Part 3 (2/2)
Brent moved to the end of the table and scanned them moodily. ”Okay, gentlemen. I'll talk. Then if you have any questions--shoot them.” He took a deep breath and began:
”We are faced with a situation that must be kept top secret for two reasons: First, it may be the first move in an attempt to subjugate or destroy our planet; two, it is so utterly ridiculous on its face that a public announcement would be greeted by hoots of laughter from pole to pole.” Brent's ugly scowl deepened at what he seemed to feel was an injustice. ”Even the Eskimos would get a yack out of it.”
The group waited, withholding judgment, evidently waiting to see whether or not it was a laughing matter. They were conceding nothing. Brent studied them for a moment and then went on.
”Last week, in Denver, early in the morning,” he said, ”a man was found dead on a residential-section street. There was no apparent cause of death. A routine autopsy revealed some peculiar things about the man's insides. For one thing, he had two hearts--”
Jones of the Air Force, a dignified, gray-haired man, paused in firing his cigar and gave the impression he was lighting his way through the darkness. Bright of the Navy, a thin man with a huge Adam's apple, allowed it to bob three times in deference to the startling nature of Brent's statement. Pender of the Army raised one eyebrow and let it fall. To a keen observer, Hagen of the FBI would have revealed prior knowledge by reacting not at all.
His mind was on the kid. He was thinking, _Christ! With all the d.a.m.ned miracle drugs and characters...o...b..ting the earth in crazy capsules, they still haven't figured out a way to keep a six-year-old from getting a cold._ He remembered the kid waving from the window yesterday morning--when he'd been ordered East to attend this clambake--standing there beside Miriam, waving good-bye and barking like a sea lion. _What the h.e.l.l was wrong with doctors? Why didn't they get with it on a stupidly simple thing like the common cold?_
” ... two hearts and--” Brent reached to the left and pulled down a chart on a window shade-type rack that stood beside his chair, ”--a rather interesting arrangement of the internal organs.” He pointed with a thick finger. ”You'll notice that the liver is exceptionally small, while the kidneys are large enough to service a horse. You'll note also that while the man had t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, there is no prostrate gland.”
The group waited in a kind of guarded abeyance that could be easily sensed. Their silence gave the impression that they were asking: _Is somebody kidding us?_
But there was certainly no lightness in Brent's manner. His arm dropped and he scowled at the far end of the table as he said, ”Now, the blood.
There was something strange about the blood--”
The door from Marcia Holly's reception room-office opened and she came in silently, followed by a white-coated waiter who set a tray on the table. The coffeepot on the tray was silver; the cups, fine china; the napkins, linen.
”--something very strange about the blood in that it conformed to all necessary specifications and yet it had a synthetic quality about it ...”
Goose pimples formed on Hagen's neck and walked gently down his spine.
Nothing was missing in this setup--synthetic blood, two hearts, oversize kidneys. Hagen got a quick mental flash of a barker outside a circus sideshow: _He walks like a man. He talks like a man. But for a thin dime, folks, you can see--_
It was something to think and wonder about. And back in Chicago, he'd had lots of company. Everybody in the office that night had wondered, and you could see the vague uneasiness in their eyes as the creature sat, acting like a human being and, at the same time, like nothing from this world. You could see a vague revulsion in the people surrounding the creature. There was also uncertainty, and this from men who were required by their profession to be fairly certain about most things.
”The blood,” Jones of the Air Force said. ”Could it have been a--well, a new kind of plasma?”
”Hardly. You see, the variation was almost theoretical, if you can understand the term as I'm using it. Drawn from an ordinary human being, it would not have been questioned. It was just that in the light of other oddities in his man, it didn't seem right, somehow.”
”Pretty vague,” Bright of the Army said.
”This I'll grant you.” Brent said. ”Anybody for coffee?”
n.o.body was for coffee so Marcia and the waiter retired and Brent said, ”Vague, I'll grant you. But let's get on with it. Two days later, a man, in every way identical, was found lying in the street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was alive, but in a dying condition, and he succ.u.mbed on the way to the hospital. Cause of death, as in the first place, undeterminable. But the medics think it was some malfunctioning of the lungs.
”All in all, gentlemen, eight identical specimens have been picked up in various American cities. Five are dead, two more are now in a comatose condition, at last report, and may very well be dead at this time. One is still alive and relatively healthy....”
Alive and relatively healthy. The son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h! Hagen felt an odd senseless rage against the creature they'd picked up in a Chicago bar.
Ordinarily it would have been a simple bull-pen, night-court case--a loud-mouth drunk refusing to pay for a drink. But much of his talk, anent enemy invasion, internal destruction, and civilian chaos, had been a little too rough for the other barflies to swallow, and complaints had been made. Later, when Bureau men went around trying to get something tangible in the way of evidence, they found themselves dealing in frustration. The complainants had left without giving their names. The barkeep really hadn't heard anything. The actual charges had gone up in smoke. But by that time, Was.h.i.+ngton was very much interested. The man was questioned and it was the d.a.m.nedest thing Hagen had ever gone through ...
”By identical,” Jones of the Air Force said, ”you of course mean--”
Brent's dark, knifelike eyes sliced out at Jones. ”By identical, I mean just that.”
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