Golem 100

2

Adida Ind’dni was Subadar of the poisonous Guff, a police precinct incorporating the territory of the old Greater New York in the Northeast Corridor. Subadar is a distinguished rank in the Indian military which had been enlisted in most of the world’s police forces by the year of Our Lord 2175. Particular qualities of high-caste Hindus—subtlety, sophistication, deep cultural resources, and profound emotional reserves—ideally suited them to the trying investigation of the psychopathic and psychedelic crime that was a way of life in the Guff.

Subadar is a title which can mean Viceroy, Governor, Captain, Chief, take your pick. Ind’dni was variously addressed as Subadar, Captain, Chief, or Mister. He responded to any and all salutations because he was too exalted in caste and rank to stand on dignity and status. However, he did recoil from one label which the twenty-second-century media had pinned on him: “The Murder Mavin of the Guff.” No one ever dared address him as “Mavin Ind’dni.”

The Subadar thought he had seen every fatal outrage perpetrated and even created (for new sins were constantly being originated) in the heart of the Northeast Corridor, nicknamed “the Guff” by its brawling inmates, but this horror was unique, and nauseated his sensitive Hindu soul.

She thrashed in the garbage and trash. She was bound, wrists and legs, with some sort of oozing rope. She was still alive and screaming. Ind’dni wished she would die quickly, for she was covered with a swarm of carpet beetles. These insects are used in natural-history museums to eat the last particles of raw flesh off skeletons preparatory to mounting them.

The beetles were busily, hungrily, single-mindedly devouring the flesh of the living woman. Bone showed already. Her eyes, nose, ears, lips, and tongue were gone, and she screamed. The beetles welcomed the blood that gouted from the gaps in her face with each cry of agony. Subadar Ind’dni shuddered and did the compassionate thing which would most assuredly imperil his distinguished position in the Guff, if reported. He seized a laser from the holster of one of the uniformed polizei and drilled a neat hole through the woman’s skull.

There were grunts of relief from his homicide squad, and the Subadar knew that his mercy would not be reported, but an assistant muttered, “Evidence, sir?”

“Evidence verbal?” Ind’dni asked in his lilting chichi accent. “How accomplished? She could not speak, surely?”

“No, sir. But written?”

“Ah yes, to be sure. Written. But with what? You see her hands?”

“There aren’t any left, sir.”

“Just so. And the ears? Could she have heard questions? Assuredly not. No. Here we have only evidence factual, and—” Subadar Ind’dni broke off in astonishment. He was unaccustomed to astonishment, and he stared. His squad stared. In one instant, the beetles had disappeared. In that same instant, the binding strands disappeared. There was nothing left but one piece of evidence factual, the gnawed body of the dead woman.

“And how,” wondered Ind’dni, “is this to be reported to Legal? The insects and the pinions were on her. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We saw them disappear. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have all seen identical?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ind’dni gazed around at his squad. All were obviously sincere and convinced in their reports. He sighed. “Then we have all seen and unseen the cause of this most cruel death?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just so. Do we believe what we have seen and unseen?”

“It isn’t easy, sir.”

“Easy? No. Impossible. Impossible to report to Legal. Perhaps best would be to report ourselves to lunacy.”

Subadar Ind’dni sniffed curiously. His nostrils twitched. He was familiar with the hundreds of fetors that polluted the Guff, but this stench was new. It was unique. He was astonished again.

* * *

“Where’s Satan?”

“Not here.”

“Anybody see anything stirring in the pentacle?”

“Not a sign.”

“Anybody feel anything? How about you, Sarah? Footsies from the Devil?”

“Not even a tickle, Regina. Alas. Alas! ALAS!”

“Drat! What a letdown.”

“Maybe he wasn’t home.”

“Somebody should have been there to answer.”

“Maybe he’s unlisted.”

“That shouldn’t make any difference; it was person-to-person. Well, don’t let’s give up. We’ll try again next week. All right?”

* * *

The hysterical calls to the Guff precinct complex were just so much gibberish. But when Subadar Ind’dni arrived with his squad, he understood why and was appalled.

The man was circling a pillar stub of the decayed opera-house portico; crawling, falling, rising, stumbling, crying piteously, shrieking, calling on Christ and cursing his gods. There was a gash in his belly that oozed blood and extruded intestine. One end of his gut had been fastened to the pillar, and as he circled and circled it was torn out of him, inch by inch, to garland the column with a bloody, grey hawser. He was driven to eviscerate himself by—

“What?” Ind’dni burst out. “By what, please? What? Never have I— Never. You see? We see?”

They saw a hulking gun-metal executioner that glittered and gleamed; that had shape and yet no shape. It was amoebic, amorphic, protean-flowing as it extruded legs, feet, pads, and hands; a dozen hands, a score of hands, a multitude of hands. Some glowed hot; so white-hot that their odor mingled with the stench of the victim’s burning back as the sear of their roasting and prodding drove him around the pillar, pulling his gut out until he tore the Guff with his last screaming agony and shriveled into death. Then the hulk disappeared, leaving only its unique odor to pollute the Subadar’s nostrils.

“Yes, I know it now,” he thought. He was incapable of speech through his retching. “I recognize it. It is the bouquet de malades, the aroma of the mad.” At last he managed to speak to his aides. “You saw? We saw? All?”

They could barely nod.

“And what was that we saw?”

They shook their heads.

“It was a man? An animal? A creature? Alive?”

They shrugged helplessly.

“Had it a face? Features? I saw none.”

“Neither did we, Subadar.”

“But it had feet. Many. They came and went like the thing itself. And hands. How many hands saw you?”

“Ten, sir.”

“No, fifty, sir.”

“More than that, sir. A hundred, at least.”

“To be agreed. A hundred-hander, and some hands white-hot. You saw?”

“Yes, Subadar, but…”

“Ah. You say, ‘Yes, but…’ and then you cannot continue. Yes. But. But how can flesh glow white-hot, eh? And yet we saw. Flesh cannot glow like metal. But. We saw the hundred hands torture and kill. We saw the creature disappear, and living things cannot disappear. But it was alive and it did. But. But. But. How explain the ‘But’ to Legal? How explain to ourselves?”

* * *

“Well, we’ve failed again. Damn it, ladies, it’s not working.”

“Maybe that’s our trouble, Regina. We’re not damned… enough.”

“Are we sure we got the chants right?”

“Letter-perfect.”

“Maybe they’re the wrong spells.”

“I got them out of my wicked books, word for word.”

“What about that Hand of Glory I’ve been holding? Genuine? Was the candle made from the fat of a virgin?”

“My Droney’s word for it, Yenta. And the hand that holds it is truly the hand of an executed felon. My Droney has heavy clout at the morgue.”

“How does he do it, Nell?”

“Bribes, Sarah.”

“B*R*I*B*E*S? For what?”

“I thought everybody knew. My Droney’s a dedicated necrophiliac, bless him.”

“Ladies, no more chitchat, please. I think that’s the real problem; we’re not serious enough. We’ll have to try again, and this time make it sincere.”

* * *

They were stretched out in a neat row, ten of them lying supine in the rusting, rotting car dump; boy-girl-boy-girl, almost like a love-gig except that they weren’t swinging on each other. They were dead.

“Most recent Lethal,” Subadar Ind’dni observed, fighting for composure. “They still bleed, you perceive?” He sniffed and his delicate features twisted in disgust. He recognized the sinister bouquet de malades. “Yes. It is to be sure. Our Hundred-Hander again. Only such a monstrous thing could have contrived this.”

The contrivance was simple and brutal. The genitals had been torn off each boy, living and conscious as the frozen contortions of the faces revealed, and thrust into the mouth of a girl. A breast had been torn off each girl and thrust into the mouth of a boy. Subadar Ind’dni took a deep breath and shook his head.

“To confess an admission,” he told his staff, “I think I have lived in the Guff too long. When first I came to the Corridor, it was so much like my dearly remembered Bombay. I was so happy and at home. But there has been change and change and change. You agree, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir. The Corridor has changed in our time.”

“To be sure there must always be change and we must always, as civilizèds, adapt; but adapt to what? This? And the other Lethals of the Hundred-Hander? What is this hundred-handed monster that stinks of madness? Whose Lethals stink of madness? Is it of animal? Yes and no. Is it of vegetable? Yes and no. Is it of mineral? Yes and no. Is it of anything we have ever encountered before?”

“The answer is no, Subadar.”

“To be sure. Is it motivated by any purpose we have ever discovered before?”

“No, Subadar.”

“Is there anything on earth like this thing of hands and stench and madness and cruelty?”

“No, sir.”

“Could it be alien from outer space, as in entertainment drama?”

“No, Subadar. Our communications section knows there’s no life of any sort within light-years of our system.”

“They know, or believe?”

“They know, sir. The five-hundred-meter radio telescope has been beaming out to the entire galaxy for two centuries… a human figure, binary numbers, atomic numbers, DNA structure, a diagram of our solar system… and no response. We’re alone in our segment of the Milky Way galaxy.”

“Most interesting. Then it is not alien from our galaxy, so it is alien of our own solar. It is living and impossible. It is incomprehensible fact. Inconceivable. Unknowable. Inexplicable. Yet it is fact. It is a new Guff madness.”

“Yes, Subadar.”

“Is it then required of us to master this new madness?”

“We must, sir. We’re required by our duty.”

“Ah yes. Our moral and legal obligation, but how to deal with this? Do we respond to each new madness of the Guff by going newly mad ourselves? Must we perform this adaptment to meet our responsibilities, to conform and be thought normally sane in a world that is of a raving madness?”

“We have to conform, Subadar… all of us.”

“Then must we cling to our civilized values in secret and become Closet Sanes? What shall happen to us? What is happening to the Guff and the Corridor? I beg of you, gentlemen, tell me if you can… What is the Northeast Corridor today?”