The Puppet Masters

  But he did not know about the seven apes.

  It was nearly daylight, so I understand, before Martinez and Rexton got it through their heads that the messages they had gotten back about successes were actually faked, fakes sent by their own men—our own men—but hag-ridden, possessed, and brought into the masquerade. After my report, more than an hour too late to stop the raids, the Old Man had tried to get them not to send in any more men, but they were flushed with success and anxious to make a clean sweep.

  The Old Man asked the President to insist on visual checks of what was happening, but the operation was being controlled by relay through Space Station Alpha and there just aren’t enough channels to parallel audio with video through a space station. Rexton had said, “They know what they are up against; quit worrying. As fast as we get local stations back in our hands, our boys will patch back into the ground relay net and you will have all the visual evidence you want.”

  The Old Man had pointed out that by then it would be too late. Rexton had burst out, “Confound it, man!—I can’t stop soldiers in action to have them take pictures of bare backs. Do you want a thousand men to let themselves be killed just to quiet your jitters?”

  The President had backed him up.

  By early morning they had their visual evidence. Stereo stations in the Central Valley were giving out with the same old pap; Rise and Shine with Mary Sunshine, Breakfast with the Browns, and such junk. There was not a station with the President’s stereocast, not one that even conceded that anything had happened. The military dispatches tapered off and stopped around four o’clock and Rexton’s frantic calls were not answered. Task Force Redemption of Schedule Counter Blast ceased to exist—spurlos versenkt.

  I got this not from the Old Man but from Mary. Being the President’s little shadow who went in and out with him, she had a box seat. I did not get to see the Old Man until nearly eleven the next morning. He let me report without comment, and without bawling me out, which was worse.

  He was about to dismiss me when I put in, “How about my prisoner? Didn’t he confirm my conclusions?”

  “Oh, him? Still unconscious, by the last report. They don’t expect him to live. The psychotechnicians can’t get anything out of him.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “You stick to things you understand.”

  “Well—have you got something for me to do?”

  “Not at the moment. I think you had better—No, do this: trot down to the National Zoo. You’ll see some things that may put a different light on what you picked up in Kansas City.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look up Doctor Horace, he’s the Assistant Director. Tell him I sent you.”

  So I went down to see the animals. I tried to find Mary, but she was tied up.

  Horace was a nice little guy who looked like one of his own baboons; he turned me over to a Doctor Vargas who was a specialist in exotic biologies—the same Vargas who was on the Second Venus Expedition. He told me what had happened and I looked at the gibbons, meantime rearranging my prejudices.

  “I saw the President’s broadcast,” he said conversationally, “weren’t you the man who—I mean, weren’t you the—”

  “Yes, I was ‘the man who’,” I agreed shortly.

  “Then you can tell us a great deal about these phenomena. Your opportunities have been unique.”

  “Perhaps I should be able to,” I admitted slowly, “but I can’t.”

  “Do you mean that no cases of fission reproduction took place while you were, uh, their prisoner?”

  “That’s right.” I thought about it and went on, “At least, I think that’s right.”

  “Don’t you know? I was given to understand that, uh, victims have full memory of their experiences?”

  “Well, they do and they don’t.” I tried to explain the odd detached frame of mind of a servant of the masters.

  “I suppose it could happen while you sleep.”

  “Maybe. Besides sleep, there is another time, or rather times, which are difficult to remember. During conference.”

  “Conference?”

  So I explained. His eyes lit up, “Oh, you mean ‘conjugation’.”

  “No, I mean ‘conference’.”

  “We mean the same thing. Don’t you see? Conjugation and fission—they reproduce at will, whenever the food supply, that is to say the supply of hosts, permits. Probably one contact for each fission; then, when the opportunity exists, fission—two fully adult daughter parasites in a matter of hours…or less, possibly.”

  I thought it over. If that were true—and looking at the gibbons, I could not doubt it—then why had we depended on shipments at the Constitution Club? Or had we? In fact I did not know; I did what my master wanted done and saw only what came under my eyes. But why had we not saturated New Brooklyn as Kansas City had been saturated. Lack of time?

  It was clear how Kansas City had been saturated. With plenty of “livestock” at hand and a space ship loaded with transit cells to draw from, the titans had reproduced to match the human population.

  I am no biologist, exotic or otherwise, but I can do simple arithmetic. Assume a thousand slugs in that space ship, the one we believed to have landed near Kansas City; suppose that they could reproduce when given the opportunity every twenty-four hours.

  First day, one thousand slugs.

  Second day, two thousand.

  Third day, four thousand.

  At the end of the first week, the eighth day, that is—a hundred and twenty-eight thousand slugs.

  After two weeks, more than sixteen million slugs.

  But we did not know that they were limited to spawning once a day; on the contrary the gibbons proved they weren’t. Nor did we know that a flying saucer could lift only a thousand transit cells; it might be ten thousand—or more—or less. Assume ten thousand as breeding stock with fission every twelve hours. In two weeks the answer comes out—

  MORE THAN TWO AND A HALF TRILLION!!!!

  The figure did not mean anything; it was cosmic. There aren’t anything like that many people on the whole globe, not even if you counted in apes.

  We were going to be knee deep in slugs—and that before long. I felt worse than I had in Kansas City.

  Dr. Vargas introduced me to a Doctor McIlvaine of the Smithsonian Institution; McIlvaine was a comparative psychologist, the author, so Vargas told me, of Mars, Venus, and Earth: A Study in Motivating Purposes. Vargas seemed to expect me to be impressed but I was not as I had not read it. Anyhow, how can anyone study the motives of Martians when they were all dead before we swung down out of trees?

  They started swapping trade talk not intelligible to an outsider; I continued to watch the gibbons. Presently McIlvaine asked me, “Mr. Nivens, how long does a conference last?”

  “Conjugation,” Vargas corrected him.

  “Conference,” McIlvaine repeated. “Keep your mind on the more important aspect.”

  “But, Doctor,” Vargas insisted, “there are parallels in terrestrial biology. In primitive reproduction, conjugation is the means of gene exchange whereby mutation is spread through the body of the—”

  “You are being anthropocentric. Doctor. You do not know that this life form has genes.”

  Vargas turned red. “I presume you will allow me gene equivalents?” he said stiffly.

  “Why should I? I repeat, sir, that you are reasoning by analogy where there is no reason to judge that analogy exists. There is one and only one characteristic common to all life forms and that is the drive to survive.”

  “And to reproduce,” insisted Vargas.

  “Suppose the organism is immortal and has no need to reproduce?”

  “But—” Vargas shrugged. “Your question is not germane; we know that they reproduce.” He gestured at the apes.

  “And I am suggesting,” McIlvaine came back, “that this is not reproduction, but a single organism availing itself of more space, as a man might add a wing to his house. No, really. D
octor, I do not wish to be offensive, but it is possible to get so immersed in the idea of the zygote-gamete cycle that one forgets that there may be other patterns.”

  Vargas started out, “But throughout the entire system—”

  McIlvaine cut him short. “Anthropocentric, terrocentric, solocentric—it is still a provincial approach. These creatures may be from outside the solar system entirely.”

  I said, “Oh, no!” I had had a sudden flash picture of the planet Titan and with it a choking sensation.

  Neither one paid any attention to me. McIlvaine continued, “If you must have analogy, take the amoeba—an earlier, more basic, and much more successful life form than ours. The motivational psychology of the amoeba—”

  I switched off my ears; I suppose free speech gives a man the right to talk about the ‘psychology’ of an amoeba, but I don’t have to listen. They never did get back to asking me how long a conference takes, not that I could have told them. A conference is, well—timeless.

  They did do some direct experimentation which raised my opinion of them a little. Vargas ordered brought in a baboon who was wearing a slug and had him introduced into the cage with the gibbons and the chimps. Up to then the gibbons had been acting like gibbons, grooming each other and such, except that they seemed rather quiet—and kept a sharp eye on our movements. As soon as the newcomer was dumped in they gathered in a ring facing outwards and went into direct conference, slug to slug. McIlvaine jabbed his finger excitedly at them. “You see? You see? Conference is not for reproduction, but for exchange of memory. The organism, temporarily divided, has now re-identified itself.”

  I could have told him the same thing without the double talk; a master who has been out of touch always gets into direct conference as soon as possible.

  “Hypothesis!” Vargas snorted. “Pure hypothesis—they have no opportunity to reproduce just now. George!” He ordered the boss of the handling crew to bring in another ape.

  “Little Abe?” asked the crew boss.

  “No, I want one which is not supporting a parasite. Let me see—make it Old Red.”

  The crew boss glanced at the gibbons, looked away at once, and said, “Gripes, Doc, I’d rather you didn’t pick on Old Red.”

  “This won’t hurt him.”

  “Why can’t I bring in Satan? He’s a mean bastard anyway.”

  “All right, all right! But hurry it up; you are keeping Dr. McIlvaine waiting.”

  So they brought in Satan, a coal black chimp. He may have been aggressive elsewhere; he was not so here. They dumped him inside, he took one look around, shrank back against the door, and began to whine. It was like watching an execution; I could not stand to look but I couldn’t look away. I had had my nerves under control—a man can get used to anything; there are people who make their livings by pumping out cesspools—but the ape’s hysteria was contagious. I wanted to run.

  At first the hag-ridden apes did nothing; they simply stared at him like a jury. It went on that way for a long while. Satan’s whines changed to low, sobbing moans and he covered his face with his hands. Presently Vargas said, “Doctor! Look!”

  “Where?”

  “Lucy—the old female. There.” He pointed.

  It was the matriarch of the family of consumptive gibbons. Her back was toward us; I could see that the slug thereon had humped itself together. An iridescent line ran down the center of it.

  It began to split as an egg splits. In a few minutes only, the division was complete. One new slug centered itself over her spine; the other flowed down her back. She was squatting, buttocks almost to the floor; it slithered off and plopped gently on the concrete.

  It crept slowly toward Satan. The ape must have peeked through his fingers, for he screamed hoarsely—and swarmed up into the top of the cage.

  So help me, they sent a squad to arrest him. Four of the biggest—two gibbons, a chimp, and a baboon. They tore him loose and hauled him down and held him face down on the floor.

  The slug slithered closer.

  It was a good two feet away when it grew a pseudopod—slowly, at first—a slimy stalk that weaved around like a cobra. Then it lashed out and struck the ape on the foot. The others promptly let go of him but Satan did not move.

  The titan seemed to pull itself in by the extension it had formed and attached itself to Satan’s foot. From there it crawled up; when it reached the base of his spine the ape stirred. Before it was settled at the top of his back Satan sat up. He shook himself and joined the others, stopping only to look us over.

  Vargas and McIlvaine started talking excitedly, apparently quite unmoved otherwise. I wanted to smash something—for me, for Satan, for the whole simian race.

  Vargas was insisting that nothing had been proved, while McIlvaine maintained that we were seeing something new to our concepts; an intelligent creature which was, by the fashion in which it was organized, immortal and continuous in its personal identity—or its group identity; the argument grew confused. In any case McIlvaine was theorizing that such a creature would have continuous memory of all its experiences, not just from the moment of fission, but back to its racial beginning. He described the slug as a four dimensional worm in space-time, intertwined with itself as a single organism, and the talk grew so esoteric as to be silly.

  As for me, I did not know and did not care. All very interesting, no doubt, but the only way I cared about slugs was to kill them. I wanted to kill them, early and often and as many as possible.

  About that uninterrupted “racial memory” idea: wouldn’t it be rather cumbersome to be able to recall exactly what you did the second Wednesday in March a million years ago?

  XX

  For a wonder, when I got back the Old Man was available and wanted to talk. The President had left to address a secret session of the United Nations and the Old Man had not been included in the party. I wondered if he had fallen out of official favor, but I did not say so.

  He had me report fully on what I had seen at the zoo and questioned me closely; he had not been down there himself. I added my opinion of Vargas and McIlvaine. “A couple of boy scouts,” I complained, “comparing stamp collections. They don’t realize it’s serious.”

  The Old Man took time out before answering. “Don’t sell those boys short, son,” he advised me. “They are more likely to come up with the answer than are you and I.”

  “Humph!” I said, or something stronger. “They are more likely to let those slugs escape. Remember Graves?”

  “I do remember Graves. You don’t understand scientific detachment.”

  “I hope I never do!”

  “You won’t. But it’s the ignition system of the world; without it, we’re sunk. Matter of fact, they did let one escape.”

  “Huh?”

  “Didn’t they tell you about the elephant?”

  “What elephant? They damn near didn’t tell me anything; they got interested in each other and ignored me.”

  “Sure that’s not what’s biting you? About the elephant: an ape with a rider got out, somehow. Its body was found trampled to death in the elephant house. And one of the elephants was gone.”

  “You mean there is an elephant loose with a slug on him?” I had a horrid vision of what that could mean—something like a tank with a cybernetic brain.

  “Her,” the Old Man corrected me, “it was a cow elephant. I didn’t say so, anyhow. They found her over in Maryland, quietly pulling up cabbages. No parasite.”

  “Where did the slug get to?” Involuntarily I glanced around. The Old Man chuckled.

  “Don’t worry; I don’t have it in here. But a duo was stolen in the adjoining village. I’d say the slug is somewhere west of the Mississippi by now.”

  “Anybody missing?”

  He shrugged again. “How can you tell, in a free country? At least, the titan can’t hide on a human host anywhere short of Zone Red.”

  That seemed true; Schedule Bare Back appeared to be operating one hundred percent. That made me thin
k of something else, something I had seen at the zoo and had not reasoned through. Whatever it was, it eluded me. The Old Man went on, “It’s taken drastic action to make the bare-shoulders order stick, though. The President has had a flood of protests on moral grounds, not to mention the National Association of Men’s Haberdashers.”

  “Huh?”

  “You would think we were trying to sell their daughters down to Rio, the way some of them carry on. There was a delegation in, called themselves The Mothers of the Republic, or some such nonsense.”

  “The President’s time is being wasted like that, at a time like this?”

  “McDonough handled them. But he roped me in on it, damn his eyes.” The Old Man looked pained. “We told them that they could not see the President unless they stripped absolutely naked. That stopped ’em.”

  The thought that had been bothering me came to the surface. “Say, boss, you might have to.”

  “‘Have to’ what?”

  “Make people strip naked.”

  He chewed his lip and looked worried. “What are you driving at?”

  “Do we know, as a certainty, that a slug can attach itself to its host only near the base of the brain?”

  “You should know, better than I do.”

  “I thought I did, but now I’m not sure. That’s the way we always did it, when I was, uh, with them.” I recounted again, in more detail, what I had seen when Vargas had had poor old Satan exposed to a slug. “That ape moved as soon as the thing reached the base of his spine, clear down at his tail bone. Maybe they prefer to ride up near the brain—I’m sure they do. But maybe they don’t have to. Maybe they could ride down inside a man’s pants and just put out an extension to the end of his spinal cord.”

  “Hmm…you’ll remember, son, that the first time I had a crowd searched for one I made everybody peel clear down to the buff. That was not accidental; I wanted to be sure.”

  “I think you were justified. See here; they might be able to conceal themselves anywhere on the body, if they have to. Inside a pair of shorts, for example. Of course you couldn’t hide anything under some shorts—” I was thinking of the skin-tight things that Mary wore. “—but take those droopy drawers you’ve got on. One could hide in them and it would just make you look a bit satchel fannied—a bit more, I should say.”