Image of the Beast and Blown

by Philip José Farmer

  were at least fifty candles, all lit. A large cut-quartz chan-

  delier held a number of red candles, also, but these were

  unlit.

  Glam stopped to indicate a chair. Childe advanced

  slowly to it. The baron, at the head of the table, rose to

  greet him. His smile was broad but fleeting. He said,

  "Welcome, Mr. Childe, despite the circumstances. Please

  sit down there. Next to Mrs. Grasatchow."

  There were four men and six women at the table.

  The baron.

  Magda Holyani.

  Mrs. Grasatchow, who was almost the fattest woman

  he had ever seen.

  The baron's great-grandmother, who had to be at least

  a hundred.

  Vivienne Mabcrough, the titian-haired woman with

  the man-headed snake-thing in her womb.

  O'Riley O'Faithair, a handsome black-haired man of

  about thirty-five who spoke a charming Irish brogue. And

  now and then a few sentences in an unknown language to

  the baron and the Mabcrough woman.

  Mr. Bending Grass, who had a very broad and high-

  cheekboned face with a huge aquiline nose and huge,

  slightly slanted, very dark eyes. He could have been Sit-

  ting Bull's twin, but something he said to Mrs. Grasatchow

  indicated that he was Crow. He spoke of the mountain

  man, John Johnston, "Liver Eating Johnston," as if he

  had been a contemporary.

  Fred Pao, a tall slender Chinese with features that

  could have been carved out of teak and a Fu Manchu

  moustache and goatee.

  Panchita Pocyotl, a short petite and beautiful Mexican

  Indian.

  Rebecca Ngima, a handsome lithe black African dressed

  in a long white native costume.

  They were all expensively and tastefully dressed and,

  though their speech was not free of foreign pronuncia-

  tion, their English was fluent, "correct," and rich with

  literary, philosophical, historical, and musical allusions.

  There were also references to events and persons and

  places that puzzled Childe, who was well-read. They

  seemed to have been everywhere and, here he felt cold

  threading the needle of his nerves, to have lived in times

  long dead.

  Was this for his benefit? An addition to the hoax?

  What hoax?

  It was then that he got another- shock, because the

  baron addressed him again as Mr. Childe. With a start, he

  remembered the first time. He had been too dull to have

  realized then what that meant.

  "How did you learn my name? I carried no identifica-

  tion with me."

  The baron smiled. "You don't really expect me to tell

  you?"

  Childe shrugged and began eating. There were many

  different dishes on the sideboard; he had been given a

  wide choice but had decided on New York-cut steak and

  baked potato. Mrs. Grasatchow, who sat on his left, had

  a platter with an entire bonita fish and a huge bowl of

  salad. She drank before, during, and after the meal from

  a gallon decanter of bourbon. The decanter was full when

  she sat down and empty when the dishes were cleared off

  the table.

  Glam and two short, dark, and shapely women in maid

  uniforms served. The women did not act like servants,

  however, they frequently talked with the guests and the

  host and several times made remarks in the foreign tongue

  that caused the others to laugh. Glam spoke only when

  his duties required. He glanced at Magda far more than

  his duties required.

  The baroness, seated at the opposite end from her great-

  grandson, bent like a living question mark, or vulture,

  over her soup. This was the only food she was served, and

  she allowed it to get cold before she finally finished it.

  She said very little and only looked up twice, once to stare

  a long time at Childe. She looked as if she had only re-

  cently been brought out of an Egyptian pyramid and as if

  she would just as soon go back into the crypt. Her dinner

  gown, high-necked, ruffle-bosomed, diamond-sequined,

  red velvet, looked as if she had purchased it in 1890.

  Mrs. Grasatchow, although as fat as two sows put to-

  gether, had a remarkably white, flawless, and creamy skin

  and enormous purplish eyes. When she had been younger

  and thinner, she must have been a beautiful woman. She

  talked now as if she thought she was still beautiful, per-

  haps the most beautiful and desirable woman in the world.

  She talked loudly and uninhibitedly about the men who

  had died—some of them literally—for her love. Halfway

  through the dinner, and two-thirds through the gallon of

  whiskey, her speech began to get slurred. Childe was awed.

  She had drunk enough to kill him, or most men, and she

  only had a little trouble with her speech.

  She had drunk far more than the Chinese, Pao, who

  had downed much wine during the evening, but not much

  relative to her. Yet nobody reprimanded her, but Igescu

  seemed concerned about Pao. He was speaking to him

  in a corner, and though Childe could not hear them, he

  saw Igescu's hand come down on Pao's wrist, and Igescu

  shook his head and then jerked the thumb of his other

  hand at Childe.

  Suddenly, Pao began to shake, and he ran out of the

  room. He was in a hurry to get out, but Childe did not

  think that he was about to vomit. He did not have the

  pale skin and desperate expression of one whose guts are

  ready to launch their contents.

  The dishes were cleared and cigars and brandy and

  wine were served. (My God! was Mrs. Grasatchow really

  going to smoke that ten-dollar cigar and pour down a

  huge snifter of brandy on top of that whiskey?)

  The baron spoke to Childe:

  "You realize, of course, that I could easily have had

  you killed for trespassing, for entering, for voyeurism, et

  cetera, but mostly for entering? Now, perhaps, you would

  like to tell me what you are up to?"

  Childe hesitated. The baron knew his name and must,

  therefore, know that he was a private investigator. And

  that he had been a partner of Colben. He must realize

  that, somehow, Childe had tracked him down, and he

  must be curious about what had led Childe here. He might

  be wondering if Childe had told anybody that he was

  coming out here.

  Childe decided to be frank. He also decided that he

  would tell the baron that the LAPD knew he was here

  and that if they did not hear from him at a certain time,

  they would come out here to find out why.

  Igescu listened with a smile that seemed amused. He

  said, "Of course! And what would they find if they did

  come out here, which they are not likely to do?"

  Perhaps they would find something Igescu did not

  suspect. They might find two naked people tied to each

  other. Igescu might have a difficult time explaining them,

  but they would not be a dangerous liability. Just puzzling

  to the police and inconvenient to Igescu.

  At that moment Vasili C
hornkin and Mrs. Krautschner,

  fully clothed, entered. They stopped for a moment, stared

  at Childe, and then walked on in. The blonde stopped by

  Igescu to whisper in his ear; the man sat down and or-

  dered something to eat. Igescu looked at Childe, frowned,

  and then smiled. He said something to Mrs. Krautschner.

  She laughed and sat down by Chornkin.

  Childe felt even more trapped. He could do nothing

  except, perhaps, make a break for it, but he doubted that

  he would get far. There was nothing for him to do except

  drift with the current of Igescu's wishes and hope that he

  would get a chance to escape.

  The baron, looking over the brandy snifter just below

  his nose, said, "Did you get a chance to read Le Garrault,

  Mr. Childe?"

  "No, I didn't. But I understand the UCLA library is

  closed because of the smog."

  The baron stood up. "Let's go into the library and talk

  where it's quieter."

  Mrs. Grasatchow heaved up from the chair, blowing

  like an alcoholic whale. She put an arm around Childe's

  shoulder; the flesh drooped like tangles of jungle vines.

  "I'll go with you, baby, you don't want to go without me."

  "You can stay here for the time being," Igescu said.

  Mrs. Grasatchow glared at the baron, but she dropped

  her arm from Childe and sat down.

  The library was a large dark room with leather-covered

  walls and massive dark-wood built-in shelves and at least

  five thousand books, some of them looking centuries old.

  The baron sat down in an overstuffed leather-covered

  chair with a wooden back carved in the form of a bat-

  winged Satan. Childe sat down in a similar chair, the back

  of which was a carved troll.

  "Le Garrault …" the baron said.

  "What's going on here?" Childe said. "Why the party?"

  "You aren't interested in Le Garrault?"

  "Sure, I'm interested. But I think there are things of

  much more interest just now. For instance, my survival."

  "That is up to you, of course. One's survival is always

  up to one's self. Other people only play the part that you

  permit. But then, that's another theory. For the present,

  let's pretend that you are my guest and may leave at any

  time you wish—which can be the true situation, for all

  you know. Believe me, I am not telling you about Le

  Garrault just to pass the time. Am I?"

  The baron continued to smile. Childe thought about

  Sybil and got angry. But he knew that it would do no

  good to ask the baron about her. If the baron had her, he

  would admit it only if it served some purpose of his.

  "The old Belgian scholar knew more about the occult

  and the supernatural and the so-called weird than any

  other man who ever lived. I don't mean that he knew

  more than anybody else. I mean that he knew more than

  any other man."

  The baron paused to draw in cigar smoke. Childe felt

  himself getting tense, although he was making an effort

  to relax.

  "Old Le Garrault found records which other scholars

  did not find or else saw in these records what other schol-

  ars missed. Or possibly he may have talked to some of

  the—what should I call them? unmen?—some of the un-

  men, the pseudo-men, and gotten his facts, which we shall

  theory, directly from them.

  "In any event, Le Garrault speculated that the so-

  called vampires, werewolves, poltergeists, ghosts, and so

  on, might be living creatures from a parallel universe. Or

  a number of parallel universes. You know what a parallel

  universe is?"

  "It's a concept originated by some science-fiction

  author, I believe," Childe said. "I think that the theory is

  that a number, perhaps an infinite number, of universes

  may occupy the same space. They can do this because

  they are all polarized or at right angles to each other.

  Those terms are actually meaningless, but they do signify

  that some physical mechanism enables more than one

  cosmos to fill the same quote space unquote. The concept

  of parallel universes was used and is being used by

  science-fiction writers to depict worlds just like ours, or

  only slightly differing, or wildly different. Like an Earth

  where the South won the Civil War. That idea has been

  used at least three times, that I know of."

  "Very good," the baron said. "Except that your ex-

  amples are not quite correct. None of the three stories

  you are thinking about postulated a parallel universe.

  Churchill's and Kantor's were what if stories, and Moore's

  was a time travel story. But you have the right idea.

  However, Le Garrault was the first to publish the theory

  of parallel universes, although the publication was so

  restricted and so obscure that very few people knew

  about it. And Le Garrault did not postulate a series of

  universes which diverged only slightly at one end of the

  series, that is, the end nearest to Earth's cosmos, and

  diverged more the further away you got from Earth's.

  "No, he speculated that these other universes were

  nothing at all like Earth's, that they had different physical

  'laws,' that many of them would be completely incompre-

  hensible to Earthmen who might broach the 'walls' be-

  tween the universes."

  "Then he said that there might be 'gates' or 'breaks'

  in the 'walls' and that occasionally a dweller of one uni-

  verse might go into another?"

  "He said more than that. He called his speculation a

  theory, but he believed that the theory was a fact. He

  believed that there were temporary breaks in the walls,

  accidental cracks, or openings which sometimes existed

  because of weaknesses or flaws.

  "He said that creatures—sentient and non-sentient—

  sometimes entered our universe through these breaks. But

  they have forms so alien that the human brain has no

  forms to fit them. And so the human brain gives them

  forms to explain them. He said that it is not just a matter

  of humans seeing the aliens as such and such. It is a mat-

  ter of the aliens actually being molded into these forms

  because they cannot survive long in this universe unless

  they have forms that conform to the physical 'laws' of this

  universe. The forms may not conform one hundred per-

  cent, but they are close enough. And, in fact, an alien

  may have more than one form, because that is the way

  the human sees him. Hence, the werewolf, who had a

  human form and wolf form, and the vampire, who has a

  human form and a bat form."

  This man is really putting me on, Childe thought. Or

  else he is so insane that he actually believes this. But what

  is he leading up to, that he is one of the aliens?

  The baron said, "Some of the extra-universals came

  here accidentally, were caught in the flaws, and were un-

  able to get back. Others were exiles or criminals, sent by

  the people of their world to this Botany Bay—this Earth."

  "Fascinati
ng speculation," Childe said. "But why do

  these take certain forms and not others?"

  "Because, in their case, the myth, the legend, the su-

  perstition, call it what you will, gave birth to the reality.

  First, there were the beliefs and tales about the were-

  beast and the vampire and the ghost and the et cetera.

  These beliefs and tales existed long ago, long before his-

  tory, long before civilization. In one form or another,

  these beliefs existed in the Old Stone Age."

  Childe shifted to relieve his discomfort. He felt cold

  again, as if a shadow had slid over him. That shadow was

  of a hulking half-brute figure, bulge-browed, ape-jawed.

  And behind it were other shadows of figures with long

  fangs and great claws and strange shapes.

  The baron continued, "There is, according to Le Gar-

  rault, a psychic imprinting. He did not use the word im-

  printing, but his description meant that. He said that the

  aliens are able to survive for a short while in their own

  form when they come to this universe. They are in a state

  of fluidity, of dying fluidity."

  "Fluidity?"

  "Their forms are trying to change to conform to the

  physical laws of this universe. A universe which is as in-

  comprehensible to them as theirs would be to an Earth-

  man. The effort sets up stresses and strains which would

  inevitably tear them apart, kill them. Unless they encoun-

  ter a human being. And, if they are lucky enough to be

  from a universe which enables them to receive—telepath-

  ically, I suppose, although that term is too restricted—en-

  ables them to receive the impressions of the human mind,

  then the alien is able to make the adaptation. He is ena-

  bled because he comprehends the form in which he can

  survive in this world. Do you follow me?"

  "In a way. But not too well."

  "It's almost as difficult to explain this as it is for

  a mystic to explain his visions. You realize that my ex-

  planations no more fit the facts, the true processes, than

  the description of the atom as a sort of miniature solar

  system fitted the true processes."

  "I understand that, at least. You're using analogies."

  "Strained analogies. But the theory says that the alien,

  if he is lucky, encounters human beings who perceive him

  as something unnatural, which he is, in a sense, since he is