Image of the Beast and Blown by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online

turned out to be indelible ink blots.
    He forced himself to consider Matthew Colben and his
murderers. At least, he thought they were murderers.
There was no proof that Colben had been killed. He
    might be alive, though not well, somewhere in this area.
Or someplace else.
    Now that he was recovering from his shock, he could
even think that Colben might be untouched and the
film faked.
    He could think this, but he did not believe it.
    The phone rang. Someone was getting through to him,
even if he could get through to no one. Suspecting that
only the police could ram through a call, he picked up
the phone. Sergeant Bruin's voice, husky and growling
like a bear just waking up from hibernation, said,
"Childe?"
    "Yes."
    "We got proof that they mean business. That film
wasn't faked."
    Childe was startled. He said, "I was just thinking
about a fraud. How'd you find out?"
    "We just opened a package mailed from Pasadena."
    Bruin paused. Childe said, "Yeah?"
    "Yeah. Colben's prick was in it. The end of it, any-
way. Somebody's prick, anyway. It sure as hell had
been bitten off."
    "No leads yet?" Childe said after some hesitation.
    "The package's being checked, but we don't expect
anything, naturally. And I got bad news. I'm being taken
off the case, well, almost entirely taken off. We got too
many other things just now, you know why. If there's
going to be any work done on this, Childe, you'll have to
do it. But don't go off half-cocked and don't do nothing
if you get a definite lead, which I think you ain't going
to get. You know what I mean. You been in the busi-
ness."
    "Yes, I know," Childe said. "I'm going to do what
I can, which, as you said, probably won't be much. I
have nothing else to do now, anyway."
    "You could come down here and swear in," Bruin
said. "We need men right now! The traffic all over the
city is a mess, like I never saw before. Everybody's try-
ing to get out. This is going to be a ghost town. But it'll
be a mess, a bloody mess, today and tomorrow. I'm tell-
ing you, I never seen nothing like it before."
    Bruin could be stolid about Colben, but the prospect
    of the greatest traffic jam ever unfroze his bowels. He
was really being moved.
    "If I need help, or if I stumble—and I mean stumble
—across anything significant, should I call you?"
    "You can leave a message. I'll call you back when—
if—I get in. Good luck, Childe."
    "Same to you, Bruin," Childe said and muttered as he
hung up, " O Ursus Horribilis! Or whatever the voca-
tive case is."
    He became aware that he was sweating, that his eyes
felt as if they'd been filed, his sinuses hurt, he had a
headache, his throat felt raw, his lungs were wheezing
for the first time in five years since he had quit smoking
tobacco, and, not too far off, horns were blaring.
    He could do something to ease the effects of the
poisoned air, but he could do little about the cars out in
the street. When he had left his wife's apartment, he
had had a surprising amount of trouble getting across
Burton Way to San Vicente. There was no stop light at
this point on Le Doux. Cars had to buck traffic coming
down Burton Way on one side and going up on the other
side of the divider. Coming down to the apartment, he
had not seen a car or even a pair of headlights in the
dimness. But, going back, he had had to be careful in
crossing. The lights sprang out of the gray-greenness with
startling rapidity as they rounded a nearby curve of
Burton Way to the west. He had managed to find a break
large enough to justify gunning across. Even so, a pair
of lights and a blaring horn and squealing brakes and a
shouted curse—subject to the Doppler effect—told him
that a speeder had come close.
    The traffic going west toward Beverly Hills was light,
but that coming across Burton Way between the boule-
vards to cut southeast on San Vicente was heavy. There
was panic among the drivers. The cars were two deep,
then suddenly three deep, and Childe had barely had
room to squeeze through. He was being