The Brain-Stealers

6

Next morning it became clear that a change was assumed to have taken place in him. Sally's father looked at him with lack-lustre eyes at breakfast. He said heavily, "You' goin' to town today, Jim. When you come back you take over an' finish hoein' the field we were workin' in yesterday."

For an instant, Jim did not grasp it. Then Sally said softly, "Town's Clearfield, Jim. There's a—courthouse there."

Still Jim did not quite grasp it. Sally's mother said with a trace of wistfulness, "It'd be nice to've had it in church, though ... I always figured...."

Then it sank home. The ridiculous iron pot had protected him not only from transmitted thoughts, but from giving any sign of having been protected. Whatever or whoever the Little Fella might be, the thoughts that had been "told" to Sally and the rest were now believed to have been implanted in Jim's mind while he slept. He was assumed to have absorbed all needful instructions and commands during his slumber. He was believed to have waked with an entire pattern of behavior in his mind, and which had all the effect of his own decision and desire. This family had been told that he would stay in this cabin. That he would help in the fields. That he would marry Sally,—today. In a town called Clearfield. And Sally's mother accepted unquestioningly the fact that he and Sally were to walk into town and be married, and walk back, and that in the afternoon Jim would work in the fields....

They classed him as one of them now. As subject to the same force that made them pale and worn-out robots.

He went white as he realized. Then Sally said explanatorily to her parents, "Jim's goin' to have to talk to Mr. Hagger. I don't know how long that'll be."

Jim said nothing. His flesh crawled at the narrowness of his escape. If a human being knew what transmitted thought was like, he might repel the thought-field of the Little Fella while he stayed awake. Especially if he raged. A thought-field wasn't a radiation. It was a field of force, a strain in space like an electrostatic field. It could be repelled by another thought-field contained in a man's own skull. But during sleep it couldn't be fought off. It would be absorbed. Its absorption would be evident,—like the removal or neutralization of a static charge. And the iron pot that had stayed over Jim's head during the night had absorbed the thought-field directed upon him.

But it was assumed that thoughts had been implanted in his mind during his sleep. Had it happened, he could never again have fought off a transmitted thought by raging, nor have resisted commands transmitted to him even during the day. And if he'd been unaware of the danger he could have been subjugated even while he was awake. Only full advance warning and the iron pot during the night kept him from being, now, the completely abject slave of whoever transmitted orders by thought-field.

Jim found himself sweating profusely. He was to go into this village of Clearfield, since he was believed to be a robot, now. He was to marry Sally in the belief that it was his own desire. And he was to talk to a Mr. Hagger ... Maybe—maybe this Mr. Hagger was the operator of the transmitter. If so, he must be killed and the transmitter smashed

"You remember, don't you, Jim?" asked Sally.

He hesitated. The food in his mouth was tasteless as ashes. But while they thought he was a robot like themselves they would talk freely. Sally had been indiscreet last night because she hadn't known that he was free. On the way to town she might talk again.

"I—guess so," said Jim slowly. "When you say it, I remember. But—my head don't feel so clear this mornin'. Like I—dreamed a lot last night..."

"Paw was like that," said Sally wisely. "Sometimes he's like that now. It takes time for you to get used to the Little Fella tellin' you things." Then she said hopefully. "But you're—kinda glad, ain't you, Jim?"

He mumbled. He continued to sweat.

"What time do we start?"

"Soon's we finish breakfast," said Sally. "I'm glad, Jim!"

He felt sick inside. He was desperately sorry for Sally. But he was also desperately sorry for her family and for the others who were subject to this unthinkable tyranny. And there was the rest of the world, too. He, himself, was a criminal in the eyes of Security, but he had upon himself the responsibility for the security of all mankind against a menace Security knew nothing about. He could not yet guess at any plan behind the use of transmitted thought, but its effect upon those subject to it was not only abject mental slavery. There was a physical effect of terrible weakness and lethargy. Anyone who used such a thing could be nothing less than a monster. No ambition or even insanity could make the crime forgivable.

Sally rose from the table and vanished. She came back dressed in her best. There was almost color in her cheeks as she looked at Jim.

"I'm—I'm ready, Jim," she said softly.

He stood up. He felt that he was white as death, but he remembered that Sally had had him kiss her in this same room last night so that the Little Fella would hear and think that they had been—kissing in the moonlight outside. Which was proof that what went on in this room could be overheard. But also it proved that the thoughts of the slaves were not read by their masters. They were only controlled.

He walked beside Sally to the trail in the woods. Once the trees had closed about them, he said abruptly, "How far to Clearfield, Sally?"

"Six miles, Jim." She was quiet; stilled with a quiet rapture. She said suddenly, "Jim! I—I want you should know. The—the Little Fella told me I loved you, but I—I loved you before! You b'lieve that, don't you?"

He said heavily, "I believe it."

They went on. Sally walked steadily, upheld by an inner exaltation. Jim felt himself a scoundrel, but a scoundrel forced by greater need than his own life or his own happiness, or that of Sally or any other individual. If human beings could be reduced to slavery more complete than ever before in all history, something had to be done about it! He said harshly, "I—told you, Sally, that my head wasn't clear this morning. You can tell me anything now, can't you?"

She looked at him with soft eyes.

"I don't know, Jim. If you—ain't seen the Little Fella yet, I don't guess I can talk about him so much. I'm told not ever to talk about him or what he looks like. Not to nobody."

"But that's what I want to know!" said Jim. She smiled at him, wisely.

"I got an idea," she said, "that you' goin' to talk to the Little Fella that tells Mr. Hagger things. That's why I got to take you to Mr. Hagger. The Little Fella down in the village."

"My God!" said Jim. His voice cracked suddenly. "There's more than one of them?"

"Oh, lots!" said Sally in surprise. "Most every family round here has a Little Fella that tell 'em what to do!— It ain't any harm to tell you that, is there, Jim? Now— now that our Little Fella tells you things?"

Jim's scalp crawled. He almost staggered in his walk. He had been thinking in terms of an individual working a thought-transmitter. He had been imagining a paranoiac, an egomaniac, a psychopathic individual insanely planning the subjugation of the world to his mad will. The horrible part was that it might be done. But this....

He felt weak, suddenly. He said, "Let's—let's sit down a minute, Sally. I feel queer..."

She was all solicitude. She took his arm.

"Here's a tree-trunk, Jim. Set down a while. It—takes you that way."

She watched him anxiously. Then she sat down beside him and took his hand in hers. She said regretfully, "The —Little Fella is greedy.... It's too bad, Jim ... The first time you go up to him, specially, it seems like you'll never be able to go down that ladder again.... I fainted! But you're so strong, Jim! You'll be all right..." Then she said in a startled fashion, "But—Jim! You said you hadn't never seen him!"

A terrible and quite preposterous suspicion was growing in Jim's mind. With it, horror so great that it amounted to panic.

"He's—he's not a human being!" he said, almost shrilly.

His expression called for solicitude again. Sally forgot her bewilderment. She soothed him, smiling anxiously.

"Of course not, Jim! He's cute! So tiny an' so cute.... He's the cutest li'l thing...."

He stared at her. But the monstrousness of it was too great even for emotion. When he spoke, his voice was precariously steady. At a wrong intonation he felt that he would go mad.

"This—Little Fella ... Where'd he come from?— When?"

She said soothingly, " 'Bout a month ago, Jim, we were settin' on our porch 'round sundown when a half-dozen of our neighbors come out of the road to our house. Some of 'em come from a long ways off. They were carryin' things that we couldn't see, at first. They come up an' one of 'em says, 'We brought you somethin' you're goin' to be right happy to have.' An' all of a sudden we knew we were glad. Awful glad! We said we was awful, awful glad to have what they was bringin' us."

Jim made a strangled noise. He could not look at her.

"There was six of the Little Fellas, Jim! The neighbors was carryin' them! An' they was so cute! We knew, right away, that we had to have a Little Fella to live with us an' tell us what to do!" Sally smiled reminiscently. "The folks stayed around about an hour, an' we got gladder an' gladder an' gladder, an' then they went away again, carryin' all the Little Fellas but the one that stayed with us. An' we fixed him up a li'l nest in the attic right nex' to the chimney so's he'd be nice an' warm ... An' he's been with us ever since, an' we' been glad every minute!"

Jim said thickly, "But he's greedy—."

"Yeah.... Awful greedy. But cute, Jim! So cute... Her finger strayed inside the collar of her dress. She fumbled delicately with the skin. There were tiny scars there. Very tiny scars. One was not quite healed. "Y'don't mind, Jim, he's so cute...

Jim saw. And he was filled with horror and an all-encompassing rage which was so terrible that for a moment he almost ceased to be human himself. It showed on his face. Sally looked at his expression and shrank away.

"Jim! Are you—mad with me?"

"No!" said Jim thickly. "Not with you! But I'm going to kill that Little Fella! I'm going to kill all the Little Fellas!

I'm going to let the world know what they are and what they do, and they'll be exterminated so terribly—"

"Jim!" She stood up, crying out fiercely. "You can't talk that way about the Little Fellas! I—I love you, Jim, but you can't talk about killin' the Little Fellas! They—they —" Then she said in a new, frightened, panicky voice," I— I got to tell him, Jim! I-got to tell the Little Fella what you said! I—can't help myself.... I—can't—"

Suddenly she turned and ran from him. And as she ran she sobbed terribly. He started up.

But cold reason told him that he could do nothing. Short of kidnapping her and holding her prisoner, he could not do anything at all. Because wherever he might take her, she would still be subject to the Things she called Little Fellas. He knew now they were not human, and he had a blood-chilling suspicion of what they might be. But she should come to no greater harm now than before. The urgent thing, of greater importance than anything else on earth, was somehow to get these facts known to the rest of humanity. Even Security—.

And if he was to get the news away, he must carry it. And when Sally sobbingly reported what she could not help telling, he would be in danger more deadly and more imminent than ever before. Since the Little Fella could transmit thought to humans, once they were subject to him, it was more than likely that he could transmit thought even more completely to his own kind. And that would mean—.

Jim dived into the wood, trying at one and the same time to remember every trick of woodcraft he had learned as a small boy when such things seemed important, and to maintain a fierce, seething, deliberate rage for protection against what might be an irresistible concentration of transmitted thought upon him. Six Little Fellas had subjugated Sally's family while they were awake. Only one had so far worked on him. But there must be many more than six ... If all combined their power, one man's mere fury might be hopelessly not enough....