A Jungle of Stars (1976) (7 page)

They developed a single mass mind which dominated the planet. When The Bromgrev discovered the place, the Mind tried to absorb him as well, but this time it met its match. The Bromgrev's mind was stronger, and instead of his becoming one with them, they became him. The Bromgrev was so powerful a telepath that, even after leaving, he continued to be with the Mind.

Should The Bromgrev come near you he could, at will, incorporate you into the Mind as well. This was a great discovery. It had given him an army that was always loyal, always obedient. But only The Bromgrev himself could incorporate you; the race of creatures he dominated were now too dispersed to be able to do it alone.

If such zombies showed up here, then The Bromgrev was here, too.

Years passed as Savage threw himself into the job. Far removed from the galactic conflict, he never even revisited the War Room, only a few hundred meters below his office. He did made Haven once, and had some obligatory training -- in spaceship guidance and control, as well as his first space flight, but that, too, was now long-ago. He had not seen Wade since the first day, and that was fine with him: the creature that was Wade made him very uneasy.

During this period he had handled several hundred cases. In most, he'd struck out, or come up with convincing explanations. At least three had been clever crimes that he was well satisfied to have solved, or helped to solve.

He also became certain after his twentieth such case that some ghosts did indeed exist, for some reason these people had not joined the great synthesis.

They remained, almost inevitably, quite insane and occasionally dangerous. His countermeasures, drawn from the computer banks and experts of the society, were sometimes effective, sometimes not.

But always Savage, and his counterparts worldwide, remained mindful that the enemy was in fact about. Twice now, he and several other agents had uncovered small cells of Bromgrev agents, and blocked some of their operations.

But The Bromgrev himself did not come. He was busy elsewhere.

So Savage remained busy, building a casebook of weird and fantastic cases, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Until the matter of the lost day.

Malloy, South Carolina, had little to distinguish itself from the thousands of other small southern agricultural towns spread throughout the southeastern United States. It was, indeed, the sleepy, two-block village with diagonal parking on Main Street and the speed trap at the beginning of town, right behind the tree-obscured END 55, BEGIN 15 MPH sign. Its population of about 350 was about 70 percent black and mostly in the peanut and cotton business, on one end or the other. But on the night of August 16, when everyone went to bed, things became unique in Malloy.

They awoke at their usual times the next day and set about their appointed tasks. It was, in fact, some time before the discrepancy was noted, for the lone cop on night duty and the two or three other night people were unwilling to admit that they, too, had dozed. It was almost 2 P.M. before everyone in the town discovered one minor fact.

It wasn't Wednesday, August 17. It was Thursday, August 18.

The story got good play in the newpapers, but since there seemed to be no harm, no ill effects -- and, therefore, no follow-up. It died, after a day, to the news of a more dramatic outside world. Those who heard of it generally dismissed it as a hoax, particularly since Malloy had been fighting unsuccessfully for charter government and needed to get noticed, at least by Columbia. A quick plane flight and rental car put Savage in Malloy in about four hours. He had had a slow month, and had been going crazy with the boredom of the rather commonplace muggings, rapes, murders, terrorism, and petty wars of the evening news.

Malloy was exactly what he expected it to be: a musky smell, extremely hot and humid at that time of year, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing all around and a few cars parked in front of the post office and general store.

There was even a sleeping bloodhound on the store's wooden porch.

The little bell over the door jingled as Savage entered. A couple of people were looking at some dry goods in one corner, and he noted with amusement their attempts not to stare at him. The proprietor, an elderly, balding man with a thin white mustache, appeared from a rear storeroom.

"Yessuh?" The storekeeper drawled, "What can we do fo' you?"

"Just directions, really," Savage replied. "I'm going to be here a day or two, and need some place to stay."

"That's the Calhoun, suh. Little hotel down the street on this side.

It's the only place in town. Heah to buy crops?"

Savage shook his head. "No. I'm in a different line of work."

He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet. His private detective's license showed clearly, and the storekeeper's eyebrows shot up.

"Detective, huh? All the way from Washington, too! What's the matta, got a runaway husband luhkin' 'round heah?"

"No," Savage chuckled. "I work for an agency that's very concerned when strange things happen; We like to be sure that these strange things aren't caused by familiar enemies."

The old man's face grew serious, and the duo over in dry goods tried ten times harder to pretend they weren't hanging on to every word. "The missin'

day, huh? Somebody took it serious, aftah all."

"You mean it wasn't?" Savage shot back quickly. "Oh, shuah as hell was.

But the newspapahs..."

"Print what sells newspapers," Savage completed. "My employers don't have to sell newspapers."

The other nodded gravely, and it was clear that Savage had gotten the correct impression across. Soon the whole town would be talking about the

"government" agent who took them seriously; and that would make things much easier in patriotic, rural South Carolina.

Savage decided he must press his advantage. "What about you, Mr. --uh?"

"Bakkus, Tom Bakkus," the storekeeper responded, automatically extending his hand.

"Paul Savage," the big man replied, and they shook. "Well, Mr. Bakkus, I suppose you have some thoughts on the subject," Savage prompted.

Bakkus scratched his head. "I dunno," he replied thoughtfully. "Damned strange is all. Went tuh sleep 'bout eleven-thutty, as usual, right aftah the evenin' news on the TV. No dreams, no funny stuff. Woke up at six as usual, no problems, 'ceptin' it was Thuhsday, damniit!"

"Did your alarm clock wake you up?"

"Naw. It'd gone off as usual on Wednesday, I suppose. Nevah thought

'bout that. Nevah wakes me up, anyways; been gettin' up at six foah fifty yeahs. Dunno why I keep that ol' clock atall."

"What about the other people? Lots of people need alarm clocks; I know I do."

Bakkus frowned. "Nope. Oh, pro'bly the usual numbah of folks use 'em, but most just thought they ovahslept. Would you notice?"

"Probably not," Savage agreed. "But I'll check the people myself --

particularly the job records -- to see how many more people than usual were late on Thursday. Say, that's a thought. Does every kid in Malloy go to school in town?"

"No help theah," the older man replied. "It's August -- vacation."

"And no visitors through town during the whole missing day?"

"Not a one they could find. Not really unusual -- we'ah a bit off the beaten track heah, and it might be days and days befoah a strangah comes through."

Savage digested the information, turning it over and over in his mind.

If the interviews proved out, it made a sinister picture.

Pick a town nobody's likely to disturb for a day. Pick a day even slower than normal. Then black everyone out for that period. Why? To keep them from seeing something? Possibly. But, if so, what would be worth the risk of national notoriety? To get something through town, perhaps? But it was a small area blacked out, and chances are you couldn't get something that mysterious both in and out of the place without somebody noticing. It didn't make sense.

Savage spent the next three days canvassing the town and the nearby farms and got pretty much the same story. Yes, people had slept through their alarms; no, nobody thought it was unusual until they found out everybody had.

By the end of three days, Savage was certain of only one thing: from the intensity of the witnesses, the blackout had occurred without a doubt.

Sinister enough. Particularly when he had talked to that out-of-town salesman who normally did come through Malloy on Wednesdays. When asked why he had missed that particular day, he'd explained, 'I got tied up in a sales meeting all morning, then found my car wouldn't start. By the time I got AAA to tow me and fix the thing, it was seven in the evening. Since there was nothing critical, I skipped it.'

Someone -- or something -- had stolen a day out of these people's lives.

How it had been done Savage had no idea, and the mysterious force had left no clues to hang on to. Or had it?

The Hunter organization could arrange a sales meeting delay, and tamper with the car. And an organization of Hunter's capabilities could easily black out a town, for they had done things far stranger. And--

For the first time, it also occurred to him that one other organization would have similar resources.

Had The Bromgrev landed? Was he -- or "it" -- one of the townspeople? If so, why do a thing so conspicuous? Why provoke an instant and predictable reaction from The Hunter's people? Maybe "predictable" was the word.

It was well past three in the morning and Savage lay awake in the darkness of his hotel room. Except for the cricket symphony, there was an almost incredible silence.

What would be predictable?

That The Hunter would send someone to investigate. No. More.

That The Hunter would send him. Virginia through Georgia was his beat.

Savage crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and watched the glow slowly die in the darkness.

A soft knock came at his door. The sound, slight as it was, made him jump as if a firecracker had suddenly exploded. He reached over to the chair on which hung his shoulder holster and removed the .38 Police Special he always carried. The knock was repeated.

Slowly he went over to the door and put his lips to the crack between door and door molding.

"Who is it?" he whispered softly.

"Someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to talk to you privately,"

came an equally whispered reply.

The voice was sharp, clear, every word perfectly formed in neutral American English, yet totally without color or emotion. Savage unlocked the door and stepped back, gun drawn. What was it about the Devil not being able to enter a place unless invited?

"Come in," he called nervously. The knob twisted, then the door opened slowly, revealing a small and not very threatening figure in the gloom. The figure entered and closed the door behind him. It was Bakkus.

No, it was something that looked like Bakkus, but it had no humanity, no fire inside. It was an animated corpse.

"Please put the gun away, Mr. Savage," Bakkus said in that strange and unnatural intonation. "You can only shoot Mr. Bakkus, and he's an innocent and unknowing bystander in this affair, of no concern to either of us. It takes a great deal of power from my other dealings to communicate in this fashion, so I will be brief."

"You are The Bromgrev?" Savage asked breathlessly.

"No, merely one of his agents, as you are an agent of The Hunter. But I am on The Bromgrev's business."

"Just where -- and what -- are you, anyway?" Savage asked, not taking his pistol off the figure, who continued to stand motionless.

"I am in a ship quite a distance from your planet, using a device that amplifies my own rather powerful mental abilities a millionfold. That device, and our agents on Earth, caused the population of this little town to remain comatose for roughly thirty Earth hours, with little disturbance."

"All to get me here," Savage accused. "Why?"

"So you have deduced that? You are, indeed, as good as we have heard. As to the why of it, we mean to correct certain impressions you have received. We mean to give you all of the facts, the truth, unlike Hunter. And, at the end, we might ask for your help."

Savage's thick brows shot up. "My help? I belong to the opposition, remember. What makes you think I'll switch?"

"You have certain distinct personality traits we believe will make you a key person in coming events. You are, of course, not the only agent we have talked to, or will talk to. If you will permit me to give you my message, you might understand."

Savage still didn't lower the pistol, but he did flop back down on the bed. Bakkus made no attempt to move or sit. The creature controlling the body operated it as a robot.

Savage carefully lit another cigarette.

"Go ahead," he told the creature. "I'm listening."

"To begin with, The Hunter told you the true nature of the war we are fighting. It is one of his characteristics that his lies are always cloaked in truths.

"For example, the evolution of the Synthesis is an integral part of natural law. An existing synthesis is necessary to maintain order in the galaxy. It's an order that is beyond your comprehension, or mine, but it is essential to the maintenance and development of all sentient life. But Hunter lied when he threatened you with that standard stage-play of his. Had you refused his offer, you would not have been submerged in insanity, but you would have found and slowly learned to use new powers as an individual, with the ability to synthesize at will with any other individuals, or the group as a whole, to become something even greater. You would have become a part of the management of your planet. You are now cheated of this."

"Well, I don't miss it," Savage responded dryly. "One doesn't miss what one has never had, wanted, or understood. What's all this to do with me?"

"Perspective," replied the creature using Bakkus. "You see, the last such race is gone -- dead, finally, or, perhaps, gone on to even greater things. Nobody knows. But that race, the race The Hunter and The Bromgrev, left far too soon. They were able to interpolate and determine that, left completely alone, the Next Race was far enough along to carry our galaxy through any rough spots. The problem, you see, was that one member of the old race enjoyed playing God too much. This was The Hunter's sector: Earth and the nearby planets. He'd played games with Earth, terrible games that could have cheated your people out of their chance -- and it's only a chance -- of attaining greatness. He introduced space travel at too early a stage. Such travel, before there is a temporal awareness and an acceptance of the Synthesis, can cause wide dispersion and the Synthesis will not be able to grow and evolve to its proper form."