The Mind Thing

“I’ll put him down in a sec, Tommy. I just wanted to see if I could pick him up. And pet him a little. Ouch!” She dropped the field mouse. “Little devil bit me.”

The field mouse scurried away from them and off one side of the path and then, only about six feet away, stopped and looked back to see if they were chasing it. They weren’t; they weren’t even looking at it, and they hadn’t moved.

“Hurt you, honey?” Tommy asked.

“No, just a little nip. Startled me, that’s all.” She happened to look down again. “Tommy! Look!”

The field mouse was running back, this time toward Tommy. It started to run up the leg of his trousers. He knocked it off with a hand, sent it rolling four or five feet. It came back to attack again—if attack was its intention. This time Tommy had kept his eyes on it, and was ready. His foot lifted and came down; there was a faint crunching sound. With the side of his shoe he kicked what was left of the field mouse off the path.

“Tommy! Did you have to—?”

His face was dark as he turned to her. “Charl, that thing was crazy, attacking me twice. Listen, if it drew blood when it bit you we’ve got to get back to town fast. And take it with us, so they can check to see if it was rabid. Where’d it bite you, Charl?”

“On the b-breast, the left breast, when I held it close against me. But I don’t think it drew blood—not through this sweater and a bra. It was more a pinch than a bite. It didn’t hurt much, just scared me into letting go of it.”

“We’ll have to check. Take off your— No, we’re almost there. One minute won’t matter, and somebody might come along here.”

He took her arm this time and strode ahead so fast that she almost had to run to keep up with him.

“Look, a turtle,” she said, a dozen steps on.

He didn’t slow down. “Haven’t you played with enough animals this afternoon? Hurry, honey.”

Another dozen paces and they turned off the path, went around behind trees and bushes to the spot that they had discovered together and had made peculiarly theirs. It was a soft grassy spot screened from all directions by bushes, a perfect hideaway just far enough from the path so they couldn’t even be heard there if they talked in normal tones of voice. It had all the privacy of a desert island and none of the latter’s disadvantages. It was as sylvanly beautiful as it was secluded. And easily accessible, for young and healthy people to whom a two-mile walk each way was a pleasure and not a tiring chore.

They were young and healthy, and deeply in love. Tommy Hoffman was seventeen and Charlotte Garner was sixteen. They had played together as children. They still went to school together and were now in the same grade, for Tommy, who didn’t care much for schooling, had flunked a grade once, putting him back to Charlotte’s level. They had each completed two years of high school.

They had fallen in love a year ago and six months ago had decided to get married. They’d talked to their families about it and had met no opposition except on the subject of when the marriage might take place. Tommy, who had just passed his seventeenth birthday, wanted them to quit school right away and get married. There would be no difficulties, he pointed out. Tommy’s father was a widower and Tommy an only child; they lived in a quite large farmhouse (Mr. Hoffman had been thinking ahead to a large family when he had built it), so there’d be not only room for Charlotte but for their children, if and when they had any. And Tommy, who knew a lot about farming already and wanted to be a farmer in any case, could help his father full time instead of part time; Charlotte would take over the house and between them they’d more than earn their keep. And that was the arrangement that would no doubt be made two years from now if they finished high school first, so why wait? What did a farmer want with a high school diploma? Mr. Hoffman himself, Tommy pointed out, had had only a grade school education, and had done all right for himself. Besides, neither he nor Charlotte wanted to finish high school. They didn’t hate school, exactly, but they didn’t think they were getting anything out of it either. What good would history or algebra do a farmer or a farmer’s wife?

As usual in such discussions, when they are amicable on all sides, a compromise was reached. They didn’t have to finish high school and lose two years. If they waited one year, continuing school meanwhile, until Tommy was eighteen and Charlotte seventeen, Tommy’s father and Charlotte’s parents would give them consent to quit school and get married.

That had been six months ago and now they had only another six months to wait. In another sense they had quit waiting a month ago. They had held out (or Charlotte had) until the day a month ago when, walking through the woods, they had found this tiny, secluded paradise. And that day the weather had been too perfect, the place too beautiful, the kisses too wonderful, and the petting too passionate; biology I had taken over. There had been no tears or regrets; for a first experience (for both of them) it had been unusually wonderful. Of course, having no standard of comparison, they didn’t know it was unusually wonderful; just that it was very wonderful indeed. Nor had they any regrets, then or since, on moral grounds. They had been brought up to believe that sex outside of marriage was wrong, but this wasn’t wrong. They were going to be married anyway, weren’t they, as soon as they could? Meanwhile they could consider themselves already married in the eyes of God—and if there is a God who cares about such things, no doubt he did so consider them. They were very much in love.

This was the third time they’d been back here since. But this one didn’t start like the others, because of the field mouse.

“Quick, Charl,” Tommy said urgently. “Peel off that sweater. I’ll unhook your bra while you’re doing it. And if there’s the slightest break in your skin where that—that thing bit you, we’ll have to get back, run back.”

Her sweater was off, then her bra. They both examined her left breast. It was a very nice, very shapely breast; so was her right one. And one was as clear and unmarked as the other. “Thank God,” Tommy said. He sighed deeply with relief. “Does it hurt at all?”

She pressed an experimental fingertip just above the nipple. “Just enough so I can tell where it was.” She lowered her hand and smiled at him. “You might kiss it and make it well. If you need an excuse.”

Tommy didn’t need an excuse. And they both knew that what was going to happen would be at least as wonderful as the other times, and maybe a little more so because of reaction from the scare they’d had.

And wonderful it was; but this time, although they didn’t know it, something was different.

This time something watched them, something whose equivalent of vision was not blocked by intervening trees and bushes. Something more horrible (although dispassionately so) than anything either of them had ever conceived in nightmare.

CHAPTER TWO

The mind thing watched avidly. Not because of prurience: he would not have understood the meaning of the word. He had no sex himself; the pronoun he being used only because it becomes very awkward when repeatedly used as a personal pronoun. His species reproduced by fission, by one creature dividing himself and becoming two, as do only lower life forms, such as bacteria, on Earth.

But he watched as eagerly as though his interest were prurient, because of a sudden hope, once he saw and understood what they were doing. Now he felt hopeful of acquiring suitable host, and soon. He knew, from his knowledge (some first hand, some acquired) of a thousand worlds which held creatures that, like these, were of two sexes and performed the sex act in at least a somewhat similar manner, that they had a strong tendency to sleep after performing their sex act. Not because it physically exhausted them, but because the intelligent species so sexed found themselves emotionally exhausted, and contentedly replete.

If either of them slept, he had a host. If they both slept he decided, he would choose the male since he was definitely the larger and stronger of the two. Quite probably the more intelligent as well.

After a while they relaxed and were motionless for a moment and he began to hope. Then they moved again, kissed a few times, murmured a few things. But then, relaxing in a somewhat different position, they were quiet again.

The female slept first, and he could have entered her, but the male had his eyes closed and his breathing was