The Puppet Masters

Chapter 18

The city did not look right. I tried to discount my own keyed-up state and to see what was actually there-not what I expected to see nor what I was expected to see. Superficially there was nothing wrong, but it did not have the right flavor, as if it were a clumsily directed play. I kept trying to put my finger on it; it kept slipping away.

Kansas City has many wide neighborhoods made up of family units a century old or more. Time seems to have passed them by; kids roll on lawns and householders sit in the cool of the evening on their front porches, just as their great-grandparents did. If there are bomb shelters around, they do not show. The queer, old, bulky houses, fitted together piece by piece by guildsmen long since dead, have homely charm. Seeing them, one wonders how Kansas City got its gamy reputation; those old neighborhoods feel like an enclave of security, impregnable, untouchable.

I cruised through, dodging dogs and rubber balls and toddlers who chased after each, and tried to get the feel of the place. It was the slack of the day, time for the first drink, for watering lawns, and for neighborly chatting.

And so it seemed. Ahead of me I saw a woman bending over a flower bed. She was wearing a sun suit and her back was bare as mine-more so, for I had that wad of cloth stuffed under my jacket. But clearly she was not wearing a master, nor were the two young kids with her. So what could be wrong?

It was a hot day, hotter even than Washington had been; I began to look for bare shoulders, sun-suited women and men in shorts and sandals. Kansas City, despite its reputation, is in the Bible Belt and feels its puritanical influence. People there do not strip to the weather with the cheerful unanimity of Laguna Beach or Coral Gables. An adult fully covered up is never conspicuous, even on the hottest day.

So I found people dressed both ways-but the proportions were wrong. Sure, there were plenty of kids dressed for the weather, but in several miles of driving I saw the bare backs of only five adult women and two adult men.

I should have seen more like five hundred. It was a hot day.

Cipher it out. While some jackets undoubtedly did not cover masters, by simple proportion well over ninety percent of the population must be possessed.

This city was not "secured" the way we had secured New Brooklyn; this city was saturated. The masters did not simply hold key points and key officials; the masters were the city.

I felt a panicky urge to blast off right from the street and streak out of Zone Red at emergency maximum. They knew that I had escaped the toll gate trap; they would be looking for me. I might be the only free man driving a car in the entire city-and they were all around me!

I fought it down. An agent who gets the wind up is no use to himself or his boss and is not likely to get out of a tight spot. But I had not fully recovered from what it had done to me to be possessed; it was hard to be calm.

I counted ten, delayed my reactions, and tried to figure the situation. It seemed that I must be wrong; there could not possibly be enough masters available to permit them to saturate a city with a million population. I remembered my own experiences hardly two weeks earlier; I recalled how we picked our recruits and made each new host count. Of course that had been a secondary invasion in which we had depended on shipments, whereas Kansas City almost certainly had had a flying saucer land nearby.

Still it did not make sense; it would have taken, I felt sure, not one saucer but a dozen or more, to carry enough masters to saturate Kansas City. If there had been that many surely the space stations would have spotted them, radar-tracked their landing orbits.

Or could it be that they had no trajectories to track? That they simply appeared instead of swooping down like a rocket? Maybe they used that hypothetical old favorite, the "space-time warp"? I did not know what a space-time warp was and I doubted if anyone knew, but it would do to tag a type of landing which could not be spotted by radar. We did not know what the masters were capable of in the way of engineering and it was not safe to judge their limitations by our own.

But the data I had led to a conclusion which contradicted common logic; therefore I must check before I reported back. One thing seemed sure: if I assumed that the masters had in fact almost saturated this city, then it was evident that they were still keeping up the masquerade. For the time being they were permitting the city to look like a city of free human beings. Perhaps I was not as conspicuous as I feared.

While I was thinking I had moseyed along another mile or so, going nowhere. Once I found myself heading into the retail district around the Plaza; I swung away; where there are crowds, there are cops. But I skimmed the edge of the district and in so doing passed a public swimming pool. I observed it and filed what I had seen. My mind works by delays and priorities; an item having a low priority is held until the circuits are cleared and ready for it.

To put it bluntly, I am subject to doubletakes.

I was several blocks away before I reviewed the swimming pool datum; it had not been much: the gates were locked and it carried a sign-"CLOSED FOR THE SEASON".

A swimming pool closed down during the hottest part of the summer? What did it mean? Nothing at all; swimming pools have gone out of business before and will again. On the other hand it was contrary to the logic of economics to close such an enterprise during the season of greatest profit except through utter necessity. The odds against it were long.

But a swimming pool was the one place where the masquerade could not possibly be maintained. From the viewpoint of humans a closed pool was less conspicuous than a pool unpatronized in hot weather. And I knew that the masters noted and followed the human point of view in their maneuvers-shucks, I had been there!

Item: a trap at the city's toll gates; item: too few sun suits; item: a closed swimming pool.

Conclusion: the slugs were incredibly more numerous than had been dreamed by anyone-including myself who had been possessed by them.

Corollary: Schedule Counter Blast was based on a mistaken estimate of the enemy and would work as well as hunting rhinoceri with a slingshot.

Counter argument: what I thought I saw was physically impossible. I could hear Secretary Martinez's restrained sarcasm tearing my report to shreds. My guesses referred only to Kansas City and were insufficiently grounded even there. Thank you kindly for your interest but what you need is a long rest and freedom from nervous strain. Now, gentlemen-

Pfui!

I had to have something strong enough for the Old Man to convince the President over the reasonable objections of his official advisers-and I had to have it right away. Even with a total disregard of traffic laws I could not clip much off two and a half hours running time back to Washington.

What could I dig up that would be convincing? Go farther downtown, mingle with crowds, and then tell Martinez that I was sure that almost every man I passed was possessed? How could I prove it? For that matter, how could I myself be certain; I did not have Mary's special talent. As long as the titans kept up the farce of "business as usual" the tell-tales would be subtle, a superabundance of round shoulders, a paucity of bare ones.

True, there was the toll gate trap. I had some notion now of how the city had been saturated, granting a large enough supply of slugs. I felt sure that I would encounter another such trap on the way out and that there would be others like it on launching platforms and at every other entrance and exit to the city proper. Every person leaving would be a new agent for the masters; every person entering would be a new slave.

This I felt sure of without being inclined to test it by visiting a launching platform. I had once set up such a trap in the Constitution Club; no one who entered it had escaped.

I had noticed a vendo-printer for the Kansas City Star on the last corner I had passed. Now I swung around the block and came back to it, pulled up, and got out. I shoved a dime in the slot and waited for my paper to be printed. It seemed to take unusually long, but that was my own nervousness, I felt that every passer-by was staring at me.

The Star's format had its usual dull respectability-no excitement, no mention of an emergency, no reference to Schedule Bare Back. The lead news story was headed PHONE SERVICE DISRUPTED BY SUNSPOT STORM, with a subhead City Semi-Isolated by Solar Static. There was a 3-col, semi-stereo, trukolor of the sun, its face disfigured by cosmic acne. The pic carried a Palomar date line, as did one of the substories.

The picture was a good fake-or perhaps they pulled a real one out of the paper's library. It added up to a convincing and unexciting explanation of why Mamie Schultz, herself free of parasites, could not get her call through to Grandma in Pittsburgh.

The rest of the paper looked normal. I tucked it under my arm to study later and turned back to my car . . . just as a police car glided silently up and cramped in across the nose of it. A cop got out.

A police car seems to condense a crowd out of air. A moment before the comer was deserted-else I would never have stopped. Now there were people all around and the cop was coming toward me. My hand crept closer to my gun; I would have dropped him had I not been sure that most, if not all, of those around me were equally dangerous.

He stopped in front of me. "Let me see your license," he said pleasantly.

"Certainly, officer," I agreed, "It's clipped to the instrument board of my car." I stepped past him, letting it be assumed that he would follow me. I could feel him hesitate, then take the bait. I led him around to the far side, between my car and his. This let me see that he did not have a mate in his car, a most welcome variation from human practice. More important, it placed my car between me and the too-innocent bystanders.

"Right there," I said, pointing inside, "it's fastened down." Again he hesitated, then looked-just long enough for me to use the new technique I had developed through necessity. My left hand slapped down on his shoulders and I clutched with all my strength.

It was the "struck cat" all over again. His body seemed to explode so violent was the spasm. I was in the car and gunning it almost before he hit the pavement.

And none too soon. The masquerade broke as suddenly as it had in Barnes's outer office; the crowd closed in. One young woman clung by her nails to the smooth outside of the car for fifty feet or more before she fell off. By then I was making speed and still accelerating. I cut in and out of oncoming traffic, ready to take to the air but lacking space.

A cross street showed up on the left; I slammed into it. It was a mistake; trees arched over it and I could not take off. The next turn was even worse; I cursed the city planners who had made Kansas City so parklike.

Of necessity I slowed down. Now I was cruising at a conservative city speed, still watching for a street which would carry me to some boulevard wide enough for an illegal take-off. My thoughts began to catch up with me and I realized that there was no sign of pursuit. My own too-intimate knowledge of the masters came to my aid. Except for "direct conference" a titan lives in and through his host; he sees what the host sees; receives and passes on information through whatever organs and by whatever means are available to the host.

I knew that. So I knew that it was unlikely that any of the slugs at the corner had been looking for that particular car other than the one inhabiting the body of a policeman-and I had settled with it!

Now, of course, the other parasites present would be on the lockout for me, too-but they had only the bodily abilities and facilities of their hosts. I decided that I need treat them with no more respect, or only a little more respect, than I would give to any casual crowd of witnesses, i.e., ignore them; change neighborhoods and forget it.

For I had nearly thirty minutes of grace left and I had decided what it was I needed as proof; a prisoner, a man who had been possessed and could tell what had happened to the city. I had to rescue a host.

I had to capture a man who was possessed, capture him without hurting him, kill or remove his rider, and kidnap him back to Washington. I had not time to pick a victim, to make plans; I must act now. Even as I decided, I saw a man walking in the block ahead. He was carrying a briefcase and stepping along like a man who sees home and supper ahead. I pulled alongside him and said, "Hey!"

He stopped. "Eh?"

I said, "I've just come from City Hall. No time to explain-slide in here and we'll have a direct conference."

He answered, "City Hall? What are you talking about?"

I said, "Change in plans. Don't waste time. Get in!"

He backed away. I jumped out of the car and grabbed at his hunched shoulders.

Nothing happened-nothing, save that my hand struck bony human flesh, and the man began to yell.

I jumped back into the car and got out of there fast. When I was blocks away I slowed and thought it over. Could it be that I was wrong, that my nerves were so overwrought that I saw signs of titans where there were none?

No! For the moment I had the Old Man's indomitable will to face facts, to see them as they were. The toll gate, the sun suits, the swimming pool, the cop at the vendo-printer . . . those facts I knew-and this last fact simply meant that I had hit the double-zero, rolled boxcars, picked the one man in ten, or whatever the odds were, who was not yet recruited. I speeded up, looking for a new victim.

He was a middle-aged man watering his lawn, a figure so bucolic and out-of-this-century that I was half a mind to pass him by. But I had no time left-and he wore a heavy sweater which bulged suspiciously. Had I seen his wife on the veranda I would have gone past, for she was dressed in bra and skirt and so could not have been possessed.

He looked up inquiringly as I stopped. "I've just come from City Hall," I repeated. "You and I need a direct conference right away. Get in."

He said quietly, "Come in the house for it. That car is too public."

I wanted to refuse but he had already turned and was heading for the house. As I came up by him he whispered, "Careful. The woman is not of us."

"Your wife?"

"Yes."

We stopped on the porch and he said, "My dear, this is Mr. O'Keefe. We have some business to discuss. We'll be in the study."

She smiled and answered, "Certainly, my love. Good evening, Mr. O'Keefe. Sultry, isn't it?"

I agreed that it was and she went back to her knitting. We went on inside and the man ushered me into his study. Since we were both keeping the masquerade I went in first, as befitted a visitor being escorted. I did not like turning my back on him.

For that reason I was half expecting it. He hit me near the base of the neck. But I rolled with it and went down almost unhurt. I continued to roll and fetched up on my back.

In training school they used to slap us with sandbags for trying to get up, once down. I recall my savate instructor saying in a flat Belgian accent, "Brave men get up again-and die. Be a coward-fight from the floor."

So I was on my back and threatening him with my heels as soon as I hit. He danced back out of range. Apparently he did not have a gun and I could get at mine. But there was an open fireplace in the room, a real one, complete with poker, shovel, and tongs. He circled toward it.

There was a small table just out of my reach. I half rolled, half lunged, grabbed a leg and threw it. It caught him in the face as he was grabbing the poker. Then I was on him.

His master was dying in my fingers and he himself was convulsing under its last, terrible command when I became aware of nerve-shattering screams. His wife was standing in the doorway. I bounced up and let her have one, right about her double chin. She went down in mid scream and I returned to her husband.

A limp man is amazingly hard to lift; it took me longer to get him up and across my shoulders than it had to silence him. He was heavy. Fortunately I am a big husky, all hands and feet; I managed a lumbering dog trot toward the car. I doubt if the noise of our fight disturbed anyone but my victim's wife, but her screams must have aroused half that end of town. There were people popping out of doors on both sides of the street. So far, none of them was near, but I was glad to see that I had left the car door open. I hurried toward it.

Then I was sorry; a brat who looked like the twin of the one who had given me trouble earlier was inside fiddling with the controls. Cursing, I dumped my prisoner in the lounge circle and grabbed at the kid. The boy shrank back and struggled, but I tore him loose and threw him out-straight into the arms of the first of my pursuers.

That saved me. He was still untangling himself as I slammed into the driver's seat and shot forward without bothering with door or safety belt. As I took the first corner the door swung shut and I almost went out of my seat; I then held a straight course long enough to fasten the belt. I cut sharp on another corner, nearly ran down a ground car coming out, and went on.

I found the wide boulevard I needed-the Paseo, I think-and jabbed the take-off key. Possibly I caused several wrecks; I had no time to worry about it. Without waiting to reach altitude I wrestled her to course east and continued to climb as I made easting. I kept her on manual across Missouri and expended every launching unit in her racks to give her more speed. That reckless and illegal action may have saved my neck; somewhere over Columbia, just as I fired the last one, I felt the car shake to concussion. Someone had launched an interceptor, a devil-chaser would be my guess-and the pesky thing had fused where I had just been.

There were no more shots, which was good, as I would have been a duck on water from then on. My starboard impeller began to run hot immediately thereafter, possibly from the near miss or perhaps simply from abuse. I let it heat, praying that it would not fly apart, for another ten minutes. Then, with the Mississippi behind me and the indicator way up into "danger" I cut it out and let the car limp along on the port unit. Three hundred was the best she would do-but I was out of Zone Red and back among free men.

Up until then I had not had time to give my passenger more than a glance. He lay where I had slung him, sprawled on the floor pads, unconscious or dead. Now that I was back among men and no longer had the power for illegal speeds there was no reason not to go automatic. I flipped on the transponder, signaled a request for block assignment, and put the controls on automatic without waiting for permission. A block control technician might curse me out and even note my signal for a citation, but they would fit me into the system somehow. I swung around into the lounge and looked my man over.

He was breathing but still out. There was a welt on his face where I had clipped him with the table, but no bones seemed broken and I doubted that he would be unconscious from that cause. I slapped his face and dug my thumbnails into his ear lobes but I could not rouse him.

The dead slug was beginning to stink but I had no way to dispose of it. I let him be and went back to the control seat.

The chronometer read twenty-one thirty-seven Washington time-and I still had better than six hundred miles to go. At my best speed on one power plant, allowing nothing for landing, for tearing over to the White House and finding the Old Man, I would reach Washington a few minutes after midnight. So I had already failed to carry out the letter of my orders and the Old Man was sure as the devil going to make me stay in after school for it.

I took a chance and tried to start the starboard impeller. No dice-it was probably frozen solid and needing a major overhaul. Perhaps just as well, as anything that goes that fast can be explosively dangerous if it gets out of balance-so I desisted and tried to raise the Old Man by phone.

The phone would not work. Perhaps I had jiggered it in one of the spots of exercise I had been forced to take that day but I had never had one fail me before. Printed circuits, transistors, and the whole works being embedded in plastic made those units almost as shock resistant as a proximity fuse. I put it back in my pocket, feeling that this was one of those days when it was just not worthwhile to get out of bed. I turned to the car's communicator and punched the emergency tab.

"Control," I called out. "Control! This is an emergency!"

The screen lighted up and I was looking at a young man. He was, I saw with relief, bare-skinned so far as he appeared in the screen. "Control answering-Block Fox Eleven. What are you doing in the air? I've been trying to raise you ever since you entered my block."

"Never mind!" I snapped. "Patch me into the nearest military circuit. This is crash priority!"

He looked uncertain, but the screen flickered and went blank. Shortly another picture built up showing a military message center-and that did my heart good, as every person in sight was stripped to the waist. The foreground was occupied by a young watch officer; I could have kissed him. Instead I said, "Military emergency-patch me through to the Pentagon and there to the White House."

"Who are you?"

"No time, no time! I'm a civil agent and you wouldn't recognize my I.D. if you saw it. Hurry!"

I might have talked him into it but he was shouldered out of scan by an older man, a wing commander by his cap insignia. "Land at once!" was all that he said.

"Look, skipper," I said. "This is a military emergency; you've got to put me through. I-"

"This is a military emergency," he interrupted, "and all civil craft have been grounded for the past three hours. Land at once."

"But I've got to-"

"Land or be shot down. We are tracking you; I am about to launch an interceptor to burst a half mile ahead of you. Hold your course, or make any maneuver but landing, and the next one will burst on."

"Will you listen, please? I'll land, but I've got to get-" He switched off, leaving me with my jaw pumping air.

The first burst seemed considerably short of a half mile ahead of me; I landed.

I cracked up in doing it, but without hurting myself or my passenger. I did not have long to wait. They had me flare-lighted and were swooping down on me before I had satisfied myself that the boat wouldn't move. They took me in and I met the wing commander personally. He even put my message through after his psych squad got through giving me the antidote for the sleep test. By then it was one-thirteen, zone five-and Schedule Counter Blast had been underway for exactly that hour and thirteen minutes.

The Old Man listened to a summary, grunted, then told me to shut up and see him in the morning.