“We are both hunters, each in our own way,” said Demosthenes. “Do you think to slay me with your fabled Winchester rifle?” he added with a contemptuous smirk.
“No,” answered Roosevelt, picking up his weapon and positioning himself between Demosthenes and the door. “We both know that bullets have no effect on you.”
“Ah!” said Demosthenes with a smile. “You expect to beat me to death with your walking stick?”
“I have a motto,” said Roosevelt. “Thus far I’ve shared it with very few people, but someday I think I shall make it public, for it has served me well in the past and will serve me even better tonight.” He paused. “It is: Speak softly and carry a big stick.” He removed the metal tip from his wooden walking stick, revealing the sharp point that he had whittled earlier in the evening. “This is my big stick.”
“So you’ve learned that much,” said Demosthenes, unperturbed. “Has any of your research told you how to drive a wooden stake into the heart of a being with fifty times your strength?”
“Let’s find out,” said Roosevelt, advancing toward him.
Demosthenes reached out confidently and grabbed the walking stick with his right hand. An instant later he shrieked in agony and pulled his hand back as the flesh on it turned black and began bubbling.
“The wooden stake was not the only thing I learned this afternoon,” said Roosevelt. “I took the liberty of rinsing my walking stick with holy water on the way here.”
Demosthenes uttered a scream of rage and leaped forward. “If I die, I will not die alone!” he snarled as the point of the stick plunged deep into his chest and his hands reached out for Roosevelt’s throat.
“Alone and unmourned,” promised Roosevelt, standing his ground.
A minute later the creature named Demosthenes was no more.
It didn’t take long for new kingpins to move into the positions vacated by Pascale, Zuckerman and O’Brien. Somehow, after Demosthenes, they didn’t seem like the insurmountable problems they might have been a month earlier.
The Commissioner of Police looked forward to the challenge.
1898:
The Roosevelt Dispatches
On the way home from the 1994 Worldcon in Winnipeg, Kevin Anderson approached me in the airport and asked me to write a story for his anthology, War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches. Each story in the book would proceed on the premise that H. G. Wells’ Martian invasion had actually occurred, and various historical characters would have to react to it.
Of course I accepted, and of course I chose Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, it was set in 1898, and here a man who was a naturalist, a taxidermist, a politician, a hunter, and military leader who had just led his men in a successful charge up San Juan Hill. Who in all the world was better qualified to face the Martians?
Kevin gave me permission to place it with a magazine before the anthology appeared, and it ran in F&SF.
Excerpt from the Diary of Theodore Roosevelt (Volume 23):
July 9, 1898: Shot and killed a most unusual beast this afternoon. Letters of inquiry go off tomorrow to the various museums to see which of them would like the mounted specimen once I have finished studying it.
Tropical rain continues unabated. Many of the men are down with influenza, and in the case of poor Westmore, it looks like we shall lose him to pneumonia before the week is out.
Still awaiting orders, now that San Juan Hill and the surrounding countryside is secured. It may well be that we should remain here until we know that the island is totally free from any more of the creatures that I shot this afternoon.
It’s quite late. Just time for a two-mile run and a chapter of Jane Austen, and then off to bed.
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to F. C. Selous, July 12, 1898: My Dear Selous:
I had the most remarkable experience this week, one that I feel compelled to share with you.
I had just led my Rough Riders in a victorious campaign in Cuba. We were still stationed there, awaiting orders to return home. With nothing better to do, I spent many happy hours bird-watching, and the event in question occurred late one afternoon when I was making my way through a riverine forest in search of the Long-billed Curlew.
Afternoon had just passed into twilight, and as I made my way through the dense vegetation I had the distinct feeling that I was no longer alone, that an entity at least as large as myself was lurking nearby. I couldn’t imagine what it might be, for to the best of my knowledge the tapir and the jaguar do not inhabit the islands of the Caribbean.
I proceeded more cautiously, and in another twenty yards I came to a halt and found myself facing a thing the size of one of our American grizzlies. The only comparably-sized animal within your experience would probably be the mountain gorilla, but this creature was at least thirty percent larger than the largest of the silverbacks.
The head was round and was totally without a nose! The eyes were large, dark, and quite widely spread. The mouth was V-shaped and lipless and drooled constantly.
It was brown — not the brown of an impala or a koodoo, but rather the slick moist brown of a sea-slug, its body glistening as if greased. The thing had no arms as such, but it did have a number of long, sinewy tentacles, each seemingly the thickness and strength of an elephant’s trunk.
It took one look at me, made a sound that was half-growl and half-roar, and charged. I had no idea of its offensive capabilities, but I didn’t like the look of those tentacles, so I quickly raised my Winchester to my shoulder and fired at almost point-blank range. I could hear the smack! of the bullet as it bounced off the trunk of the beast’s body. The creature continued to approach me, and I hurled myself aside at the last instant, barely avoiding two of its outstretched tentacles.
I rolled as I hit the ground, and fired once more from a prone position, right into the open V of its mouth. This time there was a reaction and a violent one. The thing hooted noisily and began tearing up pieces of the turf, all the while shaking its head vigorously. Within seconds it was literally uprooting large bushes and shredding them as if they were no more than mere tissue paper.
I waited until it was facing in my direction again and put a bullet into its left eye. Again, the reaction was startling: the creature began ripping apart nearby trees and screaming at such a pitch that all the nearby bird life fled in terror.
By that point I must confess that I was looking for some means of retreat, for I know of no animal that could take a rifle bullet in the mouth and another in the eye and still remain not just standing but aggressive and formidable. I trained my rifle on the brute and began backing away.
My movement seemed to have caught its attention, for suddenly it ceased its ravings and turned to face me. Then it began advancing slowly and purposefully — and a moment later it did something that no animal anywhere in the world has ever done: it produced a weapon.
The thing looked like a sword, but when the creature pointed it at me, a beam of light shot out of it, missing me only by inches, and instantly setting the bush beside me ablaze. I jumped in the opposite direction as it fired its sword of heat again, and again the forest combusted in a blinding conflagration.
I turned and raced back the way I had come. After perhaps sixty yards I chanced a look back, and saw that the creature was following me. However, despite its many physical attributes, speed was not to be counted among them. I used that to my advantage, putting enough distance between us so that it lost sight of me. I then jumped into the nearby river, making sure that no water should invade my rifle. Here, at least, I felt safe from the indirect effects of the creature’s heat weapon.