I was full of glory and the glory that was her. She caught the paranatural traces first. My indication was that her head lifted from between my shoulder blades, her arms loosened around my waist while the finger nails bit through my shirt. “What the Moloch?” I exclaimed.
“Hsh!” she breathed. We flew in silence through the thin chill dawn wind. The city spread darkling beneath us. Her voice came at last, tense, but some how dwindled and lost:-“I said I didn’t like the scent of the time-stream. In the excitement and everything, I forgot.”
My guts crawled, as if I were about to turn wolf. Senses and extrasenses strained forth. I’ve scant thaumaturgic skill—the standard cantrips, plus a few from the Army and more from engineering training but a lycanthrope has inborn instincts and awarenesses. Presently I also knew.
Dreadfulness was about.
As we flitted downward, we knew that it was in our house.
We left the broomstick on the front lawn. I turned my key in the door and hurled myself through. “Val!” I yelled into the dim rooms. “Svartalf!”
No lock had been forced or picked, no glass had been broken, the steel and stone guarding every paranatural entry were unmoved. But chairs lay tumbled, vases smashed where they had fallen off shaken tables, blood was spattered over walls, floors, carpets, from end to end of the building.
We stormed into Valeria’s room. When we saw that little shape quietly asleep in her crib, we held each other and wept.
Finally Ginny could ask, “Where’s Svartalf? What happened?”
“I’ll look around,” I said. “He gave an epic account of himself, at least.”
“Yes—” She wiped her eyes. As she looked around the wreckage in the nursery, that green gaze hardened. She stared down into the crib. “Why didn’t you wake up?” she said in a tone I’d never heard before.
I was already on my way to search. I found Svartalf in the kitchen. His blood had about covered the linoleum. In spite of broken bones, tattered hide, belly gashed open, the breath rattled faintly in and out of him. Before I could examine the damage further, a shriek brought me galloping back to Ginny.
She held the child. Blue eyes gazed dully at me from under tangled gold curls. Ginny’s face, above, was drawn so tight it seemed the skin must rip on the cheekbones. “Something’s wrong with her,” she told me. “I can’t tell what, but something’s wrong.”
I stood for an instant feeling my universe break apart. Then I went into the closet. Dusk was giving place to day, and I needed darkness. I shucked my outer clothes and used my flash. Emerging, I went to those two female figures. My wolf nose drank their odors.
I sat on my haunches and howled.
Ginny laid down what she was holding. She stayed completely motionless by the crib while I changed back.
“I’ll call the police,” I heard my voice, say to her. “That thing isn’t Val. It isn’t even human.”
XXIII
I TAKE CARE not to remember the next several hours in detail.
At noon we were in my study. Our local chief had seen almost at once that the matter was beyond him and urged us to call in the FBI. Their technicians were still busy checking the house and grounds, inch by inch. Our best service was to stay out of their way. I sat on the day bed, Ginny on the edge of my swivel chair. From time to time one of us jumped up, paced around, made an inane remark, and slumped back down. The air was fogged with smoke from ashtray, overflowing cigarets. My skull felt scooped out. Her eyes had retreated far back into her head. Sunlight, grass, trees were unreal in the windows.
“You really ought to eat,” I said for the ?-th time. “Keep your strength.”
“Same to you,” she answered, not looking at me or at anything I could tell.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nor I.”
We returned to the horror.
The extension phone yanked us erect. “A call from Dr. Ashman,” it said. “Do you wish to answer?”
“For God’s sake yell” ripped from me. “Visual.” Momentarily, crazily, I couldn’t concentrate on our first message from the man who brought Valerie into the world. My mind spun off into the principles of telephony. Sympathetic vibrations, when sender and receiver are spelled to the same number; a scrying unit for video when desired; a partial animation to operate the assembly—Ginny’s hand seized mine. Its cold shocked me into sanity.
Ashman’s face looked well-nigh as exhausted as hers. “Virginia,” he said. “Steve. We have the report.”
I tried to respond and couldn’t.
“You were right,” he went on. “It’s a homunculus.”
“What took you so long?” Ginny asked. Her voice wasn’t husky any more, just hoarse and harsh.
“Unprecedented case,” Ashman said. “Fairy changelings have always been considered a legend. Nothing in our data suggests any motive for nonhuman intelligences to steal a child . . . nor any method by which they could if they wanted to, assuming the parents take normal care . . . and certainly no reason for such hypothetical kidnappers to leave a sort of golem in its place. ” He sighed. “Apparently we know less than we believe.”
“What are your findings?” The restored determination in Ginny’s words brought my gaze to her.
“The police chirurgeon, the crime lab staff, and later a pathologist from the University hospital worked with me,” Ashman told us. “Or I with them. I was merely the family doctor. We lost hours on the assumption Valerie was bewitched. The simulacrum is excellent, understand. It’s mindless—the EEG is practically flat—but it resembles your daughter down fingerprints. Not till she ... it ... had failed to respond to every therapeutic spell we commanded between us, did we think the body might be an imitation. You told us so at the outset, Steve, but we discounted that as hysteria. I’m sorry. Proof required a whole battery of tests. For instance, the saline content and PBI suggest the makers of the homunculus had no access to oceans. We clinched the matter when we injected some radioactivated holy water; that metabolism is not remotely human.”
His dry tone was valuable. The horror began to have some shadowy outline; my brain creaked into motion, searching for ways to grapple it. “What’ll they do with the changeling?” I asked.
“I suppose the authorities will keep it in the hope of-of learning something, doing something through it,” Ashman said. “In the end, if nothing else happens, it’ll doubtless be institutionalized. Don’t hate the poor thing. That’s all it is, a poor thing, manufacturer some evil reason but not to blame.”
“Not to waste time on, you mean,” Ginny rasped. “Doctor, have you any ideas about rescuing Val?”
“No. It hurts me.” He looked it. “I’m only a medicine man, though. What further can I do? Tell me and I’ll come flying.”
“You can start right away,” Ginny said. “You’ve heard, haven’t you, my familiar was critically wounded defending, her? He’s at the vet’s, but I want you to take over.”
Ashman was startled. “What? Really—Look, I can’t save an animal’s life when a specialist isn’t able.”
“That’s not the problem. Svartalf will get well. But vets don’t have the expensive training and equipment used on people. I want him rammed back to health overnight. What runes and potions you don’t have, you’ll know how to obtain. Money’s no object.”
“Wait,” I started to say, recalling what leechcraft costs are like.
She cut me off short. “Nornwell will foot the bill, unless a government agency does. They’d better. This isn’t like anything else they’ve encountered. Could be a major emergency shaping up.” She stood straight. Despite the looted eyes, hair hanging lank, unchanged black garb of last night, she was once more Captain Graylock of the 14th United States Cavalry. “I am not being silly, Doctor. Consider the implications of your discoveries. Svartalf may or may not able to convey a little information to me about what he encountered. He certainly can’t when he’s unconscious. At the least, he’s always been a good helper, and we need whatever help we can get.”