Invasion of The Body Snatchers

course he is, but… it's just that Wilma's so positive!' She actually wrung her hands, a thing you read about but rarely see. 'Miles, I don't know what's going on out there!'

I stood up and came around the desk to stand beside her chair. 'Well, let's go see,' I said gently. 'Take it easy, Becky,' and I put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. Her shoulder, under the summer dress, felt firm and round and warm, and I took my hand off. 'Whatever's happening, there's a cause, and we'll find it and fix it. Come on.'

I turned, opened the wall closet beside my desk to get my hat, and felt like a fool. Because my hat was sitting where I always keep it, on Fred's head. Fred is a nicely polished, completely articulated skeleton, and I keep it in my closet, together with a smaller, female skeleton; can't have them standing around the office frightening the customers. My father gave them to me one Christmas, my first semester in medical school. They're a fine useful thing for a medical student to have, of course, but I think my father's real reason for giving them to me was because he could – and did – present them in a huge, six-foot-long, tissue-wrapped box, tied with red and green ribbon. Where he got a box that big, I don't know. Now, Fred and his companion are in my office closet, and of course I always hang my hat on his polished, brachycephalic head. My nurse thinks it's a riot, and it got a little smile now from Becky.

I shrugged, picked up my hat, and closed the door. 'Sometimes I think I clown around too much; pretty soon people won't trust me to prescribe aspirin for a head cold.' I dialled telephone-answering, told them where I was going, and we left the office to go take a look at Uncle Ira.

Just to get the record straight: my full name is Miles Boise Bennell, I'm twenty-eight years old, and I've been practising medicine in Santa Mira, California, for just over a year. Before that I interned, and before that, Stanford Medical College. I was born and raised in Santa Mira, and my father was a doctor here before me, and a good one, so I haven't had too much trouble snaring customers.

I'm five feet eleven inches tall, weigh one-sixty-five, have blue eyes, and black, kind of wavy hair, pretty thick, though already there's the faintest beginning of a bald spot on the crown; it runs in the family. I don't worry about it; nothing you can do about it, anyway, though you'd think the doctors would find something. I play golf and swim whenever I can, so I'm always pretty tanned. Five months earlier I'd been divorced, and now I lived alone in a big old-fashioned frame house, with plenty of big trees and lots of lawn space around it. It was my parents' house before they died, and now it's mine. That's about all. I drive a '52 Ford convertible, one of those fancy green ones, because I don't know of any law absolutely requiring a doctor to drive a small black coupe.

We turned into Dewey Avenue and Uncle Ira was out on the lawn before his home. It's a big, wide, quiet street, all the houses set well apart, and way back from the sidewalk. I had the top down, and when we drew in to the curb, Uncle Ira looked up, saw us, and waved. 'Evening, Becky. Hi, Miles,' he called, smiling.

We answered, waving back, and got out of the car. Becky went on up the walk to the house, speaking pleasantly to Uncle Ira as she passed. I strolled across the lawn toward him, casually, hands in pockets, just passing the time of day. 'Evening, Mr. Lentz.'

'How's business, Miles? Kill many today?' He grinned as though this were a brand-new joke.

'Bagged the limit.' I smiled, stopping beside him. This was the usual routine between us, whenever we ran into each other around town, and now I stood, looking him in the eyes, his face not two feet from mine.

It was nice out, temperature around sixty-five, and the light was good; not full daylight, but still plenty of sun. I don't know just what I thought I might see, but of course it was Uncle Ira, the same Mr. Lentz I'd known as a kid, delivering an evening paper to the bank every night. He was head teller then – he's retired, now – and was always urging me to bank my huge profits from the newspaper route. Now he looked just about the same, except that it was fifteen years later and his hair was white. He's big, well over six feet, a little shambling in his gait now, but still a vigorous, shrewd-eyed, race old man. And this was him, no one else, standing there on the lawn in the early evening, and I began to feel scared about Wilma.

We chatted about nothing much – local politics, the weather, business, the new state highway through town they'd been surveying for – and I studied every line and pore of his face, listened to each tone and inflection of his voice, alert to every move and gesture. You can't really do two things at once, though, and he noticed. 'You worried or something, Miles? Seem a little absent-minded tonight.'

I smiled and shrugged. 'Just taking my work home with me, I guess.'

'Mustn't do that, boy; I never did. Forgot all about the bank the minute I put my hat on at night. Course you don't get to be president that way.' He grinned. 'But the president's dead now, and I'm still alive.'

Hell, it was Uncle Ira, every hair, every line of his face, each word, movement, and thought, and I felt like a fool. Becky and Wilma came out of the house and sat down on the porch swing, and I waved to them, then walked on up to the house.

Chapter two

Wilma sat waiting on the swing with Becky, smiling pleasantly till I reached the steps, then she said quietly, 'I'm glad you've come, Miles.'

'Hello, Wilma; nice to see you.' I sat down, facing them on the wide porch rail, my back against the white pillar.

Wilma watched me questioningly, then glanced out at her uncle, who'd begun puttering around the lawn again. 'Well?' she said.

I glanced at Ira too, then looked at Wilma. I nodded. 'It's him, Wilma. It's your uncle, all right.'

She just nodded, as though expecting exactly that answer. 'It's not;' she murmured, but she said it quietly – not arguing, just asserting a fact.

'Well,' I said, leaning my head back against the pillar, 'let's take this a little at a time. After all, you could hardly be fooled; you've lived with him for years. How do you know he isn't Uncle Ira, Wilma? How is he different?'

For a moment her voice shot up, high and panicky. 'That's just it!' But she quieted down instantly, leaning toward me. 'Miles, there is no difference you can actually see. I'd hoped you might find one, when Becky told me you were here – that you'd see some sort of difference. But of course you can't, because there isn't any to see. Look at him.'

We all glanced out at the lawn again; Uncle Ira was idly kicking with the side of his foot at a weed or pebble or something imbedded in the lawn. 'Every little move, everything about him is exactly like Ira's.' Her face still red-cheeked and round as a circle, but lined now with anxiety, Wilma sat staring at me, eyes intense. 'I've been waiting for today,' she whispered. 'Waiting till he'd get a haircut, and he finally did.' Again she leaned toward me, eyes big, her voice a hissing whisper. 'There's a little scar on the back of Ira's neck; he had a boil there once, and your father lanced it. You can't see the scar,' she whispered, 'when he needs a haircut. But when his neck is shaved, you can. Well, today – I've been waiting for this! – today he got a haircut – '

I sat forward, suddenly excited. 'And the scar's gone? You mean – '

'No!' she said, almost indignantly, eyes flashing. 'It's there – the scar – exactly like Uncle Ira's!'

I didn't answer for a moment. Staring down at the tip of my shoe, I didn't dare glance at Becky, and for a moment I couldn't look at poor Wilma. Then I raised my head, looking her squarely in the eyes, and said it: 'Then look, Wilma, he is Uncle Ira. Can't you see that? No matter how you feel, he is – '

She just shook her head and sat back on the swing. 'He's not.'

For a moment I was stuck, rattled; I couldn't think of anything else to say. 'Where's your Aunt Aleda?'

'It's all right; she's upstairs. Just be sure he doesn't hear.'

I sat chewing my lip, trying to think. 'What about his habits, Wilma?' I said then. 'Little mannerisms?'

'All the same as Uncle Ira's. Exactly.'

Of course I shouldn't have, but for an instant I lost my patience. 'Well, what is the difference, then? If there isn't any, how can you tell – ' I quieted right down, and tried to be constructive. 'Wilma,