Jessie cast one last glance at the stumpy EmRec, then began his detailed explanation. "You thought my alien viewpoint might give me a fresh enough slant to solve this puzzle where your best minds could not, and you were correct. The clues were obvious. Some of them, however, were things you were so accustomed to that you took them for granted. I didn't; they were unique things to me, and I employed them in seeking a solution."
"Excuse me," EmRec said.
Jessie looked at the metal dwarf. "Yes?"
"Would say your expression, there, was one of smug self-satisfaction or a more mild and simple pleasure at your supposed success? That is to say, can we assume your explanation is untainted by egotism, or is there a shading element of the ego involved?"
Tesserax said, "Some ego, clearly. But I believe Mr. Blake's facial expression was more simple satisfaction that smugness."
"Proceed," the EmRec said.
Jessie gathered his wits and said, "First of all there was your new myth figure — the Drunken Driver. I was aware that new myths are constantly generated, but not that cross-racial myths could spring up. From the moment I realized this possibility, I kept it in mind throughout the interviewing of other witnesses, in weighing everything I saw and heard. Your own people wouldn't have considered it particularly relevant. Next, I considered how rough the supernaturals have played to keep us from learning anything about this affair. It seemed to me that they were aware of a new myth, springing from maseni-human cultural interaction, but were desperate to keep its nature unknown for fear of losing something. When I talked with the mist demon Yilio and his angel wife Hannah, I suspected that what they feared was a law — or an Earth government partial to such a law — that would forbid marriage between maseni and human supernaturals. The only thing that could generate the demand for a law like that would be some calamitous result of interracial, supernatural breeding. In other words, if a maseni-human supernatural couple produced offspring that was dangerous, the Pure Earthers might get enough power, from public fear, to force through a law forbidding all interracial marriages."
Tesserax was impressed. "Then you think this beast is the offspring of the coupling of maseni and human supernaturals?"
"Excuse me," EmRec said. "Mr. Galiotor Tesserax, is that a look of awe on your face or merely one of surprise? It is difficult for me to give it a certain interpretation. I apologize for the interruption, but I think one of my sight circuits was jolted loose during shipment."
"It was surprise and awe," Tesserax said.
"Thank you. Proceed."
Jessie took a moment, recovered, and said, "Yes, your beast is the child of an interracial, supernatural marriage. And I believe I can explain why this marriage produced an insane myth creature, a killer. You'll remember our discussion of the Protector in the space port when we landed. You said some people felt that those invading aliens, centuries ago, had not been able to live on this planet because some quirk in its geography, in its natural magnetic forces, was deadly to them."
"I recall," Tesserax said.
"Isn't it also possible," the detective went on, "that the same quirk might affect the offspring of certain supernatural marriages. Mind you, I'm not saying that all Earth myths who couple with maseni myths will produce unruly monsters. But isn't it feasible that one particular maseni species, matched with one particular Earth species, could produce an insane child by reason of your world's magnetic make-up, whatever that may be?"
"Perfectly possible," Tesserax said.
"Gentlemen," the EmRec said, "I wonder—"
"It was awe, this time. No surprise, just awe," Tesserax said.
"Thank you," the dwarf robot said. "Proceed."
Jessie said, "Finally, the suicide report convinced me that I was on the right track. Two unprecedented incidents, so close together in time and space, seemed more than coincidental to me. I felt the suicides were somehow tied in with the marauding monster. Now, I believe that the couple who took their own lives were the parents of this killer plaguing your people. In horror at what they had unleashed, they took their own lives in a sort of warped atonement for the deaths of those people in the ruined villages." He picked up the suicide report, referred to it. "If the suicides were the parents of this monster, then its mother was Kekiopa, a little-known Carribbean storm goddess elemental worshipped by a small voodoo cult. And the father was a maseni myth figure, Ityitsil the Reptile Master."
"Fascinating," Tesserax said.
"EmRec," Brutus said, "you can describe me as awe-stricken, too."
"Proceed," EmRec said.
Tesserax said, "How do you propose to locate this beast, this cross-bred monster?"
"It will locate us," Jessie said. "Part of the myth of the storm goddess is that she knows what transpires in every nook and cranny where her breezes blow. If the child inherited this mythical omniscience, it has known about all our comings and goings today. It will seek and destroy us. It knows we're here, just as it knew to avoid those traps your people set for it in the past."
"But if it knows we're here," Tesserax said, "it also knows we might be able to destroy it. It knows that you've plumbed its secret."
"It can't know that," the detective said. "It can't, because its many breezes do not reach inside four walls; indoors, it has no powers of observation, no ears and eyes."
Helena said, "Then, if it's on its way, we should be looking for some way to deal with it."
Jessie smiled, started to speak, turned to EmRec and said, "Yes, my ego is showing. I am smugly satisfied with myself."
"I thought you were," EmRec said. "I already commented to that effect, on my inner tapes." It waved one stubby hand again. "Proceed."
Jessie said, "I cracked my mythology books and found out how to destroy, how to disintegrate the souls, of each of the monster's parents."
"But they're already dead," Tesserax said.
It was Helena who was smiling smugly now. "Yes, they are, Tessie. But what Jessie means is — if we go through the rituals for dissipating both the mother and the father, the combination ought to dissipate the child — the beast."
"Exactly," Jessie said. "Now, to destroy the storm goddess, one has only to repeat this voodoo chant—" he tapped an open book, " — and throw a few drops of fresh human blood into her winds. To dissipate a Reptile Master, one must merely repeat a certain maseni prayer and pierce him with a silver shaft."
"Therefore," Helena continued, "when we confront this beast, one of us will say the voodoo thing and throw blood into the wind, while someone else repeats the maseni prayer and fires a silver shaft into the creature's hide."
Tesserax got to his feet, patting the top of his head excitedly. "Two questions come to mind, straight off. First, where will we obtain this silver shaft, on such short notice?"
Jessie said, "I have a dip of silver narcotics darts which I use in my pistol on Earth when I know I might have to shoot werewolves as well as human beings. There's not enough silver in the darts to kill a supernatural like a werewolf, but it stings them badly and keeps them back. And, judging from what I've read of your Reptile Masters, a few silver pins should turn the dissipation trick."
"And what about the human blood?" Tesserax asked.
"The service robot operates a roboclinic out of one of these trunks he brought along, doesn't he?" the detective asked.
"Yes. On any dangerous mission, a roboclinic—"
Jessie interrupted: "We can have him take a blood sample from me, and I can throw that into the air."