The Puppet Masters (26 page)

This time I made sure. Despite Pirate’s wails and struggles I forced the slug against the coals and held it there, cat fur and my hands alike burning, until the slug dropped off directly into the flames. Then I took Pirate out and laid him on the floor. He was no longer struggling. I did for him what I had done for Mary, made sure that he was no longer burning anywhere and went back to Mary.

She was still unconscious. I squatted down beside her and sobbed.

An hour later I had done what I could for Mary. Her hair was almost gone from the left side of her head and there were burns on her shoulders and neck. But her pulse was strong, her respiration steady though fast and light, and I did not judge that she would lose much body fluid. I dressed her burns—I keep a rather full stock out there in the country—and gave her an injection to make her sleep. Then I had time for Pirate.

He was still on the floor where I had left him and he did not look good. He had gotten it much worse than Mary and probably flame in his lungs as well. I thought he was dead, but he lifted his head when I touched him. “I’m sorry, old fellow,” I whispered. I think I heard him mew.

I did for him what I had done for Mary, except that I was afraid to give him a soporific. After that I went into the bathroom and looked myself over.

The ear had stopped bleeding and I decided to ignore it, for the time being. Someday, when I had time, it would need to be rebuilt. My hands were what bothered me. I stuck them under hot water and yelped, then dried them in the air blast and that hurt, too. I could not figure out how I could dress them, and, besides, I needed to use them.

Finally I dumped about an ounce of the jelly for burns into each of a pair of plastic gloves and put them on. The stuff included a local anesthetic; I could get by. Then I went to the stereophone and called the village medical man. I explained to him carefully and correctly what had happened and what I had done about it and asked him to come at once.

“At
night
?” he said. “You must be joking.”

I said that I decidedly was not joking.

He answered, “Don’t ask the impossible, man. Yours makes the fourth alarm in this county; nobody goes out at night. You’ve done everything that can be done tonight; I’ll stop in and see your wife first thing in the morning.”

I told him to go straight to the devil first thing in the morning and switched off.

Pirate died a little after midnight. I buried him at once so that Mary would not see him. Digging hurt my hands but he did not take a very big hole. I said goodbye to him and came back in. Mary was resting quietly; I brought a chair to the bed and watched over her. Probably I dozed from time to time; I can’t be sure.

A
bout
dawn Mary began to struggle and moan. I stepped to the bed and put a hand on her. “There, baby, there—It’s all right. Sam’s here.”

Her eyes opened and for a moment held the same horror they had held when she was first possessed. Then she saw me and relaxed. “Sam! Oh, darling, I’ve had the most terrible dream.”

“It’s all right,” I repeated.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” She became aware of her own dressings; she looked dismayed and said, “It wasn’t a dream!”

“No, dearest, it wasn’t a dream. But it’s all right; I killed it.”

“You killed it? You’re sure it’s dead?”

“Quite sure.” The house still reeked with the stench of its dying.

“Oh. Come here, Sam. Hold me tight.”

“I’ll hurt your shoulders.”

“Hold me!” So I did, while trying to be careful of her burns, although she seemed indifferent to them. Presently her trembling slowed down and stopped almost completely. “Forgive me, darling—I’m being weak and womanish.”

“You should have seen the shape I was in when they got me back.”

“I did see. Now tell me what happened; I must know. The last I remember you were trying to force me into the fireplace.”

“Look. Mary, I couldn’t help it; I had to—I couldn’t get it off!”

She shook my shoulders and now it was she comforting me. “I know, darling, I know—and thank you for doing it! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Again I owe you everything.”

We both cried a bit and presently I blew my nose and went on, “You did not answer when I called you, so I went into the living room and there you were.”

“I remember—oh darling, I tried so hard!”

I stared at her. “I know you did—you tried to leave. But how did you? Once a slug gets you, that’s it. There’s no way to fight it.”

“Well, I lost—but I tried.” There was no answer to the mystery. Somehow, Mary had forced her will against that of a parasite—and that can’t be done. I
know
. True, she had succumbed, but I knew then that I was married to a human who was tougher and stronger than I was, despite her lovely curves and her complete femininity.

I had a sneaking hunch that had Mary not been able to resist the slug by some amount, however slight, I would have lost the struggle, handicapped as I was by what I could not do.

“I should have used a light, Sam,” she went on, “but it never occurred to me to be afraid
here
.” I nodded; this was the safe place, like crawling into bed or into sheltering arms. “Pirate came to me at once. I didn’t see the thing until I had reached down and touched him. Then it was too late.” She sat up, supporting herself on one arm. “Where is he, Sam? Is he all right? Call him in.”

So I had to tell her about Pirate. She listened without expression, nodded and never referred to him again. I changed the subject by saying, “Now that you are awake I had better fix you some breakfast.”

“
Don’t go
!” I stopped. “Don’t go out of my sight at all,” she went on, “Not for any reason. I’ll get up in a moment and get breakfast.”

“The hell you will. You’ll stay right in that bed, like a good little girl.”

“Come here and take off those gloves. I want to see your hands.” I did not take them off—could not bear to think about it; the anesthesia had worn off. She nodded and said grimly, “Just as I thought. You were burned worse than I was.”

So she got breakfast. Furthermore she ate—I wanted nothing but a pot of coffee. I did insist that she drink a lot, too; large area burns are no joke. Presently she pushed aside her plate, looked at me and said, “Darling, I’m not sorry it happened. Now I know. Now we’ve both been there.” I nodded humbly, knowing what she meant. Sharing happiness is not enough. She stood up and said, “Now we must go.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “now we must go. I want to get you to a doctor as soon as possible.”

“I did not mean that.”

“I know you didn’t.” There was no need to discuss it further; we both knew that the music had stopped and that now was time to go back to work. The heap we had arrived in was still sitting on my landing flat, piling up rental charges. It took about three minutes to burn the dishes, switch off everything but the permanent circuits, and get ready. I could not find my shoes but Mary remembered where I had left them.

Mary drove, because of my hands. Once in the air she turned to me and said, “Let’s go straight to the Section offices. We’ll get treatment there and find out what has been going on—or are your hands hurting too badly?”

“Suits,” I agreed. My hands were hurting but they would not be any worse for another hour of waiting. I wanted to learn the situation as soon as possible—and I wanted to get back to work. I asked Mary to switch on the squawk screen; I was as anxious to catch a newscast now as I had been anxious to avoid them before. But the car’s communication equipment was as junky as the rest of it; we could not even pick up audio. Fortunately the remote-control circuits were still okay, or Mary would have had to buck it through traffic by hand.

A thought had been fretting me for some time; I mentioned it to Mary. “A slug would not mount a cat just for the hell of it, would it?”

“I suppose not.”

“But
why
? It doesn’t make sense. But it
has
to make sense; everything they do makes sense, grisly sense, from their viewpoint.”

“But it did make sense. They caught a human that way.”

“Yes, I know. But how could they plan it? Surely there aren’t enough of them that they can afford to place themselves on cats on the off chance that the cat might catch a human. Or are there enough?” I remembered the speed with which a slug on an ape’s back had turned itself into two, I remembered Kansas City, saturated, and shivered.

“Why ask me, darling? I don’t have an analytical brain.” Which was true, in a way; there is nothing wrong with Mary’s brain but she jumps logic and arrives at her answers by instinct. Me, I have to worry it out by logic.

“Drop the modest little girl act and try this on for size: the first question is, ‘Where did the slug come from?’ It didn’t walk; it had to get to the Pirate on the back of another host. What host? I’d say it was Old John—John the Goat. I doubt if Pirate would have let any other human get close to him.”

“Old John?” Mary closed her eyes, then opened them. “I can’t get any feeling about it. I was never close to him.”

“It does not matter; by elimination I think it must be true. Old John wore a coat when everyone else was complying with the Bare Back order…getting away with it because he shuns people. Ergo, he was hag-ridden before Schedule Bare Back. But that does not get me any further. Why would a slug single out a hermit way up in the mountains?”

“To capture you.”

“Me?”

“To
recapture
you.”

It made some sense. Possibly any host that ever escaped them was a marked man; in that case the dozen-odd Congressmen and any others we had rescued—including Mary—were in special danger. I’d mark that down to report for analysis. No, not Mary—the only slug that knew she had been possessed was dead.

On the other hand they might want me in particular. What was special about me? I was a secret agent. More important, the slug that had ridden me must have known what I knew about the Old Man and known that I had access to him. That would be reason enough to try to get me back. I held an emotional certainty that the Old Man was their principal antagonist; the slug must have known that I thought so; he had full use of my mind.

That slug had even met the Old Man, talked with him. Wait a minute—that slug was dead. And my theory came tumbling down.

And built up again at once. “Mary,” I asked, “have you used your apartment since the morning you and I had breakfast there?”

“No. Why?”

“Don’t. Don’t go back there for any purpose. I recall thinking, while I was with
them
, that I would have to booby-trap it.”

“Well, you didn’t, did you? Or did you?”

“No, I did not. But it may have been booby-trapped since then. There may be the equivalent of Old John waiting, spider fashion, for you—or me—to return there.” I explained to her McIlvaine’s theory about the slugs, the “group memory” idea. “I thought at the time he was spinning the dream stuff scientists are so fond of. But now I don’t know; it’s the only hypothesis I can think of that covers everything…unless we assume that the titans are so stupid that they would as soon try to catch fish in a bathtub as in a brook. Which they aren’t.”

“Just a moment, dear—by Dr. McIlvaine’s theory each slug is really every other slug; is that it? In other words that
thing
that caught me last night was just as much the one that rode you when you were with them as was the one that actually did ride you—Oh, dear, I’m getting confused. I mean—”

“That’s the general idea. Apart, they are individuals; in direct conference they merge their memories and Tweedledum becomes exactly like Tweedledee. Then, if that is true, this one last night remembers everything it learned from me provided it had direct conference with the slug that rode me, or any other slug that had had, or a slug that had been linked through any number of slugs by direct conference to the slug that had ridden me, after the time it did—which you can bet it did, from what I know of their habits. It would have—the first one, I mean…wait a minute; this is getting involved. Take three slugs; Joe, Moe, and uh, Herbert. Herbert is the one last night; Moe is the one which—”

“Why give them names if they are not individuals?” Mary wanted to know.

“Just to keep them—No reason; let it lie that if McIlvaine is right there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of slugs who know exactly who you and I are, by name and by sight and everything, know where your apartment is, where my apartment is, and where our cabin is. They’ve got us on a list.”

“But—” She frowned. “That’s a horrid thought, Sam. How would they know when to find us at the cabin? You didn’t tell anybody we were going and I did not even know. Would they simply stake it out and wait? Yes, I suppose they would.”

“They must have. We don’t know that waiting matters to a slug; time may mean something entirely different to them.”

“Like Venerians,” she suggested. I nodded; a Venerian is likely as not to “marry” his own great-great-granddaughter—and be younger than his descendants. It depends on how they estivate, of course.

“In any case,” I went on, “I’ve got to report this, including our guesses as to what is behind it, for the boys in the analytical group to play with.”

I was about to go on to say that, if we were right, the Old Man would have to be especially careful, as it was he and not Mary and myself that they were after. But my phone sounded for the first time since my leave had started. I answered and the Old Man’s voice cut in ahead of the talker’s: “Report in person.”

“We’re on our way,” I acknowledged. “About thirty minutes.”

“Make it sooner. You use Kay Five; tell Mary to come in by Ell One. Move.” He switched off before I could ask him how he had known that Mary was with me.

“Did you get it?” I asked Mary.

“Yes, I was in the circuit.”

“Sounds as if the party was about to start.”

It was not until we had landed that I began to realize how drastically the situation had changed. We were complying with Schedule Bare Back; we had not heard of Schedule Sun Tan. Two cops stopped us as we got out. “Stay where you are!” one of them ordered. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”