The Puppet Masters (17 page)

The President resumed studying the map. “So far as we know,” he said, pointing to Grinnell, Iowa, “all this derives from a single landing, here.”

The Old Man answered, “Yes—so far as we know.”

I said, “Oh, no!”

They all looked at me and I was embarrassed. “Go ahead,” said the President.

“There were at least three more landings—I know there were—before I was rescued.”

The Old Man looked dumbfounded. “Are you sure, son? We thought we had wrung you dry.”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

“I never thought of it before.” I tried to explain how it feels to be possessed, how you know what is going on, but everything seems dreamy, equally important and equally unimportant. I grew quite upset. I am not the jittery type, but being ridden by a master does something to you.

The Old Man put his hand on me and said, “Steady down, son.” The President said something soothing and gave me a reassuring smile. That stereocast personality of his is not put on; he’s really got it.

Rexton said, “The important point is: where did they land? We might still capture one.”

“I doubt it,” the Old Man answered. “They did a cover-up on the first one in a matter of hours. If it was the first one,” he added thoughtfully.

I went to the map and tried to think. Sweating, I pointed to New Orleans. “I’m pretty sure one was about here.” I stared at the map. “I don’t know where the others landed. But I know they did.”

“How about here?” Rexton asked, pointing to the East Coast.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

The Old Man pointed to the other East Coast danger spot. “We know this one is a secondary infection.” He was kind enough not to say that I had been the means of infecting it.

“Can’t you remember anything else?” Martinez said testily. “Think, man!”

“I just don’t know. We never knew what they were up to, not really.” I thought until my skull ached, then pointed to Kansas City. “I sent several messages here, but I don’t know whether they were shipment orders, or not.”

Rexton looked at the map; around Kansas City was almost as pin-studded as Iowa. “We’ll assume a landing near Kansas City, too. The technical boys can do a problem on it. It may be subject to logistic analysis; we might derive the other landing.”

“Or landings,” added the Old Man.

“Eh? ‘Or landings’. Certainly. But we need more reports.” He turned back to the map and stared at it thoughtfully.

H
indsight
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, any way. 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.