Phantoms

by Dean Koontz

  Bryce said, “What’s that?”

  “Petroleum jelly,” Jenny said.

  Tal said, “You mean ... like Vaseline?”

  And Flyte said to Sara, “But surely you’re not saying the amorphous tissue is anything as simple as petrolatum.”

  “No, no, no,” Sara said quickly. “Of course not. This is living tissue. But there are similarities in the ratio of hydrocarbons. The composition of the tissue is far more complex than the composition of petrolatum, of course. An even longer list of minerals and chemicals than you’d find in the human body. An array of acids and alkalines ... I can’t begin to figure out how it makes use of nourishment, how it respires, how it functions without a circulatory system, without any apparent nervous system, or how it builds new tissue without using a cellular format. But these extremely high hydrocarbon values...”

  Her voice trailed away. Her eyes appeared to swim out of focus, so that she was no longer actually looking at the test results.

  Watching the geneticist, Tal had the feeling that she was suddenly excited about something. It didn’t show in her face or in any aspect of her body or posture. Nevertheless, there was definitely a new air about her that told him she was onto something important.

  Tal glanced at Bryce. Their eyes met. He saw that Bryce, too, was aware of the change in Sara.

  Almost unconsciously, Tal crossed his fingers.

  “Better come look at this,” Lisa said urgently.

  She was standing by the petri dish that contained the portion of the tissue sample they hadn’t yet used.

  “Hurry, come here!” Lisa said when they didn’t immediately respond.

  Jenny and the others gathered around and stared at the thing in the petri dish.

  Grasshopper-worm-centipede-snail-earwig.

  “It just goes faster and faster and faster,” Lisa said.

  Spider-worm-centipede-spider-snail-spider-worm-spider-worm...

  And then even faster.

  ... spiderwormspiderwormspiderwormspider...

  “It’s only half-changed into a worm before it starts changing back into a spider again,” Lisa said. “Frantic like. See? Something’s happening to it.”

  “Looks as if it’s lost control, gone crazy,” Tal said.

  “Having some sort of breakdown,” Flyte said.

  Abruptly, the composition of the small wad of amorphous tissue changed. A milky fluid seeped from it; the wad collapsed into a runny pile of lifeless mush.

  It didn’t move.

  It didn’t take on another form.

  Jenny wanted to touch it; didn’t dare.

  Sara picked up a small lab spoon, poked at the stuff in the dish.

  It still didn’t move.

  She stirred it.

  The tissue liquefied even further, but otherwise did not respond.

  “It’s dead,” Flyte said softly.

  Bryce seemed electrified by this development. He turned to Sara. “What was in the petri dish before you put the tissue sample there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There must’ve been a residue.”

  “No.”

  “Think, damn it. Our lives depend on this.”

  “There was nothing in the dish. I took it from the sterilizer.”

  “A trace of some chemical...”

  “It was perfectly clean.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Something in the dish must’ve reacted with the shape-changer’s tissue,” Bryce said. “Right? Isn’t that clear?”

  “And whatever was in the dish,” Tal said, “that’s our weapon.”

  “It’s the stuff that’ll kill the shape-changer,” Lisa said.

  “Not necessarily,” Jenny said, hating to shatter the girl’s hopes.

  “Sounds too easy,” Flyte agreed, combing his wild white hair with a trembling hand. “Let’s not leap to conclusions.”

  “Especially when there’re other possibilities,” Jenny said.

  “Such as?” Bryce asked.

  “Well... we know that the main mass of the creature can shed pieces of itself in about any form it chooses, can direct the activities of those detached parts, and can summon them back the way it summoned the part of itself that it sent to kill Gordy. But now suppose that a detached portion of the shape-changer can only survive for a relatively short period of time on its own, away from the mother-body. Suppose the amorphous tissue needs a steady supply of a particular enzyme in order to maintain its cohesiveness, an enzyme that isn’t manufactured in those independently situated control cells that’re scattered throughout the tissue- ”

  “—an enzyme that’s produced only by the shape-changer’s brain,” Sara said, picking up on Jenny’s chain of thought.

  “Exactly,” Jenny said. “So... any detached portion would have to reintegrate itself with the main mass in order to replenish its supply of that vital enzyme, or whatever the substance may be.”

  “That’s not unlikely,” Sara said. “After all, the human brain produces enzymes and hormones without which our own bodies wouldn’t be able to survive. Why shouldn’t the shape-changer’s brain fulfill a similar function?”

  “All right,” Bryce said. “What does this discovery mean to us?”

  “If it is a discovery and not just a wrongheaded guess,” Jenny said, “then it means we could definitely destroy the entire shape-changer if we could destroy the brain. The creature wouldn’t be able to separate into several parts and crawl away and go on living in other incarnations. Without the essential brain-manufactured enzymes—or hormones or whatever—the separate parts would all eventually dissolve into lifeless mush, the way the thing in the petri dish has done.”

  Bryce sagged with disappointment. “We’re back at square one. We have to locate its brain before we have any chance of striking a death blow, but the thing’s never going to let us do that.”

  “We’re not back to square one,” Sara said. Pointing to the lifeless slime in the petri dish: “This tells us something else that’s important.”

  “What?” Bryce asked, his voice heavy with frustration. “Is it something useful, something that could save us—or is it just another item of bizarre information?”

  Sara said, “We now know the amorphous tissue exists in a delicate chemical balance that can be disrupted.”

  She let that sink in.

  The deep worry lines in Bryce’s face softened a bit.

  Sara said, “The flesh of the shape-changer can be damaged. It can be killed. Here’s proof in the petri dish.”

  “How do we use that knowledge?” Tal asked. “How do we disrupt the chemical balance?”

  “That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Sara said.

  “Do you have any ideas?” Lisa asked the geneticist.

  “No,” Sara said. “None.”

  But Jenny suddenly had the feeling that Sara Yamaguchi was lying.

  Sara wanted to tell them about the plan that had occurred to her, but she couldn’t say a word. For one thing, her strategy offered only a fragile thread of hope. She didn’t want to raise their hopes unrealistically and then see them dashed again. More importantly, if she told them what was on her mind, and if by some miracle she actually had found a way to destroy the shape-changer, it would hear what she said, and it would know her plans, and it would stop her. There was no place where she could safely discuss her thoughts with Jenny and Bryce and the others. Their best hope was to keep the ancient enemy smug and complacent.

  But she had tc buy some time, several hours, in which to set her plan in motion. The shape-changer was millions and millions of years old, virtually immortal. What were a few hours to this creature? Surely, it would comply with her request. Surely.

  She sat down at one of the computer terminals, her eyes burning with weariness. She needed sleep. They all needed sleep. The night was nearly gone. She wiped one hand across her face, as if she could slough off her weariness. Then she typed: ARE YOU THERE?

  YES.

  WE HAVE COMPLETED A NUMBER OF T
ESTS, she typed as the others crowded around her.

  I KNOW, it replied.

  WE ARE FASCINATED. THERE IS MORE WE WISH TO KNOW.

  OF COURSE.

  THERE ARE OTHER TESTS WE WANT TO CONDUCT.

  WHY?

  IN ORDER THAT WE CAN KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU.

  CLARIFY, it answered teasingly.

  Sara thought for a moment, then typed: DR. FLYTE NEEDS ADDITIONAL DATA IF HE IS TO WRITE ABOUT YOU WITH AUTHORITY.

  HE IS MY MATTHEW.

  HE NEEDS MORE DATA TO TELL YOUR STORY AS IT SHOULD BE TOLD.

  It flashed back a three-line response in the center of the video display:

  - A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS -

  THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD

  - A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS -

  Sara couldn’t be sure if it was merely mocking them or whether its ego was actually so large that it could seriously equate its own story with the story of Christ.

  The screen blinked. New words appeared: PROCEED WITH YOUR TESTS.

  WE WILL NEED TO SEND FOR MORE LAB EQUIPMENT.

  WHY? YOU HAVE A FULLY EQUIPPED LAB.

  Sara’s hands were moist. She blotted them on her jeans before tapping out her answer.

  THIS LAB IS FULLY EQUIPPED ONLY FOR A NARROW AREA OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY: THE ANALYSIS OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE AGENTS. WE DID NOT ANTICIPATE ENCOUNTERING A BEING OF YOUR NATURE. WE MUST HAVE OTHER LAB EQUIPMENT IN ORDER TO DO A PROPER JOB.

  PROCEED.

  IT WILL TAKE SEVERAL HOURS TO HAVE THE EQUIPMENT SENT HERE, she told it.

  PROCEED.

  She stared at the word, green on green, hardly daring to believe that gaining more time would be this easy.

  She tapped the keys: WE WILL NEED TO RETURN TO THE INN AND USE THE TELEPHONE THERE.

  PROCEED, YOU BORING BITCH. PROCEED, PROCEED, PROCEED, PROCEED.

  Her hands were damp again. She wiped them on her jeans and stood up.

  From the way the others were looking at her, she realized that they knew she was hiding something, and they understood why she was remaining silent about it.

  But how did they know? Was she that obvious? And if they knew, did it know, too?

  She cleared her throat. “Let’s go,” she said shakily.

  “Let’s go,” Sara Yamaguchi said shakily, but Timothy said, “Wait. Just a minute or two, please. There’s something I’ve got to try.”

  He sat down at a computer terminal. Although he had gotten some sleep on the airliners, his mind was not as sharp as it ought to be. He shook his head and took several deep breaths, then typed: THIS IS TIMOTHY FLYTE.

  I KNOW.

  WE MUST HAVE A DIALOGUE.

  PROCEED.

  MUST WE DO IT THROUGH THE COMPUTER?

  IT IS BETTER THAN A BURNING BUSH.

  For a second or two, Timothy didn’t understand what it meant. When he got the joke, he almost laughed aloud. The damned thing had its own perverse sense of humor. He typed: YOUR SPECIES AND MINE SHOULD LIVE IN PEACE.

  WHY?

  BECAUSE WE SHARE THE EARTH.

  AS THE FARMER SHARES THE FARM WITH HIS CATTLE. YOU ARE MY CATTLE.

  WE ARE THE ONLY TWO INTELLIGENT SPECIES ON EARTH.

  YOU THINK YOU KNOW SO MUCH. IN FACT YOU KNOW SO LITTLE.

  WE SHOULD COOPERATE, Flyte persisted doggedly.

  YOU ARE INFERIOR TO ME.

  WE HAVE MUCH TO LEARN FROM EACH OTHER.

  I HAVE NOTHING TO LEARN FROM YOUR KIND.

  WE MAY BE MORE CLEVER THAN YOU BELIEVE.

  YOU ARE MORTAL. IS THAT NOT TRUE?

  YES.

  TO ME, YOUR LIVES ARE AS BRIEF AND UNIMPORTANT AS THE LIVES OF MAYFLIES SEEM TO YOU.

  IF THAT IS THE WAY YOU FEEL, WHY DO YOU CARE WHETHER OR NOT I WRITE ABOUT YOU?

  IT AMUSES ME THAT ONE OF YOUR SPECIES HAS THEORIZED MY EXISTENCE. IT IS LIKE A PET MONKEY LEARNING A DIFFICULT TRICK.

  I DO NOT BELIEVE WE ARE YOUR INFERIORS, Flyte typed gamely.

  CATTLE.

  I BELIEVE YOU WANT TO BE WRITTEN ABOUT BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACQUIRED A VERY HUMAN EGO.

  YOU ARE WRONG.

  I BELIEVE THAT YOU WERE NOT AN INTELLIGENT CREATURE UNTIL YOU BEGAN FEEDING UPON INTELLIGENT CREATURES, UPON MEN.

  YOUR IGNORANCE DISAPPOINTS ME.

  Timothy continued to challenge it. I BELIEVE THAT ALONG WITH KNOWLEDGE AND MEMORY THAT WAS ABSORBED FROM YOUR HUMAN VICTIMS, YOU ALSO ACQUIRED INTELLIGENCE. YOU OWE US FOR YOUR OWN EVOLUTION.

  It did not reply.

  Timothy cleared the screen and typed more: YOUR MIND SEEMS TO HAVE A VERY HUMAN STRUCTURE - EGO, SUPEREGO, AND SO FORTH.

  CATTLE, it replied.

  Blink.

  PIGS, it said.

  Blink.

  GROVELING ANIMALS, it said.

  Blink.

  YOU BORE ME, it said.

  And then all the screens went dark.

  Timothy leaned back in his chair and sighed.

  Sheriff Hammond said, “Nice try, Dr. Flyte.”

  “Such arrogance,” Timothy said.

  “Befitting a god,” Dr. Paige said. “And that’s more or less how it thinks of itself.”

  “In a way,” Lisa Paige said, “that’s what it really is.”

  “Yeah,” Tal Whitman said, “for all intents and purposes, it might as well be a god. It has all the powers of a god, doesn’t it?”

  “Or a devil,” Lisa said.

  Beyond the streetlamps and above the fog, the night was gray now. The first vague glow of dawn had sparked the far end of the sky.

  Sara wished Dr. Flyte hadn’t challenged the shape-changer so boldly. She was worried that he had antagonized it, and that now it would renege on its promise to give them more time.

  During the short walk from the field lab to the Hilltop Inn, she kept expecting a grotesque phantom to lope or scuttle at them from out of the fog. It must not take them now. Not now. Not when there was, at long last, a glimmer of hope.

  Elsewhere in town, off in the fog and shadows, there were strange animal sounds, eerie ululating cries like nothing that Sara had ever heard before. It was still engaged upon its ceaseless mimicry. A hellish shriek, uncomfortably close at hand, caused the survivors to bunch together.

  But they were not attacked.

  The streets, although not silent, were still. There was not even a breeze; the mist hung motionless in the air.

  Nothing waited for them inside the inn, either.

  At the central operations desk, Sara sat down and dialed the number of the CBW Civilian Defense Unit’s home base in Dugway, Utah.

  Jenny, Bryce, and the others gathered around to listen.

  Because of the ongoing crisis in Snowfield, there was not just the usual night-duty sergeant at the Dugway headquarters. Captain Daniel Tersch, a physician in the Army Medical Corps, a specialist in containing contagious disease, third in charge of the unit, was standing by to direct any support operations that might become necessary.

  Sara told him about their latest discoveries—the microscopic examinations of the shape-changer’s tissue, the results of the various mineral and chemical analyses—and Tersch was fascinated, though this was well beyond his field of expertise.

  “Petrolatum?” he asked at one point, surprised by what she had told him.

  “The amorphous tissue resembles petrolatum only in that it has a somewhat similar mix of hydrocarbons that register very high values. But of course it’s much more complex, much more sophisticated.”

  She stressed this particular discovery, for she wanted to be certain that Tersch passed it along to other scientists on the CBW team at Dugway. If another geneticist or a biochemist were to consider this data and then look at the list of materials she was going to ask for, he would almost certainly know what her plan was. If someone in the CBW unit did get her message, he would assemble the weapon for her before it was sent into Snowfield, sparing her the time-consuming and dangerous job of assembling it with the shape-changer looking over her shoulder.

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