was never even aware of the encounter, let alone that it had impacted
the lives of intelligent beings.
Eduardo hadn’t a clue as to the larger intentions of the watcher in the
woods, but he knew instinctively that, on a personal level, it didn’t
wish him well.
It wasn’t seeking eternal fellowship and shared adventures. It wasn’t
blissfully unaware of him, either, so it was not one of the third
type.
It was strange and malevolent, and sooner or later it would kill him.
In the novels, good aliens outnumbered bad. Science fiction was
basically a literature of hope.
As the warm June days passed, hope was in far shorter supply on
Quartermass Ranch than in the pages of those books.
On the afternoon of June seventeenth, while Eduardo was sitting in a
living-room armchair, drinking beer and reading Walter M. Miller, the
telephone rang. He put down the book but not the beer, and went into
the kitchen to take the call.
Travis Potter said, “Mr. Fernandez, you don’t have to worry.”
“Don’t I?”
“I got a fax from the state lab, results of the tests on the tissue
samples from those raccoons, and they aren’t infected.”
“They sure are dead,” Eduardo said.
“But not from rabies. Not from plague, either. Nothing that appears
to be infectious, or communicable by bite or fleas.”
“You do an autopsy?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“So was it boredom that killed them, or what?”
Potter hesitated. “The only thing I could find was severe brain
inflammation and swelling.”
“Thought you said there was no infection?”
“There isn’t. No lesions, no abscesses or pus, just inflammation and
extreme swelling. Extreme.”
“Maybe the state lab ought to test that brain tissue.”
“Brain tissue was part of what I sent them in the first place.”
“I see.”
“I’ve never encountered anything like it,” Potter told him.
Eduardo said nothing.
“Very odd,” Potter said. “Have there been more of them?”
“More dead raccoons? No. Just the three.”
“I’m going to run some toxicological studies, see if maybe we’re
dealing with a poison here.”
“I haven’t put out any poisons.”
“Could be an industrial toxin.”
“It could? There’s no damned industry around here.”
“Well … a natural toxin, then.”
Eduardo said, “When you dissected them …”
“Yes?”
“… opened the skull, saw the brain inflamed and swollen . . .”
“So much pressure, even after death, blood and spinal fluid squirted
out the instant the bone saw cut through the cranium.”
“Vivid image.”
“Sorry. But that’s why their eyes were bulging.”
“Did you just take samples of the brain tissue or . . .”
“Yes?”
“. .. did you actually dissect the brain?”
“I performed complete cerebrotomies on two of them.”
“Opened their brains all the way up?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t find anything?”
“Just what I told you.”
“Nothing … unusual?”
The puzzlement in Potter’s silence was almost audible. Then: “What
would you have expected me to find, Mr. Fernandez?”
Eduardo did not respond.
“Mr. Fernandez?”
“What about their spines?” Eduardo asked. “Did you examine their
spines, the whole length of their spines?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You find anything … attached?”
“Attached?” Potter said.
“Yes.”
“What do you mean, attached’?”
“Might have . .. might have looked like a tumor.”
“Looked like a tumor?”
“Say a tumor … something like that?”
“No. Nothing like that. Nothing at all.”
Eduardo took the telephone handset away from his head long enough to
swallow some beer.
When he put the phone to his ear again, he heard Travis Potter saying,
“–know something you haven’t told me?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Eduardo lied.
The veterinarian was silent this time. Maybe he was sucking on a beer
of his own. Then: “If you come across any more animals like this, will
you call me?”
“Yes.”
“Not just raccoons.”
“All right.”
“Any animals at all.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t move them,” Potter said.
“I won’t.”
“I want to see them in situ, just where they fell.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Well . . .”
“Goodbye, Doctor.”
Eduardo hung up and went to the sink. He stared out the window at the
forest at the top of the sloped backyard, west of the house.
He wondered how long he would have to wait. He was sick to death of