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. Bu
t 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.”
You would not have known they were cops, except for the manner and the drawn guns. They were dressed in gun belts, shoes, and skimpy breech clouts—little more than straps. A second glance showed their shields clipped to their belts. “Now,” the same one went on, “Off with those pants, buddy.”
I did not move quickly enough to suit him. He barked, “Make it snappy! There have been two shot trying to escape already today; you may be the third.”
“Do it, Sam,” Mary said quietly. I did it. My shorts were a one-piece garment, with the underwear part built in; without them, I stood dressed in my shoes and a pair of gloves, feeling like a fool—but I had managed to keep both my phone and my gun covered up as I took off my shorts.
The cop made me turn around. His mate said, “He’s clean. Now the other one.” I started to put my shorts back on and the first cop stopped me.
“Hey! You looking for trouble? Leave ’em off.”
I said reasonably, “You’ve searched me. I don’t want to get picked up for indecent exposure.”
He looked surprised, then guffawed and turned to his mate. “You hear that. Ski? He’s afraid he’ll be arrested for indecent exposure.”
The second one said patiently, “Listen, yokel, you got to cooperate, see? You know the rules. You can wear a fur coat for all of me—but you won’t get picked up for indecent exposure; you’ll get picked up DOA. The Vigilantes are a lot quicker to shoot than we are.” He turned to Mary. “Now, lady, if you please.”
Without argument Mary started to remove her shorts. The second cop said kindly, “That isn’t necessary lady, not the way those things are built. Just turn around slowly.”
“Thank you,” Mary said and complied. The policeman’s point was well taken; Mary’s briefies appeared to have been sprayed on, and her halter also quite evidently contained nothing but Mary.
“How about those bandages?” the first one commented. “Her clothes sure can’t cover anything.” I thought, brother, how wrong you are; I’ll bet she’s packing at least two guns this minute, besides the one in her purse—and I’ll bet one of them is ready to heat up quicker than yours! But what I said was,
“She’s been badly burned. Can’t you see that?” He looked doubtfully at the sloppy job I had done on the dressings; I had worked on the principle that, if a little is good, more is better, and the dressing across her shoulders where she had been burned the worst undoubtedly could have concealed a slug, if that had been the purpose. “Mmmm…” he said, “If she was burned.”
“Of course she was burned!” I felt my judgment slipping away; I was the perfect heavy husband, unreasonable where my wife was concerned. I knew it—and I liked it that way. “Damn it, look at her hair! Would she ruin a head of hair like that just to fool you?”
The first cop said darkly, “One of them would.”
The more patient one said, “Carl is right. I’m sorry, lady; we’ll have to disturb those bandages.”
I said excitedly, “You can’t do that! We’re on our way to a doctor. You’ll just—”
Mary said, “Help me, Sam. I can’t take them off myself.”
I shut up and started to peel up one corner of the big dressing, my hands trembling with rage. Presently the older, more kindly one whistled and said, “I’m satisfied. How about you, Carl?”
“Me, too. Ski. Gripes, girlie, it looks like somebody tried to barbecue you. What happened?”
“Tell them, Sam.”
So I did. The older cop finally commented, “I’d say you got off easy—no offense, madam. So it’s cats, now, eh? Dogs I knew about. Horses, yes. But cats—you wouldn’t think the ordinary cats could carry one.” His face clouded. “We got a cat and now we’ll have to get rid of it. My kids won’t like that.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary told him and sounded as if she meant it.
“It’s a bad time for everybody. Okay, folks, you can go—”
“Wait a minute,” the first one said. “Ski, if she goes through the streets with that thing on her back somebody is likely to burn her.”
The older one scratched his chin. “That’s true,” he said to Mary. “I’d say you couldn’t stand to have that dressing off. We’ll just have to dig up a prowl car for you.”
Which they did—one was just landing and they hailed it. I had to pay the charges on the rented wreck, then I went along, as far as Mary’s entrance. It was in a hotel, through a private elevator; I got in with her to avoid explanations, then went back up after she had gotten out at a level lower than the obvious controls of the car provided for. I was tempted to go on in with her, but the Old Man had ordered me to come in by Kay Five, so Kay Five it was.
I was tempted, too, to put my shorts back on. In the prowl car and during a quick march through a side door of the hotel, with police around us to keep Mary from being shot, I had not minded so much—but it took nerve to step out of the elevator and face the world without pants.
I need not have worried. The short distance I had to go was enough to show me that a fundamental custom had gone with last year’s frost. Most men were wearing straps—codpieces, really—as the cops had been, but I was not the only man in New Brooklyn stark naked to his shoes. One in particular I remember; he was leaning against a street roof stanchion and searching with cold eyes every passer-by. He was wearing nothing but slippers and a brassard lettered with “VIG”—and he was carrying an Owens mob gun under his arm.
I saw three more like him before I reached Kay Five; I was glad that I was carrying my shorts.
Some women were naked, some were not—but those who were not might as well have been—string brassieres, translucent plastic trunks, nothing that could possibly hide a slug.
Most of the women, I decided, would have looked better in clothes, preferably togas. If this was what the preachers had been worrying about all these years, then they had been barking up the wrong tree; it was nothing to arouse the happy old beast in men. The total effect was depressing. That was my first impression—but before I got to my destination even that had worn off. Ugly bodies weren’t any more noticeable than ugly taxicabs; the eye discounted them automatically. And so it appeared to be with everybody else, too; those on the streets seemed to have acquired utter indifference. Maybe Schedule Bare Back got them ready for it.
One thing I did not notice consciously until much later: after the first block I was unaware of my own nakedness. I noticed other people long after I had forgotten my own bare skin. Somehow, some way, the American community had been all wrong about the modesty taboo and had been wrong for centuries.
When tackled firmly, it was as empty as the ghost that turns out to be a flapping window drape. It did not mean a thing, either pro or con, moral or immoral. Skin was skin and what of it?
I was let in to see the Old Man at once. He looked up and growled, “You’re late.”
I answered, “Where’s Mary?”
“In the infirmary, getting treated and dictating her report. Let’s see your hands.”
“I’ll show them to the doctor, thanks,” I replied, making no move to take off the gloves. “What’s up?”
“If you would ever bother to listen to a newscast,” he grumbled, ?
??you would know what was up.”
XXIV
I’m glad I had not looked at a newscast; our honeymoon would never have gotten to first base. While Mary and I had each been telling the other how wonderful the other one was the war had almost been lost—and I was not sure about that “almost”. My suspicion that the slugs could, if necessary, hide themselves on any part of the body and still control hosts had proved to be right—but I had guessed that from my own experience on the streets. It had been proved by experiments at the National Zoo before Mary and I had holed up on the mountain, although I had not seen the report. I suppose the Old Man knew it; certainly the President knew it and the other top VIPs.
So Schedule Sun Tan replaced Schedule Bare Back and everybody skinned down to the buff.
Like hell they did! The matter was still “Top Secret” and the subject of cabinet debates at the time of the Scranton Riot. Don’t ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough boys and girls to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I’ve read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don’t know; it sounds Utopian.
The Scranton Riot should have convinced anybody that the slugs were loose in Zone Green despite Schedule Bare Back, but even that did not bring on Schedule Sun Tan. The fake air-raid alarm on the east coast took place, as I figure it, the third day of our honeymoon; there had not been any special excitement in the village when we visited it the day before that and certainly no vigilante activity. After the false air-raid alarm it took a while to figure out what had happened, even though it was obvious that lighting could not fail by accident in so many different shelters.
It gives me the leaping horrors to think about it even now—all those people crouching in the darkness, waiting for the all-clear, while zombies moved among them, slapping slugs on them. Apparently in some air raid bunkers the recruitment was one hundred percent. They did not have a chance.