by Bob Shaw
No!
I screamed and threw the flaming torch from me, seeking my former state of blindness. The torch landed close to a wall and trailing streamers of wallpaper caught alight. I ran around the tank to a window, wadded its mouldering drapes and smashed the glass outwards against the boards. The planking resisted the onslaught of my feet and fists for what seemed an eternity, then I was out in the cool fresh air and running, barely feeling the ground below my feet, swept along by the dark winds of night.
When I finally looked back, blocks away, the sky above the old Guthrie place was already stained, red, and clouds of angry sparks wheeled and wavered in the ascending smoke.
How does one assimilate an experience like that? There were some aspects of the nightmare which my mind was completely unable to handle as I walked homewards, accompanied by the sound of distant fire sirens. There was, for example, the hard fact that I had started a fire in which at that very instant a group of old people could be perishing—but, somehow, I felt no guilt. In its place was a conviction that it the blaze hadn’t begun by accident I would have been entitled, obliged, to start one to rid the world of something which hadn’t any right to exist. There was no element of the religious in my thinking, because the final horror in the house’s front room had dispelled the aura of the supernatural surrounding the previous events.
I had seen an array of electronic equipment—unfamiliar in type, but unmistakable—and I had seen a thing floating in a tank of heated organic-smelling fluid, a thing which resembled …
No ! Madness lay along that avenue of thought. Insupportable pain.
What else had I stumbled across? Granny Cummins was dead—but she had been sitting in the back room of a disused house, and had spoken in a tongue unlike any language I’d ever heard. Joe Bryant was dead, for a year, yet he too had been sitting under that naked bulb. My son was seriously ill in hospital, and yet …
No!
Retreating from monstrosities as yet unguessed, my mind produced an image of Dr. Pitman. He had attended Granny Cummins. He had, I was almost certain, been the Bryant’s family doctor. He had attended Sammy that morning. He had been in my home the previous day—perhaps when Sammy had come in and spoke of seeing people in the old Guthrie place. My mind then threw up another image—that of the long-barrelled .22 target pistol lying in a drawer in my den. I began to walk more quickly.
On reaching home the first impression was that May had gone out, but when I went in she was sitting in exactly the same place in the darkness of the lounge. I glanced at my watch and discovered that, incredibly, only forty minutes had passed since I had gone out. That was all the time it had taken for reality to rot and dissolve.
“May?” I spoke from the doorway. “Did the clinic call?”
A long pause. “No.”
“Don’t you want the light on?”
Another pause. “No.”
This time I didn’t mind, because the darkness concealed the fact that my clothes were smeared with dirt and blood from my damaged hands. I went upstairs, past the aching emptiness of Sammy’s room, washed in cold water, taped my knuckles and put on fresh clothes. In my den I discovered that the saw-handled target pistol was never meant for concealment, but I was able to tuck it into my belt on the left side and cover it fairly well with my jacket. Coming downstairs, I hesitated at the door of the lounge before telling May I was going out again. She nodded without speaking, without caring what I might do. If Sammy died she would die too—not physically, not clinically, but just as surely—which meant that two important lives depended on my actions of the next hour.
I went out and found the atmosphere of the night had changed to one of feverish excitement. The streets were alive with cars, pedestrians, running children, all converging on the gigantic bonfire which had appeared, gratuitously, to turn a dull evening into an event. Two blocks away to the south the old Guthrie house was an inferno which streaked the windows of the entire neighbourhood with amber and gold. Its timbers, exploding in ragged volleys, were fireworks contributing to the Fourth of July atmosphere. A group of small boys scampering past me whooped with glee, and one part of my mind acknowledged that I had made a major contribution to the childish lore of the district. Legends would be born tonight, to be passed in endless succession from the mouths of ten-year-olds to the ears of five-year-olds. The night the old Guthrie place burned down….
Dr. Pitman lived only a mile from me, and I decided it would be almost as quick and a lot less conspicuous to go on foot. I walked automatically, trying to balance the elements of reality, nightmare and carnival, and reached the doctor’s home in a little over ten minutes. His Buick was sitting in the driveway and lights were showing in the upper windows of the house. I looked around carefully—the fire was further away now and neighbours were less likely to be distracted by it—before stepping into the shadowed drive and approaching the front door. It burst open just as I was reaching the steps and Dr. Pitman came running out, still shrugging on his coat. I reached for the pistol but there was no need to bring it into view, for he stopped as soon as he saw me.
“George!” His face creased with concern. “What brings you here? Is it your boy?”
“You’ve guessed it.” I put my hand on his chest and pushed him back into the orange-lit hall.
“What is this?” He shrugged against my hand with surprising strength and I had to fight to contain him. “You’re acting a little strangely, George.”
“You made Sammy sick,” I told him. “And if you don’t make him well again I’ll kill you.”
“Hold on, George—I told you not to get overwrought.”
“I’m not overwrought.”
“It’s the strain …’
“That’s enough !” I shouted at him, almost losing control. “I know you’re making Sammy ill, and I’m going to make you stop.”
‘But why should I …?”
‘Because he was in back of the old Guthrie place and saw too much—that’s why.” I pushed harder on his chest and he took a step backwards into the hall.
“The Guthrie house! No, George, no!”
Until that moment I had been half-prepared to back down, to accept the idea that I’d gone off the rails with worry, but his face became a slack grey mask. The strength seemed to leave his body, making him smaller and older.
“Yes, the old Guthrie place.” I closed the door behind me. “What do you do there, doctor?”
“Listen, George, I can’t talk to you now—I’ve just heard there’s a fire in the district and I’ve got to go to it. My help will be needed.” Dr. Pitman drew himself up into a semblance of the authoritative figure I had once known, and tried to push past me.
“You’re too late,” I said, blocking his way. “The place went up like a torch. Your equipment’s all gone.” I paused and stared into his eyes. “They are all gone.”
“I … I don’t know what you mean.”
“The things you make. The things which look like people, but which aren’t because the original people are dead. Those are all gone, doctor—burnt up.” I was shooting wildly in the dark, but I could tell some of my words were finding a mark and I pressed on. “I was there, and I’ve seen it, and I’ll tell the whole world—so Sammy isn’t alone now. His death won’t cover up anything. Do you hear me, doctor?”
He shook his head, then walked away from me and went up the broad carpeted stair. I reached for the pistol, changed my mind and ran after him, catching him just as he reached the landing. He brushed my hands away. Using all my strength, I bundled him against the wall with my forearm pressed across his throat, determined to force the truth out of him—no matter what it might be. He twisted away, I grappled again, we overbalanced and went on a jarring rollercoaster ride down the stairs, bouncing and flailing, caroming off wall and banisters. Twice on the way down I felt, and heard, bones breaking; and had been lying on the hall floor a good ten seconds before being certain they weren’t mine.
I raised myself on one arm and looked d
own into Dr. Pitman’s face. His teeth were smeared with blood and for a moment I felt the beginnings of doubt. He was an old man, and supposing he genuinely hadn’t understood a word I had been saying …
“You’ve done it now, George,” he whispered. “You’ve finished us.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s one thing I want you to believe … we never harmed anybody … we’ve seen too much pain for that…’ He coughed and a transparent crimson film spanned his lips.
“What are you saying?”
“It was to be a very quiet, very gradual invasion … invasion’s the wrong word … no conquest or displacement intended … physical journey from our world virtually impossible … we observed incurably ill humans, terminal cases … built duplicates and subsituted them … that way we too could live normally, almost normally, for a while … until death returned …’
“Dr. Pitman,” I said desperately, ‘you’re not making sense.”
“I’m not real Dr. Pitman … he died many years ago … first subject in this town—a doctor is in best position for our … I was skorded—you have no word for it—transmitted into a duplicate of his body …’
The hall floor seemed to rock beneath me. “You’re saying you’re from another planet!”
“That’s right, George.”
‘But, for God’s sake, why ? Why would anybody … ?”
“Just be thankful you can’t imagine the circumstances which made such a project … desirable.” His body convulsed with sudden pain.
“I still don’t understand,” I pleaded. “Why should you duplicate the bodies of dying people if it means being locked in an old house for the rest of your life?”
“Usually it doesn’t mean that … we substitute and integrate … the dying person appears to recover … but the duplication process takes time, and sometimes the subject dies suddenly, at home, providing us with no chance to take his place … and there can be no going back …’
I froze as a brilliant golden light flooded through the hall. It was followed by the sound of wheels on gravel and I realised a car had pulled into the driveway of the house. The man I knew as Dr. Pitman closed his eyes and sighed deeply, with an awful finality.
‘But what about Sammy?” I shook the inert figure. “You’ve told me nothing about my son.”
The eyes blinked open, slowly, and in spite of the pain there I saw kindness. “It was all a mistake, George.” His voice was distant as he attempted more of the broken sentences. “I had no idea he had been around the old house … aren’t like you—we’re bad organisers … nald denbo sovisegg … sorry … I had nothing to do with his illness …’
A car door slammed outside. I wanted to run, but there was one more question which had to be asked. “I was in the old house. I saw the tank and … something … which looked like a boy. Does that mean Sammy’s dying? That you were going to replace him?”
“Sammy’s going to be all right, George … though at first I wasn’t hopeful … I haven’t known you and May as long as Dr. Pitman did, but I’m very fond of … I knew May couldn’t take the loss, so I arranged a substitution … tentatively, you understand, kleyl nurr … not needed now … Sammy will be fine …’ He tried to smile at me and blood welled up between his lips just as the doorbell rang with callous stridency.
I stared down at the tired, broken old man with—in spite of everything—a curious sense of regret. What kind of hell had he been born into originally? What conditions would prompt anybody to make the journey he had made for such meagre rewards? The bell rang again and I opened the door.
“Call for an ambulance,” I said to the stranger on the steps. “Dr. Pitman seems to have fallen down the stairs—I think he’s dying.”
It was quite late when the police cruiser finally dropped me outside my home, but the house was ablaze with light. I thanked the sergeant who had driven me from the mortuary where they had taken the body of Dr. Pitman (I couldn’t think of him by any other name) and hurried along the white concrete of the path to the door. The lights seemed to signal a change in May’s mood but I was afraid to begin hoping, in case …
“George!” May met me at the door, dressed to go out, face pale but jubilant. “Where’ve you been? I tried everywhere. The clinic called me half an hour ago. You’ve been out for hours. Sammy’s feeling better and he’s asking to see us. I brought the car out for you. Should I drive? We’re allowed in to see him, and I …’
“Slow down, May. Slow down.” I put my arms around her, feeling the taut gratification in her slim body, and made her go over the story again. She spilled it out eagerly.
Sammy’s response to drug treatment had been dramatic and now he was fully conscious and asking for his parents. The senior doctor had decided to bend regulations a little and let us in to talk with the boy for a few minutes. A starshell of happiness burst behind my eyes as May spoke, and a minute later we were on our way to the clinic. A big moon, the exact colour of a candle flame, was rising behind the rooftops, trees were stirring gently in their sleep, and the red glow from the direction of the Guthrie house had vanished. May was at the wheel, driving with zestful competence, and for the first time in hours the pressure was off me.
I relaxed into the seat and discovered I had forgotten to rid myself of the pistol which had nudged my ribs constantly the whole time I was talking to the police. It was on the side next to May so there was little chance of slipping it into the glove compartment unnoticed. Shame at having carried the weapon, plus a desire not to alarm May in any way after what she had been through, made me decide to keep it out of sight a little longer. Suddenly very tired, I closed my eyes and allowed the mental backwash of the night’s events to carry me away.
The disjointed fragments from Dr. Pitman made an unbelievable story when pieced together, yet I had seen the ghastly proof. There was something macabre about the idea of the group of alien beings, duplicates of dead people, cooped up in a dingy room in a disused house, patiently waiting to die. The memory of seeing Granny Cummins’ face again, two weeks after her funeral, was going to take a long time to fade. She, the duplicate, had recognised me, which meant that the copying technique used by the aliens was incredibly detailed, extending right down to the arrangement of the brain cells. Presumably, the only physical changes they would introduce would be improvements—if a person was dying of cancer the duplicate would be cancer-free. Ageing muscles might be strengthened—Dr. Pitman and those who had been in the house all moved with exceptional ease. But would they have been able to escape the fire? Perhaps some code of their own would not allow them to leave the house, even under peril of death, unless a place had been prepared to enable them to enter our society without raising any alarms ….
The aliens may have a code of ethics, I thought, but could I permit them to come among us unhindered? For that matter, had I any idea how far their infiltration had proceeded? I’d been told that Dr. Pitman was the first subject in this town—did that mean the invasion covered the entire state? The country? The world? There was also the question of its intensity. The dying man had said the substitution technique failed when a person’s death occurred suddenly at home, which implied the clinic was well infiltrated—but how thoroughly? Would there come a day when every old person in the world, and a proportion of younger people as well, would be substitutes?
Street lights flicking past the car pulsed redly through my closed eyelids, and fresh questions pounded in my mind to the same rhythm. Could I believe anything “Dr. Pitman’ had said about the aliens’ objectives? True, he had appeared kind, genuinely concerned about Sammy and May—but how did one interpret fecial expressions controlled by a being who may once have possessed an entirely different form? Another question came looming—and something in my subconscious cowered away from it—why, if secrecy was so vital to the aliens’ scheme, had “Dr. Pitman’ told me the whole fantastic story? Had he been manipulating me in some way I had not yet begun to understand? Once again I saw my son’s face blind
ly lolling as he was carried down the stairs, and a fear greater than any I had known before began to unfold its black petals.
I jerked my eyes open, unwilling to think any further.
“Poor thing—you’re tired,” May said. “You keep everything bottled up, and it takes far more out of you that way.”
I nodded. She’s mothering me, I thought. She’s happy, serene’ confident again—and it’s because our boy is getting better, Sammy’s life is her life,