The Puppet Masters

Chapter 16

Hindsight is confoundedly futile. At the moment the first saucer landed the menace could have been stamped out by one determined man and a bomb. At the time "The Cavanaughs"-Mary, the Old Man, and I-reconnoitered around Grinnell and in Des Moines, we three alone might have killed every slug had we been ruthless and, more important, known where they all were.

Had Schedule Bare Back been ordered during the fortnight after the first landing it alone might have turned the trick. But by the next day it was clear that Schedule Bare Back had failed as an offensive measure. As a defense it was useful; the uncontaminated areas could be kept so, as long as the slugs could not conceal themselves. It had even had mild success in offense; areas contaminated but not "secured" by the parasites were cleaned up at once... Washington itself, for example, and New Philadelphia. New Brooklyn, too-there I had been able to give specific advice. The entire East Coast turned from red to green.

But as the area down the middle of the country filled in on the map, it filled in red, and stayed so. The infected areas stood out in ruby light now, for the simple wall map studded with push pins had been replaced by a huge electronic military map, ten miles to the inch, covering one wall of the conference room. It was a repeater map, the master being located down in the sublevels of the New Pentagon.

The country was split in two, as if a giant had washed red pigment down the Central Valley. Two zigzag amber paths bordered the great band held by the slugs; these were overlap, the only areas of real activity, places where line-of-sight reception was possible from both stations held by the enemy and from stations still in the hands of free men. One such started near Minneapolis, swung west of Chicago and east of St. Louis, then meandered through Tennessee and Alabama to the Gulf. The other cut a wide path through the Great Plains and came out near Corpus Christi. El Paso was the center of a ruby area as yet unconnected with the main body.

I looked at the map and wondered what was going on in those border strips. I had the room to myself; the Cabinet was meeting and the President had taken the Old Man with him. Rexton and his brass had left earlier. I stayed there because I had not been told where to go and I hesitated to wander around in the White House. So I stayed and fretted and watched amber lights blink red and, much less frequently, red lights blink amber or green.

I wondered how an overnight visitor with no status managed to get breakfast? I had been up since four and my total nourishment so far had been one cup of coffee, served by the President's valet. Even more urgently I wanted to find a washroom. I knew where the President's washroom was, but I did not have the nerve to use it, feeling vaguely that to do so would be somewhere between high treason and disorderly conduct.

There was not a guard in sight. Probably the room was being scanned from a board somewhere; I suppose every room in the White House has an "eye & ear" in it; but there was no one physically in view.

At last I got desperate enough to start trying doors. The first two were locked; the third was what I was looking for. It was not marked "Sacred to the Chief" nor did it appear to be booby-trapped, so I used it.

When I came back into the conference room, Mary was there.

I looked at her stupidly for a moment. "I thought you were with the President?"

She smiled. "I was, but I got chased out. The Old Man took over for me."

I said, "Say, Mary, I've been wanting to talk with you and this is the first chance I've had. I guess I-Well, anyway, I shouldn't have, I mean, according to the Old Man-" I stopped, my carefully rehearsed speech in ruins. "Anyhow, I shouldn't have said what I did," I concluded miserably.

She put a hand on my arm. "Sam. Sam, my very dear, do not be troubled. What you said and what you did was fair enough from what you knew. The important thing, to me, is what you did for me. The rest does not matter-except that I am happy again to know that you don't despise me."

"Well, but-Damn it, don't be so noble! I can't stand it!"

She gave me a merry, lively smile, not at all like the gentle one with which she had greeted me. "Sam, I think you like your women to be a little bit bitchy. I warn you, I can be so." She went on, "You are still worried about that slap, too, I think. All right, I'll pay it back." She reached up and patted me gently on the cheek, once. "There, it's paid back and you can forget it."

Her expression suddenly changed, she swung on me-and I thought the top of my head was coming off. "And that," she said in a tense, hoarse whisper, "pays you back the one I got from your girlfriend!"

My ears were ringing and my eyes did not want to focus. If I had not seen her bare palm, I would have sworn that she had used at least a two-by-four.

She looked at me, wary and defiant, not the least apologetic-angry, rather, if dilated nostrils meant anything. I raised a hand and she tensed-but I just wanted to touch my stinging cheek. It was very sore. "She's not my girlfriend," I said lamely.

We eyed each other and simultaneously burst out laughing. She put both her hands on my shoulders and let her head collapse on my right one, still laughing. "Sam," she managed to say, "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have done it-not to you, Sam. At least I shouldn't have slapped you so hard."

"The devil you're sorry," I growled, "but you shouldn't have put English on it. You damn near took the hide off."

"Poor Sam!" She reached up and touched it; it hurt. "She's really not your girlfriend?"

"No, worse luck. But not from lack of my trying."

"I'm sure it wasn't. Who is your girlfriend, Sam?" The words seem coquettish; she did not make them so.

"You are, you vixen!"

"Yes," she said comfortably, "I am-if you'll have me. I told you that before. And I meant it. Bought and paid for."

She was waiting to be kissed; I pushed her away. "Confound it, woman, I don't want you 'bought and paid for'."

It did not faze her. "I put it badly. Paid for-but not bought. I'm here because I want to be here. Now will you kiss me, please?"

So help me, up to that moment she had not turned on the sex, not really. When she saw that the answer was yes, she did so and it was like summer sun coming out from a cloud. That is inadequate but it will have to do.

She had kissed me once before; this time she kissed me. The French are smart; they have two words for it . . . this was the other one. I felt myself sinking into a warm golden haze and I did not ever want to come up.

Finally I had to break and gasped. "I think I'll sit down for a minute."

She said, "Thank you, Sam," and let me.

"Mary," I said presently, "Mary, my dear, there is something you possibly could do for me."

"Yes?" she said eagerly.

"Tell me how in the name of Ned a person gets anything to eat around here? I'm starved. No breakfast."

She looked startled; I suppose she had expected something else. But she answered, "Why, certainly!"

I don't know where she went nor how she did it. She may have butted into the White House pantry and helped herself. But she returned in a few minutes with a tray of sandwiches and two bottles of beer. Corned beef and rye put the roses back in my cheeks. I was cleaning up my third when I said, "Mary, how long do you figure that meeting will last?"

"Let me see," she answered, "fourteen people, including the Old Man. I give it a minimum of two hours. Why?"

"In that case," I said, swallowing the last bite, "we have time to duck out of here, find a registry office, get married, and get back before the Old Man misses us."

She did not answer and she did not look at me. Instead she stared at the bubbles in her beer. "Well?" I insisted.

She raised her eyes. "I'll do it if you say so. I'm not welshing. But I'm not going to start out by lying to you. I would rather we didn't."

"You don't want to marry me?"

"Sam, I don't think you are ready to get married."

"Speak for yourself!"

"Don't be angry, my dear. I'm not holding out-honest. You can have me with or without a contract, anywhere, anywhen, anyway. But you don't know me yet. Get acquainted with me; you might change your mind."

"I'm not in the habit of changing my mind." She glanced up without answering, then looked away sadly. I felt my face get hot. "That was a very special circumstance," I protested. "It could not happen to us again in a hundred years. That wasn't really me talking; it was-"

She stopped me. "I know, Sam. And now you want to prove to me that it didn't really happen or at least that you are sure of your own mind now. But you don't have to prove anything. I won't run out on you and I don't mistrust you. Take me away on a weekend; better yet, move into my apartment. If you find that I wear well, there's always time to make me what great grandmother called an 'honest woman', heaven knows why."

I must have looked sullen; I felt so. She put a hand on mine and said seriously, "Take a look at the map, Sam."

I turned my head and looked. Red as ever, or more so-it seemed to me that the danger zone around El Paso had increased. She went on, "Let's get this mess cleaned up first, dear. Then, if you still want to, ask me again. In the meantime, you can have the privileges without the responsibilities."

What could be fairer than that? The only trouble was that it was not the way I wanted it. Why will a man who has been avoiding marriage like the plague suddenly decide that nothing less will suit him? I had seen it happen a hundred times and never understood it; now I was doing it myself.

Mary had to go back on duty as soon as the meeting was over. The Old Man collared me and took me for a walk. Yes, a walk, though we went only as far as the Baruch Memorial Bench. There he sat down, fiddled with his pipe, and stared into space. The day was as muggy as only Washington can get, but the park was almost deserted. People were not yet used to Schedule Bare Back.

He said, "Schedule Counter Blast starts at midnight."

I said nothing; questioning him was useless.

Presently he added, "We swoop down on every relay station, broadcast station, newspaper office, and Western Union office in 'Zone Red'."

"Sounds good," I answered. "How many men does it take?"

He did not answer; instead he said, "I don't like it. I don't like it a little bit."

"Huh?"

"See here, bub-the President went on the channels and told everybody to peel off their shirts. We find that the message did not get through into infected territory. What's the next logical development?"

I shrugged. "Schedule Counter Blast, I suppose."

"That hasn't happened yet. Think, it has been more than twenty-four hours: what should have happened and hasn't?"

"Should I know?"

"You should, if you are ever going to amount to anything on your own. Here-" He handed me a combo key. "Scoot out to Kansas City and take a looksee. Stay away from comm stations, cops, and-shucks, you know their attack points better than I do. Stay away from them. Take a look at anything else. And don't get caught." He looked at his finger and added, "Be back here a half hour before midnight, or sooner. Get going."

"A lot of time you allow me to case a whole city," I complained. "It will take nearly three hours just to drive to Kansas City."

"More than three hours," he answered. "Don't attract attention by picking up a ticket."

"You know dam well I'm a careful driver."

"Move."

So I moved, stopping by the White House to pick up my kit. I wasted ten minutes convincing a new guard that I really had been there overnight and actually had possessions to pick up.

The combo was to the car we had come down in; I picked it up at Rock Creek Park platform. Traffic was light and I commented on it to the dispatcher as I handed in the combo. "Freight and commercial carriers are grounded," he answered. "The emergency-you got a military clearance?"

I knew I could get one by phoning the Old Man, but bothering him about minutiae does not endear one to him. I said, "Check the number."

He shrugged and slipped the combo in his machine. My hunch had been right; his eyebrows shot up and he handed it back. "How you rate!" he commented. "You must be the President's fair-haired boy."

He did not ask for my destination and I did not offer it. His machine probably broke into "Hail, Columbia!" when the Old Man's number hit it.

Once launched, I set the controls for Kansas City at legal max and tried to think. The transponder beeped as radar beams hit it each time I slid from one control block into the next, but no faces appeared on the screen. Apparently the Old Man's combo was good for the route, emergency or not.

I began to wonder what would happen when I slipped over into the red areas-and then realized what he had been driving at when he talked about "the next logical development". Would the control net pass me on through into areas we knew darn well were infested by titans?

One tends to think of communications as meaning the line-of-sight channels and nothing else. But "communications" means all traffic of every sort, even dear old Aunt Mamie, headed for California with her head stuffed with gossip. The slugs had seized the channels and the President's proclamation had not gotten through, or so we assumed-but news can't be stopped that easily; such measures merely slow it down. Behind the Soviet Curtain Aunt Sonya does not go on long trips; it ain't healthy. Ergo, if the slugs expected to retain control where they were, seizing the channels would be just their first step.

It stood to reason that they were not numerous enough to interfere with all traffic, but what would they do?

I reached only the unhelpful conclusion that they would do something and that I, being a part of "communications" by definition, had better be prepared for evasive action if I wanted to save my pretty pink skin.

In the meantime the Mississippi River and Zone Red were sliding closer by the minute. I wondered what would happen the first time my recognition signal was picked up by a station controlled by masters. I tried to think like a titan-impossible, I found, even though I had been a slave to one. The idea revolted me.

Well, then, what would a security commissar do if an unfriendly craft flew past the Curtain? Have it shot down, of course. No, that was not the answer; I was probably safe in the air.

But I had better not let them spot me landing. Elementary.

"Elementary" in the face of a traffic control net which was described proudly as the No-Sparrow-Shall-Fall plan. They boasted that a butterfly could not make a forced landing anywhere in the United States without alerting the search & rescue system. Not quite true-but I was no butterfly.

What I wanted was to land short of the infested area and go in on the ground. On foot I will make a stab at penetrating any security screen, mechanical, electronic, manned, or mixed. But how can you use misdirection in a car making westing a full degree every seven minutes? Or hang a stupid, innocent look on the nose of a duo?

If I went in on foot the Old Man would get his report come next Michaelmas; he wanted it before midnight.

Once, in a rare mellow mood, the Old Man told me that he did not bother his agents with detailed instructions-give a man a mission; let him sink or swim. I suggested that his method must use up a lot of agents.

"Some," he had admitted, "but not as many as the other way. I believe in the individual and I try to pick individuals who are survivor types."

"And how in the hell," I had asked him, "do you know when you've got a 'survivor type'."

He had grinned at me wickedly. "A survivor type is an agent who comes back. Then I know."

I had to reach a decision in the next few minutes. Elihu, I said to myself, you are about to find out which type you are-and damn his icy heart!

My course would take me in toward St. Louis, swing me in the city loop around St. Louis, and on to Kansas City. But St. Louis was in Zone Red. The military-situation map had showed Chicago as still green; as I remembered it the amber line had zigzagged west somewhere above Hannibal, Missouri-and I wanted very badly to cross the Mississippi while still in Zone Green. A car crossing that mile-wide river would make a radar blip as sharp as a desert star.

I signaled block control for permission to descend to local-traffic level, then did so without waiting, resuming manual control and cutting my speed. I headed north.

Short of the Springfield loop I headed west again, staying low. When I reached the river I crossed slowly, close to the water, with my transponder shut down. Sure, you can't shut off your radar recognition signal in the air, not in a standard rig-but the Section's cars were not standard. The Old Man was not above using gangster tricks.

I had hopes, if local traffic were being monitored while I crossed, that my blip would be mistaken for a boat on the river. I did not know certainly whether the next block station across the river was Zone Red or Zone Green, but, if my memory was correct, it should be green.

I was about to cut in the transponder again on the assumption that it would be safer, or at least less conspicuous, to get back into the traffic system when I noticed the shoreline opening up ahead of me. The map did not show a tributary there; I judged it to be an inlet, or possibly a new channel cut in the spring floods and not yet mapped. I dropped almost to water level and headed into it. The stream was narrow, meandering, and almost overhung by trees and I had no more business taking a sky car into it than a bee has of flying down a trombone-but it afforded perfect radar "shadow"; I could get lost in it.

In a few minutes I was lost, not only from any monitoring technician, but lost myself, right off the map. The channel switched and turned and cut back and I was so busy bucking the car by hand, trying to keep from crashing that I lost all track of navigation. I swore and wished that the car were a triphib so that I could land on water.

The trees suddenly broke on the left bank; I saw a stretch of level land, kicked her over and squatted her in with a deceleration that nearly cut me in two against my safety belt. But I was down and no longer trying to play catfish in a muddy stream.

I wondered what to do. There seemed to be nobody around; I judged that I was on the back end of someone's farm. No doubt there was a highway close by. I had better find it and stay on the ground.

But I knew that was silly even as I thought it. Three hours from Washington to Kansas City by air-I had completed almost all the trip and now I was how far away from Kansas City? By land, about three hours. At that rate, all I needed to make the trip complete was to park the car ten or twelve miles outside Kansas City and walk; then I would still have three hours to go.

I felt like the frog who jumped halfway to the end of the log with each hop, but never got there. I must get back into the air.

But I did not dare do so until I knew positively whether traffic here was being controlled by free men, or by slugs.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had not turned on the stereo since leaving Washington. I am not much for stereo; between the commercials and the junk they sandwich between them I sometimes wonder about "progress". But a newscast may have uses.

I could not find a newscast. I got (a) a lecture by Myrtle Doolightly, Ph.D., on Why Husbands Grow Bored, sponsored by the Uth-a-gen Hormone Company-I decided that she probably had plenty of experience in her subject; (b) a trio of girl hepsters singing 'If You Mean What I think You Mean, What are We Waiting For?' (c) an episode in 'Lucretia Learns About Life'.

Dear Doctor Myrtle was fully dressed and could have hidden half a dozen titans around her frame. The trio were dressed about the way one would expect them to be, but they did not turn their backs to the camera. Lucretia appeared to alternate having her clothes torn off with taking them off willingly, but the camera always cut or the lights always went out just before I could check on whether or not her back was bare-of slugs, that is.

And none of it meant anything. Those programs could have been taped weeks or months before the President announced Schedule Bare Back. I was still switching channels, trying to find a newscast-or any live program-when I found myself staring into the professionally unctuous smile of an announcer. He was fully dressed.

Shortly I realized it was one of those silly give-away shows. He was saying: "-and some lucky little woman sitting by her screen right this minute is about to receive, absolutely free, a General Atomics Six-in-One Automatic Home Butler. Who will it be? You? You? Or lucky you! He turned away from scan; I could see his shoulders. They were covered by shirt and jacket and distinctly rounded, almost humped. I was inside Zone Red.

When I switched off I realized that I was being watched-by a male urchin about nine years old. He was wearing nothing but shorts, but the brown of his shoulders showed that such was his custom. I threw back the windscreen. "Hey, bub, where's the highway?"

He continued to stare before replying, "Road to Macon's up there yonder. Say, mister, that's a Cadillac Zipper, ain't it?"

"Sure thing. Where yonder?"

"Give me a ride, huh, will you?"

"Haven't got time. Where's the road?"

He sized me up before answering, "Take me along and I'll show you."

I gave in. While he climbed in and looked around, I opened my kit, got out shirt, trousers, and jacket, and put them on. I said conversationally, "Maybe I shouldn't put on this shirt. Do people around here wear shirts?"

He scowled. "I've got shirts!"

"I didn't say you didn't; I just asked if people around here wore shirts."

"Of course they do. Where do you think you are, mister; Arkansas?"

I gave up and asked again about the road. He said, "Can I punch the button when we take off, huh?"

I explained that we were going to stay on the ground. He was frankly annoyed but condescended to point out a direction. I drove cautiously as the car was heavy for unpaved countryside. Presently he told me to turn. Quite a bit later I stopped the car and said, "Are you going to show me where that road is, or am I going to wallop your backsides?"

He opened the door and slid out. "Hey!" I yelled.

He looked back. "Over that way," he admitted. I turned the car, not really expecting to find a highway, but finding one, nevertheless, only fifty yards away. The brat had caused me to drive around three sides of a large square.

If you could call it a highway-there was not an ounce of rubber in the paving. Still, it was a road; I followed it to the west. All in all, I had wasted more than an hour.

Macon, Missouri seemed normal-much too normal to be reassuring, as Schedule Bare Back obviously had not been heard of here. There were a number of bare backs, but it was a hot day. There were more backs that were covered and any of them might have concealed a slug. I gave serious thought to checking this town, rather than Kansas City, then beating back the way I had come, while I could. Pushing further into country which I knew to be controlled by the masters made me as nervous as a preacher at a stag party; I wanted to run.

But the Old Man had said "Kansas City"; he would take a dim view of a substitute. Finally I drove the belt around Macon and pulled into a landing flat on the far side. There I queued up for local traffic launching and headed for Kansas City in a mess of farmers' copters and suchlike local craft. I would have to hold local speeds all across the state, but that was safer than getting into the hot pattern with my transponder identifying my car to every block control station.

The field was automatically serviced, no attendants, not even at the fuelling line. It seemed probable that I had managed to enter the Missouri traffic pattern without arousing suspicion. True, there was a block control station back in Illinois which might be wondering where I had gone, but that did not matter.