"Interesting," Jessie said. "Conspiracy of a sort between the real and the spirit world."
"One thing," Brutus growled.
Galiotor Fils looked at the hound. "Yes?"
"I don't know much about maseni mythology," Brutus said. "When one of you dies, what happens to the 'soul'?"
"Any of a dozen different things," Galiotor Fils said. "Tesserax might have become a ghost, much like the sort that you people believe in. Or he might have been changed into a Great Tree, assigned to suffer the tortures of the sentient inanimate before recyling — ah, this gets difficult to explain in terms you people would understand."
"It doesn't matter just now," Jessie said. "In short, Tesserax would have returned in some form, and you would have known about it."
"Exactly," the alien said. "Immediately upon learning of his death, I paid to have a constant call on the netherworld communications network, so that he would come to me first thing. He hasn't answered it. He would, if he could. Therefore—"
"Perhaps he isn't dead," Jessie suggested.
"In my central heart, I hope that this is true," Galiotor Fils said, placing a hand across his abdomen to indicate the seat of his emotions. "However, I also fear that something even worse than death has happened to him."
"Like what?" Brutus asked.
The alien stood, suddenly, towering almost to the ceiling, unfolding out of the easy chair like a paper accordion coming to full length. He leaned over Blake's desk, his palms flat on the blotter, his twelve tentacles wriggling madly, and he said, "I am afraid, Mr. Blake, that Tesserax was buried without the proper ceremony, and that his soul — his soul has been dissipated."
The last few words came out in a strangled gasp. Everyone was silent in the wake of this display, until Galiotor Fils could recover. His face had blanched, and his whole body had locked into a twisted, rigid stance.
At last, the alien said, "Forgive me for getting so emotional."
"That's okay," Blake said, not able to meet the creature's gaze. "Can you go on? Can you explain just what you meant — when you said that Tesserax's soul may have been dissipated?"
Galiotor Fils grimaced, a horrible sight on that nearly featureless, yellow face. "Yes, of course. You see…. Maseni mythology holds that, unless certain burial procedures are observed, the soul of the departed will simply disintegrate. He will never return in another form, will have no spiritual life. He will be, plainly, dead. Because this has long been a maseni belief, millennia old, it has come to be fact. As you know, the supernatural is at the mercy of human creation, just as humanity is at the mercy of the spirits' creations. It is a closed circle. God created us, yet we created God, sort of like your riddle: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
"Theoretically," Brutus said, "you've brought us to another impasse."
Galiotor Fils looked down at the hound and said, "How so?"
"You told us your embassy people weren't killers. Yet, if they purposefully denied Tesserax a proper burial ceremony, they killed his soul, if not his physical being."
The maseni sat down again, compressing himself into the seat that was too small for him, arranging his yellow robes, brushing at his face with both hands. "I've considered this obvious contradiction, before coming here."
"And you can explain it?" Jessie asked.
Galiotor Fils leaned away from the back of the chair. "The only reason for disposing of Tesserax, both physically and spiritually, would be to keep him from making public some secret which my government finds dangerous. By letting his soul dissipate, they silence him even after death, when he might normally have come back to expose them. If he held a secret of proper magnitude, perhaps the embassy people could be lead into such a heinous crime."
"Earlier, you said they were specially tested for psychological defects. Wouldn't the ability to kill be a defect?" Jessie asked.
Galiotor Fils looked down at the floor and did not speak for a long time. When he did finally have something to say, it came in a small voice, a child's voice, soft and distant: "I don't know what to think, anymore."
Brutus said, "Where is your brood brother buried?"
Galiotor looked up. "The maseni cemetery, outside of Los Angeles. Why do you ask?"
"It may be necessary to go there, during the course of the investigation," Brutus said.
"Then you'll take the case?"
"We'll take it," Jessie said.
The alien stood again, energized by elation, this time, and he said, "How can I express my gratitude?"
"Give us a fat retainer fee," Brutus said.
"Yeah," Jessie said. "That'll be a start, anyway."
Chapter Three
Helena was nude when she reached out and answered the vidphone, her large breasts grazing the video pickup scanner for a brief moment before she leaned back. She glanced at the stunned face in the screen and, before the caller could recover, she handed the receiver to Jessie. "It's for you," she said. "Myer Hanlon's returning the call you placed to his robosecretary."
Jessie scrambled off the unmade day bed and slid into the shape-changing chair behind his desk. He was nude, too, and he shivered as the cool plastic nuzzled around, him. "It's after midnight, Myer. When I called your mechanical Girl Friday, I didn't think you'd get my message so soon."
Myer swallowed hard and said, "Since I've changed over from straight sleuthing to these supernatural cases, I've had to take on night hours, like you. So many of the people you deal with, in these things, only come out at night." He hesitated, craned his neck as if trying to see beyond Jessie, and he said, "Say, Jess…"
"Yeah?"
"Was that Helena?"
"It was."
"You know, I've only ever seen Helena over the phone — and then only her face. I mean, I didn't know she was so… so… so…"
"Dynamite," Jessie said.
"Exactly!" Myer beamed. "Is she — married?"
"She doesn't believe in marriage," Jessie said.
"Wonderful! Do you know if she's doing anything Friday?"
"Myer, you ought to know that Helena is an unabashed sexist. She can't seem to establish a normal relationship with a man, because she thinks of us as sex objects and nothing more."
"Great, great!" Myer said. "About Friday now—"
Behind Jessie, Brutus howled long and low, and Helena cried out in what sounded like pleasure.
"Brutus, for God's sake, control yourself while I'm on the phone, would you?" Jessie asked.
Myer looked shocked. "You mean the three of you… That she lets Brutus… I mean, that she…"
"Like many modern women," Jessie patiently explained, "Helena has catholic tastes. She goes for flesh-and-blood lovers and for a few supernatural ones as well."
"But Brutus!" Myer said.
"Myer, let's get back to business," Jessie said, scratching his bare, hairless chest. "You got something for me?"
Hanlon looked at some notes on his desk top. "Not much," he said. Clearly, his mind was still on Helena.
"Tell me anyway."
"Well, you wanted to know if anyone had come to me about a missing maseni diplomat named Galiotor Tesserax, and you said you'd pay for the information. That right?"
"Twenty credits," Jessie said.
"I was thinking more like forty," Myer said.
"Go ahead and think forty. It's not worth more than twenty. Should I credit your accounts with twenty, then?"
Myer hesitated only a second. "Okay."
Jessie lifted the lid on the computerized banking keyboard set in the top of his desk, and he typed out Myer's name. "What's your account number?"
'It's 88-88-34-34567," Myer said.
Jessie typed that out next, then punched twenty credits worth of buying power to Hanlon's account, closed the lid and looked back at the vidphone screen. "Now, what have you got?"