something strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to
be folding in on himself, shriveling, accordioning. The silk-shirt
lost shape, the dark, whipping hair became a hideous toadstool
around his collar.
Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously,
Green Terror leaped.
I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on
my back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I
caught one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone
funnel, and then the darkness descended.
When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the grainery bins in the
all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had
been beaten with padded Indian clubs.
Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes
were open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever
gonna wake up. How you feel?"
"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"
"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado
almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."
At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came
flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"
His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an
evasive answer.
"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know,
Chips. I have to."
Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't
exactly what we told the cops -- in fact we hardly told the cops any
of it. No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's
gone. I didn't even know that Legere guy was around."
"And Green Tiger?"
Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought
to death."
"Other tiger? There's no other ---"
"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell
of a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."
"What -- where --"
"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler
that way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.
And that's the end of my story -- except for two little items. The
words Mr. Legere shouted just before the tornado hit: "When a
man and an animal live in the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts
determine the mold!"
The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me
later, offering it only for what it might be worth. What he told me
was that the strange tiger had a long scar on the back of its neck.
THE
REPLOIDS
Stephen King
Appeared in
Night Visions #5, 1988
No one knew exactly how long it had been going on. Not long.
Two days, two weeks; it couldn't have been much longer than that,
Cheyney reasoned. Not that it mattered. It was just that people got
to watch a little more of the show with the added thrill of knowing
the show was real. When the United States - the whole world -
found out about the Reploids, it was pretty spectacular. just as
well, maybe. These days, unless it's spectacular, a thing can go on
damned near forever. It is neither believed nor disbelieved. It is
simply part of the weird Godhead mantra that made up the
accelerating flow of events and experience as the century neared its
end. It's harder to get peoples' attention. It takes machine-guns in a
crowded airport or a live grenade rolled up the aisle of a bus load
of nuns stopped at a roadblock in some Central American country
overgrown with guns and greenery. The Reploids became national
- and international - news on the morning of November 30, 1989,
after what happened during the first two chaotic minutes of the
Tonight Show taping in Beautiful Downtown Burbank, California,
the night before.
The floor manager watched intently as the red sweep secondhand
moved upward toward the twelve. The studio audience
clockwatched as intently as the floor manager. When the red sweep
second-hand crossed the twelve, it would be five o'clock and
taping of the umpty-umptieth Tonight Show would commence.
As the red second-hand passed the eight, the audience stirred and
muttered with its own peculiar sort of stage fright. After all, they
represented America, didn't they? Yes!
"Let's have it quiet, people, please," the floor manager said
pleasantly, and the audience quieted like obedient children. Doc
Severinsen's drummer ran off a fast little riff on his snare and then
held his sticks easily between thumbs and fingers, wrists loose,
watching the floor manager instead of the clock, as the show -
people always did. For crew and performers, the floor manager
was the clock. When the second-hand passed the ten, the floor
manager counted down aloud to four, and then held up three
fingers, two fingers, one finger ... and then a clenched fist from
which one finger pointed dramatically at the audience. An
APPLAUSE sign lit up, but the studio audience was primed to
whoop it up; it would have made no difference if it had been
written in Sanskrit.
So things started off just as they were supposed to start off: dead
on time. This was not so surprising; there were crewmembers on
the Tonight Show who, had they been LAPD officers, could have
retired with full benefits. The Doc Severinsen band, one of the best
showbands in the world, launched into the familiar theme: Ta-da-
da-Da-da ... and the large, rolling voice of Ed
McMahon cried enthusiastically: "From Los Angeles,
entertainment capital of the world, it's The Tonight Show, live,
with Johnny Carson! Tonight, Johnny's guests are actress Cybill
Shepherd of Moonlighting!" Excited applause from the audience.
"Magician Doug Henning!" Even louder applause from the
audience. "Pee Wee Herman!" A fresh wave of applause, this time
including hoots of joy from Pee Wee's rooting section. "From
Germany, the Flying Schnauzers, the world's only canine
acrobats!" Increased applause, with a mixture of laughter from the
audience. "Not to mention Doc Severinsen, the world's only Flying
Bandleader, and his canine band!"
The band members not playing horns obediently barked. The
audience laughed harder, applauded harder.
In the control room of Studio C, no one was laughing.
A man in a loud sport-coat with a shock of curly black hair was
standing in the wings, idly snapping his fingers and looking across
the stage at Ed, but that was all.
The director signaled for Number Two Cam's medium shot on Ed
for the umpty-umptieth time, and there was Ed on the ON
SCREEN monitors. He barely heard someone mutter, "Where the
hell is he?" before Ed's rolling tones announced, also for the
umpty-umptieth time: "And now heeeere's JOHNNY!"
Wild applause from the audience.
"Camera Three," the director snapped.
"But there's only that-"
"Camera Three, goddammit!"
Camera Three came up on the ON SCREEN monitor, showing
every TV director's private nightmare, a dismally empty stage ...
and then someone, some stranger, was striding confidently into
that empty space, just as if he had every right in the world to be
there, filling it with unquestionable presence, charm, and authority.
But, whoever he was, he was most definitely not Johnny Carson.
Nor was it any of the other familiar faces TV and studio audiences
had grown used to during Johnny's absences. This man was taller
than Johnny, and instead of the familiar silver hair, there was a
luxuriant cap of almost Pan-like black curls. The stranger's hair
was so black that in places it seemed to glow almost blue, like
Superman's hair in the comic-books. The sport-coat he wore was