When Gusterson got home toward the end of the second dog watch, he slipped aside from Daisy’s questions and set the children laughing with a graphic enactment of his slidestanding technique and a story about getting his head caught in a thinking box built for a midget physicist. After supper he played with Imogene, Iago and Claudius until it was their bedtime and thereafter was unusually attentive to Daisy, admiring her fading green stripes, though he did spend a while in the next apartment, where they stored their outdoor camping equipment.
But the next morning he announced to the children that it was a holiday — the Feast of St. Gusterson — and then took Daisy into the bedroom and told her everything.
When he’d finished she said, “This is something I’ve got to see for myself.”
Gusterson shrugged. “If you think you’ve got to. I say we should head for the hills right now. One thing I’m standing on: the kids aren’t going back to school.”
“Agreed,” Daisy said. “But, Gusterson, we’ve lived through a lot of things without leaving home altogether. We lived through the Everybody-Six-Feet-Underground-by-Christmas campaign and the Robot Watchdog craze, when you got your left foot half chewed off. We lived through the Venomous Bats and Indoctrinated Saboteur Rats and the Hypnotized Monkey Paratrooper scares. We lived through the Voice of Safety and Anti-Communist Somno- Instruction and Rightest Pills and Jet-Propelled Vigilantes. We lived through the Cold-Out, when you weren’t supposed to turn on a toaster for fear its heat would be a target for prowl missiles and when people with fevers were unpopular. We lived through—”
Gusterson patted her hand. “You go below,” he said. “Come back when you’ve decided this is different. Come back as soon as you can anyway. I’ll be worried about you every minute you’re down there.”
When she was gone — in a green suit and hat to minimize or at least justify the effect of the faded stripes — Gusterson doled out to the children provender and equipment for a camping expedition to the next floor. Iago led them off in stealthy Indian file. Leaving the hall door open Gusterson got out his.38 and cleaned and loaded it, meanwhile concentrating on a chess problem with the idea of confusing a hypothetical psionic monitor. By the time he had hid the revolver again he heard the elevator creaking back up.
Daisy came dragging in without her hat, looking as if she’d been concentrating on a chess problem for hours herself and just now given up. Her stripes seemed to have vanished; then Gusterson decided this was because her whole complexion was a touch green.
She sat down on the edge of the couch and said without looking at him, “Did you tell me, Gusterson, that everybody was quiet and abstracted and orderly down below, especially the ones wearing ticklers, meaning pretty much everybody?”
“I did,” he said. “I take it that’s no longer the case. What are the new symptoms?”
She gave no indication. After some time she said, “Gusterson, do you remember the Dore illustrations to the
“As bad as that, hey?”
She nodded emphatically and all of a sudden shivered violently. “Several shades worse,” she said. “If they decide to come topside—” She shot up. “Where are the kids?”
“Upstairs campin’ in the mysterious wilderness of the 21st floor,” Gusterson reassured her. “Let’s leave ’em there until we’re ready to—”
He broke off. They both heard the faint sound of thudding footsteps.
“They’re on the stairs,” Daisy whispered, starting to move toward the open door. “But are they coming from up or down?”
“It’s just one person,” judged Gusterson, moving after his wife. “Too heavy for one of the kids.”
The footsteps doubled in volume and came rapidly closer. Along with them there was an agonized gasping. Daisy stopped, staring fearfully at the open doorway. Gusterson moved past her. Then he stopped too.
Fay stumbled into view and would have fallen on his face except he clutched both sides of the doorway halfway up. He was stripped to the waist. There was a little blood on his shoulder. His narrow chest was arching convulsively, the ribs standing out starkly, as he sucked in oxygen to replace what he’d burned up running up twenty flights. His eyes were wild.
“They’ve taken over,” he panted. Another gobbling breath. “Gone crazy.” Two more gasps. “Gotta stop ’em.”
His eyes filmed. He swayed forward. Then Gusterson’s big arms were around him and he was carrying him to the couch.
Daisy came running from the kitchen with a damp cool towel. Gusterson took it from her and began to mop Fay off. He sucked in his own breath as he saw that Fay’s right ear was raw and torn. He whispered to Daisy, “Look at where the thing savaged him.”
The blood on Fay’s shoulder came from his ear. Some of it stained a flush-skin plastic fitting that had two small valved holes in it and that puzzled Gusterson until he remembered that Moodmaster tied into the bloodstream. For a second he thought he was going to vomit.
The dazed look slid aside from Fay’s eyes. He was gasping less painfully now. He sat up, pushing the towel away, buried his face in his hands for a few seconds, then looked over the fingers at the two of them.
“I’ve been living in a nightmare for the last week,” he said in a taut small voice, “knowing the thing had come alive and trying to pretend to myself that it hadn’t. Knowing it was taking charge of me more and more. Having it whisper in my ear, over and over again, in a cracked little rhyme that I could only hear every hundredth time, ‘Day by day, in every way, you’re learning to listen … and
His voice started to go high. He pulled it down and continued harshly, “I ditched it this morning when I showered. It let me break contact to do that. It must have figured it had complete control of me, mounted or dismounted. I think it’s telepathic, and then it did some, well, rather unpleasant things to me late last night. But I pulled together my fears and my will and I ran for it. The slidewalks were chaos. The Mark 6 ticklers showed some purpose, though I couldn’t tell you what, but as far as I could see the Mark 3s and 4s were just cootching their mounts to death — Chinese feather torture. Giggling, gasping, choking … gales of mirth. People are dying of laughter … ticklers!.. the irony of it! It was the complete lack of order and sanity and that let me get topside. There were things I saw—” Once again his voice went shrill. He clapped his hand to his mouth and rocked back and forth on the couch.
Gusterson gently but firmly laid a hand on his good shoulder. “Steady,” he said. “Here, swallow this.”
Fay shoved aside the short brown drink. “We’ve got to stop them,” he cried. “Mobilize the topsiders — contact the wilderness patrols and manned satellites — pour ether in the tunnel airpumps — invent and crash- manufacture missiles that will home on ticklers without harming humans — SOS Mars and Venus — dope the shelter water supply — do something! Gussy, you don’t realize what people are going through down there every second.”
“I think they’re experiencing the ultimate in outer-directedness,” Gusterson said gruffly.
“Have you no heart?” Fay demanded. His eyes widened, as if he were seeing Gusterson for the first time. Then, accusingly, pointing a shaking finger: “
Before Gusterson could retort to that, or begin to think of a reply, or even assimilate the full enormity of Fay’s statement, he was grabbed from behind and frog-marched away from Fay and something that felt remarkably like the muzzle of a large-caliber gun was shoved in the small of his back.
Under cover of Fay’s outburst a huge crowd of people had entered the room from the hall — eight, to be exact. But the weirdest thing about them to Gusterson was that from the first instant he had the impression that only one mind had entered the room and that it did not reside in any of the eight persons, even though he recognized three of them, but in something that they were carrying.
Several things contributed to this impression. The eight people all had the same blank expression — watchful
