It was just after dawn when we landed at Le Bourget. We could have landed at the more convenient floating airport above the Champs-Elysées, but it would have involved radioing for permission, and this might have alerted reporters. Instead, we took a helicab into the centre of Paris from Le Bourget, and were there in twenty minutes.
Now there were five of us, we were almost impregnable as far as casual recognition went. With our minds ‘in series’, we were able to form a kind of wall to divert the attention of anyone who happened to look at us. People could ‘see’ us, of course, but they could not look at us. The faculty of understanding or grasping follows that of perception (as you can see if you read something with your mind elsewhere). Most objects we look at are not properly registered, because they are not worth noticing. We merely had to prevent the ‘attention’ of any onlooker from ‘closing’ on us—the same principle as jamming a stick in a dog’s mouth to prevent him from biting. We were virtually invisible as we walked through Paris.
Our one hope lay in surprise. If the parasites were observing us, then they would make sure that we never got to Georges Ribot, for he could be warned hours before we arrived. On the other hand, they had sustained a considerable defeat the night before, and might well be off their guard. This is what we hoped.
We only had to pick up a newspaper to discover where he was, for Ribot was now a celebrity on a scale he had never known before. An abandoned copy of Paris-Soir told us that Ribot was in the Curel Clinic on the Boulevard Haussman, suffering from some kind of nervous collapse. We knew how to interpret this.
It was now necessary to use force, although we were still strongly opposed to the idea. The clinic was too small for us to get in unnoticed. But the hour—five in the morning—ensured that there would be few people around. A sleepy porter looked resentfully out of his office, and five minds clamped on him, seizing him far more powerfully than our five pairs of hands could have done. He gaped at us, incapable of understanding what had happened. Fleishman asked him softly: ‘Do you know which room Ribot is in?’ He nodded in a dazed manner—we had to relax our grip even to allow him to do that. ‘Take us to him,’ Fleishman said. The man pressed the automatic door opener, and led us in. A ward sister hurried forward saying: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ A moment later, she was also smartly preceding us along the corridors. We asked her why there were no reporters.
She replied: ‘M. Ribot is giving a press conference at nine.’ She had the presence of mind to add: ‘I think you might have waited until then.’
We met two night nurses, but they must have assumed our visit was in order. Ribot’s room was at the very top of the building—a special private room. The doors to this section opened only by a special code. Luckily, the night porter knew it.
Fleishman said quietly: ‘Now, madame, we shall have to ask you to wait in this outer room, and not to try to escape. We shall do the patient no harm.’ This was by no means certain, of course; it was said to soothe her.
Reich drew the curtains back, and the noise woke Ribot up. He was unshaven and looked very ill; when he saw us, he stared blankly for a moment, then said: ‘Ah, gentlemen. I thought you might call.’
I looked into his brain, and what I saw horrified me. It was like a town whose inhabitants have all been massacred and replaced by soldiers. There were no parasites present; they were unnecessary. Ribot had surrendered to the parasites in terror. They had entered his brain and taken over all the habit circuits. When these were all broken, he was virtually helpless, for every act now had to be performed with immense effort, through free-will. We do most of our living through the habit circuits: breathing, eating, digesting, reading, responding to other people. In some cases—an actor, for example—the habit circuits are actually the result of a life-time of effort. The greater the actor, the more he relies on habit circuits, so that only the supreme peaks of his art are left to his free will. To destroy a man’s habit circuits before his eyes is crueller than murdering his wife and children. It is to strip him of everything, to make life as impossible for him as if you had stripped him of his skin. The parasites had done this, then quickly replaced the old habit circuits with new ones. Certain circuits were restored: breathing, speaking, mannerisms (for these were essential to convincing people that he was the same person, and in full possession of his senses). But certain habits were completely eliminated—the habit of thinking deeply, for example. And a new series of responses had been installed. We were ‘the enemy’, and we aroused in him boundless hatred and disgust. He felt this of his own free will, in a sense; but if he had not chosen to feel it half his circuits would have gone dead again. In other words, having surrendered to the parasites, he remained a ‘free man ‘in the sense that he was alive and could choose his actions. But it was consciousness on their terms—either that, or no consciousness at all. He was as completely a slave as a man with a gun pressed to his head.
So, as we stood around his bed, we did not look at him as avengers. We felt pity and horror. It was like looking at a mutilated corpse.
We did not speak. Four of us held him down—by PK, of course—while Fleishman quickly examined the contents of his brain. It was impossible to tell whether he could be repaired, for it depended so much upon his own strength and courage. All that was certain was that he would have to exert enormous will-power—far more than he had succeeded in exerting against the parasites before he capitulated.
It was no time for long deliberations. Our strength convinced him that he had as much to fear from us as from the parasites. Each one of us entered into the circuits of his brain that controlled his motor mechanisms, and learned their combination. (This is difficult to explain to non-telepaths; but communication with other brains depends upon learning a certain ‘combination’ which is their thought wavelength. After this, a degree of remote control is possible.) Fleishman spoke to him gently, telling him that we were still basically his friends, and that we realized the ‘brain washing’ was no fault of his. If he would trust us, we would free him from the parasites.
Then we all left. The nurse and porter escorted us down. We thanked the porter, and tipped him in dollars (which were then world currency.) In less than an hour, we were halfway back to Diyarbakir.
Our mental contact with Ribot enabled us to discover what happened when we left. Neither the nurse nor the porter could fully understand how we had forced them to take us to Ribot; they could not believe that it was not of their own free will. So there was no hue and cry. The nurse went back to Ribot and found him awake and apparently unharmed, and decided to say nothing.
As we landed in Diyarbakir, Reich said: ‘Seven o’clock. Two hours before he gives his press conference. Let’s hope they don’t…’
He was interrupted by a cry from Fleishman, who had agreed to keep up telepathic contact with Ribot. He said:
‘They’ve found out… They’re attacking in force.’
I asked: ‘What can we do?’ I tried to concentrate, to use my knowledge of Ribot’s brain to reestablish contact, but there was no result. It was like turning on a radio set when you’ve forgotten to connect it to the mains. I asked Fleishman:
‘Are you still in touch?’
He shook his head. Each of us tried in turn. It was useless.
An hour later, we discovered why. The television news announced that Ribot had committed suicide by leaping from his bedroom window.
Was this a defeat or not? We could not tell. Ribot’s suicide prevented him from telling the truth at his press conference and withdrawing his ‘confession’. It also prevented him from doing us further damage. On the other hand, if our visit to the hospital was discovered, we would certainly be accused of killing him…
As it happened, it was never discovered. Probably the nurse continued to believe that we were just intrusive journalists. She had seen Ribot after we left and he was well. So she said nothing.
At eleven o’clock that morning Reich and I summoned the press to the board room, which had be
en lent us for that purpose. Fleishman, Reich and the Graus waited on either side of the door, probing everyone who came in. Our caution was rewarded. One of the last men to come into the room was a huge bald-headed man, Kilbride of the Washington Examiner. Reich nodded to one of the company guards, who approached Kilbride and asked him if he would mind being searched. He immediately began to protest vehemently and noisily, shouting that it was an indignity. Then suddenly he broke loose and ran towards me, reaching for his inside pocket. I exerted all my mental force, and stopped him short. Three guards hurled themselves on him and dragged him out. They found a Walther automatic pistol in his pocket, with six shots in it and one in the barrel. Kilbride protested that he always carried it for protection, but his action in trying to shoot me had been seen by everyone. (Later, we probed his brain and discovered that the parasites had invaded it while he was drunk the day before—he was well known as an alcoholic.)
This diversion produced a strong atmosphere of expectancy. There were about five hundred reporters present—all the room would hold. The rest watched outside on closed circuit television. Reich, Fleishman and the Grau brothers joined me on the platform—their purpose was actually to scan the hall and make sure there were no more potential assassins—and I read aloud the following statement:
Our aim today is to warn the people of the earth about a greater menace than they have ever faced. This planet is at present being watched by an enormous number of alien intelligences, whose aim is either to destroy the human race or to enslave it.
Some months ago, when we were conducting our first archaeological investigations into the Black Mountain at Karatepe, Professor Reich and I became aware that we were in the presence of disturbing forces. We were aware, that is, of a power that actively resisted our efforts to uncover the secret of the mound. We assumed at the time that this power could be in the nature of some psychic field of force established there by long dead inhabitants for the protection of their tombs. Both Reich and myself had long been convinced that such things were possible, and explained, for example, the difficulties of the first excavators of the tomb of Tutankhamen. We were prepared to risk invoking this curse, if this was its nature, and continued our investigations.
‘But in recent weeks we have become convinced that we are facing something far more dangerous than a curse. It is our conviction that we have disturbed the sleep of forces that once dominated the earth, and who are determined to dominate it again. These forces are more dangerous than any yet known to the human race because they are invisible, and are capable of attacking the human mind directly. They are able to destroy the sanity of any individual they attack, and to cause suicide. They are also capable of enslaving certain individuals and of using them for their own purposes.
‘At the same time, it is our belief that the human race has no cause for panic. Their numbers are small compared to ours, and we have been forewarned. The struggle may be hard. but I think that there is every chance that we shall win.
‘I shall now try to summarize what we have succeeded in learning about these mind parasites…
I spoke for about half an hour, and described briefly most of the events that I have recorded here. I told the story of the destruction of our colleagues, and of how Ribot had been made to betray us. Then I explained how, once one became aware of the existence of these parasites, it was possible to destroy them. I went to great trouble to emphasize that these forces were not yet active; they were blind and instinctive. It was important to prevent panic. Most of the human race could do nothing whatever about these parasites, and it was best that they should feel fairly confident of ultimate victory. I spent the last quarter of an hour of my talk emphasizing the bright side of things: how, now that man was forewarned, the destruction of the parasites could be only a matter of time.
We concluded the meeting by inviting questions; but most of the reporters were so anxious to get to the nearest telescreen that the question period was short. Two hours later, the news was on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
To tell the truth, all this bored me. The five of us were explorers preparing to investigate an exciting new world, and it was tiresome to have to waste time on reporters. But we had decided that this was the best way of ensuring our own safety. If we died now, it would alert the whole world. As it was, the best plan of the parasites would be to try to discredit us by allowing everything to proceed normally for a month or so—perhaps even a year or so—until everyone decided it had all been a hoax. By making our announcement now, we had bought time—this, at any rate, was the idea. It would take us a long while to realize that the parasites could out-manoeuvre us on almost every point.
The reason for this should be obvious. We didn’t want to waste time on the parasites. Imagine a bibliophile who has just received a parcel containing a book he has wanted all his life, and imagine that, before he has opened it, he is interrupted by a bore who insists on talking for hours… The parasites may have been the greatest menace ever faced by the human race, but to us, they were the dreariest of bores.
Human beings get so used to their mental limitations, just as the men of three centuries ago got used to the enormous inconvenience of travelling. How would Mozart have felt if, after some exhausting journey lasting a week, someone had told him that the men of the twenty-first century would do it in a quarter of an hour? Well, we were like Mozarts who had been swept forward into the twenty-first century. Those mental journeys which we had once found so exhausting and painful could now be made in a matter of minutes. At last we understood clearly Teilhard de Chardin’s remark that man stands on the brink of a new phase in his evolution. For we were now in that new phase. The mind was like virgin country, like the promised land of the Israelites. All we had to do was to occupy it… and, of course, expel its present inhabitants. So in spite of these anxieties and problems, our mood during these days was one of ecstatic happiness.
As we saw it, we now had two major tasks. The first was to find new ‘pupils’, others to help us in this fight. The second was to explore the possibility that we could turn this into an offensive battle. At present, we could not reach those lower regions of the mind inhabited by the parasites. Yet my night battle with them had taught me that I could call upon a power that came from some very deep source. Could we get close enough to that source to carry the battle into the enemy’s camp?
I paid only perfunctory attention to the reactions of the world press. Not surprisingly, most of them were hostile and sceptical. The World Free Press of Vienna said openly that the five of us should be placed under close arrest until the whole question of the suicides could be investigated. The London Daily Express, on the other hand, suggested that we should be placed in charge of a United Nations War Department, with full powers to combat the parasites by any means we considered effective.
One item disturbed us all. It was an article in the Berliner Tagblatt by Felix Hazard. He did not, as we had expected, ridicule the whole business and support Ribot’s ‘confession’. He seemed to take it for granted that the world was in danger from this new enemy. But if this enemy was capable of ‘taking over’ individual minds, said Hazard, what guarantee was there that we were not slaves of these parasites? We had made this announcement about their existence, but that proved nothing. We had to make the announcement out of self-preservation; after Ribot’s statement, we were likely to find ourselves facing criminal proceedings… The tone of this article was not entirely serious. Hazard seemed to leave open the possibility that he was ridiculing the whole thing with mild satire. Still, the effect was disturbing. There could be no possible doubt in our minds that Hazard was an agent of the enemy.
There was one more matter that needed immediate consideration. So far, reporters had not been allowed into the site at the Black Mountain. But they would obviously have no difficulty in speaking to various workmen and soldiers from the site. This, if possible, had to be forestalled. So Reich and I proposed to escort a selected group of reporters to the si
te that evening, and we agreed to the presence of television cameras. We gave instructions that the strictest security precautions were to be observed before we arrived; no reporters were to be allowed near the site.
At ten o’clock that evening, fifty reporters were waiting for us in two transport helicopters. The journey to Karatepe took an hour in these cumbrous machines. When we arrived, the whole site had been floodlit. Portable television cameras had been set up ten minutes before we landed.
Our plan seemed foolproof. We would escort the group of reporters down as far as the Abhoth block, which was now fully exposed, and we would use our PK powers to create an atmosphere of oppression and tension. Then we would deliberately pick on the most nervous and susceptible members of the group, and try to induce total panic in them. This, of course, was our reason for failing to mention our PK powers in the earlier interview. We realized that they could, in fact, be used for ‘framing’ the parasites.
We reckoned without the parasites. Just before landing, I noticed that the reporters in the other helicopter appeared to be singing. This seemed odd. We presumed that they had been drinking heavily. The Graus, Fleishman, Reich and myself were in the other helicopter. Then, as soon as we landed, we sensed the presence of parasites, and understood what was happening. They were reversing their usual method. Instead of sucking energy from their victims, they were giving energy. Many of these men were heavy drinkers and, like most reporters, not particularly intelligent. Because of their habit patterns, this ‘gift’ of mental energy had upon them much the same effect as drink. As soon as the reporters from our helicopter joined the others, they were infected by the same party spirit. I heard the television commentator saying: ‘Well, these boys certainly don’t seem worried about the parasites. They seem to be treating the whole thing as a joke.’