TVA BABY and Other Stories (20 page)

“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.”

“It’s not going to evolve any farther,” said Boudin.

“No reason to,” I said. “Unless. Unless you seeded the planet with a killer—or killers. Killer robots. Berserkers that would pursue this species, relentlessly. Something that was big, fast, and hard to kill. And smart.”

“Charlie’s Angels,” said Prang. “I get it. Survival of the fittest. Berserker robots with a mission: Evolve or else!”

The BMW’s cell phone rang.

“If it’s Ward don’t let him keep you on the phone,” I reminded Prang. “And if it’s our friend…”

“Prang here. Hello?”

“You got it,” said a deep, smoky, dreamlike voice. “Now kill me, please.”

“Got what?” Prang asked, as she scattered kids and crossing guards.

“Kill you?” I asked, eyes squeezed shut.

“So I can rest,” said the Enormé over the car phone. “There were twelve of us. I am the last.”

“Twelve what? Angels … I mean, robots?” The 740i has a speakerphone; I switched it on.

“One in each corner of your tear drop globe. We stalked and killed your kind, or what was then your kind. We slaughtered the weaklings and pushed the rest into the caves and cold hills. Out of the pretty plains. Away from the meat runs.”

“The dragon myth,” said Boudin. “Racial memory.”

“There’s no such thing as racial memory,” said Prang.

“Nonsense,” I told her. “What is culture but racial memory?”

“Then I slept for a thousand years. Dreaming. But I could not speak. Xomilcho could not hear. He would not kill me.”

“Xomilcho?” Prang lit a fresh Camel. “Sounds like a chain store.”

“Sounds Olmec to me,” said Boudin. “Was Xomilcho the one who put you in the tomb?”

“Saved me from the moon. Let me dream and dream. But he would not kill me.”

“We want to let you dream too,” I said. “Where are you?”

“City of the Dead…”

“Which one?” Prang asked.

“C-c-city …” the Enormé began stuttering like a bad CD. “Can’t t-t-tell w-which …”

Click.

“What happened?” asked Prang.

“We overloaded him,” said Boudin. “If this berserker hunch is right, the Enormé is programmed to evade. He can’t tell us where he is any more than we could decide not to breathe.”

“Then we have to check them all, it’s getting late!” said Prang, stepping on the gas. I didn’t want to watch, so I ducked my head and watched the blinking light on the display. Our speed was alarming, even there.

Then I saw another blinking light, in the upper left hand corner of the screen. It was stationary.

“Head north,” I said. “Crescent Street, near the corner of Citadelle.”

“There are no cemeteries there,” Prang protested. “Is this another hunch?”

“Yes!”

That was enough for her. I put my hands over my ears to block out the screaming of tires as she made a U-turn.

“Damn!” said Prang, as she power slid off Citadelle onto Crescent.

I opened my eyes just enough to see a run-down business district, with a Karate School, a Starbucks, a Woolworth’s and an abandoned movie theater.

No cemeteries. Even though the street looked spooky enough in the gathering dusk. The sun was setting.