Invasion of The Body Snatchers

Chapter eighteen

I took Becky's arm, holding her hand flat between mine, squeezing it tight between them, and she looked up at me, and managed to smile. I led her to the big leather chair in front of my desk and she sat down, and I sat on the arm, leaning close to her, my arm around her shoulders.

For a little time we were silent, and I sat remembering the night not long ago, yet very long ago – when Becky had come here to talk about Wilma, and I realized she was wearing the very same dress, silk, long-sleeved, and with a red and grey pattern. I remembered how glad I'd been to see her that night, realizing that even though we'd had only a few high-school dates, I'd never really forgotten her. And now I understood a lot of things I hadn't before. "I love you, Becky" I said, and she looked up at me to smile, then leaned her head back against my arm.

"I love you, Miles."

I heard a tiny sound from the locked door behind us, familiar, yet for an instant I couldn't recognize it; it was the snapping sound a dry, brittle leaf makes. Then I knew what it was, and glanced quickly at Becky, but if she'd heard it, too, she gave no sign.

"I wish we'd been married, Becky. I wish we were married now."

She nodded. "So do I. Miles, why didn't we?"

I didn't answer; the reasons were meaningless now.

She said, "We should have, but you've been afraid, for yourself and for me. Mostly for me, I think." She smiled at me tiredly. "And it's true enough that I couldn't take another failure, I just couldn't. But you couldn't protect me against that either; and who else do you think I'd have found who could? Any two people who marry take a chance on failure; we were no different from anyone else. Except that we knew more; we already knew what failure was like, and maybe something of what causes it, and how to guard against it. We ought to have been married, Miles."

After a moment I said, "Maybe we still can." Because she was right, of course; it was simple and obvious; I just hadn't let myself see it. Of course we could have failed; I could have wrecked her life; but that made me no different from any other man who might have done the same thing.

The faint snapping, crackling sound came again from the other side of the door behind us, and then I was on my feet, prowling the little office, hunting for something, anything, that could help us. More than anything I ever wanted before, I wanted another chance; now there had to be away out of this. Remembering to move silently I opened my desk drawer; there lay prescription pads, blotters, celluloid calendar cards, paper clips, rubber bands, a broken forceps, pencils, two fountain pens, an imitation-bronze letter opener. I picked up the opener, holding it like a dagger, my fist clenched on the handle, and looked at the varnished surface of the heavy wood door to the reception room. Then I opened my hand and let the useless object drop silently onto a little scattering of blotters.

There was my instrument cabinet across the room: neatly folded white towels on which lay rows of stainless steel forceps, scalpels, hypodermic needles, scissors, disinfectants, antiseptics; and I didn't even bother opening the glass doors. There was the little refrigerator: serums, vaccines, antibiotics, and half a quart of stale ginger ale my nurse had left; and I quietly closed the door. There wasn't much else: the office scale, my examining-table, an enamelled white wall cabinet of bandages, adhesive tape, iodine, mercuro-chrome, merthiolate, tongue depressors; there was furniture, rugs, my desk, pictures and diplomas on the wall – there was nothing.

I turned to Becky, my mouth opening to say something, and my heart stopped, then began to pound, and I took two fast steps to her chair, grabbing her shoulders and shaking hard, and her eyes flew open.

"Oh, Miles! – I was asleep." Her eyes opened wide in terror.

In the lower left-hand desk drawer, I found the Benzedrine tablets, went to the washroom for a glass of water, then gave Becky one tablet. I looked at the little bottle for a moment, then slipped it into my pocket without taking a tablet; I could hold out for a while yet, and it was best for us to take these alternately, the one keeping the other awake.

And now I sat at my desk, elbows on the glass top, clenched fists under my cheekbones, Becky watching my eyes to be sure I didn't sleep. If there was any way out of this, it was in my mind, not in my feet prowling the office.

Time passed, with an occasional brittle snap from the other side of the closed door before me, and we both heard, and neither of us would glance at that door. I made myself sit where I was, remembering everything I knew about the great pods.

After a time I looked up slowly; in the leather chair, across my desk, Becky sat silently and alertly watching me, her eyes bright now from the Benzedrine. Very quietly, both asking her advice and thinking out loud, I said, "Suppose, just suppose there was a way – not to escape; there's no way to escape – but to make them take us somewhere else, instead of here." I shrugged – "To the city jail, I guess. Suppose there was a way to do that?"

"What are you thinking of, Miles?"

"I don't know. Nothing, probably. I was thinking of a way to maybe spoil their damn pods; though I'm not even sure we could. But they'd just get more. They'd take us somewhere else, and get more. We wouldn't have accomplished a thing."

"We might gain a little time," Becky said. "Because I doubt if there are more pods at the moment. I think we saw all that were ready." She nodded at the window, and the street below. "I should think they'd have used all they had ready. Maybe the two out there" – she indicated the locked door – "are the last two we saw left, in Joe Grimaldi's truck."

"There are more growing; all we'd have gained is a little reprieve" – I was soundlessly, frustratedly hitting the knuckles of my fist into the palm of my other hand – "and that's not enough, it's no good." I was frowning hard, trying to think clearly. "A little more time isn't what we want to end up with; if there's a way to make them take us out of here, down out of the building, that has to be our chance; there won't be any other."

Becky said, "Do you think you could… hit them, knock them out unexpectedly, leaving the building? Like you did Nick Griv – "

I was shaking my head. "We've got to think real, Becky; this isn't a movie, and I'm not a movie hero. No, I couldn't possibly handle four men, or maybe even one. I very much doubt that I could handle Mannie, and Chet Meeker could break me in two. Maybe the professor, or the little fat man." I smiled. Then I spoke seriously again. "Hell, I don't even know we could make them take us out of here. Probably not."

"How would we try, though?" She wouldn't give up.

I pointed to the reception-room door. "Right now, if Budlong is right, the things out there are – preparing. Preparing, more or less blindly at first, to imitate, and duplicate whatever life-substance they encounter; cell and tissue, bone structure, and blood. And that means us – once we lie quietly asleep, our body processes slowed down and defenceless. But suppose… " I looked at Becky, hesitating; if this weren't the answer, I didn't know what else could be. "Suppose," I said slowly, "that we made those two pods out there expend themselves on something else. Suppose we provided a substitute: Fred and his girl friend."

She frowned a little, not getting what I meant, and I reached out and opened the wall closet beside my desk. "The skeletons," I said, pointing at them, standing hollow-eyed and grinning in my closet. "They did live." Suddenly I was talking rapidly and excitedly, almost as though convincing Becky were all I need do. "They're bone structure, human, and absolutely complete! And if Budlong is right, the atoms that compose them are held together still, by the very same sort of patterns of forcelines, or whatever he wants to call them, that held them together in life, and that hold ours together now. There they are – asleep and more than asleep! Ready, willing, and just possibly able, to be taken over, their patterns blindly copied and reproduced instead of ours!"

After a moment, Becky said, "We can't lose by trying, Miles," and before she finished, I was on my feet.

In absolute silence, infinitely careful not to bump the loose-swinging limbs against the closet walls, I lifted out first, the taller male skeleton, carried it to the locked reception-room door, and laid it on the floor, face down so we wouldn't see that grinning face. Seconds later I laid the female skeleton beside it.

We stood looking down at them for a moment, then I turned to the instrument cabinet at the wall, carefully opened the glass door, and took out a 20 cc. syringe. I tilted a glass alcohol dispenser against a wad of sterile cotton, then swabbed a small area on Becky's arm, then on mine, then led Becky to the reception-room door. From a vein in her forearm I withdrew 20 cc. of blood, and a moment later – quickly, before the blood could clot – the collar and several rib bones of the nearer figure on the floor were streaked red. From my own arm I withdrew another 20 cc., and bent quickly over the other figure.

"Miles, don't; don't."

I looked up to see Becky quickly shaking her head, eyes averted, her face paling, but I didn't stop.

"Miles, please; I can't stand it; the way they look; please don't. No more!"

I stood, and turned toward her. "All right" – I nodded. "I don't know at all that it'd do any good, except that it's just that much more living matt – " I let it go and didn't finish. But I left the figures on the floor as they were. I didn't really know what I was doing, but – I left them as they were.

I did one more thing, and didn't ask Becky's permission. I took my desk scissors, snipped off a good chunk of her hair, then a handful of mine, and scattered them on the two figures on the floor. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

We sat, Becky in the leather chair, I at my desk; then Becky began speaking. Slowly, doubtfully, and pausing often to look at me questioningly, she described an idea that had occurred to her.

I listened, and when she stopped, waiting for an answer from me, I smiled and nodded a little, trying not to look immediately discouraging. "Becky, it might – it probably would – work as far as it goes. But I'd still end up, struggling on a floor, with two or three men on top of me."

She said, "Miles, I know there's no reason why anything we can think of has to work out at all. But now you're thinking like a movie. Most people do – sometimes, anyway. Miles, there are certain activities most people never actually encounter all of their lives, so they picture them in terms of movie-like scenes. It's the only source most people have for visualizing things they've had no actual experience of. And that's how you're thinking now: a scene in which you're struggling with two or three men, and – Miles, what am I doing in that scene in your mind? You're seeing me cowering against a wall, eyes wide and frightened, my hands raised to my face in horror, aren't you?"

I thought about it, and she was right, very accurate, in fact, and I nodded.

She nodded, too. "And that's how they'll think: the stereotype of a woman's role in that kind of situation. And it's exactly what I will do – until I know they've seen and noticed me. Then I can do exactly what you did; why not?"

I was considering what she'd said, and Becky persisted, unable to wait. "Why not, Miles; why can't I?" She paused for an instant, then said, "I can. You'll be beaten up, you'll have a bad minute or so, but then… Miles, why couldn't it work?"

I was afraid. I didn't like this at all; this was real, genuinely and simply a matter of life or death for us, and I saw that we were going at it in a spur-of-the-moment, improvising way. We had to think, be certain, and make sure of what we were doing – take the time to be right, and know we were right. Yet now, like soldiers suddenly caught in enemy fire, the most important thinking of our lives had to be improvised on the spot under terrible strain, with the penalty for anything less than perfection being death or worse. There was no time for more careful planning! We certainly couldn't sleep on it, I thought, and smiled with no amusement at the joke.

"Miles, come on!" Becky whispered. She was standing, reaching across the desk, yanking at my sleeve. "You don't know how much longer we have!"

There was a light tapping at the outer door of my office, and from the hallway outside I heard Mannie's voice, very soft and quiet. "Miles?" he whispered, then paused. "Miles…?"

"I'm sorry, Mannie," I called out, "but we're still awake. I can't help that; you know we'll stay awake as long as we can. But it won't be too long; it can't be."

He didn't answer, and now there was no guessing how much longer we'd be alone. I hated what we were going to do, hated pinning hope on this one flimsy notion of Becky's, but certainly I couldn't think of anything else at all. "All right." I stood up, then walked to the little wall cabinet and took out a wide roll of adhesive tape. At the instrument cabinet I gathered up everything else we needed; then, at my desk, I unbuttoned Becky's sleeves at her wrists, pushed back my coat sleeves, and went to work.

It didn't take long, four minutes, maybe, and while I was pulling down my sleeves, Becky buttoning the sleeves of her dress, she gestured with her head – "Miles, look."

I turned to look, narrowed my eyes to make sure I was seeing it, and then I knew I was. The yellow-white bones on the floor looked – different. I can't say how, but, looking at them now, there was simply no doubt that they'd changed.

It may have been the colour, though I couldn't be sure, but it was more than that, too. The sense of sight is more subtle than we're accustomed to think; it sees more than we credit it for. We say, "I could tell by looking," and though sometimes we can't explain how that could be, it is usually true. Those bones had lost hardness, although I don't even quite know what I mean by that, or how we could see it. Their form hadn't changed, but – they'd lost some degree of rigidity or firmness. Like an ancient wall of loosened bricks, its form still unchanged to the eye, but the mortar crumbling, some strength had left them. Whatever was holding each bone together, giving it its form and shape, was weakening. And the eye could tell it.

Trying not to hope too much, ready for disappointment, not yet able to trust what my eyes saw, I stared. Then suddenly, in the flick of an eye, on a little inch-long segment of the ulna, one of the two bones of the forearm, in the nearest figure on the floor, a patch of grey appeared. Nothing more happened for the beat of a heart; then the patch lengthened, and continued to lengthen, extending in both directions, shooting out along the yellow-white bone. And then – it was like an animated-cartoon sequence in which a picture is sketched impossibly fast, the lines flashing out in all directions faster than the eye can follow. On both figures on the floor under our eyes the grey shot out along the bones, following their lines with enormous speed – the entire rib cage of one in the flash of an eye. Then the bone-whiteness was gone, and for a suspended instant of time the two skeletons lay there composed – in perfect completeness – of a grey weightless fluff. The instant ended, and they collapsed – a puff of air would have done it – into a formless little heap of dust and nothingness on the floor.

For an instant longer I stood staring, wild with elation; then the breath sucked into my lungs, and I yelled out, "Mannie!"

The hallway door of my office opened instantly, and they came in – hurrying – their faces utterly calm and composed. I pointed with the toe of my shoe, and they stopped, stared for a moment, then Mannie pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the door to my reception room. He opened it, and it bumped something, something hard that clicked on the wood of the door. Mannie pushed, the door opened a little more, then jammed. Then each of us, as fast as we could, moving one at a time, sidled around that partly blocked door.

There on the brown rug, yellow-white and reproduced down to the last useless detail, lay two skeletons, red-daubed on the shoulders, a handful of dark hair filtering through their bones. Face down on the floor, they grinned liplessly and unceasingly at the joke. Beside and under them, nearly unnoticeable on the rug, lay the brittle fragments of all that remained of the two great pods.

Mannie nodded slowly several times, lips folded in, thinking to himself, and Budlong said, "That's very interesting, really very interesting. Do you know" – he turned to me conversationally, eyes friendly as ever – "that had never occurred to me, and yet of course it's perfectly possible. Interesting." He turned to look down at the floor again.

"All right, Miles" – Mannie looked musingly at me – "I guess we will, at that, have to hold you in a cell, till we can get others. Sorry, but it's what we'll have to do."

I just nodded, and we all moved out then, through the door to the building hallway. I didn't care whether we took the elevator or stairs, but Mannie said, "'Let's walk down. There's only the janitor, Saturdays; service is bad." And we walked along the hall to the metal fire-door, then began filing down the long, winding staircase.