The Mind Thing

by Fredric Brown

  They sat down. The mind thing studied the dog. It was his first chance to do so, and thus far this was the biggest potential animal host he had had a chance to study.

  Henceforth, Buck might be his if he ever needed a dog. Or the nearest other dog that happened to be asleep.

  And now Buck, relaxed from his tracking, went to sleep. The mind thing considered, but waited. In Buck, he would have only Buck’s senses, not his own.

  “I’m trying to figure why he came here,” Hoffman said.

  “Anybody’s guess, Gus. He was out of his mind, that’s all. Probably discovered this cave when he was a kid and remembered it, came here to hide from—from whatever. You can’t figure what’s going through a guy’s mind when he’s out of his mind.”

  “Could be, to hide. But what if he came here to hide something? Or dig up something he’d hid here before? Don’t ask me what, but this is soft sand, easy digging even with your hands.”

  “What would he be hiding? Or going to dig up?”

  “Dunno. But if we found anything here—”

  The struggle was less negligible than that with the mind of a field mouse, but the mind thing was in Buck’s mind almost instantly. Buck lifted his head.

  He—the mind thing in Buck—considered. He probably couldn’t kill both of these men, but he could manage with a sudden attack to get in bites on both of them before they could subdue or kill him. That would certainly distract them from digging, at least right away. Probably it would send them hurrying back to town and a doctor. If not because the bites themselves were bad enough, then because of the same fear of rabies that Tommy and the girl had felt.

  Garner said, “Not now, Gus. Look, I don’t think we’ll find anything or learn anything, but I’ll go along on coming back with you and trying, tomorrow. Too dark in here, for one thing, to do a good job without flashlights or a lantern, and if we do it at all we might as well do a good job and be sure, huh? And it’ll go quicker if we have a spade and a rake. Besides, there isn’t time now. We won’t get home much before lunch as it is, and after lunch we got to get cleaned up and dressed, for the inquest.”

  “Guess you’re right, Jed,” Gus said. “Okay, we might as well take off now. Least, we learned one thing we can tell at the inquest. Where Tommy went. And where he must of stayed till he saw our lanterns coming. If he’d left the cave here when he saw our lanterns he’d of met us just about where he did.”

  Buck put his head down again. When the men left to crawl out of the cave, he followed them, trotted alongside Hoffman as the real Buck would have done, for the two miles back to the road.

  There he bolted suddenly away from them—along the road, but east, in the opposite direction from the way they were headed. He did not go back into the woods toward the cave; he didn’t want them remotely to suspect that he might be going back there. Hoffman called after him, but he paid no attention and kept running.

  When he was out of sight around a bend, he dropped to a trot and cut into the woods. There was no path here but, without regard to Buck’s senses or his knowledge of the terrain, the mind thing had perfect orientation; he went straight back to the cave.

  Once inside, Buck dug through nine inches of sand and picked up the mind thing’s shell in his mouth, carried it out of the cave, and put it down gently. Then he went back into the cave and filled in the hole he had dug. When it was filled he rolled over it several times to eliminate all signs that there had ever been a hole there. Then he went outside and picked up the mind thing again in his mouth. It was no heavier than a partridge, and he was as soft-mouthed as he would have been in carrying a wounded bird.

  He trotted into the woods, avoiding paths or even game trails, looking for the wildest, most secluded spot. In thick, high grass, screened by bushes, he found a small hollow log. It would serve, at least for a while. With his mouth he placed the mind thing in one end of the hollow log and with a paw pushed it in farther, completely out of sight.

  Then he trotted on in the same direction—so that if anyone with another dog should follow Buck’s trail, he’d simply be led past the log—and a hundred yards away sat down while the mind thing considered.

  He was safe now from being found when the men came back to the cave to dig. But did he want to keep Buck as a host for a while? He considered carefully and decided against it. Buck had served his purpose, and if he stayed in Buck he would have only Buck’s senses; he could not study other potential hosts and ready himself for them. He wanted to be able to get, when he wanted one, a hawk, an owl, a deer, other animals. And while he was in Buck he could not so ready himself by studying other creatures as they passed near him.

  Buck trotted ahead, veering slowly till he was heading back toward the road.

  At the edge of the road he waited until a car came along. Then, at the last moment, and before the driver could have time even to touch the brakes, he dashed forward, right under its wheels.

  Back in himself in the hollow log one minute later (it had taken Buck just that long to die), the mind thing thought back over everything he had just done and decided that he had made no mistake this time.

  Nor had he, except for one he could not possibly have foreseen. He should have let Buck wait for another car. The driver of the car that had killed Buck was Ralph S. Staunton, Ph.D., Sc.D., professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  Doc Staunton did not look impressive. He was small, about five feet six, and weighed slightly under a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He was fifty, and his crew-cut hair was graying, but he had a wiry strength and an agile body and mind that made him seem younger. The first thing you’d have noticed about him was his eyes, because they were the youngest thing about him. When he was amused, which was often, they didn’t just twinkle; they seemed to sparkle like gray diamonds.

  Right now, on vacation, he was dressed comfortably and somewhat sloppily, and he was in need of a shave. You’d never have guessed him to be one of the most brilliant men in the country.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Swearing under his breath, Doc Staunton braked the car to a stop. It hadn’t been his fault; there was no possible way he could have avoided running over that dog, but still it was an unpleasant thing to have happened. What had been wrong with the dog? Mad and running blindly? It had simply come from nowhere, out of the bushes along the side of the road. Even if it hadn’t stopped to look for cars, it couldn’t have failed to hear his—the only sound in a quiet countryside. The car was a station wagon, ancient and quite noisy, that he had bought two weeks before in Green Bay after having flown that far. He’d paid so little for it that if he sold it even for junk at the end of his Wisconsin vacation it would have cost him less to own it than to have rented a car for six weeks.

  He turned off the ignition, got out of the car and walked back, hoping that the dog was dead. It couldn’t possibly survive; both the left front and the left rear wheels had gone squarely over its body. Since it would die anyway he hated the thought that it might have to live and suffer a while first. It was about twenty paces back of the car; it had taken him that far to stop. It didn’t seem to be moving, nor was it making any sound that he could hear, but when he was about halfway to it he saw that it was still alive; its side moved with convulsive breathing.

  Doc swore again and went back to the car. He didn’t have either of his guns in it, but a tire iron would be better than nothing. He got one and hurried back to the dog, but it was dead by then; its eyes were open and glazed. Blood had run out of its mouth and there was no sign of breathing.

  “Sorry, old boy,” Doc said softly. “Guess I’ll have to find out who owned you, and tell him.”

  He bent down to lift the dog by its legs to move it off the edge of the road, but then he straightened up instead and stood thinking. The dog would have to be buried in any case, whether by him or by its owner, and it would be a much less pleasant job—because of ants and possibly buzzards—if he left it here while he did his errands in Bartlesville, which might tak
e hours. He had no shovel in the station wagon but there was a tarpaulin which was old enough to be expendable. He got the tarpaulin and spread it out, folded once, on the road; then he lifted the dog onto it, rolled the tarpaulin around it a few times, and put it into the back of the station wagon.

  In town a little later he made purchases at several different places, describing the dog—it had been a hound, male, liver and white—at each, and on the third try he found someone who said that it must be the dog that belonged to Gus Hoffman, and that Hoffman would be in town because he’d be attending the inquest on his son, who had committed suicide last night, that was being held at the local mortuary.

  Doc Staunton had never attended an inquest and since he was mildly curious how one was run, he went to the mortuary and found it just starting. All the chairs were taken, but several other men were standing at the back of the room and Doc stood there too and listened.

  Charlotte Garner was testifying, and Doc found himself increasingly fascinated. First by her calm and courageous frankness in telling the full truth about her relations with the boy Tommy Hoffman, and then by the story itself of how she had awakened to find Tommy’s clothes, but not Tommy. When she’d finished describing searching and calling for him and then running home to tell her parents, the coroner tried to dismiss her, but there was, she said, one thing that she wanted to add; his questions had led her to skip the part about the field mouse and she wanted to put it in the testimony because she thought possibly it had bitten Tommy when it had tried to run up his leg and he had knocked it off with his hand. And that maybe he had been infected by some form of hydrophobia…

  The coroner let her finish, but before calling his next witness he talked to the jury a moment, explaining the symptoms of hydrophobia and its relatively long incubation period; a bite from the mouse could not possibly have affected Tommy so suddenly nor, for that matter, in such a way. Besides, he said, while it was possible that the mouse had had hydrophobia, which would account for at least most of its actions, it had not bitten Tommy; the skin on his hands had been unbroken. There had been scratches on his, legs, but these were caused by his running barelegged through bushes in the woods; none of the scratches could have been a bite.

  Gus Hoffman testified next, then Jed Garner. Their stories were identical because they had been together all the time.

  Doc Staunton listened carefully, especially when the dog Buck was mentioned—Buck following the boy last night, Buck leading them to the cave this morning. The sheriff testified last, about being called and going into the woods with Hoffman and Garner to bring out the body.

  The coroner’s jury went into another room but came back almost immediately with a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane. People began to wander off.

  Doc started to make his way toward the man whom he now knew to he Gus Hoffman, owner of the dog, but Hoffman disappeared into an inner office of the mortuary, no doubt to discuss arrangements for the funeral, and Garner and Garner’s daughter had gone with him.

  Doc then cornered the big man who was the sheriff, introduced himself, and told about running over the dog.

  “Maybe it’s just as well, Sheriff,” he said, “that I’m talking to you instead of Mr. Hoffman because—well, Mr. Hoffman had a nasty blow losing his son last night. Possibly it would be better if he doesn’t learn right away that his dog is dead too. It might be kinder to let him think the dog has just run away or got lost, and to realize gradually that it won’t be coming back. What do you think?”

  The sheriff scratched his head. “Well—” He hesitated.

  “May I make a suggestion?” Doc asked. “To give you a few minutes to think about that and also to let me ask a question or two about the suicide, which interests me, will you have a drink with me at the bar across the street?”

  “Well—guess I’ll have time for one. Couple little things I gotta do here first, though. If you want to go ahead I’ll join you over there in ten minutes.”

  At the bar, which he had investigated and found not wanting on his first day in Bartlesville, Doc ordered himself a beer and then got his pipe loaded and going. The cold beer tasted good, and he was just finishing it when the sheriff slid into the booth across from him. He said, “Beer looks good,” and turned toward the bar and called out, “Hey, Hank, bring us two beers. Big ones.”

  And then to Doc, “Been thinking while I crossed the street. Guess you’re right about not hitting Gus with the news about the dog right now. He’s pretty broke up. But—uh, did you leave the dog along the road where he might see it driving home, or where somebody else might see it and phone him?”

  Doc shook his head. “It’s rolled up in a tarp in the back of my car. I’ll bury it when I get home.” He relighted his pipe, which had gone out. “Damned sorry about the dog, but I couldn’t help running over it. It dashed from nowhere right under my wheels. Didn’t even have time to touch the brakes before I hit it.”

  “Funny,” the sheriff said. “Buck was always afraid of cars, ran into the fields when he heard one coming. Car-shy, like some dogs are gun-shy.”

  Doc stared at the sheriff. “Good Lord, Sheriff. Then he must have been crazy, running blind and deaf. Have there been any cases of rabies around here?”

  “Not in a couple of years. Longer’n that, I guess.” He seemed uninterested.

  Doc stared at the big moon face, wondering whether or not the sheriff was stupid. Probably not, he decided; probably of average intelligence, but unimaginative. He could dismiss the strangeness of the actions of the field mouse and those of the dog as irrelevant and think only about the actions of the boy Tommy. They’d been peculiar, yes, but after all the boy had gone suddenly insane, and insane people do insane things. That would be the reasoning of the sheriff, and no doubt of everyone else, concerned or not concerned, who had attended the inquest.

  Let’s see, what had he wanted to ask the sheriff about the inquest? Yes… “Uh—Sheriff. I got to the inquest a little late; didn’t hear the medical report. Was there an autopsy?”

  “Autopsy? No, what for? Wasn’t any doubt he killed himself, slashing his wrists with a knife. No other marks, except scratches on his legs, from bushes, and the bottoms of his feet cut and bloody.”

  Doc opened his mouth and closed it again.

  The sheriff said, “Say, I been trying to place where you’d be staying or living out that road. House at the very end of it, about ten miles out?”

  “That’s right,” Doc said. “The old Burton place, they call it; used to be a farm but it’s gone wild now. Friend of mine back in Boston bought it to use as a summer vacation place. This summer he couldn’t get away and offered to let me use it.”

  “Yeah, guy named—uh—Hastings. Met him a few times, summers. Wife with you, or staying alone out there?”

  “I’m staying alone. Not married. I like to get a little solitude once in a while. When you teach—”

  “What do you teach, Mr. Staunton?”

  “Call me Doc, Sheriff. I teach physics at M. I. T. Specialize in electronics. I’ve done some work on the satellite program, too. Spent the first half of my vacation working on that, but I’ve got the rest of it to myself.”

  “You mean you work on rockets?” There was respect in the sheriff’s voice.

  “Not rockets themselves. Mostly on the detectors and transmitting sets in the satellites that send back information on radiation, cosmic rays, things like that. I helped design the components for the paddlewheel satellite, for one thing. But right now I’m more interested in fishing. There’s a creek about a mile east of where I live that’s—”

  “I know it; I’ve lived there. But you—and your friend that owns the house, Hastings—ought to come out here in the hunting season sometime. Plenty deer out that way, in the woods north of you.”

  “Afraid I’m not much of a hunter, Sheriff. Brought along a rifle and a pistol, but just for some target practice. And a shotgun because Hastings said there might be rattlers around the place, but I haven
’t seen any yet. Have another beer?”

  “Okay,” the sheriff said; he held up two fingers to the bartender.

  “Had any other strange deaths here, Sheriff?” Doc asked.

  The sheriff looked at him curiously. “Don’t know what you mean by ‘strange,’ ” he said. “Couple of unsolved killings in the last few years, but they were robbery kills, nothing strange about them.”

  “No other case of anyone going suddenly suicidally—or homicidally—insane?”

  “Ummm—not since I’ve been in office, six years almost. But what’s strange about it? People do go crazy, don’t they?”

  “Yes, except that insanity usually follows certain patterns, and Tommy Hoffman’s—well—”

  “You’re not suggesting it wasn’t suicide, are you?”

  “Of course not. Just wondering what kind of a psychosis he had, and why it hit him so suddenly, and right then. While he was, or should have been, happy and relaxed, taking a nap after—after what should have been a pretty pleasant experience. It just doesn’t make sense. Well, let’s skip it. You say you’ve fished my creek, Sheriff. What kind of fly do you use for trout?”

  After he finished his second beer the sheriff said he’d better get back to Wilcox, and left. Doc ordered himself a third, and over it, and over a pipe that kept going out because he couldn’t remember to keep puffing on it he lost himself in thought. Was he going overboard in thinking that the three deaths—the field mouse, the boy, the dog—formed an almost incredible sequence? The sheriff hadn’t seemed to think so, but—

  Or was he making much ado about nothing? A field mouse had acted strangely. First it had sat up and pawed at the boy and girl as though to warn them away. Then it had let the girl pick it up but had nipped her. When she dropped it it had started to run away and then had run back and attacked the boy, thereby in effect committing suicide.