From DEATH FOR A DISTANT STRANGER:  “MARCH OF THE Z-MEN”

By Willis QuickWillis Quick

Felicia haranged two burly sheriff’s deputies.  One scribbled laboriously on a notepad, while the other worked on a cud of tobacco.  When he leaned to spit, Felicia seized his arm and shook her head.  He hitched his belt, strolled a dozen yards to the big excavation and spat an ambeer jet into the refuse heap.  Adjusting his campaign hat, he ambled to the ambulance parked by the strings and tapes marking the archaeological dig.
            The coroner, a young man with stubbly red hair, dressed in worn suntan trousers and a rumpled white shirt with its sleeves rolled, leaned on the back door of the ambulance.  As Poole arrived in earshot, he was in mid-conversation with the deputy, saying, “. . . one shot in the back of the head, biggish caliber.  I’d say a handgun, .38 or so.  We’ll tell you directly.  No other visible marks.  Just your average execution, hey Lew?”
            The deputy shuffled his feet and grunted.  The coroner continued, “We found the usual stuff in his pockets, no sign he was robbed or stripped.  Oh, and one damned odd thing.  This—”
            He held up a plastic baggy enclosing a tattered copy of a pulp magazine.  Its cover—lurid in reds and blues and yellows—bore a blaze-lettered title:  STRANGE TALES OF SPACE-TIME.  Smaller type read April 1949.  The cover art depicted a bizarre creature. Something like an inflated turnip with four bulbous eyes, holding a thin, nearly nude woman in grips like lobster claws.  Yellow circus type below it read MARCH OF THE Z-MEN by Elron Naismith.
            Poole introduced himself, flashing his TransAtlas card to the coroner and deputy, who seemed incurious about him.  Poole pointed to the evidence bag.
            “This was on the body?”
            “Yep—in the left hip pocket, kind of crumpled down.”
            The deputy took the bag and another envelope of effects, and Poole drifted back to the site.  Felicia van Kamp was surrounded by her team, talking in a low, earnest voice.  Poole recognized Lily, white-faced and trembling.  The small man named Wilson held her by the arms.  Kelley stood a few steps away, head lowered and tears on her cheeks.
            “Jesus,” she whispered, “why would anyone . . . ?”  She scrubbed at her face.
            The same grizzled deputy left his cruiser and ambled toward Poole.  Straightening his DI hat, he said, “Poole?  I’m Lew Houseman.  I checked you out with the SP office.  You’ve got some friends.  They said you can hang around, if you ain’t a nuisance.  You don’t aim to be a nuisance, do you, Mr. Poole?”  Behind a friendly customer-service smile, his gray eyes were hard as the flint arrowheads Felicia had shown Poole.
            “I observe all parts of the Boy Scout Code,” Poole said.  “At least the cheerful, helpful, obedient parts.”
            “Good,” Houseman said.  “We don’t often haul Boy Scouts to the calaboose.”
            Two white-coated attendants loaded the black body bag into the ambulance.  Several plainclothes officers Poole decided were forensics men still hunkered beside the trench, poking the red soil.  One said flatly, “Filled really neat.  Whoever stuck him here did a tidy job.  Nothing extra disturbed.”
            Felicia was next to Poole.  “If I hadn’t been all tied in knots, I’d have seen it.  They think it’s neat, but you can spot it a hundred yards away.”
            “You can see it.  I can’t and they can’t.  Might suggest that whoever planted Arnold knew some archaeology.  Enough to fool a layman—?”
            She shook her head.  “Look—he was right here at the end of this cut.  Anybody would know we’d find him, and soon.”
            “Somebody wanted him found?”
            “You don’t hide something where you know a whole gang of experts are going to look first, do you?  It doesn’t make sense.  A thousand square miles of scrub and shale around.  If you wanted to lose a . . . body forever, this is the best place on earth!”
            “So Arnold was, er, planted here?  To discredit you?  Or your dig?  Or Henley’s operation?”
            “I don’t know.  Why would that work?  It won’t stop us.  It’s really crude . . .  Shit, I don’t think the cops will see that.”
            “Lew Houseman seems a shrewd cookie.”
            She kicked a loose stone then bent and retrieved it, rolling it between her fingers.  “Yeh,” she said.  “If you have a job for muscle.  Ah—”  She tossed the pebble away.
            As he walked with Felicia to the little headquarters tent that gave the diggers shade and respite, Poole saw a flicker of motion.  A scrap of mustard-yellow paper hung on a branch of ocotillo, wiggling like a banner in the breeze.  Poole picked it from the thorn impaling it.
            It was a single-sheet pamphlet garishly printed in red.  At the top a drawing, a stylized eye of Horus surrounded by alternating sunrays and thunderbolts.  Bold script read THE EYE OF ELRON.  Below straggled columns of crowded agate type:
                                   A NEW AGE has dawned on the third planet from Sol, an age
                                   heralded by cataclysms of the 20th century.  Have you felt new
                                   life stirring in you?  Have you gazed with new eyes on a world
                                   free of sin and anguish?  What mankind thought were mere myths
                                   and dreams are the living creatures of coming ages, when Terra
                                   will be cleansed of error and disease, when crime, war and human
                                   misery shall cease.  Learn to see anew with new eyes.  The Nova
                                   Terra Foundation extends the hand of wisdom.  Discover the
                                   realities behind so-called “fantasies” like
  • Extraterrestrial Beings live among us and guide the affairs of the Human Race.
  • Mindpowers like telekinesis, teleportation and telepathy
    are inherent in all humans and have been mastered by great
    leaders throughout history.
  • immortality is within anyone’s reach, without the aid of
    science or so-called religion.
  • World leaders in our present poisoned age have conspired
    to repress and destroy the ancient wisdom of Atlantis, Mu and Cibola, empires of peace and progress greater than any known in our censored schoolbook histories.
  • The human organism is a perfect, self-regulating, self-healing
    entity whose capacities are limitless if unfettered from self-imposed ignorance and error.
           Poole frowned and flipped the sheet.  Felicia glanced back and growled, “Jesus—another one?  Those damn things are everywhere.  I’d like to catch the flunky who’s—”
           She subsided.  The back of the sheet read:
                                The Path of Stellar Knowledge has now been retraced, after eons of suppression.
                                The New Science of Aleatics reveals the basic truths of human life and the shape of
                                cosmic destiny.  A birth into new wisdom, new mental and physical powers can be
                                yours! Return the form below for complete information on The Aleatic Society.  If
                                you are sick of the confusion and disorder of your life, if you cower in fear and
                                uncertainty, the New Way awaits your hand and heart.
            At the bottom of the sheet was a box asking for personal data.  The return address was New Age Syndics/P.O. Box 1134  Deseret Station, Utah.  Poole slid the sheet into his shirt pocket.
            Poole left Jason Henley about noon.  Henley was still shaking and muttering as he climbed into a big power-yellow BMW sedan and gunned it up the dusty trail.  The sheriff’s vehicles had gone, and the sun was at the apex of the pale blue sky.  Felicia had gathered her diggers and sent them on their ways.  All seemed equally grief-stricken and shaken to Poole’s eye.  Felicia trudged up and stood next to Poole.  Three buzzards described slow circles a mile or so across the valley. ###

jptArchive Issue 5

Copyright 2008- WJ Schafer & WC Smith - All Rights Reserved

The Journal of Provincial Thought
luminance
Pigasus the JPT flying pig, copyright 2008 William J. Schafer
jptArchive Issue 5
Comic book, lobster beast has girl- Schafer illustration
This excerpt from the third Richard Poole novel finds our intrepid investigator at the site of an archaeological dig way out West in the Four Corners region, where a modern corpse has been found deposited in the ruins of an ancient Amerindian village.  In this story, an ominous intersection between big business, science fact (archaeology) and science fiction impels a tale of alien invasion, flying saucers and large-scale land grabs.