It’s not that Zeus was a frightful character — far from it. Why, this Zeus and I, as I’ve already noted, are the bosomest of pals. We’ve shared all manner of adventures, we’ve plucked the gowans fine, we’ve travelled the length and breadth of Detroit and undergone a series of lengthy incarcerations in the hospice. And throughout our association our relations have always run along the chummiest of lines. He’s as gentle as a ewe-lamb and as pleasant a slice of humanity as you’d meet in an average year. No, the alarm so often inspired in those who are taken unawares when meeting Zeus is not occasioned by his character, but by his unusual physique.
Zeus, you see, is one of those extra-large, economy-sized, body-builder types who, while not necessarily constructed along the lines of any superheroes or demigods you’ve heard of, could certainly be mistaken for their personal trainer. He bulges with muscles in all directions. And, as if his girth and breadth weren’t enough to make this Zeus a terror for any try-your-weight machines unlucky enough to cross his path, there’s also his height to worry them. “Skyscraper” sums it up nicely. He is, in point of fact, the burliest colossus to ever bestride a harbour, and the sort of man who could fell a rhinoceros with a single blow, if he met one.
The sudden appearance of one built along Zeus’s specifications invites a strong reaction. When faced with a man of Zeus’s dimensions, Attila the Hun might fail to quail in terror, but nobody but Attila the Hun, and him only on his best day. Any cannibal seeing Zeus — if Detroit had cannibals — would think he’d struck upon a buffet for the whole tribe.25 Those who encounter Zeus in the hospice frequently swoon in disbelief that a single pair of fuzzy slippers could support such a stupendous quantity of mental patient.
In any event, it was this Zeus, this most amiable of giants, whom I expected to find recovering in the infirmary. I renewed my wriggling efforts and proceeded as stealthily as an air duct will allow, lest an errant “ping” or “pop” alert authorities to my presence.
And it was a good thing I had proceeded stealthily, too, for I hadn’t wriggled another metre before I chanced to hear a snatch of conversation from below. It ran as follows:
“A dog?” said some chump, registering incredulity.
“A dog,” said another.
The second chump I could identify. The voice belonged to Dr. Peericks, overlord of the hospice and fatheadedest medical man to have lanced a boil.
“Some sort of terrier, I think,” the insufferable ass was saying. “It’s hard to be sure. It’s not an exact science. But certainly a breed of canis lupus familiaris.”
Pretentious git.
In any event, I’d collared the gist. The doctor and his companion — whose identity at this juncture remained a closed book to yours truly — were conversing about Zeus.
Now, the character sketch I’ve given of this Zeus, while admirable in its coverage of his topography and overall genial nature, could, I’ll admit, be criticized in one respect, and that is this: it failed to pay sufficient heed to his peculiar mental condition. He has one, of course, and it’s not just that he’s a princk. The peculiar thing about Zeus is that, unlike myself, Ian, and most other princks you’re apt to encounter, Zeus believes that while inhabiting the beforelife he was a dog.
Reread that sentence if you must, but it won’t change anything. The man believes he was a dog. A miniature Yorkshire terrier, if you really want to know. And having been a particularly good miniature Yorkshire Terrier, Zeus believes that he is now on his way toward eventual reincarnation as a human. And while Zeus now occupies a human body — a massive, chiselled, muscular human body suitable for bench-pressing minivans or appearing on the covers of romance novels — his behaviour and psychology remain distinctly canine in some respects.
For the most part, Zeus’s canine personality is a boon: he is a loyal friend, an excellent guard, and an accomplished chaser of postal workers. But there are several notable entries on the debit side of the ledger — he has a mild aversion to B-A-T-H-S, for example, a compulsive need to spin around in his bed three times before he can fall asleep, and an irksome habit of running off with his fellow patients’ slippers. And it is difficult to explain to hospice visitors why a six-foot-seven, 350-pound weightlifter is attempting to sniff their respective crotches.
“Seriously, though, a dog?” the unidentified chump continued, unconvinced. And then he sniffled and blew his nose.
Tired of thinking of this nose-blowing fellow as “the chump” — though no doubt a chump he was — I undertook to ascertain his identity, and so shimmied forward as quietly as I could until my head aligned with a grate above the infirmary. Through this grate I could peer down on the speakers below, though not on Zeus, as the infirmary beds were situated beyond my field of view. Dashed inconvenient of the beds, I know, but such things are sent to try us.
The doctor’s interrogator, it turned out, was a rumpled sort of man wearing a trenchcoat. He had the shabby, dishevelled aspect of a used dishrag in human shape. I shifted slightly to a vantage from which I could see the fellow’s face, which I recognized in an instant: that drooping chin, those rheumy eyes, that fallen-soufflé expression of defeated resignation . . . this was Inspector Amos Doctor, a middle ranking member of the DSCPD.
(That’s the “Detroit South-Central Police Department,” for any readers who are not hep to popular lingo.)
I had met this wretched specimen of Detroit-South-Central’s Finest once before, when a combination of judicial misunderstanding, a surplus of gins-and-tonics, and that famous Feynman penchant for up-whooping had landed me in the jug (a longish story which is a side issue and needn’t detain us). And as you’ll know if you’ve been following my adventures, I have nothing but the utmost respect for those who don the uniform — or, in the present case, the rumpled trenchcoat — and stand between Good Citizens and Disorder. If I chance upon a copper I doff my cap and say “Right ho!” or something equally uplifting, demonstrating my keen esteem for the Thin Blue Line.
But these civic feelings aside, it was dashed difficult to look on this particular copper with anything short of cheerless pity. I mean to say, the man radiated gloom, a sort of careworn, downcast, soul-crushing aura of world-weariness generally unattainable by anything but a melting birthday cake with a secret sorrow. His permanent head-cold didn’t help. His clothing seemed to generate its own ink blots, coffee stains, and unclassifiable blotches. Wrinkle resistance was futile. The man was a wreck inside and out.
The mournful bowl of soup I’ve been describing had manifested about three centuries ago, emerging from the river with the unlucky name “Amos Doctor.” You read it correctly: “A. Doctor.” And as I learned at our last meeting, he’d heard every possible joke about his name a thousand times — his associates always raced to volunteer him if someone asked if there was “A Doctor” in the house, and they would hound him with suggestions that he enter graduate studies and earn the title Dr. Doctor. And, as is so often the case with this peculiar breed of jokester, every blighter who trotted out these obvious wheezes seemed to believe that he was the first to strike upon an untapped vein of comedy gold.
This sort of thing can wear one down. And now that he had risen to the rank of police inspector it seems that Amos Doctor’s highers-up in policedom found it amusing to assign him to every case involving a hospital, hospice, dental office, or gathering of professors, just to revel in the cock-ups that would inevitably ensue. Small wonder, then, that this man’s default modus vivendi was to mourn and not be comforted. It’s dashed depressing to live one’s life as a pun.
The hapless copper shuffled in place and blew his nose. It made a depressing sort of florf. He shook his bean for a moment as though trying to bring the world back into focus.
“Right,” he said in a voice of resignation. “A dog then.” Sniffle.
I know that he said “dog” because I was paying close attention. But one could have been forgiven for thinking that he�
��d said “nog,” given his stuffed-up nasal passages.
“We try not to encourage his canine behaviours,” said the doctor, who seemed to have been unnerved by the evening’s tribulations. “We’ve managed to curb his car chasing and his drinking from the toilet. But he’s just so happy standing guard, and, well, so long as we let him do it he promises not to ask for kibble.”
The inspector sniffled a bit before replying: “You think that’s sensible, doctor?
“It’s never really posed a problem,” said the doctor. “It’s not as though we’ve ever had security problems. We’re a health-care facility. A research centre. We don’t attract a criminal element. We have guards at exterior doors, another pair who roam the halls — all for the safety of patients, you’ll understand — and a few more posted here and there in the past few weeks, ever since the mayor’s office ordered us to beef up our security. But we’ve never had serious trouble. Not before tonight, I mean. And besides,” the doctor continued, “we have cameras and alarms throughout the building, we —”
“Cameras and alarms
“I can’t explain that,” said the doctor. “You’ve seen the same footage that I have. There’s no sign of any intruder. Just that blurry eight-second bit we’ve already watched and then —”
“Let’s have it again,” said the inspector, wiping his nose.
Assenting to the copper’s request, the doctor fumbled in his trouser pocket (his own trouser pocket I mean, not the inspector’s, which he stayed out of as dictated by civility) before withdrawing some sort of gizmo and pressing one of the shiny doodads on its base. It projected one of those holo-thingamajigs into the air between the doctor and the inspector.
This particular holo-thingamajig depicted a scaled-down Zeus, apparently standing post in front of the hospice archives. At first it showed him in a sort of geometric outline built of polygons of light, and then filled him in with the fleshy bits and colour.
This holo-thingummy was almost certainly a record of the moments before our Zeus was attacked, an exciting bit of footage you’re no doubt eager to have described. Here’s what it revealed:
The miniature, holographic Zeus flickered for a moment as the projector within the doctor’s gizmo whirred and buzzed a bit while building up the background scenery, first projecting a neon grid and then filling in the texture and colour. A pair of doors materialized behind the scaled-down Zeus, clearly the doors to the hospice archives. A moment later the stage was set and action started. Zeus stood still for a few seconds, rocking back and forth on his heels; then the image blurred for a moment before disintegrating entirely.
Not the most informative holo-whatsit, I reflected.
“Rewind that segment,” said the inspector, dabbing his nose. “Display it again, frame by frame.”
“We’ve already done that,” said the doctor, a touch impatiently, “you’ve already —”
“Humour me, Doc
The doctor replayed the scene once more, this time advancing it frame by frame. It began with Zeus, the faithful guardian standing peacefully in front of the archive door, rocking back and forth on his heels and whistling something. A few frames later, a barely visible blur entered the field of view and passed around the whistling giant, apparently undetected by the non-mechanical eye. Final frame: the gentle guardian, without time for a “hey!” or a “ho!,” did an impression of an earth-to-camera missile, flung ceilingward by some mighty and unseen force, as though he weighed no more than a kitten. This was followed by a tinkling sort of glass-breaking sound and that snowy “shhhhhh” you sometimes get when your stereo’s speaker system cashes in its pension.
The holo-images disappeared.
The doctor and the inspector stood in silence for a moment, apparently pondering what they’d seen. I did the same — or rather I came as close to standing in silence as one can while in a prone, duct-bound position. Our silent pondering was interrupted when the inspector blew his nose.
It honked despondently, and unless I’m much mistaken it managed to strike a melancholy middle C.
“Ah, well,” said the doctor. “No harm done, I suppose. Zeus will be fine in a day or two, and —”
The inspector suddenly sneezed one of those apocalyptic sneezes, interrupting whatever it was that Peericks had been about to say. I didn’t mind at all, of course, for the crucial bit had been said. Zeus would be fine. My reconnaissance was a success.
“Excuse me,” said the inspector, no doubt by way of apology for his eardrum-breaking sneeze.
“You know,” the doctor said, taking a longish step back from the inspector in a strategic retreat from the fallout zone, “I could give you something for that cold. No need for you to be sneezing and sniffling all the time. Let me get my —”
“Debberbibe,” said the inspector (which I perceived to mean “never mind”). “They say it’s
“Ah,” said the doctor, which is all that one can say in such situations.
“I sometimes
I could have answered him, of course. It’s the simplest thing in the world, depending only on the position of the drip. “What’s that thing in your nose?” some blighter asks, “Nasal drip,” you respond, applying the tissue. “What’s that thing in your lap?” “Post-nasal drip.” Silly ass.
It was at this point in the proceedings that I became aware of a fluttering movement in the vicinity of my lower reaches, such as might be produced by a clumsy pickpocket or, when conditions are just right, by the close proximity of Tonto sporting those fetching, light-blue trousers that she wore last visitors’ day. I recalled a similar sensation around the time when Henry had barged into the Sharing Room with tidings of an attack. At that time I’d ignored the matter, what with one thing and another. But now, when stealth was imperative, and when mysterious, fluttering movements could spell disaster, I undertook an investigation.
I wiggled myself around as stealthily as current conditions permitted.
The source of this mysterious movement became immediately apparent when, my pocket having become unsquashed by my recent bit of wiggling, Fenny — my pet hamster, whose presence in said pocket had been unknown to yours truly — emerged and clucked his tongue in sharp annoyance. “Grrrnnmph,” said he, exhibiting no small measure of pique, and I’ve no doubt he meant it to sting. His monologue thus completed, he waddled off in a nor’westerly direction.
Poor little fellow, I reflected. I mean to say, he’s a loyal companion and in most conditions a fervent Rhinnick-booster, but being dragged about in an air duct while pinned under your much-loved master is not a sensitive hamster’s notion of a fine evening. I perceived, by the quickness of his waddling, that he had pressing engagements elsewhere, so I bid Fenny a silent farewell and turned my attention back to the pair of asses below.
It was apparent that the subject under discussion in the infirmary had changed to some degree during my tête-à-tête with Fenny. There was, no doubt, some sort of gradual and sensible transition of topic, some sort of smooth segue from Agenda Item A (viz, a discussion of holo-thingamajigs, attacks on Zeus and nasal drips) to Agenda Item B (the issue about to be described), but I had missed it, and will have to trust the Author to supply his own bridge paragraph in the future. One can’t be expected to notice everything, after all. I mean to say, I was distracted by concern for an injured pal, by the depocketing of m
y hamster, and — above all other matters — by the burden of literary composition weighing upon me. But, whatever my two subjects had said as I’d been fretting about Zeus, consorting with Fenny, and groping about for mots justes, what the inspector said next called for my undivided attention. It was this:
“And what about this Brown fellow?
I pricked up my ears and listened with interest, which you’ll no doubt understand. I mean to say, the only person who’d been attacked, as far as anyone knew, was my friend Zeus, someone I’d known for years and years. And the chap now under discussion was Ian Brown, a crumpet who shared my very dorm room and who was my newest pal. What was the common element between these two otherwise unconnected figures? Yours truly: Rhinnick Feynman. Clearly, whatever plots were afoot within the halls of Detroit Mercy, Rhinnick Feynman lay at the core. I was, as is so often the case, the fulcrum upon which the emerging plot pivoted — a juicy bit of metaphor, if you don’t mind my saying.
“Right,” said Peericks. “Ian Brown. Admitted two weeks ago for Beforelife Delusion. Newly manifested. An unusual case, actually. And he’s the only one whose records were stolen. Nothing else is missing.”
“What do you mean ‘unusual case’?” asked the inspector, getting straight to the nub.
“It’s the nature of his delusions,” replied the doctor. “They’re . . . well . . . I don’t know how familiar you are with princks, inspector, but, in most cases patients who suffer from BD imagine foggy, blurred snippets of past lives, disjointed images that are created by the effect of the neural flows. But Ian Brown, his delusions are . . . well . . . they’re different.”
“Mumbledemumble?” said the inspector, a touch discourteously for those of us trying to listen from the air ducts.
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