Grace had a mind that was magic throughout. Never in thousands of years have I seen such a shimmering jewel; never in thousands of pages of words found in thousands of languages could such a trove be described. All that she saw was transmuted in sibilant subleties; all that she heard was in breath-taking colors and shapes. What she touched, what she said, what she saw, what she felt, what she thought —these were all blended in joy.
She was the pinnacle; she was the source of the heady exuberant food which in flavor eclipsed my most radiant memories. She, like the blizzard of Annabelle—she was the suitable circumstance, bringing about the release of the powers I held all untried.
I stirred in her mind. I found I could reach out and touch certain sources of hunger—sights that she never had seen and sensations she never had turned to, things which should surely delight such a sensitive soul.
I found to my joy that with care I controlled them, the hungers for things I remembered in hosts less responsive. I practiced this skill as she broadened her life, and I led her to music and poems and thoughts which she never, perhaps, could have found by herself. She had every reason for happiness with all these riches, and I—oh, I gloried in bringing things to her, as many a gifted composer has brought a new music to some virtuoso.
But her husband was Stoye.
Stoye was a devil. He hated me for what I was, before he could define it. His mind was quite as rich as hers, but something curbed it. Growing with her was impossible; he sensed with rare perception that a Thing had come to her, and since that Thing was not of him, he hated it. It mattered not to him that she was better for it. Brutally he turned away from sharing what I brought into his home.
And she—I could not take her from him. How I tried! Poor treasure trove, she was at last a battleground between that questing creature and myself. He hounded me through her, and I struck, back by taking her to rare enchantments in which he could not share.
He was the first—the very first—of all the humans I have known, to recognize me and to seek me out. This recognition was intolerable; all my life I have avoided it, and lived in war and secret joyfulness. He goaded me until I evidenced myself; I never realized I could make a human speak, but Grace spoke for me when she said that “It wants only to be let alone.”
She might as well have died, right then and there, for all the sustenance I got from here thereafter. I knew that she would kill herself; between us, her and me, there was a madness caught from Stoye.
Stoye put her, numb and docile, in the hospital. I started to encyst, for Grace’s well was dry to me. I found a likely subject in the nurse, who seemed as sensitive as Grace (but lacked that fine capacity for whimsy) and I poised myself to make the change. While waiting, then, I thought of Stoye—and realized that, with Grace’s death, he would not rest until he found me and destroyed me, either by attacking all my hosts, or if he learned the way of it, by closing minds against me by his printed propaganda. He had to be destroyed.
Grace killed herself; her one blind foolishness, her love for Stoye, and all her stupid thoughts that she had lost it, made her do it. I might have stopped her; but why should I, when I needed a release from all her bitterness? Believe me, it was just as strong as all her joys had been … before she leaped she tried to warn him, tried to send some crazy message to him through a youngster standing down below.
My connection with her was not close just then; I am not sure; she still was set on death as an escape but wished her husband to be watchful and protect himself. And then she leaped.
And then it came—that awful amputation.
I could not kriow that Ronnie was so strong a host, potentially—that so well suited to me was he that, as I flashed upward to the nurse, to take possession, I was torn apart!
I have no substance; yet I am an entity, with limits and with boundaries. These were ruptured; while my greater . part found room within the nurse’s mind, a fragment nestled into Ronnie’s.
At first I felt a transcendental pain and dizziness; and then I did the things I could to be protected. I hid the crumpled body with a forced hypnotic wave (this is no subtle mystery; a thousand men can do it) to keep the wave of terror all confused with curiosity, for terror undiluted quite inhibits my possession of a host.
I settled into Lucille Holder’s mind and tested the controls which Stoye had forced me to develop. Lucille was far less strong than Grace had been, and forcing her was easy. I was wounded, I was maddened, and at last I drank, with purpose and a new dark joy, the thing called hate.
Stoye had to die. The man called Daniels, Ronnie’s father, saw Grace leap and was a witness. Possibly he might become too curious, with his son possessed, and be another probing devil. He must die. Ronnie had a part of me, and I did not think he could release it while he lived. So he must die.
To test my new controls, I seiit the nurse at first to do the minor task. The elder Daniels was not there; and when I found myself confronted with that other part of me, I nearly died of yearning. And I realized, in that closeness, that the boy could be controlled as well, and that he could destroy his father quite at my convenience, while Lucille could kill him later. Satisfied, I went away.
I spent that night and all next day securing my controls, and practicing. And late the night that followed, I killed Stoye, and two strange things happened.
One was when Stoye died; I felt a wave of powerful protectiveness about him as he fled his body, and I sensed again the fullest, richest magic that was Grace. I was terrified of it; I had never known before that humans could outlive their carcasses …
The other thing was the arrival of Ronnie, apparently moved by the part of me carried within him. Yet since he possessed but a fragment, his effort was late and his motive was weak, and I feared that he might make a botch of the killing of Daniels. I therefore sent Lucille to do it; Ronnie, again weak and tardy, followed my orders.
The gunshot, the bullet which shattered the neck of the nurse, were quite unexpected. I was flung unprepared into cold, in my nakedness, cold indescribable, cold beyond bearing. Yet I was glad; for the fraction of me that was Ronnie’s came streaming toward me as I was exploded away from the nurse. The wrench it gave Ronnie must have been dreadful; when I settle into a host all my roots go down deep.
I hid Lucille’s body and searched all the minds in the house for a suitable host. Ronnie was perfect, unconscious and closed. Daniels was fretful; I can’t abide fear. I fought back the cold, drew inward, contracted, and formed, at long last, a new cyst. I let Lucille’s body be seen, and ignoring the others—their whimsy was as flat as their oversized feet— I withdrew.
And I have been thinking.
Some things were important that now cannot matter. I am different because of the searchings of Stoye—I blame him for all that has happened, and that is a thing which can no longer matter.
I know how to hate now, and how to make murder; the taste of these things is still bitter, but so is the taste of good stout when first taken, and stout has a taste worth acquiring. Like Grace I still have all my earlier qualities—the sun on a mountain or watching the curve of the wing of a gull (through a host) certainly has all the zest for me that it has ever had. Now I have more, though; and that is a thing which can matter very much indeed.
I have been selfish. It never occurred to me, back in the days of the man who did minuets joyfully, that I might do something for him whom I choose as a host. Grace taught me that, purely by feeding me richly through her experiences, purely by being a subject for my schooled suggestions. There may have been many who carried me, who were susceptible to my control.
I could not know without trying, and I never tried this command until Grace took me in. And since then I hunger, I thirst for the richness and beauty and shifting and changing of colors and sounds which she brought me, and never again will rest and be fed and be happy to have just enough to sustain me.
I drift, now, encysted, but testing my powers when never before had I thought of them. I find I am mobile
; also, to certain degrees, I can move things—this writing machine, for example, though it is slow and laborious. I find I can whisper to humans and fit some strange thoughts and ideas to each other.
I have looked for a host for a weary, cold while, and my energies seem to be dwindling. I still have enough, though, to search for a time, and soon now I’ll have what I need.
I’ll find, soon, a person, a man or a woman, or even a sensitive child. This one will be mine and I’ll lead him to wonders of sense and of music and heady adventure. I think I am learning to savor the tartness of terror, the bloody salt flavor of killing with purpose. My host will exist in a series of colorful pageants and move in a world of emotional riches, all of my carefulest choosing.
And for this I sacrifice that which I guarded—my passion for quiet and secret enjoyments. I say to you, Know me! Suspect me! for by your suspicion you open yourself to my coming. And when some great mural is painted by someone who never did passable work in his life before that, suspect me. And when in a prison some cringing psychotic says, over and over, “A voice said to do it!” suspect me.
Whenever you walk in the street and feel a strange spasm of nausea, suspect me indeed; for then I am injured, and what you have seen is a part-host like Ronnie; and know that that person must die—and can kill if I will it.
I am so cold…
I write this because in my search for a host who is perfect, I find that one segment of humans is almost entirely open. These are the readers and tellers of tales of the dark and of terror and madness. The one who has written these chapters would serve as a host—but I fear he would turn on me, feed on my memories, use me for piddling profit in plying his trade.
Besides, he’s a bit superficial for one of my tastes. I know his intentions, however, and what he will do with this script. I know he is frightened because of the way this long tale has unfolded, I know, too, that nothing will keep him from seeing it printed.
When it is read, though, by thousands of like-minded people over the world, and he hears of the music and murder created by someone who fell to me only through reading it, then he will curse and will wish he were dead, and wish he had torn this to pieces.
THERE IS NO DEFENSE
Cursing formality, Belter loosened his tunic and slouched back in his chair. He gazed at each of the members of the Joint Solar Military Council in turn, and rasped: “You might as well be comfortable, because, so help me, if I have to chain you to this table from now until the sun freezes, I’ll ran off this record over and over again until someone figures an angle. I never heard of anything yet, besides The Death, that couldn’t be whipped one way or another. There’s a weakness somewhere in this thing. It’s got to be on the record. So we’ll just keep at the record until we find it. Keep your eyes peeled and the hair out of your eyes. That goes for you too, Leess.”
The bottled Jovian shrugged hugely. The infrared sensory organ on its cephalothorax flushed as Belter’s words crackled through the translator. Glowering at the creature, Belter quenched a flash of sympathy. The Jovian was a prisoner in other things besides the bottle which supplied its atmosphere and gravity. Leess represented a disgraced and defeated race, and its position at the conference table was a hollow honor—a courtesy backed by heat and steel and The Death. But Belter’s glower did not change. There was no time, now, to sympathize with those whose fortunes of war were all bad ones.
Belter turned to the orderly and nodded. A sigh, compounded of worry and weariness, escaped the council as one man. The lights dimmed, and again the record appeared on the only flat wall of the vast chamber.
First the astronomical data from the Plutonian Dome, showing the first traces of the Invader approaching from the direction of the Lyran Ring— Equations, calculations, a sketch, photographs. These were dated three years back, during the closing phases of the Jovian War. The Plutonian Dome was not serviced at the time, due to the emergency. It was a completely automatic observatory, and its information was not needed during the interplanetary trouble. Therefore it was not equipped with instantaneous transmissions, but neatly reeled up its information until it could be visited after the war. There was a perfectly good military observation base on Outpost, the retrograde moon of Neptune, which was regarded as quite adequate to watch the Solar System area. That is, there had been a base there—
But, of course, the Invader was well into the System before anyone saw the Pluto records, and by that time—
The wall scene faded into the transcript of the instantaneous message received by Terran HQ, which was rigged to accept any alarm from all of the watch posts.
The transcript showed the interior of the Neptunian military observatory, and cut in apparently just before the Sigmen heard the alarm. One was sprawled in a chair in front of the finder controls; the other, a rangy lieutenant with the burned skin of his Martian Colonial stock, stiffened, looked up at the blinking “General Alarm” light as the muted, insistent note of the “Stations” bell began to thrum from the screen. The sound transmission was very good; the councilmen could distinctly hear the lieutenant’s sharp intake of breath, and his voice was quite clear as he rapped:
“Colin! Alarm. Fix!”
“Fix, sir,” said the enlisted man, his fingers flying over the segmented controls. “It’s deep space, sir,” he reported as he worked. “A Jovian, maybe—flanking us.”
“I don’t think so. If what’s left of their navy could make any long passes at all, you can bet it would be at Earth. How big is it?”
“I haven’t got … oh, here it is, sir,” said the e.m. “An object about the size of a Class III-A Heavy.”
“Ship?”
“Don’t know, sir. No heat radiation from any kind of jets. And the magnetoscope is zero.”
“Get a chaser on him.”
Belter’s hands tightened on the table edge. Every time he saw this part of the record he wanted to get up and yell, “No, you idiot! It’ll walk down your beam!” The chaserscope would follow anything it was trained on, and bring in a magnified image. But it took a mess of traceable vhf to do it.
Relaxing was a conscious effort. Must be slipping, he thought glumly, wanting to yell at those guys. Those guys are dead.
In the picture recording, a projection of the chaserscope’s screen was flashed on the observatory screen. Staring fearfully at this shadow picture of a shadow picture, the council saw again the familiar terrible lines of the Invader—squat, unlovely, obviously not designed for atmospheric work; slab-sided, smug behind what must have been foolproof meteor screens, for the ship boldly presented flat side and bottom plates to anything which might be thrown at her.
“It’s a ship, sir!” said the e.m. unnecessarily. “Seems to be turning on its short axis. Still no drive emanations.”
“Range!” said the lieutenant into a wall mike. Three lights over it winked on, indicating the batteries were manned and ready for ranging information. The lieutenant, his eyes fixed on the large indicators over the enlisted man’s head, hesitated a moment, then said “Automatics! Throw your ranging gear to our chaser.”
The three lights blinked, once each. The battery reporters lit up, showing automatic control as the medium and heavy launching tubes bore round to the stranger.
The ship was still on the screen, turning slowly. Now a dark patch on her flank could be seen—an open port. There was a puff of escaping gas, and something appeared whirling briefly away from the ship, toward the scanner. They almost saw it clearly—and then it was gone.
“They threw something at us, sir!”
“Track it!”
“Can’t sir!”
“You saw the beginning of that trajectory! It was coming this way.”
“Yes sir. But the radar doesn’t register it. I don’t see it on the screen either. Maybe it’s a warper?”
“Warpers are all theory, Colin. You don’t bend radar impulses around an object and then restore them to their original direction. If this thing is warping at all, it’s warping light.
It—”
And then all but the Jovian closed their eyes as the screen repeated that horror—the bursting inward of the observatory’s bulkhead, the great jagged blade of metal that flicked the lieutenant’s head straight into the transmission camera.
The scene faded, and the lights went up.
“Slap in the next re— Hold it!” Belter said. “What’s the matter with Hereford?”
The Peace delegate was slumped in his chair, his head on his arms, his arms on the table. The Martian Colonial representative touched him, and Hereford raised his seamed, saintly face:
“Sorry.”
“You sick?”
Hereford sat back tiredly. “Sick?” he repeated vaguely. He was not a young man. Next to that of the Jovian, his position was the strangest of all. He represented a group, as did each of the others. But not a planetary group. He represented the amalgamation of all organized pacifistic thought in the System. His chair on the Joint Solar Military Council was a compromise measure, the tentative answer to an apparently unanswerable question—can a people do without the military? Many thought people could. Some thought not. To avoid extremism either way, the head of an unprecedented amalgamation of peace organizations was given a chair on the JSMC. He had the same vote as a planetary representative. “Sick?” he repeated in a whispering baritone. “Yes, I rather think so.” He waved a hand at the blank wall. “Why did the Invader do it? So pointless … so … so stupid.” He raised puzzled eyes, and Belter felt a new kind of sympathy. Hereford’s hollow-ground intelligence was famous in four worlds. He was crackling, decisive; but now he could only ask the simplest of questions, like a child too tired to be badly frightened.
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