Tales of the Wold Newton Universe by Philip José Farmer Read Free Book Online Page A

the embryo becomes opaque. The material inside, the yolk, is absorbed or eaten by the embryo. Then the shell is broken and the fragments are eaten by the little beast.
    “And then, sometime after hatching, a short time, I’d say, the beastie must become mobile, it wriggles away, it takes refuge in a hole, a mouse hole, perhaps. And there it feeds upon cockroaches, mice, and, when it gets larger, rats. And then, Bunny? Dogs? Babies? And then?”
    “Stop,” I cried. “It’s too horrible to contemplate!”
    “Nothing is too horrible to contemplate, Bunny, if one can do something about the thing contemplated. In any event, if I am right, and I pray that I am, only one egg has so far hatched. This was the first one laid, the one that Persano somehow obtained. Within thirty days, another egg will hatch. And this time the thing might get away. We must track down all the eggs and destroy them. But first we must catch the thing that is laying the eggs.
    “That won’t be easy. It has an amazing intelligence and adaptability. Or, at least, it has amazing mimetic abilities. In one month it learned to speak English perfectly and to become well acquainted with British customs. That is no easy feat, Bunny. There are thousands of Frenchmen and Americans who have been here for some time who have not yet comprehended the British language, temperament, or customs. And these are human beings, though there are, of course, some Englishmen who are uncertain about this.”
    “Really, A. J.!” I said. “We’re not all that snobbish!”
    “Aren’t we? It takes one to know one, my dear colleague, and I am unashamedly snobbish. After all, if one is an Englishman, it’s no crime to be a snob, is it? Somebody has to be superior, and we know who that someone is, don’t we?”
    “You were speaking of the thing,” I said testily.
    “Yes. It must be in a panic. It knows it’s been found out, and it must think that by now the entire human race will be howling for its blood. At least, I hope so. If it truly knows us, it will realize that we would be extremely reluctant to report it to the authorities. We would not want to be certified. Nor does it know that we cannot stand an investigation into our own lives.
    “But it will, I hope, be ignorant of this and so will be trying to escape the country. To do so, it will take the closest and fastest means of transportation, and to do that it must buy a ticket to a definite destination. That destination, I guess, will be Dover. But perhaps not.”
    At the Maida Vale cab station, Raffles made inquiries of various drivers. We were lucky. One driver had observed another pick up a woman who might be the person—or thing—we were chasing. Encouraged by Raffles’ pound note, the cabbie described her. She was a giantess, he said, she seemed to be about fifty years old, and, for some reason, she looked familiar. To his knowledge, he had never seen her before.
    Raffles had him describe her face feature by feature. He said, “Thank you,” and turned away with a wink at me. When we were alone, I asked him to explain the wink.
    “She—it—had familiar features because they were Phillimore’s own, though somewhat feminized,” Raffles said. “We are on the right track.”
    On the way into London in our own cab, I said, “I don’t understand how the thing gets rid of its clothes when it changes shape. And where did it get its woman’s clothes and the purse? And its money to buy the ticket?”
    “Its clothes must be part of its body. It must have superb control; it’s a sentient chameleon, a superchameleon.”
    “But its money?” I said. “I understand that it has been selling its eggs in order to support itself. Also, I assume, to disseminate its young. But from where did the thing, when it became a woman, get the money with which to buy a ticket? And was the purse a part of its body before the metamorphosis? If it was, then it must be able to detach parts of its body.”
    “I rather imagine