everyone preferred to have a bit more confirming evidence.
In the control room, in addition to Ralph and the giant, there were Burt Cogborn, the station’s advertising salesman and ad-copy writer, and Mason Morrell, their weekday-evening talk-show host, who had switched from live chatter to a prerecorded segment that he kept on hand for emergencies like this. Well, not
exactly
like this. The kind of emergency Mason had in mind was an unexpected attack of on-air diarrhea. Everyone but the stranger looked anxious and confused.
In Sammy’s absence, the body of Warren Snyder had been stripped to the waist, and his pants had been pulled down far enough to reveal his entire abdomen, sternum to groin.
“I don’t know exactly what you’ll see,” Deucalion said, “but I’m confident it will be enough to prove this wasn’t the real Warren Snyder.”
The giant knelt beside the corpse and plunged the knife into it, just below the breastbone.
Mason Morrell gasped, probably not because the mutilation of the corpse shocked or dismayed him, but only for effect, to suggest that he, an on-air talent, was by nature more sensitive than those who laboredbehind the scenes of his show. Sammy liked Mason, though the guy was always performing to one degree or another, whether at the microphone or not, and he was sometimes exhausting.
A thin serpent of blood slithered from the haft of the buried knife and along the pale abdomen, and for a moment the cadaver seemed human, after all. But then Deucalion slashed to the navel and beyond, and the illusion of humanity was cut away. The lips of the wound sagged apart, and the blood—if it was blood—proved to be confined to the surface tissues.
Deeper, all was strange, not the viscera of a human body. Some of the organs were the color of milk glass, others were white tinted unevenly with faint streaks of gray like the flesh of certain fish, and a smaller number were white with the merest suggestion of green, some smooth and slick, others textured like curds of cottage cheese, all of them bizarre in shape and asymmetrical. A double helix of opalescent tubes twined through the body trunk, and a creamy fluid leaked from those that had been nicked or severed. Throughout the body cavity lay a fine web of luminous filaments that seemed less biological than electronic, and they glowed softly even though this replicant of Warren Snyder was surely as dead as the real man that he had replaced.
Leaving the knife protruding from the body, Deucalion rose to his full height.
With a quiver of revulsion and with fear in his voicethat dismayed him, Sammy Chakrabarty asked, “What is that thing?”
“It was made in a laboratory,” the giant said. “Hundreds or even thousands of them are in the process of taking control of this town.”
“What laboratory?” Ralph Nettles wondered. He shook his head in disbelief. “Our science isn’t far enough advanced to do this.”
“The proof is before your eyes,” Deucalion reminded him.
Burt Cogborn stared not at the cadaver but at his wristwatch, as if his world of radio-spot sales allowed no room for a development of this magnitude, as if he might announce that he had a deadline looming and needed to return to his office to write ad copy.
“Maybe a laboratory,” Ralph acceded. “But not on this planet.”
“On this planet, in this state, this county,” Deucalion assured them with unsettling certainty. “Who I am, who made these creatures, I’ll explain soon. But first, you’ve got to prepare to defend the station, and warn others, both in Rainbow Falls and beyond, what’s happening here.”
“Defend it with what?” Mason Morrell asked. “A couple of kitchen knives? Against hundreds—maybe thousands—of these … these things? And they’re stronger than us? Man, this isn’t a movie, there’s no big-screen superstar to make everything right in the third act. I can’t save the world. I can’t save anythingbut my own ass, split this
In the control room, in addition to Ralph and the giant, there were Burt Cogborn, the station’s advertising salesman and ad-copy writer, and Mason Morrell, their weekday-evening talk-show host, who had switched from live chatter to a prerecorded segment that he kept on hand for emergencies like this. Well, not
exactly
like this. The kind of emergency Mason had in mind was an unexpected attack of on-air diarrhea. Everyone but the stranger looked anxious and confused.
In Sammy’s absence, the body of Warren Snyder had been stripped to the waist, and his pants had been pulled down far enough to reveal his entire abdomen, sternum to groin.
“I don’t know exactly what you’ll see,” Deucalion said, “but I’m confident it will be enough to prove this wasn’t the real Warren Snyder.”
The giant knelt beside the corpse and plunged the knife into it, just below the breastbone.
Mason Morrell gasped, probably not because the mutilation of the corpse shocked or dismayed him, but only for effect, to suggest that he, an on-air talent, was by nature more sensitive than those who laboredbehind the scenes of his show. Sammy liked Mason, though the guy was always performing to one degree or another, whether at the microphone or not, and he was sometimes exhausting.
A thin serpent of blood slithered from the haft of the buried knife and along the pale abdomen, and for a moment the cadaver seemed human, after all. But then Deucalion slashed to the navel and beyond, and the illusion of humanity was cut away. The lips of the wound sagged apart, and the blood—if it was blood—proved to be confined to the surface tissues.
Deeper, all was strange, not the viscera of a human body. Some of the organs were the color of milk glass, others were white tinted unevenly with faint streaks of gray like the flesh of certain fish, and a smaller number were white with the merest suggestion of green, some smooth and slick, others textured like curds of cottage cheese, all of them bizarre in shape and asymmetrical. A double helix of opalescent tubes twined through the body trunk, and a creamy fluid leaked from those that had been nicked or severed. Throughout the body cavity lay a fine web of luminous filaments that seemed less biological than electronic, and they glowed softly even though this replicant of Warren Snyder was surely as dead as the real man that he had replaced.
Leaving the knife protruding from the body, Deucalion rose to his full height.
With a quiver of revulsion and with fear in his voicethat dismayed him, Sammy Chakrabarty asked, “What is that thing?”
“It was made in a laboratory,” the giant said. “Hundreds or even thousands of them are in the process of taking control of this town.”
“What laboratory?” Ralph Nettles wondered. He shook his head in disbelief. “Our science isn’t far enough advanced to do this.”
“The proof is before your eyes,” Deucalion reminded him.
Burt Cogborn stared not at the cadaver but at his wristwatch, as if his world of radio-spot sales allowed no room for a development of this magnitude, as if he might announce that he had a deadline looming and needed to return to his office to write ad copy.
“Maybe a laboratory,” Ralph acceded. “But not on this planet.”
“On this planet, in this state, this county,” Deucalion assured them with unsettling certainty. “Who I am, who made these creatures, I’ll explain soon. But first, you’ve got to prepare to defend the station, and warn others, both in Rainbow Falls and beyond, what’s happening here.”
“Defend it with what?” Mason Morrell asked. “A couple of kitchen knives? Against hundreds—maybe thousands—of these … these things? And they’re stronger than us? Man, this isn’t a movie, there’s no big-screen superstar to make everything right in the third act. I can’t save the world. I can’t save anythingbut my own ass, split this
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