The Brain-Stealers

5

The world, of course, was bright and new and shining on its sunlit side, and restful and peaceful and secure where night clothed it. In the countries where the sun shone, men and women worked and children played, and where the stars looked down they slept quietly. But all assured themselves that they were secure. They were perfectly, perfectly safe. The world was made safe by Security, which was an organization of quite the wisest men on earth. They were at once the greatest of scientists and the most able of administrators. They had the welfare of everybody in mind.

They had begun, of course by forbidding anybody to experiment with atom bombs, because the human race could be wiped out by only so many of them. They could make all the earth's atmosphere poisonously radioactive. Then everybody would die. But Security prevented that. And presently it forbade the use of atomic energy as such in any form, because, of course, any generator of atomic power makes radioactivity which may escape into the air. And not long after that, the wise men of Security learned that someone had been experimenting with germs and by accident had created a new and very deadly mutation. It could have been used in biological warfare, but it could have released a new and very deadly plague upon the world. So Security forbade experiments with germs. And still later a physicist discovered the principle of a very tiny generator which developed incredibly high voltages. Beams of deadly radiation became possible. So Security had to protect the world from that.

Security was very wise and very conscientious. It did not stop all scientific advance, of course. Its scientists experimented very carefully, in especially set-up Experimental Zones, with all due care that nothing could happen to endanger the people of Earth. Which meant, naturally, that they did not make any very dangerous experiments. And in time Security took a fatherly interest in public health because new plagues sometimes arise in nature, and it issued directives governing quarantine and medicine in general, and of course travel by individuals because individuals are sometimes disease-carriers. And presently it was inevitable that Security should give advice on education, and arrange that technical knowledge should be restricted to stable personalities. In a complex modern civilization a single paranoiac could cause vast damage if he were technically informed. So presently everybody took psychological tests, and those who received technical educations were strictly licensed by Security. Then libraries were combed and emptied of dangerous facts that lunatics could use to the detriment of mankind. And—.

The people of Earth were very secure, to be sure. They were protected against everything that Security could imagine as happening to them. But they weren't free any longer. And the tragedy was that many of the guiding minds of Security were utterly sincere, though there were self-seekers and politicians merely seeking soft jobs and importance among Security officials. The guiding minds believed devoutly that they served humanity by using their greater knowledge and wisdom to protect human beings from themselves. But somehow, knowing their own motives, they did not see that they had created the most crushing tyranny ever known to men.

But Jim Hunt knew it. Yet he knew that even the tyranny of Security, which essayed to control man's actions, was as nothing beside a tyranny which might control their thoughts. Whatever or whoever could sent transmitted thoughts into a man's brain could control his inmost self. A man does not question the opinions his own brain tells him it believes. His mind could become a robot's mind, believing and remembering only what it was told. His actions could become a robot's actions, motivated only by blind and abject loyalty to his unknown master. But even Jim had no idea of the depths of horror the present situation could hold.

He walked with Sally in the moonlight, along the woods-trail leading to the cabin. She pressed close to him, her hand in his arm. The unearthly tranquility of her features was broken, a little, by a secretive half-smile.

"You're funny, Jim," she said softly.

He'd been abstracted, fumbling in the back of his mind for possible intrusive and alien thoughts.

"How so, Sally?"

"You act funny," she said, smiling at him. "You act like you ain't been told!"

"Told what?" asked Jim. Suddenly he was intent. He remembered what she'd said to her father. That he'd been "told" to say to the Security fliers that there was no stranger anywhere about. "What should I have been told?"

"You know!" she protested. "You're teasin' me!" He hesitated, reasoning swiftly.

"M-maybe," he said after an instant. "What were you told?"

She smiled up at him. "You know!"

"About what?" he insisted.

"About—us," said Sally. "What we're goin' to do, you an' me. About you stayin' at the cabin for always, an' us—us—."

She smiled confidently up at him. There were prickles at the back of his neck. Then a slow, red fury swept over him. But he said quietly, "Go on!"

"Us—gettin' married," said Sally softly. "I know it was the Little Fella tellin' me I loved you. Oh, sure! But I'd ha' done it anyway! An' when he told me we were goin' to get married I was—awful glad. Were you?"

Jim Hunt stood still. The girl's face was radiant—but so terribly pale and tired! It was unspeakably pathetic. But this was a chance to learn what the victims of those nibbling thoughts could tell.

"Listen, Sally," said Jim, and despite himself some grimness crept into his voice, "when did the—Little Fella tell you all this?"

"While we were eatin' supper," said Sally, still smiling. "Didn't you notice?"

He shook his head, cold all over. "Little Fella" meant something—the source of the whispered thoughts. But no previous guess of his at a transmitter of thought could possibly have earned such a nickname. He had not imagined fondness for the source of the whisperings, though of course fondness could be created by suggestion like anything else. But the use of a diminutive; the complete submission implied in her rejoicing that she was "told" that she was going to marry him; the whole atmosphere of unquestioning acceptance of the control of her life and that of everybody else—these things did not add up.

"I—guess I'm dumb, Sally," he said slowly. "I didn't know about it. I wasn't—I haven't been told yet."

She did not flush. It looked as if she didn't have blood enough in her to flush. But she looked ashamed. Then she said softly, "But he'll tell you! If he told me, he'll tell you, too! I hope you'll be glad, Jim!"

Jim said bluntly, very cold and raging for the girl before him; "I came from a long way off, Sally. What is a Little Fella? I've never seen one. I don't know—exactly—what you mean."

She regarded him blankly.

"You don't know? You ain't—." Then she looked frightened. "I shouldn't ha' said anything! I can't talk about him excep'—"

She caught her breath in terror. Jim put his hand on her shoulder.

"He can't hear what you said!"

"But—but if he wants I should tell him, I—I got to!" She trembled. But it was not quite fear in the normal sense. She was terrified by the discovery that she had done something she should not have done. She was afraid of the fact, not of its consequences. "But—but—oh, sure!" she said presently, self-reassured. "You'll know all about it presently! He'll tell you, an' he'll tell you to love me, if you don't, an' we'll get married an' stay right here for always...."

She was comforted. Jim forced himself to ruthlessness. He asked questions. The answers came. Sally had been told to love him. So she did. Of course! One always did what the Little Fella told one to do.... Yes ... The idea came into one's mind that it would please the Little Fella, and one did it...Yes. Of course! How could anybody not do what the Little Fella wanted? How could anybody want to do what he didn't want? The Little Fella was—was—.

There she stopped. There was a mental block that kept her from saying more. No questions, however indirect or shrewd, would bring out anything else. But he persisted.

Presently she said in a choked voice, "He—he tol' me we was goin' to be m-married an'—an' so I was to be awful nice t' you...."

She buried her face in her hands. Abysmal shame overwhelmed her. She sobbed. And Jim, standing beside her in her humiliation, knew that whatever bond kept her subject had been broken. For a little while she could see clearly. But still she could not speak of what she was forbidden to speak....

Presently Jim soothed her as well as he could. He held her comfortingly close and told her gently that he'd only been curious. He didn't know anything about the Little Fella. It was all new to him. But she hadn't done anything wrong. Not in talking to him, because the Little Fella hadn't warned her. And of course when he, Jim, learned about the Little Fella and how people must do what he said, and of course when the Little Fella told him about their getting married....

Her tears dried, somehow. She grew radiant again and somehow maternal. They walked together back toward the farmhouse. Then, when it loomed dark before them with only a single tiny glimmer of light in one window, she whispered, "J-Jim, when we—get inside, you— you kiss me. So's the Little Fella'll hear an' think we' been—kissin' outside...." Her hand trembled on his arm. He nodded. He did kiss her, in the dark main room of the cabin, with no illumination save the dying coals of the fireplace. She gasped, "G-goodnight, Jim..."

Then Jim was left alone. And a murderous fury filled him. He had learned much, but not enough. He had not yet had time to sort out what he had learned, but he knew savagely that he had been right and Security wrong, and the danger Security feared had come true more horribly than any Security official could imagine. But his fury was because of the thin, weary, enslaved folk in this cabin. And for the girl Sally.

But he had been a night and two days without sleep, and his mind would not be clear. Also there was the danger that in his weariness the Little Fella—whatever thing devised in hell a Little Fella might be—might put soothing, convincing thoughts into his mind...

He went to the fireplace. There was a great iron pot beside it. At the moment it was empty. He held it in his hands. As cast-iron, its hysterisis-constant should be high. He raised it over his head and carefully let down his guard, fumbling in the back of his mind...

"Nice...." said the sly and insinuating and somehow loathsome thought. "Very nice.... Sally is nice.... Sally is fun....It will be nice to stay here....Sally—."

He lowered the iron pot carefully over his head. The thoughts dimmed. He lay down on the corn-husk mattress spread on the floor for him. For a time he was unwillingly alert. Presently he was calm again. He slipped his head partly out of the iron pot. Thoughts came to him once more.

He listened to them in stark horror. Before they could seize upon him—but his horror itself was a defense—he drew the pot down over his head again.

It was very uncomfortable, but ultimately he managed to sleep. And he woke in the morning with the certain knowledge that his mind had not been tampered with while he slumbered. It was quaint to think that he was able to think clearly and think clearly because he'd imitated the fabled ostrich—by hiding his head. But there was sound reason. He'd insulated his laboratory with quarter-inch plates of high hysterisis iron. Nothing his apparatus produced could go through that! An iron cooking-pot neatly if absurdly duplicated the insulation.

But his feelings were grim indeed. The few thoughts he'd dared listen to made him feel sick with fear for the rest of mankind. But it was humorous to know, from that listening, that the iron pot he'd worn had been not only a protection against the thought-field directed upon him, but had absorbed that field so it seemed that he had no protection.