Botanists had theorized that some mineral either present or lacking in this particular segment of rock was producing this effect, as there was no climatological reason for it, but it had never been satisfactorily explained. In the center of the meadow was an abrupt outcrop of ancient black lava upon which nothing would grow. It was a huge mass of obsidian or an obsidian-like rock, quick cooled and glassy, and while it was well worn, its persistence over the eons it must have stood there was another meadow mystery.
There were a great many insects in the forest, and tens of thousands of birds, but no land animals, big or small. Over the years some rats had come from ships that called, but those who survived the eradication campaigns and the numerous cats mostly stuck to the more civilized areas of the island; the jungle was not for tough and world-wise rats any more than it was really for people.
The sounds of birds and insects were all around him, lifting his spirits and making him feel truly alive. Not obtrusive, they were simply a comfortable and natural background to this remote little spot. He approached the glassy black mass and walked around it once, studying it, although he'd been here and seen it thousands of times before. It had, of course, acquired the nickname "the altar stone" even before he'd bought the place, although it was clearly a natural formation linked to larger deposits below. Its rough shape and downward slope could, with a bit of imagination, be said to resemble a facsimile of the island, complete with a depression down the center. The entire stone was perhaps eight feet long and three feet wide, a bit too long to be an island model, but that never stopped anybody.
Sir Robert looked at the depression, walked down to the foot of the stone, then knelt for a moment and examined something at the base. He stiffened. "That idiotic fanatical bastard!" he muttered under his breath. "Well, we'll fix him now!"
He got back up and began to walk away from the slone. He was almost at the edge of the meadow when he suddenly stopped again, turned, and looked puzzled. He could sense a wrongness, but for a moment he couldn't really place just what was wrong. Then he had it. The birds, the insects, even the distant roar of breakers and the sound of breezes through the treetops had ceased. It was as if he were suddenly covered by some huge and invisible bell jar, allowing sight but nothing else to.penetrate. It was the most unnatural thing he'd ever experienced, and he had the good sense to be as frightened of it as he was curious about it.
Suddenly he heard a sound, back from the direction of the altar stone. A sharp, odd sequence that sounded very much like a great door opening, swinging wide, and then being closed again, a sound coming not really from the stone but from somewhere deep beneath it. Again there was silence, then the sudden, unmistakable sound of something coming, something huge, as if great feet were slowly and methodically climbing a great stairway from beneath to the surface.
Sir Robert frowned once more and tried to figure out the nature of it. Broadcast, somehow? Some sort of beam striking the meadow and making it, or perhaps the stone, some kind of radio receiver? It made sense. It fit in with all the other known facts. Anger replaced confusion within him. Just as the ancient shamans had carefully sculpted acoustical canals in their idols so as to make the masses believe they spoke, he had repeated the trick in a materialistic age using the most modern techniques. Now, he thought, I understand how it works. Now I know it all.
With that thought came the sudden realization that all this would never have been revealed to him unless it no longer mattered. Looking around, he entered the trail and the forest but stopped as the sounds from the meadow made it seem as if some great beast had now reached the top and was out in the open. It was such a convincing illusion that in spite of himself he stopped, turned, and looked back at the meadow and the altar stone. Nothing was visible in the eerie silence, but now, as he looked on, the grass in front of the altar stone bent and twisted as if crushed by an enormous foot, followed by yet another giant imprint a few yards further on.
Sir Robert turned and began to run down the path. He reached a junction of two trails, one well worn and leading back to the road, the other leading away towards the cliff trail down to the beach. He did not hesitate but.took the slightly overgrown cliff trail. The road was his logical choice, and even if he'd met other people out there it would not stop that madman from killing them all to get to him. That he would not have. The cliff trail was also the most direct route to the village, although it was almost never used for that.
There were sounds behind him, sounds of some great beast crashing through the dense underbrush. Beamed-in illusion or true monster, it made no difference; the thing was almost certainly death and it was stalking him.
His heart pounding, he broke through the last of the bush and came to the edge of the cliff. It was more than a hundred foot drop and quite sheer, and he was forced to run along for a few hundred yards, fearing that the terrible thing, whatever it was, that chased him would spot him and simply knock him off the cliff. He was determined not to give its controller that satisfaction. If he could not outrun it, he would make bloody well certain that no verdict of death by accident or natural causes was possible.
He reached the trail break where it wound down the cliff to the sea and took it, going as fast as he dared. He was not in top condition, but he was no heart candidate, either. He jumped a few of the switchbacks when he dared to save time, and heard it break from the trees behind and above him. He dared not look back, but made for the beach as fast as he could. He jumped the last six feet into the sand and fell momentarily, then got up and continued to run along the beach towards the town and also out towards the water.
There was a rocky outcrop ahead, and he knew that the town lay not far beyond it. As he moved to the water's edge, he suddenly caught sight of the steeple of the small church and felt encouragement. He might just make it! Slowing, he risked a look back, and saw a huge disturbance in the sand near the bottom of the beach trail; now the sand was falling away, as if pressed in by some great weight, a body that had to be twenty feet tall if it existed at all and with a stride to match. He knew in an instant that he could not make it, and made his way out into the water. Even now sounds were damped, and the breakers came at him not in silence but as if far away. He knew the water was quite shallow at this point, but he hoped that the rough water would diffuse any projection if that was what his stalker was.
The great footprints reached the edge of the water and then began to walk along, paralleling his progress. He felt suddenly elated. Oho! Don't like the rough water, do you?
Another five minutes and he would be within hailing distance of the town. Another five minutes of wading in waist-deep water and surviving the occasional high wave and there would be plenty of witnesses, probably too many for such as this. With the supply boat due in today, his assassins would miss their chance.
He had nearly reached the outcrop after which the town would be in full view and he was suddenly feeling confident. He risked stopping for a moment, ten feet or more out, and turned. "Got you, you bastard!" he yelled back at the apparently empty beach. "You cut it too fine this time!"
At that moment a huge breaker came in and struck him in the back, propelling him forward, towards the beach. He stumbled and dropped into the water, losing the papers he'd managed to cling to, and then picked himself up as quickly as possible. He had been pushed forward a good four feet!
Suddenly something he could not see grasped him by the head and shoulders and lifted him out of the water. He was flung by some invisible force fifteen feet or more into the air, dangling and struggling as if held by some great hand.
The "hand" shifted and held him suspended now by a hold on his waist, and he found himself lifted still higher, perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet, and brought close over the sands as if whatever had hold of him was studying him for a moment. He yelled and screamed, hoping that some noise, anything, would carry to the town that was so very near.
And then the great hand slowly tightened, more and more, and his eyes bulged and his mouth opened wide, only now it was incapable of sound.
And then the bloody, mangled carcass of what was now hardly recognizable as human remains dropped to the sands below, out of the reach of the water that might have saved him.
Quite abruptly the area was alive with the screeches of sea birds, the buzz of insects, and the roar of crashing breakers once more.
2
JIGSAW
The entire beach area had been covered with a huge patchwork of tarpaulins so that it resembled a sports stadium field being protected from the rain, though it was in bright sunshine.
Security officers stood at all access points to the beach area, extending from the trail above all the way to the point at which the body had struck the sands. The body itself had been photographed and then removed, but all else was as undisturbed as it could be considering the circumstances.
Two men walked down the beach from town: one a short, burly man built like a barrel with flaming red hair and an unkempt beard to match, the other tall, athletically built, with a long, lean, angular face and sharp nose. His long hair was turning a premature dark gray.
"Lucky you were so close and could get here on short notice," commented Constable Julius "Red" Mathias, the shorter and older of the two men. "I mean, this is the cushiest job in law enforcement up to now—nothing to enforce and plenty of tropical breezes and really good pay to boot—but this thing would drive anybody nuts." Mathias had a pronounced Midlands accent tempered only a bit by being away from Britain so long.
Gregory MacDonald chuckled sourly. "Luck had something to do with it all right, Red, but it was all bad and all mine."
"Ain't as unlucky as Sir Robert, you might note," the other quipped, sticking an unlit, half-smoked cigar in his mouth.
MacDonald noted it. "Thought you were going to quit those."
"Y'don't see me smokin', now do you? Call it me pacifier."
They reached the scene and MacDonald was impressed. "Have 'em roll it back a ways, Red," he instructed. "I want to take a look at what we're really dealing with here."
Red gave a sour laugh and spat. "Oh, this is a winner. A classic, lad. The sort of thing that makes up all at once for a century or two of crime-free living here."
At the constable's order, the crew began to slowly but professionally roll up the tarps one at a time, exposing the death scene first.
"Where'd you get all these people, Red?"
"Oh, they's mostly security staff from the Institute. The place is crawlin' with 'em, so why not use 'em? The others doin' the heavy work are mostly men from the town. Those security fellows fought like hell my bringin' in the others, but when you see what we got you'll understand why I didn't feel right just leavin' this all to the Institute boys."
It didn't take long to see what the old cop meant. One look at the tracks with their great stride told anyone that either this was the most elaborate hoax in criminal history or something was loose on the tiny island that couldn't possibly be hidden.
"You made casts of the footprints?"
Red nodded. "Yeah. Wait'll you see 'em, Gregory my boy. If that thing's for real, I for one sure as hell don't want to meet it."
In spite of the sand and the disruptions and, of course, the weight of the tarp, it was clear from just looking at the things that the old boy was right. MacDonald got out his tape measure and discovered that the damned things were more than two feet long. He measured the stride, not once but at almost every point back to the cliff and found them very consistent. Whoever or whatever did this was very thorough.
Equally revealing was the impression it had made jumping from the top of the trail to the beach below. MacDonald examined it all and then stood up and shook his head. "Whatever it is, I'd put it at somewhere around fifteen feet tall and weighing maybe two or three tons. How the hell does it stand upright without a tail or some other counterbalance? There weren't any drag marks around, were there. Red?"
"Nope. What you see, allowin' for the necessaries, is what you got. Other than Sir Robert's own footprints goin' first to the beach and then to the water over there, and the footprints of the pair that found it all, there was nothin' whatever on the beach but what you see. Of course, there's a lot of prints now, but they was to lay the tarp and photograph the scene, and it's pretty consistent."
"And one way," MacDonald noted. "This monster—how did it leave? The tracks are clear from here, then they go almost to the water's edge, walk along it for a bit—I assume that area of no prints is a high tide mark—and then . . . what? Sir Robert gets into the water, the thing doesn't enter but tracks him, and then suddenly it gets Sir Robert and flings him a good ten feet inward of the breakers. So we assume that Sir Robert wasn't far enough out, or somehow came in to where this thing could reach, and it plucked him out."
"You're soundin' as if you think it was a real creature."
"For now we'll stick with it, but that leaves me with a real problem. Okay, so the thing gets its claws on Sir Robert, lifts him up, does him in, and drops him on the beach. Now what does it do?"
"Huh? Um, yeah, I see what y'mean. No return footprints."
"It doesn't fly away—some of the prehistoric monsters bigger than that could do it, but they'd take a mile of runway at the minimum and really mess up the beach. If somebody hoisted it out, in broad daylight, such a ship or derrick large enough would be seen by the town or by the whole damn island and sure as hell couldn't be broken down in—what was the gap?"
"No more'n two hours between death and discovery, or so Doc says."
The younger man nodded. "All right, then. So the only place it might go is into the water—its stride and the high tide might mask that. But if it could stomach the water, then why didn't it just wade in after Sir Robert? Why play cat and mouse and then wait to hoist him inland?"
"Maybe it's perverse. Cats like to play with mice and rats a long time before they kill 'em. Who knows what somethin' like this'd be like?"
MacDonald sighed. "I wish I could have seen the body as it was, but I'll look at the pictures. Never as good as the real thing, but it'll have to do."
"Couldn't be helped, lad. What would y'have me do? Leave Sir Robert there? I mean, it's one thing if it'd been some janitor, but this was the boss!"
"I understand. You did what you could. The two that found the body—no chance of complicity in the affair?"
"I'd doubt it. Low-level clerks workin' in the supply system in town, not even Institute folks. Comin' out here on a slow day to enjoy a few hours beach time on the boss and maybe a little nookie. Besides, their only prints, to and from, cross a high tide mark after the high tide, so they couldn't have been here until at least ten thirty, and that's too late."
"Just checking. Anybody who notices something like that doesn't need me, though. You're a good cop, Mathias." They stopped at the base of the cliff trail. "Okay, they find the body, run back into town, fetch you and a few others, and you all come running up the beach and see the scene. Then what?"
"I checked the body and ordered everybody back from the scene. It was some time before I could tell whose body it was for sure, although I knew from the clothes who it had to be. I sent me gal Friday, Sandy, back to ring up the Institute and give 'em a tentative I.D. Warned 'em to come only by the main road and then to the beach, too. They didn't listen. The whole place up there erupted with security about five minutes later, but I yelled and cussed a blue streak at 'em and threatened to shoot any one of 'em that came down."
"You don't carry a gun. Even most of them don't."
"Yeah, but in the shock and all they didn't remember that. Otherwise we'd have had a bloody mess out here instead of a near perfect reconstruction. Those photos, by the way, were done by the Institute but I doubt if there'll be any funny business with 'em. Took 'em in three dee, so they should be good'n gory. Got top shots of the whole scene, too."
"Uh huh. But—after you'd gotten all you wanted, did any of them make their own investigation? I didn't see much sign, although it's hard to tell around the body site."
"Nope. Bunch of 'em spouted stuff into their walkie-talkies and the like, but they didn't even act all too curious. Of course, I was doin' all the procedures right and they'll have copies of the photos—probably have sent 'em to everyplace in creation by now."
Together they walked up the trail to the top, trying to retrace the path of the victim. At the top stood a tall, tanned man in a loud shirt, jeans, and dark sunglasses, a walkie-talkie on his belt. MacDonald recognized him. "Really nice operation you've got here, Ross," the younger man said tauntingly. "You're so thorough that nothing less than a fifteen foot prehistoric monster could chase and kill the boss in broad daylight without anyone seeing. Real secure."
Ross didn't seem pleased. He was an American with a hard New York accent and he looked like a bad tourist loose in the tropics. "All right, can the sarcasm, MacDonald. We were penetrated and we blew it."
"Penetrated! I'd say you were invaded!"
"Oh, you don't believe this horse shit about a monster any more than I do and you know it. I don't know how they did it, but somebody's drinking vodka toasts right now and laughing at us as we run around looking for sea monsters." His tone dropped and sounded icy and threatening. "I will know, though. My ass is more on the line than yours."
MacDonald sighed. "Well, let's see what you didn't manage to muck up in your zeal to get here. Want to come along?"
Ross did, and the three of them started back along the trail. "Not my fault we jumped to get here," the security man said defensively. "Hell, man, we get word of a gruesome death on the beach and some preliminary indication that it's Sir Robert. You'd have done the same thing in our place and you know it. Beats me why you're here anyway."
"I spent several years at homicide back home. You know that. As soon as the identity of the victim was confirmed the boys at headquarters ran everybody in the company with any sort of background like that through the computers and came up with a number. Then they matched them to where they were and my name came up, my being at that time somewhat drunk and disorderly as befits a vacation about three hours flying time from here. I'm not happy with this, either, Ross, but the buck got passed to me and I'm it." He stopped and examined the foliage hanging overhead. "Anybody in your organization tall enough to break those limbs?"
Ross looked up and saw what the company man meant. The trail had been cut with a hand saw and was kept open the same way with weekly trims, but the area was otherwise overgrown and the trail had been cleared only to a height of eight or nine feet, the reach of the man with the saw. From all the signs, something a lot taller and wider than any man had come through here.
"If there ain't no monster they sure as hell went all the way," Red noted.
They reached the junction to the road, but MacDonald followed the signs even though the foliage was thinning and those signs were getting fewer and fewer and walked up towards the glen. The ground was hard there, with much exposed rock, and not well suited to footprints.
The glen, however, was a different story. Although the grass had begun to recover, the huge impressions in the ground of the clearing were still evident, even with a horde of security men running through. The men didn't weigh two or three tons.
Ross sighed. "There aren't any prints beyond the altar stone," he told the other two resignedly. "We checked."
MacDonald examined the massive stone carefully, checking all the points where it intersected the ground. He hadn't paid much attention to the place in previous visits, but it was clear that if that stone was hinged or moved in any way it had been covered by experts beyond his ability to expose.
Gregory MacDonald felt quite at ease in what he always thought of as his Sherlock Holmes disguise, but it had been a long time since he'd had any chance to use it on a real crime. In the three years since resigning from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, his powers of deduction had been mostly put to use in testing and designing corporate security plans for the company's many worldwide enterprises, many of which were security sensitive, and many more of which were exposed to terrorism and other criminal threats beyond the ability of any single nation's law enforcement or security apparatus to thoroughly safeguard. Sir Robert had always suspected and believed that the best policemen were of the same mentality as the best criminals, simply restrained by moral codes, culture, or nature from working the wrong side of the law.
MacDonald enjoyed his job, but he hadn't expected to be on or near Allenby again for some time. Although company owned, the island was well defende,d by a multinational professional security force. Red was basically the company cop, a retired desk sergeant who had served with Sir Robert in Korea long ago. He took care of white-collar crimes, such as embezzlement, pilferage, fraud, and the like, having jurisdiction over the twelve hundred men and women on the island who were company employees and performed the mundane tasks that kept the operation going. This was really more up Ross's alley than Red's and more in the security force's jurisdiction, and that fact bothered MacDonald. Why had they so meekly allowed Red to control the entire investigation? That wasn't like Ross or Jureau, men who loved to be in charge unless they were ordered otherwise.
Clearly Ross was simmering at being essentially second to MacDonald, whom he hadn't liked since the company man had taken a small team and penetrated all the way to the Lodge almost a year earlier. Clearly, too, there was some resentment that the company thought it necessary to dispatch their own expert to the scene; it suggested that they didn't trust the security force.
MacDonald didn't trust them, either, for it was never clear from whom their orders came or even from what branch of whose security forces. He couldn't help but wonder if their seeming lack of interest in this affair didn't indicate a more sinister role in all this. He certainly dismissed Ross's own idea of the culprit or culprits; Sir Robert, caught alone on that beach, would have been far more valuable alive than dead.
Once the trio walked back to the main road they had no trouble tracing the victim back to the Lodge. Many had seen him and spoken to him, and all had been questioned and their interrogations recorded.
The Institute itself never failed to impress MacDonald, although it was neither pretty nor natural-looking. It sat atop the highest point of the ancient Caribbean volcano, almost two thousand feet above the sea. At the far point was the Lodge, a hotel and restaurant for everyone who worked there, an imposing structure looking much like a British manor house, huge and imposing. Arranged in a semicircle just in front of the Lodge were six identical two-story buildings where much of the actual work went on, three on each side of the circle. These were mostly of red brick with red slate roofs, and all looked rather drab.
The road circled around this complex, forming a center island in front of the Lodge, and here one could see that something extraordinary was going on. There were seven of them, all facing southwest, seven enormous dish-shaped antennae with massive feeder and transmission horns pointed at their cream-colored middles. These were the eyes and ears of the Institute, putting them in instant two-way communication with six major defense agencies in six countries, as well as with the Magellan Corporation's own headquarters and far-flung enterprises. More impressive even than the antennae, though, was what was beneath them.
The town and the Lodge had come first, built by an eccentric British millionaire back in the days when that term meant something. It was technically under the sovereignty of the Mornkay Federation, a tiny group of former British-owned islands that together formed one of the smallest and poorest nations in the world, let alone the Caribbean. Allenby was, in fact, their major tax base and primary source of revenue, and Magellan ran it as if it was an independent little kingdom, which for all intents and purposes it was. No Mornkay citizens even lived on the island, and rather liberal payments that were all that kept the government from complete collapse kept it that way. The Queen, and perhaps the Governor General didn't need permission to set foot on the place, but the Prime Minister did.
In front of the Lodge, which had been renovated and turned into its comfortable hotel-like present existence, there had been a monstrous excavation, and within that hole had been placed a building no less than two hundred feet tall, lead-shielded and practically bomb-proof. In there, too, had been placed the most technologically advanced, state of the art supercomputer, the System for Artificial Intelligence Networking and Telecommunications, or SAINT for short. It was so advanced, so new, so radical, that it was the latest word in artificial intelligence computing. Some said it could think for itself, although that was denied. Certainly it was like nothing else on earth, able not only to sift through enough transmitted data to fill a library as high as the moon every day, but to actually evaluate and flag what its operators considered important enough to warrant human attention.
Access was through the six research buildings and tremendous layers of security and a series of complex, mostly automated booby traps. SAINT was its own master security force, and it was formidable indeed.
MacDonald went immediately to the building just to the right of the Lodge and then back to the small but efficient hospital area. Dr. Brenda Andersen was expecting him.
Andersen was a tough, no nonsense sort of woman, a Dane employed by the company who was, in title, "Resident Surgeon," but was actually a fan...
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