Invasion of the Body Snatchers (17 page)

He reached forward to tap me on the knee, smiling at Becky. "But you aren't a newspaper reporter, Doctor Bennell. The seed pods on the Parnell farm, if that is what they were, probably drifted there on the wind, from not too great a distance, and were undoubtedly a completely well-known and classified specimen with which I simply didn't happen to be familiar. And I'm sure I could have avoided a great deal of kidding from my colleagues at the school if I had simply said so to young Beekey. Instead of allowing him to take my theories and make me run with them." He grinned at us again, a very likable guy.

I sat thinking about what he said, and after a moment he said gently, "Why are you interested, Doctor Bennell?"

"Well-" I hesitated, wondering how much I could, or should, say to him. Then I said, "Have you heard anything, Professor Budlong, about a - sort of delusion that has been occurring here in Santa Mira?"

"Yes, a little." He looked at me wonderingly, then nodded at a mass of papers on the desk before him. "I've been working hard during this summer's vacation on what I feel, or hope, is a fairly important technical paper scheduled for fall publication; it will mean a great deal to me professionally. And I've been more or less out of circulation, working on it. But a psychology instructor at school did tell me something about an apparent, though temporary, delusion of personality change which several local people have had. You think there's some connection between that, and" - he grinned - "our 'space spores'?"

I glanced at my watch, and stood up; in just over three minutes, Jack Belicec was due to drive down this street, and I wanted us out at the tall hedge in front of the house, ready to step into his car. "Possibly," I answered Professor Budlong. "Tell me this: could these spores conceivably be some sort of weird alien organism with the ability to imitate, in fact, duplicate, a human body? Turn themselves, for all practical purposes, into a kind of human being, indistinguishable from the real thing?"

The pleasant-faced, youthful-looking man at the desk before me looked up at me curiously, studying my face for a moment. Then, when he spoke, after apparently considering my question, his tone was carefully polite; he was treating an utterly absurd question, for the sake of good manners, with a seriousness it did not deserve. "I'm afraid not, Doctor Bennell. There aren't many things" - he smiled at me - "that you can assert with absolute positiveness, but one of them is this. No substance in the universe could possibly reconstitute itself into the amazing structure of living bone, blood, and infinitely complex cellular organization that is a human being. Or any other living animal. It's impossible; absurd, I'm afraid. Whatever you feel you may have observed, Doctor, you're on the wrong track. I know myself how easy it is, at times, to be carried away by a theory. But you're a doctor, and when you think about it, you'll know I'm right."

I did know. I felt my face flush in complete confusion, unable to think, and I stood there feeling I'd made the most ridiculous kind of fool of myself, and that of all people, I, a doctor, should have had more sense, and I wanted to drop through the floor, or disappear in thin air. Quickly, almost abruptly, I thanked Budlong, shaking his hand; all I wanted was to get away from this intelligent, pleasant-eyed man whose face was so carefully refraining from showing the contempt he must have felt. A few moments later, he was politely showing us out the front door, and as we walked down the steps toward the wooden gate in the high shrub along the front edge of the lawn, I was grateful to hear the door close behind us.

I wasn't thinking, I was mentally still back in that study feeling like a child who's disgraced himself, and I actually had my hand on the gate latch, fumbling with the mechanism. Then I stopped; a few hundred yards off to our right, I heard a car, moving very fast, swing around the corner and into this street, the rubber squealing on the pavement as though it would never stop. An instant later, through the lattice-work of the gate, I saw Jack Belicec's car flash past, Jack hunched over the wheel, eyes straight ahead, Theodora crouched beside him, the motor roaring. Another set of tyres squealed around the corner to the right, out of sight over the high hedge; then, a split-second later, a shot sounded, the sharp, unmistakable crack of a gun, and we actually heard the faint, high whistle of the bullet ripping the air of the street before us. A brown-and-tan, gold-starred Santa Mira police car shot past our gate; and then, in an incredibly few moments, the twin sounds of racing motors had diminished, faded, sounded once again very faintly, then they were gone.

Behind us, the front door opened, and now I unlatched the gate, and holding Becky's elbow tightly, I walked with her - quickly, but not running - along the sidewalk, and down two houses. We turned, then, into a walk leading to a two-storied, white clapboard house I'd played in as a boy. We walked along the side, and through the back yard; behind us, on the street we'd just left, I heard a voice call out, another voice answer, then the slam of a door. A moment later, we were again climbing the hill that rose behind the row of houses on Corte Madera Avenue; and then, once more, we were hurrying along a path threading through underbrush, occasional eucalyptus and oak trees, and second-growth saplings.

I'd had time to think; I knew what had happened, and I was astounded at the kind of nerve and clear-headed intelligence and thoughtfulness Jack Belicec had shown. There was no telling how long he'd been chased, though it couldn't have been long. But I knew he must have driven through Santa Mira streets, a police car behind him and shooting, with one eye on his watch. Deliberately passing up whatever chances he'd had to escape, to drive out of this town and into the world and safety beyond it, Jack had driven so as to lead the chase closer and closer to the street and home he knew we'd be waiting at, until the minute hand of his watch told him we'd see - just what we had seen. It was the only way he could warn us, and, incredibly, he'd done so, at a time when horror and panic must have been fighting for his mind. And all I could do for him now was hope that somehow he and his wife would escape, and I was certain they could not - that the one nearly impassable road he could drive out on would be blocked now, other police cars waiting and ready for them. And now I knew what a terrible mistake we had made coming back to Santa Mira, how helpless we were against whatever was ruling this town; and I wondered how long it would be - at the next step, the next bend of the path perhaps - before we were caught, and what would happen to us then.

Fear - a stimulant at first, the adrenalin pumping into the blood stream - is finally exhausting. Becky was clinging to my arm, unaware of how much of her weight she was making me carry, and her face was bloodless, her eyes half closed, her lips parted, and she was sucking in air through her mouth. We couldn't continue to roam and climb these hills much longer. My leg movements, I noted, were no longer automatic; the muscles were responding now only through an effort of will. Somewhere we had to find sanctuary, and there was none - not a home at which we dared to appear, not a face, even that of a lifelong friend, to which we dared risk appealing for help.

fifteen

Our Main Street, and the secondary business street that parallels it, curve and wind along the foot of a miniature range of hills, as do most of the town's streets, except those in the section known as The Flats, and a few others at the mouth of The Valley. We were climbing, presently, down the side of one of these hills, winding along a foot path which would end at the little alley at the back of a block of business buildings, including the building in which I had my office.

It was the best I could think of; all I could think of. I was afraid to go there, but more afraid not to; and in a curious way I thought it was perfectly possible that we might be safe there, for a time, anyway. Because it wasn't a place we could be expected to go to; not until time had passed, and we weren't found anywhere else. And right now, we simply had to have an hour of rest, at least. We might even sleep, I thought, leading Becky down the hill, though I didn't really think we could. But I had benzedrine in the office, and a few other drugs, stimulants that, after an hour's rest to think of some sort of plan, might give us the strength to carry it out.

Below us, now, I could see, over the roofs of the buildings we were approaching, the Main Street I'd known as long as I could remember; the
Sequoia,
where I'd watched so many Saturday-afternoon serials as a kid;
Gassman's
Sweet Shoppe, where I'd bought candy for the show, and where I'd had a job one high-school summer vacation; and the three-room apartment over
Hurley's Dry Goods
where I'd been half a dozen times, one summer, my first year in college, calling on a girl who lived there alone.

We reached the alley, and there was no one in it, only a dog sniffing at a refuse-filled carton. We crossed it, and walked into the office building through the open sheet-steel door that led into the white-painted, concrete-block, back stairwell.

I was ready to slug and take with us anyone, man or woman, we might have met on those stairs; but it's an elevator building, and we met no one on the stairs. At the sixth floor, my ear at the closed metal fire-door, I listened. After a time, two minutes, perhaps, I heard the elevator doors open, heard the clack of steps on the marble floor, and heard them enter the elevator. Then the elevator doors closed, and I pulled the fire door open. We walked silently along the empty hallway to the opaque-glassed door that bore my name, I had my key out and ready, and then we were inside my office, the door clicking shut behind us.

My waiting-room and office were already dusty, I saw as I wandered through it, looking the place over; a fine film of dust over every glass and wood surface. My nurse, I knew, wouldn't have been near the place since I'd been here last, and now it smelled unused and closed-in, and was dark, every venetian blind closed tight. It was quiet and dead, and no longer friendly, as though I'd been away too long and it weren't really mine any more. The place looked untouched, and I didn't bother trying to see if anyone had been here, searching through it for some reason. Right now, I just couldn't care.

There's a long, wide davenport in the waiting-room, and I put Becky on it, her shoes off. I got a couple sheets, and the pillow from the examining-table, and tucked her in carefully. She lay watching me, not saying anything, and when our eyes met, she smiled wanly, in thanks. Crouching beside her, I took her face in my hands, and kissed her, but it was a gesture of comfort, like kissing a child, and there was no excitement or sex in it; she was worn out, at the end of her rope. I passed my hand slowly over her forehead, stroking it. "Sleep," I said. "Get some rest." I smiled and winked at her, looking, I hoped, calm and confident, as though I knew what I was doing, and was going to do.

My shoes off, so no one passing by in the hall outside could hear me, I untied the leather pad from my examining-table, took it out to the waiting-room to the row of windows overlooking Main Street, and laid it on the floor paralleling the windows. Then I unbuttoned my coat, loosened my tie, dropped cigarettes and matches to the floor beside the pad, and taking an ash tray from a magazine table, I sat down. My back against the side wall, I slowly tilted one slat of the Venetian blind just enough to peer down at Main Street, and now I felt better. Enclosed in these dark, silent rooms I'd felt blind and helpless, but now looking down on the street below, watching the activity on it, I felt more in control of things.

The scene I saw through that quarter-inch slit was ordinary enough at first glance; drive along the main street of any of a hundred thousand American small towns, and you'll be seeing what I did. There were parked cars on an asphalt street, sidewalks and parking meters, white-ruled parking spaces, and people walking in and out of J. C. Penney's, Lovelock's Pharmacy, the supermarket, and a dozen others. There was a little fog, no more than a mist, moving in from the Bay. Main Street jogs at the corner just past my windows, following the hills, and Hillyer Avenue, a wide through-street, curves into and joins Main at that corner. So the paved street area is more than usually wide there, and because of the jog in the street, the wide area of pavement is almost completely enclosed on three sides by stores; the nearest thing to a sort of town square we've got. They used to set up a band stand here, blocking off Hillyer Avenue, for street dances or carnivals.

I lay there smoking and watching, changing position now and then, occasionally lying on my side, propped on an elbow, my eyes just over the window sill; once I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I've long since learned that thinking is mostly an unconscious process; that it's usually best not to force it, particularly when the problem itself is vague in your mind, and you don't really know what sort of answer you're hunting for. So I rested - tired, but not sleepy - watching the street, waiting for something to happen inside my mind.

There's a real fascination about monotony in motion: the steady flicker of a fire, an endless series of waves slowly crashing on a beach, the unvarying movement of a piece of machinery. And I stared down at the street for minute after minute, watching the shifting patterns that over and over almost, but never quite, repeated themselves: women walking into the supermarket, and women coming out, arms around brown-paper sacks or cartons, clutching at purses or children, or both; cars backing out of the angled parking spaces, others slipping into the white-ruled slots; a mailman moving into and out of one store after another; an old man plodding along; three young boys horsing around.

It all looked so
ordinary
: there were red-and-white paper signs pasted on the windows of the supermarket: advertising Niblets, round steak at 96 cents a pound, bananas, and laundry soap. Vasey's hardware store, as always, had one window filled with kitchen equipment: pots, pans, electric mixers, irons; and in the other window, power tools. The dime-store windows were loaded to the ceiling with candy kisses, model airplanes, paper cut-out dolls, and staring at the red-and-gold front, I could almost smell that dime-store fragrance. Stretching across the street, near the
Sequoia
theatre, hung a rather faded banner, red with white letters;
Santa Mira Bargain Jubilee
, it read, an annual sale of the merchants. This year, though, it looked as though they hadn't bothered painting a new banner.