The Possessors

by John Christopher

  “Can you have pure intelligence?” Douglas asked. “Doesn’t intelligence depend on there being a brain in the first place?”

  “It does in terms of our present knowledge,” Selby said. “But the whole point is that our present knowledge isn’t adequate to cover what’s been taking place. If the facts don’t fit, then you need a new hypothesis. And we can’t explain things any longer as derangements of individuals. One fact we have to face is that they are a group, serving a group purpose, working in a harmony closer than any group of human beings could work. That presupposes something behind them, or in them, that’s both intelligent and alien.”

  “Coming out of a blue tennis ball?” George asked. His tone was derisive, but he was uneasy, Jane saw. For her own part she did not know whether to take what Selby was saying seriously or not. It did not seem to her to matter very much. No explanation of what it was all about could help Diana. With a swift agony of remembrance, she insisted to herself that what she had suggested to Selby was true: she had got away from them, escaped across the snow—was hiding somewhere, scared and cold but unharmed. At least she had been wearing a thick coat.

  Selby said, “The color is unimportant, I should think, though blue is a common effect of the action of certain forms of energy in the atmosphere. It gleamed from the inside, Steve said. The sounds a bit like energy, too. We can’t guess what kind. As to the ball—a sphere is the most economical three-dimensional shape that exists.”

  Douglas asked, “How do you think it got here?”

  “There was a chap called Arrhenius who suggested life came to the earth from some other planet in the first place, in spores propelled by light rays.”

  “Can light rays propel anything?” Douglas asked.

  “Yes. A very small effect, but it exists. And this would have no mass worth talking of if my guess about it is right. More or less pure energy.”

  Douglas said, “These things float through space, down through the atmosphere, and lie there, waiting for someone to pick them up—is that what you’re suggesting? Well, wouldn’t the same sort of thing have happened before, if so? You said unprecedented.”

  “We’re talking of astronomical time,” Selby said, “astronomical distances. It takes light over four years to get here from the nearest star, and being propelled by light is a very far thing from traveling at the speed of light. Our galaxy is a hundred thousand light years across. That thing could have been traveling since before the earth came out of the sun.” He shrugged. “This may not have been the way it happened. I’m simply pointing out that it could.”

  George said, “It all sounds very interesting.” His tone was heavily sarcastic. “I don’t know that it helps much, though.”

  “Perhaps not,” Selby said, “except that, in my view, ‘Know thy enemy’ comes pretty close to ‘Know thyself,’ as a precept. If this thing is an intelligence, and alien, then there is one thing it must know—that there can be no question of toleration between it and us. We have to wipe it out, if we are not going to be assimilated by it. It knows that the rest of us in the house have been alerted, and it knows that there is only a limited time before we will be in a position to alert others. That helicopter this morning must have thrown a scare in it. And that, I imagine, is why the tempo of attack is quickening. It must have us under control, before people come in from the outside.”

  Elizabeth said, “If this is true, what about Andy?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, the coma—and then rushing away from the house. If he had been taken over, why did he not just go up to his mother? She wouldn’t have guessed.”

  “Perhaps the first contact was more difficult than later ones. There would be some initial confusion probably. The prime feature in any intelligence is the ability to learn. I think we have to assume that this one has learned a lot in the last few days.”

  George said, “As far as I can see, the answer is still that we take no chances. If we stay barricaded in the house, we should be all right. And when the mist clears …” He walked to the window, and looked out. “It doesn’t look quite as thick out there as it did.”

  Jane followed him to the window. Her eyes strained against the veils of mist. Diana was there somewhere; the thought hurt her, as no thought had done for many years.

  Selby said, “And we must expect trouble. That has to be faced, too.”

  13

  Mandy had not listened very closely to the things Selby had been saying. They sounded impressive and clever, and perhaps it was all important, but what she was most conscious of was that the glow was fading again, and with this awareness came the beginning of need. As a lover might think of the face, the smile, of the beloved, she saw the shelf in her mind’s eye, and the bottle on the shelf. It was, she remembered, half empty, though she had only filled it again that morning. Was she drinking too much? But she was nowhere near being drunk, and the glow was fading, and after all, these were special circumstances—the others all knew that.

  Though it was not fear she felt, but loneliness. Even though they were standing within a few feet of her, sitting in a chair with a foot stretched out, no more than an inch or two from her own, they seemed very far away. Their voices came from a long way off—George’s, too. She registered at one point that he was angry with Selby, but the anger was at a vast distance, like thunder over the hills, in summer, when the cousins were staying at the house … Caesar had been frightened of thunder, and had always run to hide in the cubbyhole under the stairs, and Hilda had laughed about it, and she and Clyde had joined her in poking fun at him, until Cooper had come along and said how cruel it was, and made them see things in a different way: the poor dog shivering there, afraid of something he did not understand, and seeing those who should love him laughing at him. And she had known that, although he was talking to all of them, he was talking most of all to her—it was her he was disappointed in. And had thrown herself down in the warm dark, hugging the shivering dog, and pressing her face against his neck so that no one should see her tears.

  She turned, when there was a pause in the conversation, to slip quietly away. George asked her, “Where are you going, Mandy?”

  “Just to the kitchen.”

  “I suppose that’s all right. But leave the door open, and the moment you see anything suspicious, yell out.”

  She nodded, and left the room, but he came after her and caught her up in the hall. He said, “Are you all right, lovey?”

  He put his hand on her arm, but still she did not feel that he touched her. She said, “Yes. I’m quite all right, George.”

  “Remember. Don’t go down to the basement by yourself.” He frowned. “I think we’ll close the stair door, and slip the catch on, anyway.”

  The door at the top of the stairs to the basement was normally fastened back against the wall. George swung it to, and fastened the hook. The outside, exposed now, carried a layer of dust; Marie was really terribly slovenly if one did not watch her closely …

  She said, “I’ll get a duster for that.”

  The dusters were in the right-hand drawer of the kitchen table. She went there first, and took one out. Straightening up and turning away, she glimpsed the shelf, and it suddenly had a shattering reality—the shelf, with a chip showing the old darker green under the new paint, the squat shape of the sugar jar and the vanilla pod, black against white. Bright sharp surfaces in a drab and misty world. The bottle was only partly hidden by the jar; she had not bothered to push it right behind it. And the steps were there, as she had left them. She climbed up, and got it down, and poured herself a small tot, and then a larger one.

  She had had one sip, and was pausing in contemplation of a second, when George came into the kitchen.

  He said, “I was a bit worried, in case …” He saw the glass in her hand. “Well, I don’t think that’s a bad idea, at all. What one needs, on a day like this. I’ll get a glass and have a little snifter with you.”

  His voice was cheerful or rather, she t
hought, cheery. It was kind of him, but then, he was a kind person; she had always known that. She poured gin into the glass he held, and her hand shook slightly. Mandy, she chided herself, you did that on purpose. It really is naughty of you.

  George said, “Cheers.” He did not, she knew, care for the taste of gin by itself, but be drank it with every sign of appreciation. “Warmer now,” he said. He put an arm affectionately on her shoulder, but it did not really make him seem any nearer. “Mandy,” he said, “when all this is over …”

  She held her glass in both hands, and waited for him to go on. She could not feel interested in what he was going to say, and that was wrong, too. She smiled, trying to look at him as though it mattered, anything mattered.

  “We’re going to get away,” he told her. “Cancel the bookings for the rest of the season. There aren’t all that many, and the Buffet de la Gare will take them. We’ll have a proper holiday. Take the bus and wander through Italy a bit. Stay where we like, as long as we like. A few weeks in Siena. You always said you’d like to go back there and spend longer. We’ll have the spring in Italy—it’s the best of the year.”

  He was looking at her, hopeful of a response, and she knew it was important not to let him down. She said, “That sounds lovely, George.”

  “And we might get across to Venice. You’ve only been there in the summer; it’s a different place when you don’t have to hold your nose whenever you step into a gondola. And San Marino. We’ve never really seen Italy the way it should be seen, taking our time, not rushing anything.” She said again, “It sounds lovely.”

  But what it really sounded like was something out of a radio play, in the old days, before television, when there were plays on the radio, and one listened while one’s eyes watched other things—knitting, the clock on the wall, the kitten playing with its tail, or the faces of other people in the room. So that one’s attention was never wholly caught, the problems and promises never quite real.

  George said, “You really would like it?”

  He was watching her. She smiled. “I really would.”

  He looked relieved, and that pleased her. He said, “Are you coming in now to join the others?”

  “Why, no,” she said. “I’m going to dust that door, and after that I’m coming back in here to start things for supper.” He looked uncertain. “Now, don’t you worry, George. You can see I’m all right here, and the door will be open, and everything.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, not a thing. You go back there and keep them cheered up. I’ll call if anything happens.”

  They went to the hall together, and George went on through to the voices in the salon. Mandy dusted the outside of the door, carefully, taking her time. She could hear them talking and, once, George laughing. She felt again the sense of great loneliness, but knew that if she went in there nothing would happen, except that their voices would be louder, and they would expect her to listen, and perhaps reply to them. She finished the dusting, and went back to the kitchen. She could hardly hear them at all now, and that was better. She poured herself a drink, and thought about supper.

  Food was getting to be a difficulty. Apart from cans of corned beef, potatoes were the only things left in fairly good supply. Stuffed potatoes were probably the answer. She could manage an egg each, from the dwindling supply of those that had been put down in water glass, and with chopped ham and onion, and grated cheese on top, they should be quite nice. And to go with them? Well, there were three cans of spinach left. And a soup beforehand, though the stock was getting a bit thin by this time. Things were becoming thin all around. Ah well, she decided, tomorrow could take care of itself.

  She had another drink before she went to the larder to get the potatoes she needed; luckily Peter had brought a sack up the day before. While she picked out nice big long ones, she though of Peter, and Marie, and how different it was not to have them around. She wondered what they were doing outside, what it was like to be changed as they had been. Something Selby had said came vaguely to mind—about them doing things together. Then perhaps they were friendly to each other, because people could not do things together without being a bit friendly. That time when she had fallen out with Clyde, and not spoken to him for two days, and then Cooper had got them all working together, building a dam across the river, and in no time at all everything had been different.

  She took the potatoes to the sink, and scrubbed them carefully, and cut them in half. She was scooping out the center of one of them, when she heard the voice. The window was open, but the wood was still nailed across it; she had had to put the lamp on so that she could see what she was doing. The voice came from outside the window. Ruth Deeping’s voice.

  It said, “Come out, Mandy. Come with us.”

  The voice was not loud, the tone neither hectoring nor wheedling, merely reasonable. And friendly. She lifted her head and looked up at the window. Between the rough slats she saw the grayness of the mist, nothing else. The window was well above ground level, of course—six or seven feet above.

  “Come with us, Mandy.”

  She had said she would call if anything happened, and she supposed she ought to tell the others—tell George, anyway—about this. But the voice was quiet, and not dangerous. How could it be dangerous? And it asked nothing; neither response nor even attention. It was strange, but the fact that it asked nothing made it seem closer than those other voices. Scooping the pulp out of the potatoes, she thought about that. There was more to it than asking nothing. It gave her something: a feeling of being wanted.

  “Come out, Mandy. Come out.”

  She had left the bottle on the table; there seemed no point any longer in putting it up on the shelf. Her glass was empty, and she filled it. She let her tongue play with the spirit before she drank, feeling the taste buds tingle. As she did so, she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall behind the lamp, and felt like laughing. She went closer, and examined herself. That square, rather pudgy face, the skin coarsened and marked with tiny red lines of broken capillaries, the brows which had always —except, at his insistence, during the time of her marriage to John—been too bushy, the eyes, vacantly and fuzzily staring at her: where in those was the girl that Cooper or Clyde would have known?

  “Come with us, Mandy. Come with us.”

  And where, for that matter, was the mother that Lois and Annette and Johnny knew, in the house on the Parkway, with its split levels and lawns kept green by sprinklers even after so hot a summer, on that bright fall morning, crisp and smelling of leaves and smoke? None of them would know me, she thought, and saw the face crumple, the eyes of the stranger in front of her blur with meaningless tears.

  “Mandy. Mandy. Come out, Mandy.”

  “I can’t come out,” she said.

  There was a pause, and the voice said, “Yes, you can. There’s nothing to stop you. Come out, Mandy. Come with us.”

  She took her glass with her back to the sink, and went on with the potatoes. That had been wrong: thinking of the children. In one’s prayers at night one thought about them, but during the day it was wrong. Unfair to them, unfair to George. One made a choice, a decision, and one must abide by it or be lost. As one grew older and lonely, she supposed, there were bound to be memories, but one must choose the memories that were permitted. Of Caesar and the boys, and the cousins. There was nothing wrong with that.

  “Come out, Mandy,” the voice said. “You will be happy with us.”

  The time they went for a picnic, on bicycles, and little Charlie got lost. They had hunted for him, with growing anxiousness, for what seemed hours. Anxiousness and fear —there had been a child murdered a month before that, talked about obliquely but in tones of horror by the grownups, with mystification and excitement by the children. Behind each bush there was a body, or a killer. And in the end they had found him sleeping in the grass by the river, like Portly in The Wind in the Willows. They had scolded him and laughed at him until he began to cry, an
d after that the girls had fussed him and Catharine had made him a daisy chain. Fear and loss could end in happiness—at least they could then.

  “Come with us, Mandy,” the voice said. “We want you to come with us.”

  She had wanted to ask Charlie: had he heard the music, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn? Because it was her favorite book, and that was the favorite part in it. She had got him to herself at one point, but of course the question seemed silly when it came to that, and she could not frame it. What if she put it to him now, to the jowling face with the executive spectacles and the hair that was just beginning to be thin—what answer would there be? She shook her head. Bewilderment, and thinking her crazy, were the only responses there could be. It would be too terrible if he said yes.

  “Come out, Mandy. You think it’s cold out here, but it isn’t.”

  She said involuntarily, “It’s not cold I mind, but being lonely.”

  “But there’s no more loneliness, for any of us. We are all together. Come with us, Mandy. You won’t be lonely once you’re with us.”

  She heard footsteps in the hall, and a moment or two later George came in, followed by Elizabeth and Jane. He said, “Did I hear something?”

  Mandy smiled. “Only me, talking to myself.”

  “The girls want to lend a hand,” George said.

  She shook her head. “No need for that. I can manage fine.”

  “Look,” Elizabeth said, “it’s ridiculous that you should do all the work. We’re in this together.”

  “I’m really all right. I promise you.”

  “All the same, we’re going to help.”

  She looked at George in appeal; he would see, surely, that she wanted to be by herself, and persuade them to go away. But the appeal went disregarded.