Invasion of the Body Snatchers (4 page)

He nodded. "I should have brought you along; it was stupid of me not to."

Opening the car door, I leaned forward to let Theodora into the back seat, then Jack introduced her to Becky, and we drove on up to the house.

four

Jack's house is a green frame house sitting by itself on the side of a hill, and the garage is a part of the basement. The garage was empty, the door open, and Jack motioned me to drive right in. We got out of the car then, Jack snapped on a light, closed the garage door, then opened a door leading into the basement proper, motioning us to walk on in ahead of him.

We stepped into an ordinary basement: laundry tubs, a washing machine, a wooden sawhorse, stacked newspapers, and against one wall, on the floor, some cardboard cartons and several used paint cans. Jack walked past us across the room to another door, then stopped, turning toward us, his hand on the doorknob. He had a pretty good second-hand billiard table in there, I knew; he'd told me he used it a lot, just knocking the balls around by himself, doing a lot of his writing in his head. Now he looked at Becky, glancing at his wife, too. "Get hold of yourself," he said, then walked in, pulled the chain on the overhead light, and we followed after him.

The light over a billiard table is designed to light up the table surface brilliantly. It hangs low so it won't shine in your eyes as you play, and it leaves the ceiling in darkness. This one had a rectangular shade to confine the light to the table top only, and the rest of the room was left in semi-gloom. I couldn't see Becky's face very clearly, but I heard her gasp. Lying on the bright green table top under the sharp light of the 150-watt bulb, and covered with the rubberized sheet Jack kept on the billiard table, lay what was unmistakably a body. I turned to look at Jack, and he said, "Go ahead; pull it off."

I was irritated; this worried and scared me, and there was too damn much mystery to suit me; it occurred to me that the writer in Jack was laying on the dramatics a little heavily. I grabbed the rubber sheet, yanked it off, and tossed it to a corner of the table. Lying on the green felt, on its back, was the naked body of a man. It was maybe five feet ten inches tall - it isn't too easy to judge height, looking down on a body that way. He was white, the skin very pale in the brilliant shadowless light, and at one and the same time, it looked unreal and theatrical, and yet it was intensely, over real. The body was slim, maybe 140 pounds, but well-nourished and well-muscled. I couldn't judge the age, except that he wasn't old. The eyes were open, staring directly up into the overhead light, in a way that made your own eyes smart. They were blue, and very clear. There was no wound visible, and no other obvious cause of death. I walked over beside Becky, slipped my arm under hers, and turned to Jack. "Well?"

He shook his head, refusing to comment. "Keep looking. Examine it. Notice anything strange?"

I turned back to the body on the table. I was getting more and more irritated. I didn't like this; there was something strange about this dead man on the table, but I couldn't tell what, and that only made me angrier. "Come on, Jack" - I looked at him again. "I don't see anything but a dead man. Let's cut out the mystery; what's it all about?"

Again he shook his head, frowning pleadingly, "Miles, take it easy. Please. I don't want to tell you my impression of what's wrong; I don't want to influence you. If it's there to see, I want you to find it yourself, first. And if it isn't, if I'm imagining things, I want to know that, too. Bear with me, Miles," he said gently. "Take a good look at that thing."

I studied the corpse, walking slowly around the 'table, stopping to look down at it from various angles, Jack, Becky, and Theodora stepping aside out of my way as I moved. "All right," I said presently, and reluctantly, apologizing to Jack with the tone of my voice. "There
is
something funny about it. You're not imagining things. Or if you are, so am I." For maybe half a minute longer I stood staring down at what lay on the table. "Well, for one thing," I said finally, "you don't often see a body like this, dead or alive. In a way, it reminds me of a few tubercular patients I've seen - those who've been in sanitariums nearly all their lives." I looked around at them all. "You can't live an ordinary life without picking up a few scars, a few nicks here and there. But these sanitarium patients never had a chance to get any; their bodies were unused. And that's how this one looks" - I nodded at the pale, motionless body under the light. "It's not tubercular, though. It's a well-built, healthy body; those are good muscles. But it never played football or hockey, never fell on a cement stair, never broke a bone. It looks …unused.That what you mean?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah. What else?"

"Becky, you all right?" I glanced across the table at her.

"Yes." She nodded, biting at her lower lip.

"The face," I said, answering Jack. I stood looking down at that face, waxy-white, absolutely still and motionless, the china-clear eyes staring. "It's not - immature, exactly." I wasn't sure how to say this. "Those are good bones; it's an adult face. But it looks" - I hunted for the word, and couldn't find it - "vague. It looks-"

Jack interrupted, his voice tense and eager; he was actually smiling a little. "Did you ever see them make medals?"

"Medals?"

"Yeah, fine medals. Medallions."

"No."

"Well, for a really fine job, in hard metal," Jack said, settling into his explanation, "they make two impressions." I didn't know what he was talking about or why. "First, they take a die and make impression number one, giving the blank metal its first rough shape. Then they stamp it with die number two, and it's the second die that gives it the details: the fine lines and delicate modeling you see in a really good medallion. They have to do it that way because that second die, the one with the details, couldn't force its way into smooth metal. You have to give it that first rough shape with die number one." He stopped, looking firm me to Becky, to see if we were following him.

"So?" I said a little impatiently.

"Well, usually a medallion shows a face. And when you look at it after die number one, the face isn't
finished.
It's all there, all right, but the details that give it character aren't." He stared at me. "Miles, that's what this face looks like. It's all there; it has lips, a nose, eyes, skin, and bone structure underneath. But there are no lines, no
details,
no character. It's unformed. Look at it!" His voice rose a notch. "It's like a blank face, waiting for the final finished face to be stamped onto it!"

He was right. I'd never seen a face like that before in my life. It wasn't flabby; you certainly couldn't say that. But somehow it was formless, characterless. It really wasn't a face; not yet. There was no
life
to it, it wasn't marked by experience; that's the only way I can explain it. "Who is he?" I said.

"I don't know." Jack walked to the doorway and nodded out at the basement and the staircase leading upstairs. "There's a little closet under the stairway; it's walled in with plywood to make a little storage space. It's half full of old junk: clothes in cardboard boxes, burned-out electrical appliances, an old vacuum cleaner, an iron, some lamps, stuff like that. We hardly ever open it. And there are some old books in there, too. I found him in there; I was hunting for a reference I needed, and thought it might be in one of those books. He was lying there, on top of the cartons, just the way you see him now; scared me stiff. I backed out like a cat in a doghouse; got a hell of a bump on the head" - he touched his scalp. "Then I went back and pulled him out. I thought he might still be alive, I couldn't tell. Miles, how soon does rigor mortis set in?"

"Oh - eight to ten hours."

"Feel him," said Jack. In a way he was enjoying himself, as a man will who's made a big promise and is living up to it.

I picked up an arm from the table, by the wrist; it was loose and flexible. It didn't even feel clammy, or particularly cold.

"No rigor mortis," Jack said. "Right?"

"That's right," I said, "but rigor mortis isn't invariable. There are certain conditions-" I stopped talking; I didn't know what to make of this.

"If you want," said Jack, "you can turn him over, but you won't find any wounds in the back, and there are none in the hair. Not a sign of what killed him."

I hesitated, but legally I couldn't touch this body, and I picked up the rubber sheet, and tossed it over the body again, half covering it. "All right," I said. "Where to, now? Upstairs?"

"Yeah." Jack nodded at the doorway, and stood with his hand on the light chain till we'd all filed out.

Up in the living-room, Theodora politely asked us to sit down, went around turning on lamps and placing ash trays, then went into the kitchen and came back in a moment without her apron. She sat down in a big easy chair, Becky and I were on the davenport, and Jack was sitting by the window in a wooden rocking chair, looking down on the town. Almost the whole front wall of his living-room is a single sheet of plate glass, and you could see the lights of the entire town scattered through the hills; it's a nice room.

"Want a drink or anything?" Jack said then.

Becky shook her head, and I said, "No thanks; you folks go ahead, though."

Jack said no, glancing at his wife, and she shook her head. Then he said, "We called you, Miles, because you're a doctor, but also because you're a guy who can face facts. Even when the facts aren't what they ought to be. You're not a man to knock yourself out trying to talk black into white, just because it's more comfortable. Things are what they are with you, as we have reason to know."

I shrugged, and didn't say anything.

"You got anything more to say about this body downstairs?" Jack asked.

I sat there for a moment or so, fiddling with a button on my coat, then made up my mind to say it. "Yeah," I said, "I have. This doesn't make sense, it makes no sense at all, but I'd give a lot to perform an autopsy on that body, because you know what I think I'd find?" I glanced around the room - at Jack, Theodora, then Becky - and no one answered; they just sat there waiting. "I think I'd find no cause of death at all. I think I'd find every organ in as perfect condition as the body is externally. Everything in perfect working order, ready to go."

I let them think about that for a moment, then gave them some more; I felt utterly foolish saying it, and utterly certain I was right. "That isn't all. I think that when I opened the stomach, there'd be nothing inside. Not a crumb, not a particle of food, digested or undigested; nothing. Empty as a newborn baby's. And if I opened the bowel, the same thing: no waste, not a bit. Nothing at all. Why?" I glanced around at them again. "Because I don't believe that that body downstairs ever died. There is no cause of death, because it never died. And it never died because it's never been alive." I shrugged, and sat back on the davenport. "There you are. That screwy enough for you?"

"Yeah." Jack said, slowly and emphatically nodding his head, the women silently watching us. "That's exactly screwy enough for me. I only wanted it confirmed."

"Becky" - I turned to look at her - "what do you think?" She shook her head, frowning, then sighed." I'm - stunned. But I think I would like that drink, after all."

We all smiled then, and Jack started to get up, but Theodora said, "I'll get them," and stood. "One for everyone?" she asked, and we all said yes.

Then we sat waiting, getting out cigarettes, striking matches, holding lights, till Theodora came back and handed drinks around. We each took a sip, then Jack said, "That's exactly what I think, and so does Theodora. And the thing is, I didn't tell her anything about my impressions. I let her look at that thing, and form her own opinion, just like I did with you, Miles. And she's the one who first made the comparison with the medallions; we saw them making medallions once, on our honeymoon in Washington." Jack sighed, and shook his head. "We've talked and thought about this all day, Miles; then decided to call you."

"You tell anyone else?"

"No."

"Why didn't you call the police?"

"I don't know." Jack looked at me, a little smile around his mouth. "You want to call them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Then I smiled, too. "I don't know. But I don't."

"Yeah." Jack nodded in agreement, then we all sat there for several moments, sipping our drinks. Jack rattled the ice idly in his glass and, staring down at it, said slowly, "I have a feeling that this is a time to do something more than call the police. That this isn't a time to pass the buck, and let someone else do the worrying. What exactly could the police do? This isn't just a body, and we know it. It's" - he shrugged, his face sombre - "something terrible. Something… I don't know what." He looked up from his glass, glancing around at us all. "I only know, and somehow I'm certain of this, that we mustn't make a mistake here. That there is some one thing - the wise thing, the single correct thing, the one and only thing to do - and if we fail to do it, if we guess wrong, something terrible is going to happen."

I said, "Do what, for instance?"

"I don't know." Jack turned away to stare out the window for a moment. Then he looked back at us, and smiled a little. "I have a terrible urge to… call the President at the White House direct, or the head of the Army, the FBI, the Marines, or the Cavalry, or something." He shook his head in wry, smiling amusement at himself, then the smile faded. "Miles, what I mean is, I want
somebody
- exactly the right person, whoever he is - to realize from the very start how important this is. And I want him, or them, to do whatever should be done, without a mistake. And the thing is that whoever I got in touch with, if he'd even listen to or believe me, might be exactly the wrong person, somebody who'd do exactly the worst thing possible. Whatever that might be. But I do know this isn't something for the local police. This is-" He shrugged, realizing he was repeating himself, and stopped talking.

"I know," I said. "I have the same feeling, the feeling that the world better hope we handle this right." In medicine sometimes, on a puzzling case, an answer or a clue will pop up out of nowhere; the subconscious mind at work, I suppose. I said, "Jack, how tall are you?"