A JUNGLE OF STARS BY JACK L. CHALKER

“There exist other planes than ours, with different laws and frames of reference, yet coexisting in the same time and space as we. They are pretty much barren, lifeless nothings; and we could not normally exist there. But there are some weak points between our plane and the one next door; and sometimes things, well, break through. Over the millennia, enough atmosphere, and other components of our plane have seeped through in sufficient quantities, creating tiny bubbles in theirs. If conditions are just right, you can enter them.”

He leaned back and continued puffing on the fat cigar. “My headquarters,” he said, “which I call Haven, is a place like that. Except that by technological means I have sustained it and made it habitable. It is untouchable except through the opening nature made and I perpetuate. As no one enters or leaves except through me, The Bromgrev cannot get his agents in. Since only I can key the way in or out, they can’t sneak past, either. But The Bromgrev keeps trying! Sooner or later, it will sink into my brother’s coarse mind that the only member of his staff capable of penetrating Haven is The Bromgrev himself.” A spark lit up Wade’s eyes as he spoke, and his voice raised in pitch. “He’ll come like a thief in the night, and in heavy disguise. He could be anybody — or anything — at all, any sentient beastie in the galaxy.

“You, and my other agents here, are my Early Warning System. All of you are former detectives, trained observers with particularly analytical minds. When he comes, it’s your job to spot him, identify him, and then we will win this struggle.”

“Terrific,” Savage grunted sarcastically. “All I do is identify Superman, put him under arrest, and bring him to you, right? And all he does while I’m doing all this is come docilely along. No thanks! I’ve had a taste of one of you already!”

“He won’t know that you know him,” Wade said quietly. “He won’t be able to take your body or your mind. I guarantee that. Making you a closed-loop organism, a self-repairing individual, was simple. But those days in the hospital, while you were unconscious, I did far more. I created mental blockages in your mind so impenetrable that nothing, no organism past or present except the whole of a God-race, could break through them. The Bromgrev uses telepathy skillfully, far better than I, from an operational standpoint. But my mind and powers are equal to his own, and your blocks are so strong that even I cannot penetrate them. I have been trying during this entire interview; and they are so firm that I can’t undo them. To a telepath, you don’t exist. The ‘paths call you boys “zombies” — you exist when the sense they depend on the most tells them you do not. They can get only the surface thoughts that you verbalize.”

Savage sat still for a while, letting the implications sink in. A zombie, huh? Well, that’s what he was: the walking dead. He tried to imagine what it must be like to be able to see anyone’s innermost thoughts, to probe the depths of memory. Except for a very few.

He suddenly felt confident again, private, secure. No more funny business. He was himself, a closed book to others, as always.

The germ of a plan was in Savage’s mind even then, but it had not yet surfaced. He did not have enough facts, not enough to go on. Two problems surfaced immediately: How do you tell which of an infinite variety of organisms is the quarry? And how do you kill an invincible immortal?

“When do I start?” he asked.

“I’ll show you your office now, if you like. Then get a hotel room downtown and take two or three days to find a place and get settled. I’ll instruct Accounting to get you whatever you need in the way of funds. This will be your district: the southeastern United States. You’ll work out of here. And you’ll meet your share of characters before you’re done.”

6

THE JOB DID prove to be interesting at that. He worked, he found, for a nonprofit group called the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, a group that had some very real and quite ignorant members as well as some of Hunter’s own people. As with many things, The Hunter had not created the group, but had merely joined it, endowed it, and then let it serve his purposes.

The society was concerned with the investigation of unnatural or apparently unnatural phenomena, from flying saucers to ghosts, poltergeists, rains of frogs, and anything else that science could not explain. It had performed some valuable services, and some interesting tasks were undertaken by reputable scientists on its behalf: a scientific expedition to Loch Ness, another to find Bigfoot, others hunting spectral shapes in the southern swamps. In most cases they came up empty-handed; but, in others, sound scientific and quite rational explanations — and some extremely nasty and clever hoaxes — were uncovered and released to the public. A lot of extremely talented and inteffigent people worked, on and off, for the society.

The society also had, needless to say, a full compliment of nuts.

From Savage’s point of view, his job was a simple and interesting one: to pick out of the reports, clippings, and news items any events that might be related to enemy activity: the landing of agents and supplies for Bromgrev men, for example. (That meant chasing – a lot of flying saucer reports.) He also kept up with tales of demonic possession and zombie-like activities. Particularly with the latter two, it had been explained to him, since The Bromgrev had a highly effective and unique way of gaining converts.

In his wanderings through the galaxy, through many lives and in many bodies, The Bromgrev had discovered a large planet organized somewhat like a society of bees. Every organism — and there were billions of them — served a specific purpose, each acting like a single component of an organism. Through the years, on this world that apparently had been incredibly harsh, one group of beings had evolved with totally unshielded telepathy.

They developed a single mass mind which dominated the planet. When The Bromgrev discovered the place, the Mind tried to absorb him as well, but this time it met its match. The Bromgrev’s mind was stronger, and instead of his becoming one with them, they became him. The Bromgrev was so powerful a telepath that, even after leaving, he continued to be with the Mind.

Should The Bromgrev come near you he could, at will, incorporate you into the Mind as well. This was a great discovery. It had given him an army that was always loyal, always obedient. But only The Bromgrev himself could incorporate you; the race of creatures he dominated were now too dispersed to be able to do it alone.

If such zombies showed up here, then The Bromgrev was here, too.

Years passed as Savage threw himself into the job. Far removed from the galactic conflict, he never even revisited the War Room, only a few hundred meters below his office. He did made Haven once, and had some obligatory training — in spaceship guidance and control, as well as his first space flight, but that, too, was now long-ago. He had not seen Wade since the first day, and that was fine with him: the creature that was Wade made him very uneasy.

During this period he had handled several hundred cases. In most, he’d struck out, or come up with convincing explanations. At least three had been clever crimes that he was well satisfied to have solved, or helped to solve. He also became certain after his twentieth such case that some ghosts did indeed exist, for some reason these people had not joined the great synthesis. They remained, almost inevitably, quite insane and occasionally dangerous. His countermeasures, drawn from the computer banks and experts of the society, were sometimes effective, sometimes not.

But always Savage, and his counterparts worldwide, remained mindful that the enemy was in fact about. Twice now, he and several other agents had uncovered small cells of Bromgrev agents, and blocked some of their operations.

But The Bromgrev himself did not come. He was busy elsewhere.

So Savage remained busy, building a casebook of weird and fantastic cases, and he thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Until the matter of the lost day.

Malloy, South Carolina, had little to distinguish itself from the thousands of other small southern agricultural towns spread throughout the southeastern United States. It was, indeed, the sleepy, two-block village with diagonal parking on Main Street and the speed trap at the beginning of town, right behind the tree-obscured END 55, BEGIN 15 MPH sign. Its population of about 350 was about 70 percent black and mostly in the peanut and cotton business, on one end or the other. But on the night of August 16, when everyone went to bed, things became unique in Malloy.

They awoke at their usual times the next day and set about their appointed tasks. It was, in fact, some time before the discrepancy was noted, for the lone cop on night duty and the two or three other night people were unwilling to admit that they, too, had dozed. It was almost 2 P.M. before everyone in the town discovered one minor fact.

It wasn’t Wednesday, August 17. It was Thursday, August 18.

The story got good play in the newpapers, but since there seemed to be no harm, no ill effects — and, therefore, no follow-up. It died, after a day, to the news of a more dramatic outside world. Those who heard of it generally dismissed it as a hoax, particularly since Malloy had been fighting unsuccessfully for charter government and needed to get noticed, at least by Columbia. A quick plane flight and rental car put Savage in Malloy in about four hours. He had had a slow month, and had been going crazy with the boredom of the rather commonplace muggings, rapes, murders, terrorism, and petty wars of the evening news.

Malloy was exactly what he expected it to be: a musky smell, extremely hot and humid at that time of year, with flies and mosquitoes buzzing all around and a few cars parked in front of the post office and general store. There was even a sleeping bloodhound on the store’s wooden porch.

The little bell over the door jingled as Savage entered. A couple of people were looking at some dry goods in one corner, and he noted with amusement their attempts not to stare at him. The proprietor, an elderly, balding man with a thin white mustache, appeared from a rear storeroom.

“Yessuh?” The storekeeper drawled, “What can we do fo’ you?”

“Just directions, really,” Savage replied. “I’m going to be here a day or two, and need some place to stay.”

“That’s the Calhoun, suh. Little hotel down the street on this side. It’s the only place in town. Heah to buy crops?”

Savage shook his head. “No. I’m in a different line of work.”

He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet. His private detective’s license showed clearly, and the storekeeper’s eyebrows shot up.

“Detective, huh? All the way from Washington, too! What’s the matta, got a runaway husband luhkin’ ‘round heah?”

“No,” Savage chuckled. “I work for an agency that’s very concerned when strange things happen; We like to be sure that these strange things aren’t caused by familiar enemies.”

The old man’s face grew serious, and the duo over in dry goods tried ten times harder to pretend they weren’t hanging on to every word. “The missin’ day, huh? Somebody took it serious, aftah all.”

“You mean it wasn’t?” Savage shot back quickly. “Oh, shuah as hell was. But the newspapahs…”

“Print what sells newspapers,” Savage completed. “My employers don’t have to sell newspapers.”

The other nodded gravely, and it was clear that Savage had gotten the correct impression across. Soon the whole town would be talking about the “government” agent who took them seriously; and that would make things much easier in patriotic, rural South Carolina.

Savage decided he must press his advantage. “What about you, Mr. —uh?”

“Bakkus, Tom Bakkus,” the storekeeper responded, automatically extending his hand.

“Paul Savage,” the big man replied, and they shook. “Well, Mr. Bakkus, I suppose you have some thoughts on the subject,” Savage prompted.

Bakkus scratched his head. “I dunno,” he replied thoughtfully. “Damned strange is all. Went tuh sleep ‘bout eleven-thutty, as usual, right aftah the evenin’ news on the TV. No dreams, no funny stuff. Woke up at six as usual, no problems, ‘ceptin’ it was Thuhsday, damniit!”

“Did your alarm clock wake you up?”

“Naw. It’d gone off as usual on Wednesday, I suppose. Nevah thought ‘bout that. Nevah wakes me up, anyways; been gettin’ up at six foah fifty yeahs. Dunno why I keep that ol’ clock atall.”

“What about the other people? Lots of people need alarm clocks; I know I do.”

Bakkus frowned. “Nope. Oh, pro’bly the usual numbah of folks use ‘em, but most just thought they ovahslept. Would you notice?”

“Probably not,” Savage agreed. “But I’ll check the people myself — particularly the job records — to see how many more people than usual were late on Thursday. Say, that’s a thought. Does every kid in Malloy go to school in town?”

“No help theah,” the older man replied. “It’s August — vacation.”

“And no visitors through town during the whole missing day?”

“Not a one they could find. Not really unusual — we’ah a bit off the beaten track heah, and it might be days and days befoah a strangah comes through.”

Savage digested the information, turning it over and over in his mind. If the interviews proved out, it made a sinister picture.

Pick a town nobody’s likely to disturb for a day. Pick a day even slower than normal. Then black everyone out for that period. Why? To keep them from seeing something? Possibly. But, if so, what would be worth the risk of national notoriety? To get something through town, perhaps? But it was a small area blacked out, and chances are you couldn’t get something that mysterious both in and out of the place without somebody noticing. It didn’t make sense.

Savage spent the next three days canvassing the town and the nearby farms and got pretty much the same story. Yes, people had slept through their alarms; no, nobody thought it was unusual until they found out everybody had. By the end of three days, Savage was certain of only one thing: from the intensity of the witnesses, the blackout had occurred without a doubt.

Sinister enough. Particularly when he had talked to that out-of-town salesman who normally did come through Malloy on Wednesdays. When asked why he had missed that particular day, he’d explained, ‘I got tied up in a sales meeting all morning, then found my car wouldn’t start. By the time I got AAA to tow me and fix the thing, it was seven in the evening. Since there was nothing critical, I skipped it.’

Someone — or something — had stolen a day out of these people’s lives. How it had been done Savage had no idea, and the mysterious force had left no clues to hang on to. Or had it?

The Hunter organization could arrange a sales meeting delay, and tamper with the car. And an organization of Hunter’s capabilities could easily black out a town, for they had done things far stranger. And—

For the first time, it also occurred to him that one other organization would have similar resources.

Had The Bromgrev landed? Was he — or “it” — one of the townspeople? If so, why do a thing so conspicuous? Why provoke an instant and predictable reaction from The Hunter’s people? Maybe “predictable” was the word.

It was well past three in the morning and Savage lay awake in the darkness of his hotel room. Except for the cricket symphony, there was an almost incredible silence.

What would be predictable?

That The Hunter would send someone to investigate. No. More.

That The Hunter would send him. Virginia through Georgia was his beat.

Savage crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and watched the glow slowly die in the darkness.

A soft knock came at his door. The sound, slight as it was, made him jump as if a firecracker had suddenly exploded. He reached over to the chair on which hung his shoulder holster and removed the .38 Police Special he always carried. The knock was repeated.

Slowly he went over to the door and put his lips to the crack between door and door molding.

“Who is it?” he whispered softly.

“Someone who has gone to a lot of trouble to talk to you privately,” came an equally whispered reply.

The voice was sharp, clear, every word perfectly formed in neutral American English, yet totally without color or emotion. Savage unlocked the door and stepped back, gun drawn. What was it about the Devil not being able to enter a place unless invited?

“Come in,” he called nervously. The knob twisted, then the door opened slowly, revealing a small and not very threatening figure in the gloom. The figure entered and closed the door behind him. It was Bakkus.

No, it was something that looked like Bakkus, but it had no humanity, no fire inside. It was an animated corpse.

“Please put the gun away, Mr. Savage,” Bakkus said in that strange and unnatural intonation. “You can only shoot Mr. Bakkus, and he’s an innocent and unknowing bystander in this affair, of no concern to either of us. It takes a great deal of power from my other dealings to communicate in this fashion, so I will be brief.”

“You are The Bromgrev?” Savage asked breathlessly.

“No, merely one of his agents, as you are an agent of The Hunter. But I am on The Bromgrev’s business.”

“Just where — and what — are you, anyway?” Savage asked, not taking his pistol off the figure, who continued to stand motionless.

“I am in a ship quite a distance from your planet, using a device that amplifies my own rather powerful mental abilities a millionfold. That device, and our agents on Earth, caused the population of this little town to remain comatose for roughly thirty Earth hours, with little disturbance.”

“All to get me here,” Savage accused. “Why?”

“So you have deduced that? You are, indeed, as good as we have heard. As to the why of it, we mean to correct certain impressions you have received. We mean to give you all of the facts, the truth, unlike Hunter. And, at the end, we might ask for your help.”

Savage’s thick brows shot up. “My help? I belong to the opposition, remember. What makes you think I’ll switch?”

“You have certain distinct personality traits we believe will make you a key person in coming events. You are, of course, not the only agent we have talked to, or will talk to. If you will permit me to give you my message, you might understand.”

Savage still didn’t lower the pistol, but he did flop back down on the bed. Bakkus made no attempt to move or sit. The creature controlling the body operated it as a robot.

Savage carefully lit another cigarette.

“Go ahead,” he told the creature. “I’m listening.”

“To begin with, The Hunter told you the true nature of the war we are fighting. It is one of his characteristics that his lies are always cloaked in truths.

“For example, the evolution of the Synthesis is an integral part of natural law. An existing synthesis is necessary to maintain order in the galaxy. It’s an order that is beyond your comprehension, or mine, but it is essential to the maintenance and development of all sentient life. But Hunter lied when he threatened you with that standard stage-play of his. Had you refused his offer, you would not have been submerged in insanity, but you would have found and slowly learned to use new powers as an individual, with the ability to synthesize at will with any other individuals, or the group as a whole, to become something even greater. You would have become a part of the management of your planet. You are now cheated of this.”

“Well, I don’t miss it,” Savage responded dryly. “One doesn’t miss what one has never had, wanted, or understood. What’s all this to do with me?”

“Perspective,” replied the creature using Bakkus. “You see, the last such race is gone — dead, finally, or, perhaps, gone on to even greater things. Nobody knows. But that race, the race The Hunter and The Bromgrev, left far too soon. They were able to interpolate and determine that, left completely alone, the Next Race was far enough along to carry our galaxy through any rough spots. The problem, you see, was that one member of the old race enjoyed playing God too much. This was The Hunter’s sector: Earth and the nearby planets. He’d played games with Earth, terrible games that could have cheated your people out of their chance — and it’s only a chance — of attaining greatness. He introduced space travel at too early a stage. Such travel, before there is a temporal awareness and an acceptance of the Synthesis, can cause wide dispersion and the Synthesis will not be able to grow and evolve to its proper form.”

“But we have space travel,” Savage pointed out. “We’ve been on the moon and rockets—”

“Toys of no consequence,” the creature responded. “It is the knowledge of how to bypass relativity that matters. The Hunter gave Earth the necessary equations to conquer space, and his people, the Kreb, caught him at it, as they had to. They caused a series of natural disasters that forced Earth’s civilization virtually back to the caves, but saved its future. And they did something else: they expelled The Hunter from the Synthesis, and caused him to become what he is today: earthbound, material, and parasitic. The hatred he nurtures for this transcends all reason, and he will never allow any to reach Synthesis again. He is the apostle of chaos.”

“You’re saying The Hunter is the Devil, cast out of Heaven for playing God,” Savage observed. “The Hunter says The Bromgrev is the Devil. So?”

“When the Kreb departed, they left a guardian, one of their own, to counteract the unforeseen and keep things in check until the Next Race develops. To do this, they reduced this agent to the same status as The Hunter, but not bound to this or any other planet. That is my master, The Bromgrev. Until now there was little need to do anything. Bound to this planet, Hunter was neutralized.

“But, about a hundred and fifty of your years ago, The Hunter discovered that the ancient destruction wrought upon Earth by the Kreb had left severe weaknesses in the space-time fabric; and, using one such, he was able to transcend the ancient curse that bound him here and to go out again to the stars. He built his headquarters here, and brought real space travel back to Earth from outside. Killed on Earth, he is doomed to remain here, body after body, life after life. But killed in Haven, he is able to overcome the ancient Kreb barriers and be reborn elsewhere. Once loose, his megalomania knows no bounds, his abilities for chaos are unchecked. To save the Next Race and all future races, The Bromgrev organized and began this war: to hold the key positions, to control the key sectors, to protect the Next Race until it could develop to a point where it can do to The Hunter what his own race was unwilling or unable to do.”

“All very interesting, but not very important to me. Certainly it doesn’t make much difference, from my point of view.”

“There is a crystal world,” the creature continued, as if it had not been interrupted, “whose sentient life forms live for more than a million years; where time, and even thought, is that much slower relative to our own. Should hosts of The Hunter and The Bromgrev die at the same instant, in normal space, and if one knew of the impending death and the other did not, it would be possible for the one who knew to control the confused one who did not, to guide him to that crystal world, and there trap both in those near-immortal bodies. The war would end; the Next Race would develop normally and deal with them both, and millions of lives would be saved.”

Savage was quick to catch the implications. “That means put the both of them together, and an executioner,” he pointed out. “So The Bromgrev is coming here, after all. But you picked the wrong boy, Bakkus or whatever your name is. Once bought, I stay bought.”

“Our agents reported the rather violent death of one Joseph Santori on a military installation. We made the assumption that you had killed him,” the thing said.

“No comment,” Savage replied with a smile. “How can you blackmail a dead man?”

“Blackmail has nothing to do with it,” explained the agent of The Bromgrev. “Our people routinely check out new recruits to your side. We made the connection and decided, after much thought, that you were one of our best candidates. The key is revenge, Mr. Savage. You are a vengeful person. Your hate is deep inside, ready to explode. You killed Santori when he did not attempt to kill you except in defense. Rage, Mr. Savage. You killed a surrogate because your true murderer eluded you.”

“McNally,” Savage whispered. It was a tone that was almost inhuman.

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