The Puppet Masters (12 page)

I looked down and saw a line of red welling out of my left wrist; in my struggles I had cut myself on the clamp. It did not matter; I would tear off hands and feet and escape from there on bloody stumps, if escape for my master were possible that way.

“Well,” asked the Old Man, “how did you like the taste of that?”

The panic that possessed me washed away; I was again filled with an unworried sense of well being, albeit wary and watchful. My wrists and ankles, which had begun to pain me, stopped hurting. “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Certainly, you can hurt me—but why?”

“Answer my questions.”

“Ask them.”

“
What are you
?”

The answer did not come at once. The Old Man reached for the rod; I heard myself saying, “We are the people.”

“The people? What people?”

“The only people. We have studied you and we know your ways. We—” I stopped suddenly.

“Keep talking,” the Old Man said grimly, and gestured with the rod.

“We come,” I went on, “to bring you—”

“To bring us what?”

I wanted to talk; the rod was terrifyingly close. But there was some difficulty with words. “To bring you peace,” I blurted out.

The Old Man snorted.

“‘Peace’,” I went on, “and contentment—and the joy of—of surrender.” I hesitated again; “surrender” was not the right word. I struggled with it the way one struggles with a poorly grasped foreign language. “The joy,” I repeated, “—the joy of…
nirvana
.” That was it; the word fitted. I felt like a dog being patted for fetching a stick; I wriggled with pleasure.

“Let me get this,” the Old Man said thoughtfully. “You are promising the human race that, if we will just surrender to your kind, you will take care of us and make us happy. Right?”

“Exactly!”

The Old Man studied me for a long moment, looking, not at my face, but past my shoulders. He spat upon the floor. “You know,” he said slowly, “me and my kind, we have often been offered that bargain, though maybe not on such a grand scale. It never worked out worth a damn.”

I leaned forward as much as the rig would allow. “Try it yourself,” I suggested. “It can be done quickly—and then you will
know
.”

He stared at me, this time in my face. “Maybe I should,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe I owe it to—somebody, to try it. And maybe I will, someday. But right now,” he went on briskly, “you have more questions to answer. Answer them quick and proper and stay healthy. Be slow about it and I’ll step up the current.” He brandished the rod.

I shrank back, feeling dismay and defeat. For a moment I had thought he was going to accept the offer and I had been planning the possibilities of escape that could develop. “Now,” he went on, “where do you come from?”

No answer… I felt no urge to answer.

The rod came closer. “Far away!” I burst out.

“That’s not news. Tell me where? Where’s your home base, your own planet?”

I had no answer. The Old Man waited a moment, then said, “I see I’ll have to touch up your memory.” I watched dully, thinking nothing at all. He was interrupted by one of the bystanders. “Eh?” said the Old Man.

“There may be a semantic difficulty,” the other repeated. “Different astronomical concepts.”

“Why should there be?” asked the Old Man. “That slug is using borrowed language throughout. He knows what his host knows; we’ve proved that.” Nevertheless he turned back and started a different tack. “See here—you savvy the solar system; is your planet inside it or outside it?”

I hesitated, then answered, “All planets are ours.”

The Old Man pulled at his lip. “I wonder,” he mused, “just what you mean by that?” He went on, “Never mind; you can claim the whole damned universe; I want to know where your nest is? Where is your home base? Where do your ships come from?”

I could not have told him and did not; I sat silent.

Before I could anticipate it he reached behind me with the rod; I felt one smashing blow of pain, then it was gone. “Now, talk, damn you! What planet? Mars? Venus? Jupiter? Saturn? Uranus? Neptune? Pluto? Kalki?” As he ticked them off, I saw them—and I have never been as far off Earth as the space stations. When he came to the right one, I knew—and the thought was instantly snatched from me.

“Speak up,” he went on, “or feel the whip.”

I heard myself saying, “None of them. Our home is much farther away. You could never find it.”

He looked past my shoulders and then into my eyes. “I think you are lying. I think you need some juice to keep you honest.”

“No, no!”

“No harm to try.” Slowly he thrust the rod past me, behind me. I knew the answer again and was about to give it, when something grabbed my throat. Then the pain started.

It did not stop. I was being torn apart; I tried to talk, to tell, anything to stop the pain—but the hand still clutched my throat and I could not.

Through a clearing blur of pain I saw the Old Man’s face, shimmering and floating. “Had enough?” he asked. “Ready to talk?” I started to answer, but I choked and gagged. I saw him reach out again with the rod.

I burst into pieces and died.

They were leaning over me. Someone said, “He’s coming around. Watch him; he might be violent.”

The Old Man’s face was over mine, his expression worried. “Are you all right, son?” he asked anxiously. I turned my face away.

“One side, please,” another voice said. “Let me give him the injection.”

“Will his heart stand it?”

“Certainly—or I wouldn’t give it to him.” The speaker knelt by me, took my arm, and gave me a shot. He stood up, looked at his hands, then wiped them on his shorts; they left bloody streaks.

I felt strength flowing back into me. “Gyro”, I thought absently, or something like it. Whatever it was, it was pulling me back together. Shortly I sat up, unassisted.

I was still in the cage room, directly in front of that damnable chair. The cage, I noticed without interest, was closed again. I started to get to my feet; the Old Man stepped forward and gave me a hand. I shook him off. “Don’t touch me!”

“Sorry,” he answered, then snapped, “Jones! You and Ito—get the litter. Take him back to the infirmary. Doc, you go along.”

“Certainly.” The man who had given me the shot stepped forward and started to take my arm. I drew away from him.

“Keep your hands off me!”

He stopped. “Get away from me—all of you. Just leave me alone.” The doctor looked at the Old Man, who shrugged, then motioned them all back. Alone, I went to the door, through it, and on out through the outer door into the passageway.

I paused there, looked at my wrists and ankles and decided that I might as well go back to the infirmary. Doris would take care of me, I was sure, and then maybe I could sleep. I felt as if I had gone fifteen rounds and lost every one of them.

“Sam, Sam!”

I looked up; I knew that voice. Mary hurried up and was standing before me, looking at me with great sorrowful eyes. “I’ve been waiting,” she said. “Oh, Sam! What have they done to you?” Her voice was so choked that I could hardly understand her.

“You should know,” I answered, and found I had strength enough left to slap her.

“Bitch,” I added.

The room I had had was still empty, but I did not find Doris. I was aware that I had been followed, probably by the doctor, but I wanted no part of him nor any of them just then; I closed the door. Then I lay face down on the bed and tried to stop thinking or feeling anything.

Presently I heard a gasp, and opened one eye; there was Doris. “What in the world?” she exclaimed and came over to me. I felt her gentle hands on me. “Why, you poor, poor baby!” Then she added, “Just stay there, don’t try to move. I’ll get the doctor.”

“No!”

“But you’ve got to have the doctor.”

“No. I won’t see him. You help me.”

She did not answer. Presently I heard her go out. She came back shortly—I think it was shortly—and started to bathe my wounds. The doctor was not with her.

She was not more than half my size but she lifted me and turned me when she needed to as if I had been the baby she had called me. I was not surprised by it; I knew she could take care of me.

I wanted to scream when she touched my back. But she dressed it quickly and said, “Over easy, now.”

“I’ll stay face down.”

“No,” she denied, “I want you to drink something, that’s a good boy.”

I turned over, with her doing most of the work, and drank what she gave me. After a bit I went to sleep.

I seem to remember being awakened later, seeing the Old Man and cursing him out. The doctor was there too—or it could just as well have been a dream.

Miss Briggs woke me up and Doris brought me breakfast; it was as if I had never been off the sick list. Doris wanted to feed me but I was well able to do it myself. Actually I was not in too bad shape. I was stiff and sore and felt as if I had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel; there were dressings on both arms and both legs where I had cut myself on the clamps, but no bones were broken. Where I was sick was in my soul.

Don’t misunderstand me. The Old Man could send me into a dangerous spot—and had done so, more than once—and I would not hold it against him. That I had signed up for. But I had not signed up for what he had done to me. He knew what made me tick and he had deliberately used it to force me into something I would never have agreed to, had I not been jockeyed into it. Then after he had gotten me where he wanted me, he had used me unmercifully.

Oh, I’ve slapped men around to make them talk. Sometimes you have to. But this was different. Believe me.

It was the Old Man that really hurt. Mary? After all, what was she? Just another babe. True, I was disgusted with her to the bottom of my soul for letting the Old Man talk her into being used as bait. It was all right for her to use her femaleness as an agent; the Section had to have female operatives; they could do things men could not do. There have always been female spies and the young and pretty ones had always used the same tools.

But she should not have agreed to use them against another agent, inside her own Section—at least, she should not have used them against
me
.

Not very logical, is it? It was logical to me. Mary shouldn’t have done it.

I was through, I was finished. They could go ahead with Operation Parasite without me; I’d had it. I owned a cabin up in the Adirondacks; I had enough stuff there in deep freeze to carry me for years—well, a year, anyhow. I had plenty of tempus pills and could get more; I would go up there and use them—and the world could save itself, or go to hell, without me.

If anyone came within a hundred yards of me, he would either show a bare back or be burned down.

I
had
to tell somebody about it and Doris was the goat. It may have been classified information but I did not give a hoot. It turned out that Doris knew all about Operation Parasite; there was no reason to try to keep any part of it secret. The trouble was to make it not a secret—but I am ahead of myself.

Doris was indignant—shucks, she was sore as a boiled owl. She had dressed what they had done to me. Of course, as a nurse, she had dressed a lot worse, but this had been done
by our own people
. I blurted out how I felt about Mary’s part in it. “You know that old slaughterhouse trick,” I asked her, “where they train one animal to lead the others in? That’s what they got Mary to do to me.”

She had not heard of it, but she understood me. “Do I understand you that you had wanted to
marry
this girl?”

“Correct. Stupid, ain’t I?”

“All men are, about women—but that’s not the point. It does not make any difference whether she wanted to marry you or not; her knowing that you wanted to marry her makes what she did about eight thousand times worse. She
knew
what she could do to you. It wasn’t fair.” She stopped massaging me, her eyes snapping. “I’ve never met your redhead, not yet—but if I ever do, I’ll scratch her face!”

I smiled at her. “You’re a good kid, Doris. I believe you would play fair with a man.”

“Oh, I’m no angel, and I’ve pulled some fast ones in my time. But if I did anything halfway like that. I’d have to break every mirror I own. Turn a bit, and I’ll get the other leg.”

Mary showed up. The first I knew about it was hearing Doris say angrily, “You can’t come in.”

Mary’s voice answered, “I’m going in. Try to stop me.”

Doris squealed, “Stay where you are—or I’ll pull that hennaed hair out by the roots!”

There was a short silence, sounds of a scuffle—and the
smack
! of someone getting slapped, hard. I yelled out, “Hey! What goes on?”

They appeared in the doorway together. Doris was breathing hard and her hair was mussed. Mary managed to look dignified and composed, but there was a bright red patch on her left cheek the size and shape of Doris’s hand. She looked at me and ignored the nurse.

Doris caught her breath and said, “You get out of here. He doesn’t want to see you.”

Mary said, “I’ll hear that from him.”

I looked at them both, then said, “Oh, what the hell—Doris, she’s here; I’ll talk to her. I’ve got some things to tell her, in any case. Thanks for trying.”

Doris waited a moment, then said, “You’re a fool!” and flounced out.

Mary came over to the bed. “Sam,” she said. “Sam.”

“My name isn’t ‘Sam’.”

“I’ve never known your right name.”

I hesitated. It was no time to explain to her that my parents had been silly enough to burden me with ‘Elihu’. I answered, “What of it? ‘Sam’ will do.”

“Sam,” she repeated. “Oh Sam, my dear.”

“I am not your ‘dear’.”

She inclined her head. “Yes, I know that. I don’t know why. Sam, I came here to find out why you hate me. Perhaps I can’t change it, but I must know why.”

I made some sound of disgust. “After what you did, you don’t know why? Mary, you may be a cold fish, but you aren’t stupid. I know; I’ve worked with you.”

She shook her head. “Just backwards, Sam. I’m not cold, but I’m frequently stupid. Look at me, please—I know what they did to you. I know that you let it be done to save me from the same thing. I know that and I’m deeply grateful. But I don’t know why you hate me. You did not have to do it, I did not ask you to do it, and I did not want you to do it.”