by Terry Bisson
But dead bodies, even headless ones, were not what interested me. Two enormous three-toed stone feet stuck out of the tomb, pointing skyward.
We had found the Enormé.
With Prang at my side, I crept forward and felt the three-toed feet, then the thick short legs, each as smooth as granite, and cold: cold as any stone.
The light inside the tomb was dim. The statue lay on its back between two opened coffins, the source, I was sure, of the bodies outside. The smell was worse for being faint. The big stone eyes were blank, looking straight up.
I touched the Enormé’s wolf-like snout. Stone. Cold dead stone.
“What now?” Prang whispered.
“You have recovered your stolen property,” I said. “Now we call Ward and report it. That makes everything legal.”
“Now do you believe?” Prang asked, as we headed back to the museum, after watching Ward’s minions dust the area for prints, the cemetery groundskeepers refill and close the tomb, and the museum crew load the Enormé onto a flatbed truck.
“Nope.”
“An ancient statue that comes to life in the full moon. And kills! If that’s not supernatural, what is?”
“Nothing is,” I said. “There is no such thing as the supernatural. There is a natural, scientific, materialist explanation for everything. Didn’t you ever read Arthur Conan Doyle—or Edward O. Wilson?”
“I thought you were a Supernatural Private Eye!” she said, lighting a new Camel off her latest casualty. “That’s why I hired you.”
“This is New Orleans,” I said. We were following the flatbed through the streets toward the museum. No one paid any attention to the big stone gargoyle on the bed of the truck. “Everybody has to have a specialty, the spookier the better. Besides, I got your Enormé back, didn’t I?” “Yes, but it will only happen again. Last night was just a warm up. Tonight is the full moon.”
“Good,” I said, “I’ll be there, watching. Tell Ward the museum is providing its own security.”
We found a rail-thin black man in a Cardin suit waiting for us in Prang’s office.
“Boudin,” he said, extending his hand. “Le Louvre.”
“Welcome to New Orleans,” said Prang. “What can you tell us?”
“The photos were interesting but inconclusive,” Boudin said. He held up a small device the size and shape of my cell phone. “I will do a quantum magneto-scan and let you know.”
Luckily, the new window hadn’t been installed yet, so the Enormé could be hoisted into the museum’s lab by craneand laid out on the table. It was late afternoon before the workmen had fixed the windows and gone.
Prang went out for cigarettes, while Boudin scanned the Enormé with his device. I took the opportunity to get my first good look at the statue I had been hired to recover and protect. It was made out of some kind of smooth stone, and except for its size—about eight feet in length—there was nothing special about it. Laid out, it looked less like a medieval gargoyle and more like a kid’s idea of a monster. It had big blank eyes, short arms, thick legs with enormous claws, and two rows of stone “teeth,” like a shark. It looked sort of Mayan, vaguely European, and even a little bit East Indian. It had aspects of every monster ever imagined, anywhere in the world.
Boudin agreed with my assessment. “Trés generique,” he said. “If it weren’t made out of this odd stone, which is from nowhere in Mexico, it would be of no interest whatsoever. And its age…”
“Its age?”
“According to my scanner the statue in its present form is almost a half a million years old—and so is the stone it’s carved from! Of course that’s some kind of quantum error—too young for stone and too old for art. They’re recalibrating in Paris right now.” He held up the scanner and smiled proudly. “This has a full-time satellite hookup, like GPS.”
I acted impressed because he clearly wanted me to be, but I wasn’t surprised. We live, all of us, in a very small world. Far too small for spooks.
Meanwhile, it was suppertime. I pulled out my trusty cell phone and ordered pizza, with pepperoni.
“Pepperoni?” Prang was back.
“The moon doesn’t come up until after sunset,” I said, shutting off my cell phone to save the batteries. “If I’m staying the night, you’re paying expenses. And I don’t eat pizza plain.”
“Make it pepperoni on one side and mushrooms on the other,” said Prang, as she tore open a new pack of Camels with her teeth. “I’m a vegetarian.”
In a real private eye story this would be the beginning of an unlikely romance, but life, at least my life, is much too likely for that. Boudin went back to his hotel (still jet-lagged) while Prang and I retired to the corner of the lab where the techs watched TV on their breaks, and ate pizza and watched the evening news, which was luckily still Enormé-free.
“Thanks to Ward,” I explained. “He doesn’t want the press all over a story until he can show them a suspect.”
“What’s the rub between you and him?” she asked.
“I was a cop for eighteen years,” I said. “A hostage negotiator. We had an incident where a school principal went postal, took a third-grade class hostage. I was about to get the kids released, when Ward bursts in shooting. Four kids and the teacher were blown away. I broke the blue wall of silence and filed a formal complaint.”
“But Ward’s still there.”
“And I’m not,” I said. “Go figure. And pass the pizza.”
The sun was setting.
The moon rose behind skinny trees, but nothing happened. We settled in to wait.
Prang got the couch; I got the armchair.
I missed my Jim Beam, but I had Charlie Rose on the TV, which is almost as good for putting you to sleep. It was a rerun—Stephen Jay Gould, talking about the intricacies of evolution. A favorite subject of mine.
But was it really a rerun? Halfway through their talk, Gould and Rose were joined by Charles Darwin. I recognized him by his beard. Darwin’s cell phone rang, and Rose and Gould both turned into girls, only it was three girls, all armed to the teeth…
I sat up and knew at once that I had been dreaming. Charlie’s Angels was on the TV, a re-run for sure. I turned on my cell phone to check the time: almost ten. Prang was asleep on the couch.
Through the lab’s windows came a soft silvery glow: the moon was rising over the trees. My cell phone was beeping: a message.
I retrieved it to shut it up.
“Kill me … please …” The same male voice as in the cemetery.
I heard a groan, behind me.
I turned around. Was I still dreaming? I certainly hoped so, for the Enormé was sitting up, staring straight at me. Its “eyes” were wide open, reflecting the full moon like oversize silver coins.
“Wake up!” I whispered, poking Prang’s shapely hip.
“What?” She sat up. “Oh shit! Where’s your gun?”
“Can’t stand the things. Not that a gun would do any good…”
Still staring straight at me, the Enormé slid off the table in one fluid motion, graceful as a cat. It started across the room toward the couch, stubby arms outstretched in an eerie mixture of menace and plea…
I jumped behind the couch, Prang right behind me. “Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want?”
The Enormé stopped and looked around, as if confused. Then it turned away, toward the wall of windows. Moaning once again, it lowered its head and smashed through the windows, frame and all, and disappeared into the night.
Alarms started to howl, all over the building.
I ran for the window, pulling Prang by the arm. She twisted out of my grasp. “I have to turn off the alarms!” she said.
The parking lot was bathed in moonlight. I climbed out through the broken glass. There was no sign of the Enormé; not even bloody tracks this time. The cold light of the full moon seemed to mock the certainties of a lifetime, which lay shattered all around me, like broken glass.
“Now do you believe?” Prang ask
ed, lighting a cigarette at my side.
“Give me one of those.”
“Thought you didn’t smoke.”
“I didn’t believe in monsters either.”
First Prang called the police to tell them it was a false alarm. Then she used my cell phone to call Boudin at his hotel, waking him up.
He looked annoyed when he arrived; then amazed when he saw the empty table and the broken glass.
“Incroyable!” he said.
“Have you heard from Paris?” I asked. “Any idea where that stone is from?”
Boudin shook his head. “It’s not from anywhere because it’s not stone.” He showed me his scanner. Even with my bad French I could read the word at the bottom of the tiny screen:
SYNTHETIQUE
“It’s also slightly radioactive,” said Boudin. “They’re analyzing the scan in Paris to see if it’s the material or a source inside.”
“One question,” said Prang, raising her chin and stroking her neck between thumb and forefinger. “Why didn’t it pinch our heads off?”
“I think it wants to be followed,” I said. “And it knows we’re the followers.”
“Let’s get following then!” said Prang. “The night is yet young. We have to find it before it kills somebody else. The museum might be liable.”
“I have a hunch we’re not going to find it until it wants us to,” I said. “Boudin, did you scan those eyes?” “Oui.”
“Could they be some kind of photoreceptors?”
“I’ll have Paris check them out.”
“Good,” I said. “While we’re waiting, why don’t we all get some sleep, and meet at my office at noon?”
“Sleep? Noon?” Prang lit another Camel. “Shouldn’t we be out looking for this thing?”
“I told you, I have a hunch. Isn’t that what private eyes have? Isn’t that what you’re paying me for?”
Morning is the only quiet time in the French Quarter. I was dreaming of Darwin again, dispatching killer girls around the universe, when Prang and Boudin knocked at my door.
“You were right about the photoreceptors,” said Boudin, “How did you know?”
“Apparently the Enormé is activated by moonlight,” I said. “And what about the radioactivity?” “Still waiting.”
“What are we doing here?” asked Prang, looking around my office with ill-disguised disgust. “Where are all your ashtrays?”
“We’re waiting for a phone call.”
“From who?”
“From a friend, if my hunch is right. I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in here.”
“What do you mean, a friend?” She took a deep drag and blew it up toward the ceiling. “Tell me more.”
“There was something about that phone call in the cemetery. In the middle of the day. Then I got a message, from later in the afternoon. If my theory is right—my hunch, I mean…”
My phone rang.
“Jack Villon,” I said. “Supernatural Private Eye.”
“Kill me…” It was the same voice. I held the phone so Prang and Boudin could hear.
“I know who you are,” I said. “I want to help. Where are you?”
“In the dark… dreaming…”
Click.
“Was that who I think it was?” Prang asked, and it was not exactly a question.
“That,” I said, “was your Enormé. “These calls come only when it is resting, sleeping. But uneasily, waiting on moonrise. When I got the phone call in the cemetery, I assumed it was the blackmailer or the hoaxer. But it was the Enormé itself, wanting to be found.”
“Kill me before I kill again?” Prang asked, fishing the last Camel out of her pack. “A werewolf with a conscience?”
“Not a werewolf,” I said. “A robot.”
“A what?!”
“The weird ‘stone’ that is not stone. The photoreceptors. The radioactivity. We are dealing with a device.”
“Who built it then, and what for?” Boudin asked.
“I think, unfortunately, we have seen what it was designed for,” I said. “It’s some kind of war or killer robot. As to who built it…”
“Save it for later,” said Prang. “I need to get some cigarettes. And it’s time for lunch.”
The Chez Toi is the best restaurant in the French Quarter. That’s the upside of working for a major museum director.
“The curse made more sense,” said Prang, after we had ordered. “Nobody sacrifices virgins to a robot.”
“The Mayans didn’t know from robots,” I said. “Wasn’tit Arthur C. Clarke who said that any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic?”
“That was Jules Verne,” said Boudin. “But I must admit your theory fits the facts. According to Paris, the ‘stone’ is some kind of silicon substance with a toggling molecule that allows it to change from solid to flexible in an instant.”
“Synthetique!” I said, digging into my chicken provençale.
“There’s one big problem with your robot theory, or hunch, or whatever,” said Prang. “The Enormé’s half a million years old, remember?”
“Between 477,000 and 481,000,” said Boudin, checking his scanner.
“So!” said Prang. She pushed her plate away and lit a Camel. “No one could have built a robot that long ago!”
“No one could have carved a statue either,” Boudin pointed out. “No one on Earth, anyway.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“I’m afraid you can’t smoke in here,” said the waiter.
“Extraterrestrials?” said Prang, blowing a smoke ring shaped like a flying saucer. “Aliens? This is worse than ever. Now I need a science fiction private eye!”
“You had one all along,” I said. “I never believed in the supernatural. I believe in the real world, and as Shakespeare said, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.”
“That was Voltaire,” said Boudin. “But your point is well taken.”
“You’ve both been watching too much Star Tank,” said Prang, signing the check. “But whatever the Enormé is, Iwant to find it and get it back. Keep your phone on. What do you say we take a ride?”
The parking valet brought the big BMW around and gave up the keys with a visible sigh of regret.
“Where do we start?” Prang asked, as she peeled away from the curb (and I closed my eyes). “Any hunches?”
“None,” I said. “I doubt the Enormé would hide in the cemeteries again, unless…”
“Unless it wanted to be found,” said Boudin.
Prang’s car phone rang.
“Prang here.”
“Yes, find… Kill me…”
I lunged for the speaker phone switch. “Where are you? Are you awake?”
“No, dreaming…”
“Where are you?” asked Prang.
“City, city of the Dead…” He was fading. “Please kill me… before I wake…”
Click. Dial tone.
“City of the Dead. Big help!” Prang said. “New Orleans has over twenty cemeteries in the city limits alone!”
The car phone rang again.
“Prang here. Is that you, Enormé?”
“Keep your opinions to yourself,” said Chief Ward. “Where are you, Prang? I hear your statue is gone missing again.”
“I’m out for a drive, if it’s any of your business,” said Prang. “And don’t worry about the statue. It’s under control.”
“We have ten calls from people who saw it walking up Rampart Street just before dawn. Prang what is this thing? A monster? Is it the murderer we’re looking for?”
“Don’t be silly, Ward. It’s just a statue.”
“We’re putting out an all-points, shoot-to-kill.”
“You can’t do that! It’s museum property.”
“Stealing itself? What is this, Prang? Some sort of insurance scam?”
“Hang up!” Boudin whispered.
“Huh?”
“Boudin’s right,” I whispered.
“Ward’s using the car phone to track you!”
“Damn!” Prang hung up. “I thought he was awfully chatty!”
We cruised the “Cities of the Dead” all afternoon, looking for opened gates. The GPS screen on the dash of the BMW allowed me to follow our progress without looking out the window and subjecting myself to the terrifying view of the pedestrians and cars Prang barely missed.
“You’re sure that was it on the phone?” Prang asked. “Why would it want to be found?”
“I’m still working on that,” I said. “It is activated by the moon, but only communicates when it’s dormant. Perhaps we are stimulating some new response in it.”
Boudin’s scanner-communicator beeped.
“Anything new from Paris?” Prang asked, lighting a fresh Camel and pitching the old one out the window.
“Just filling out what we had,” said Boudin, checkingthe tiny screen. “The Enormé is solid all the way through. There is no internal anatomy at all, only field patterns in the pseudo stone activated by a tiny nuclear power cell buried in the center of the mass. The Enormé appears to have been grown, like a crystal, rather than made…”
“But who put it here?” Prang asked. “And why? There were no humans here half a million years ago. Just hominids, half human, hunting in packs.”
“That’s it!” I said. “Charlie’s Angels!”
“Charlie who?” asked Boudin.
“Darwin. I’ve been having these weird dreams about Charles Darwin.”
“Is this another hunch?” Prang asked.
“Maybe. Suppose you wanted to speed up evolution. How would you go about it?”
“Soup up the chromosones?” offered Prang, as she deftly maneuvered between an eastbound Coke and westbound Pepsi truck. I concentrated on the GPS screen again, where we were a flashing light.
“Make conditions harder,” said Boudin. “Apply pressure.”
“Exactly!” I said. “Suppose you found a species, a primate, for example, right on the verge of developing intelligence, language, culture. But it doesn’t really need all that. It is perfectly capable of living in its ecological niche. It has intelligence, or at least enough; it makes fire; it even makes some crude tools—stone hammers, wooden spears. It has spread all over the planet and adapted to every environment, from the equator to the arctic. It is perfectly adapted to its environment.”