The Mind Thing

Doc Staunton gestured wearily. “Don’t blame yourself for anything, Miss Talley. I made the first mistake—the first two mistakes. I should never have stayed here night before last, after the gray cat killed itself; that made this house, or at least this area, a focus. And yesterday morning, after I learned about Jim Kramer’s death, I should never have come back here just to pack up my possessions. That was the big mistake, the one that caught me.” He sighed.

“Let’s have some coffee. I’ve been drinking it cold, but now that I have someone to talk to, I think I’ll risk a cup of it hot. I’ll even risk sitting down and letting you make it—if you’ll keep talking to me, or vice versa. Maybe we can come up with something. We’ve got to come up with something.”

In the kitchen he compromised by leaning against the wall while she started water boiling for fresh coffee. He did most of the talking, since he had more to tell.

“The alien,” Miss Talley said firmly, the first time he mentioned the enemy. “Doctor, why not admit we’re fighting —or at any rate defending ourselves against—an extraterrestrial intelligence? What else could it be?”

“A mutant human being, one who was born with or has acquired what Charles Fort called a wild talent.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“No,” Doc said. “Nor the only other possibility I’ve been able to think of—a demon or devil. But I won’t narrow it down. Until I know for sure, or until I lose, I’m going to call him the enemy. Let’s not worry about nomenclature. Miss Talley. There’s too much else to worry about. First and foremost, what chance have we got, if any? Of course I can hope I’m wrong in thinking the enemy is keeping me—us, rather—boxed in here until I have to go to sleep.”

“Have you had any ideas at all?”

He told her his thought that wounding an animal controlled by the enemy might give them time for a getaway. “But,” he added, “it’s hard to wound a large animal with a shotgun in such a way that it couldn’t attack, or manage to kill itself. You’d have to break a leg to immobilize it.”

“You don’t have a rifle?”

“Only a twenty-two; it’s still in the station wagon, and not worth the risk of trying to get it. It would be if I had long rifle cartridges for it, but I have only shorts; I intended to use it only for target practice. I have a pistol, but I’m not accurate enough with it to take the risk of trying to wound a charging animal without killing it.”

He shook his head wearily. “I think it recognizes the risk of being wounded and that’s why it prefers to use birds. Even if I could shoot one high enough in the air only to wound it with a few pellets, it would already be diving and the fall would kill it… Lord, but I’m sleepy.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Just keep talking, or listening. By the way, I’m on a hunger strike to keep awake, but don’t let that stop you from getting yourself something any time you want. The refrigerator’s been off since yesterday evening, so don’t take a chance on anything in it. But there’s plenty of canned goods.”

The coffee was finished and she poured two cups and brought them to the table. “Thanks, I’m not hungry yet. But perhaps I should make two or three extra pots of coffee.”

“If you wish. But why?”

“Since he managed to shut off your electricity, he just might figure a way to shut off the gas too. And you don’t want to be without coffee, even if both of us will have to drink it cold.”

“I don’t think he could, short of using a human host. It takes a wrench to turn the valve on the butane tank. There’s nothing to lose, though, if you want to make a couple of extra pots.”

She put more water on the stove to boil and then came to the table and sat across from him.

“How about the water supply? Any chance of his shutting that off? If so, I’d better fill a few buckets, to be safe.”

“I don’t think it’s necessary.” He explained how the water supply worked. “He could easily enough wreck the pump that brings water from the well to the tank on the roof, but the tank itself is heavy and solid and it must be at least half full; more water than we’ll need. It holds two hundred gallons.”

He took a sip of his coffee. “Talking about water reminds me of something I’ll do when I’ve finished this. A cold bath and a change of clothes will help me; I should have thought of it this morning, but I didn’t.”

“It sounds like a good idea. And I’ll get myself something to eat while you’re upstairs. You must be pretty hungry, and that way you won’t have to watch me eat”

“Fine. But make a circuit of the windows once in a while and call me if you see anything. I’ll take a robe into the bathroom with me so I can come quickly. And that reminds me—”

He started to get up, but Miss Talley, in her best schoolteacher manner, ordered him to sit still and got up to make a circuit of the downstairs windows. She came back to report nothing new except that the buzzards were back at the dead deer. None as yet had gone to the dead bull; the deer was riper and more to their taste.

Doc nodded. “I don’t expect anything to happen. It’s a waiting game—unless one of us tries to leave. He’s made no attempt to get inside the house, in any form, and if he wanted to he could have, long ago. Any big animal could break, through either door, unless I shot it first.”

“Or a human being. I wonder why he hasn’t sent one against you.”

“No reason to, unless he wanted to kill me, and apparently he doesn’t, unless I try to leave. In a way, I wish he would send one. It’s dangerous to try to shoot a leg of a charging bull without killing it. But with a man, it would be relatively easy.”

“Doctor, when I came—how did you know I wasn’t—the enemy? You could have shot me in the leg easily enough.”

He laughed. “It never occurred to me. And if it had, the bull coming right after you would have been proof enough. The thing we’re most certain of is that he can’t control more than one host at a time.” He stood up and stretched his arms, fighting back a yawn. “Well, to my cold tub. And I’ll make circuits of the upstairs windows while the water’s running. You won’t have to, until after you hear it stop.”

He went upstairs, and half an hour later he came back down, looking at least outwardly refreshed. Miss Talley had finished eating and they sat in the living room and took turns talking. Doc insisted on making periodic rounds of the windows himself instead of letting her do it. He explained that the danger of his going to sleep if she left him alone was a more important factor than his doing an occasional bit of walking.

The hours dragged. One or the other of them thought of a dozen things to try, but for one reason or another had to reject each as impractical or too dangerous. Once Doc verified that the siege was still on by stepping outside with the shotgun. When he saw a high-circling bird start a dive, he fired at it without waiting for it to get close. But if any of the pellets hit and wounded it, the wound was insufficient to deflect it and he had to use the second barrel when it was dangerously close. Even then he had to jump back the instant he fired or the bird would have hit him. It thudded against the doorsill. He reloaded the shotgun before using its muzzle to push the dead bird—it was, or had been, a chicken hawk off the porch.

Blood had spattered on his shoes and the cuffs of his trousers. He went upstairs to change them and to take another cold bath; he’d left the water in the tub, since he’d realized while taking the first one that even the hundred gallons that he estimated had been in the tank wouldn’t fill the tub too many times. The second bath didn’t help much; in fact, he almost went to sleep in the tub and he realized that he was almost at the limit of his ability to stay awake.

When he came downstairs he told Miss Talley so, and asked her to bring in a pan of cold water and a glass, and to keep the glass filled, or half filled, from the pan. She should sit facing him, he told her, with the glass in her hand, and throw water in his face whenever she might see his eyes close longer than to blink. She brought the water, and also a towel for him to use in case she had to use the water.

Twice within the next hour she had to throw water in his face. Both times he’d been talking and had stopped in the middle of a sentence as his eyes went shut. It was six o’clock when it happened the second time; it would be dark within another hour or so. He doubted that he could possibly stay awake even that long, and certainly not much longer.

When he had dried his face with the towel, he stood up, swaying a bit. “Miss Talley,” he said, “it’s no use going on this way; even if I put carpet tacks on a chair and sit on them I’ll lose consciousness eventually. We’ve got to do one of two things. There’s danger in both of them, for you as well as for me, so I’m going to let you decide which we should do.

“One, I leave now while there’s time for me to walk to town—or at least to the nearest farm that has a