The Brain-Stealers

11

Security, of course, had the final and overriding power among men, and it differed from previous tyrannies only in degree. The sincere belief of its top men that they were essential to mankind's continued existence had only little more reason behind it than the similar beliefs of previous dictatorships and empires. Men had reached a stage of technical progress where they could destroy themselves, and something like Security, to some degree, was needed. When it was a purely international affair and hardly operated below a national level, it was probably an unmixed blessing. It certainly prevented a second atomic war and assuredly kept biological warfare from being tried out full-scale.

Even later it was essentially useful. It wouldn't be wise to allow high-school students to learn the principles of induced atomic detonation. Common table-salt contains a fissionable isotope and adolescents playing with atomic energy could be more destructive than even with fast cars and sport-planes. Also, it was even necessary that cranks and crooks and lunatics should not be able to go into the nearest public library and find out just what a single individual can do in the way of damage with proper information and a minimum of aparatus. When Security managed only these things, even, it was not too bad. But there is a boundary to the safe suppression of knowledge.

Security no longer recognized limits. There is a point where risks have to be taken for progress. When Security extended its authority downward and prohibited all dangerous scientific experiments, its underlings ruled automatically that anything which could be dangerous should be forbidden, and that any experiment whose result was not certain could be dangerous. Interplanetary flight could not be developed because any but one-way guided-missile flights meant a danger of bringing back alien and possibly deadly micro-organisms. Microbiology became merely an art of cataloging observations, because bacteria sometimes mutate under cultivation. Experimental medicine became pure science without application to human life, and physics. All research involving nuclear fission was forbidden and physics came to a frustrated stop. Even electronics was suspect. When Jim Hunt essayed a daring excursion into the physical basis of consciousness, the foreseeable perils of the subject made Security clamp down swiftly and firmly for the safety of mankind.

The official motive for Security decisions could not be challenged. Its motive was the safety of the race. Nobody outside of Security was allowed to learn enough to be able to challenge its methods. The world as a whole tended to settle down into a comfortable stagnation, with due gratitude to Security for its continued life, and most people placidly confided in the protection they were not allowed to escape.

But this state of things was ideal for the purposes of the Things. Naturally enough, as parasites, they were not especially intelligent. Certainly not, compared to men. They were utterly uncreative. Essentially they were parasitic in exactly the fashion in which lice are parasitic, only with a highly specialized ability to implant desired thoughts into the consciousness of other organisms. That was all. Tin's odd power secured their survival, instead of small size and ability to hide which lice and fleas find so convenient. The Things thrived because they could make other creatures wish to serve them, instead of kill them. They had a very considerable cunning, and certainly they had the ability to learn a great deal about their hosts—or victims. But despite their success they were actually rather stupid.

They had exactly one desire, to be warm and comfortable and fed. That happy estate called for the enslavement of other creatures intelligent enough to provide warmth and comfort and food. Actually, the Things had only one technique and one trick, but the combination was deadly. The technique was the linkage of their thought-transmission power so that several could concentrate on an individual on whom they wished to prey. The trick was the use of slave-brains for contrivance.

When desire to serve the Things became a passion as sincere and unreasoning as patriotism, their victims set joyously about the enslavement of their fellow-men. They schemed for it. They planned for it. They devised far-reaching and beautifully-planned campaigns to bring it about. And they had no qualms, because everyone who was subject to the Things was very, very happy. It showed on their faces. But of course a man in a state of inner exaltation is not so good a workman, and there is a fine edge gone from his perceptions because he is lost in his contentment. Also there are times when he is desperately weak because of the Things' demands upon his strength. So where the Things held sway there was a slight slackening. Civilization seemed to falter just a little, in preparation for a quiet and contented descent into barbarism. But when the service of the Things was the high point in one's life, and they wanted only to be warm and lie soft and feed gluttonously,—why—there was no point in striving for anything more.

But Jim Hunt was not yet reduced to slave's estate. And his freedom was the only thing the Little Fellas had to fear, and about the only hope for yet-free humans to stay that way.

Long after nightfall he still roamed the streets of the city and racked his brains for a possible course of action. At any instant a deadly and desperate search for him might begin again. The unconscious man he'd turned over in Clearfield had been accepted as himself. But if Sally's father looked at him, or a physician were ordered to restore him to consciousness ... Yes. A doctor-slave would see tiny scars, fresh ones, which would prove that the man in the iron cap had been a duly submissive slave and could not possibly have been Jim. A blood-count would show weakness beyond exhaustion, and its cause. Unless that man was simply murdered out of hand, it was inevitable that he'd be found to be an unwitting imposter!

And when that was found out, of course it would be guessed that Jim himself had turned him over. And that Jim had very quietly mingled with those who then gave up the hunt and had been carried out of danger when the summoned mob returned to its homes. And there was his call to the local Security office. It had seemed a safe trick. Somebody might make such a call in all innocence. But no innocent man would have fled with such speed when the Security officer in the visiphone pressed an emergency-button. Only a man with a bad conscience would have suspected that the button would trace the visiphone call and order a cordon about it instantly.

So Jim should be in as bad a case as ever. If Jim's substitute had been unmasked, the odds were a hundred to one that he was already being hunted in this city. The police-force here was under the Things' control, and there was an infallible way to detect Jim. He wore an iron-wire cap. Already there would be a cordon about the town. No man could leave on any vehicle, ground or air, without removing his hat at least, and probably not without a more detailed examination still. They'd know Jim had to get away quickly and that he'd guess it. So they'd try to trap him.

He couldn't stay in town without taking off his hat By morning there would be an order that all men had to take off their hats in all public vehicles. In all stores and dwellings and places of business. It was absurdly simple! If it was announced that the homicidal maniac who'd committed a crime of insensate violence and wanton horror in the mountains was now in the city, the entire population would look for him. If it was announced that his mania commanded him to wear a cap of iron wire on his head, even the children would challenge any man who kept his head covered!

So simple! People who were enslaved would seize him in a frenzy of hate. People who weren't would shrink in horror from the iron cap that proclaimed him a lunatic. And if he tried to explain? Small round hairless things, horribly gluttonous and cuddled in soft warm nests, served by humans who were their passionately loyal slaves? No one would believe his story. They'd fear him. Broadcasts and newscasts and published accounts would make him hunted everywhere. Everywhere! Within ten hours there was not a city on the continent where he would be safe or where he would be listened to!

It was airtight. Even Jim's few friends would think him mad. News accounts of the murder he was accused of would take care of that! Simply by the accusation of murder and the necessary wire cap, he had become a psychopath, a deranged criminal, whom absolutely nobody on earth would listen to. Logically, he would even seem to have gone mad as a result of his own experiments and to have proved the wisdom of Security in forbidding them.

In this completely hopeless reasoning, however, Jim had made an advance. Until now he had believed in horrors only when they were proved to exist. But now, abruptly, he thought ahead. For the first time he anticipated future troubles.

" is believed to be possibly in this city. Without alarming the public, the police give information that a man seen wearing an iron-wire cap is apt to be a homicidal maniac and likely to commit a murder at any time without provocation. It is suggested—" Here the newscaster's face wore a reassuring smile, "that every man in the city go hatless tomorrow, and that all citizens beware of any person who approaches them with his head covered. If you stay away from any man who can be wearing an iron-wire cap, you will be quite safe...."

It didn't even increase his numbed feeling that absolutely nothing could be done. The only way to convince anybody who wasn't already enslaved, he reflected with surpassing bitterness, would be to show them—.

Then he stopped short, there in the shadowy street with tall dark buildings on every hand. He was unshaven and shabby and in ill-fitting clothes. He had been condemned to life imprisonment, and had escaped, and now he was a hunted animal, and any other human being who saw him tomorrow would scream with terror if he drew near them with his hat on, and scream more horribly still if he took off his hat....

But the despair suddenly left his face. His expression grew drawn and taut and intense. After a moment he moved on, but his eyes roved now, seeking what he knew he must have.

An hour later he idled down a very narrow street in the oldest and dingiest part of the city. The shops here were cheap and shoddy. Their interiors were dark. There was a vague smell of mustiness from the very buildings.

He'd passed the shop once walking briskly, and again walking with the listless gait of one whose Thing was very greedy. This third time he slipped into the vestibule. He broke the narrowest panel of the shop's plate-glass. There is a trick to doing it without noise, and he used it. In seconds he was inside the shop, ransacking it feverishly.

He went out of the window with a heavy bag in his hands. The bag contained saleable loot—purses, handbags, silk scarves, and the like. It contained a wax display-head, on which mannish hats were set to show how fetchingly they would make a wearer look. And he had a lot of assorted scissors.

An enterprising thief would have realized money on the lot. But Jim carried it three blocks and turned into an alley—this was a very old part of the city, built before the Second World War—and crouched down in an alcove between buildings. He had spotted this place, too. There was a storm-sewer grating there. And he carefully thrust all his loot, piece by piece, into the opening. He thrust the bag through. Then he smashed the waxen head and put every scrap of wax deep down out of sight.

With an obvious looting of the store for marketable goods, the theft of the wax head might not be noticed. He'd shifted the remaining display-heads, too, to hide the fact that one was missing. Absorbed in the loss of merchandise, the proprietor of the shop might not notice for days or weeks that a window-dummy was gone.

And an hour later, his face grayed with whitish dust rubbed off on his hands from a whitewashed wall, Jim Hunt stumbled into a starting-place for busses. One of the smaller vehicles was just warming up, getting ready to leave on a route which included Clearfield.

Jim stumbled wearily into it. He was the only passenger, so far. He paid his fare. The conductor said shortly, "Hat!"

He pointed to a new sign in the bus's interior: ALL MEN'S HATS MUST BE REMOVED.

Jim numbly took off his hat. He visibly did not wear an iron-wire cap. He looked drawn and gray and exhausted. He went with dragging footsteps to the very back of the bus and sank down in a seat.

A little later the bus rolled out. It had two other passengers, no more. It purred through the city streets. It was stopped once at the edge of town. The driver spoke curtly to a uniformed man who peered within. The uniformed man glanced at the passengers. A fat woman, and a bald-headed man, and Jim seemingly comatose from weariness in the back. One of the bus's lights shone on Jim's uncovered head. The policeman was satisfied. The bus rolled on and out into open country.

Jim continued to look half-dead and wearied. Actually, he felt almost incredulous of his escape. A wig from a fashion-dummy, caught over his iron-wire cap and unskilfully trimmed to blend with his own hair had not seemed promising, but it was the only trick that he could even try. Still, it was not likely that anyone would look for the fugitive who'd been hunted so desperately in the mountain country to head back for that very area when he made a break out of the city.

From his own standpoint, though, he could have no other destination. Anywhere in the world, his unsupported tale would be considered the raving of a lunatic. Now that he'd been accused of murder, even Security would think he'd simply gone mad. Unless the Things controlled Security. There was just one possible action for Jim to take.

He had to kidnap a Thing and get away with it to where free men could be persuaded to examine it and credit the meaning of its existence.