Invasion of the Body Snatchers (20 page)

Again he nodded. "So it can happen, Doctor Bennell, and rather easily; the intricate pattern of electrical forcelines that knit together every atom of your body to form and constitute every last cell of it - can be slowly transferred. And then, since every kind of atom in the universe is identical - the building blocks of the universe - you are precisely duplicated, atom for atom, molecule for molecule, cell for cell, down to the tiniest scar or hair on your wrist. And what happens to the original? The atoms that formerly composed you are - static now, nothing, a pile of grey fluff. It can happen, does happen, and you know that it
has
happened; and yet you will not accept it." He watched me for a moment, then smiled. "Though perhaps I'm wrong about that; I think maybe you have accepted it."

For a time, then, the room was silent, the four figures in my waiting-room quietly watching Becky and me. He was right; I believed him. I
knew
it was true, possible or impossible, and the helplessness and frustration were rising up in me. I could feel it in my finger tips, an actual physical sensation, a compelling urgency to do something, and I sat there, my fists clenching and unclenching. Suddenly, impulsively, for no other reason than to move, to act, to do
something
, I reached behind me, grabbed the cord of the Venetian blind, and yanked. The blinds shot up, the slats rattling like machine-gun fire, daylight slanting into the room, and I turned to look down at the wandering shoppers, the stores, the cars, the parking meters, the so ordinary scene below.

The four figures in my office didn't move, just sat watching me; and now my eyes were darting around the room, frantically searching for something I could
do.

Mannie realized what was going on in my mind before I did. "You could grab something and heave it through the window, Miles. And it would attract attention; people would look up and see the smashed window. You could stand there, then, and shout at them, Miles. But no one would come up." My eyes swung to the phone, and Mannie said, "Grab it; we won't stop you. And you'll reach the operator. But she won't put a call through."

Becky's head swung toward me, and she buried her face on my chest, her hands clutching my lapels; and, my arms around her, I felt her shoulders heave in a dry and soundless sobbing.

"Then what are you
waiting
for!" There was an actual red mist swarming before my eyes. "What are you
doing,
torturing us?"

Mannie grimaced, his face apparently pained, and he was shaking his head. "
No
, Miles! No, we're not. We haven't the least desire to hurt or torture you in any way. You're friends of mine! Or were." He shook his head, hands outspread helplessly. "Don't you see? There's nothing we can
do,
Miles, but wait; and try to explain, make you understand and accept this, try to make this as easy on you as we can. Miles," he said simply, "we have to wait till you're asleep, that's all. And there's no way you can make a man sleep."

Mannie looked at me for a moment, then added gently, "But there's no way you can keep from sleeping, either.You can fight it off for a time, but finally… you'll have to sleep."

The little man near the door - I'd forgotten he existed - sighed, and said, "Lock them in a cell at the jail; they'll sleep eventually. Why all the argument?"

Mannie looked at him coldly. "Because these people are friends of mine. Go on home, if you want to; three of us are enough."

The little man just sighed - no one ever got mad, I noticed - and continued to sit where he was.

Mannie got up suddenly, walked toward us, and stood looking down at me, his face pained and regretful. "Miles, face it! You're caught; there's nothing you can do. Face it, and accept it; do you
like
seeing Becky this way? I don't!" We stared at each other for several ticks of a clock, and somehow I didn't believe in his anger at all. Gently, persuasively, Mannie said, "Talk to her, Miles. Make her see the truth. No fooling, you won't mind, I tell you. You'll feel nothing at all. Sleep, and you'll wake up feeling exactly the same as you do now, only rested. You'll
be
the same. What the hell are you fighting?" After a moment he turned, and walked back to the davenport.

seventeen

My hand was moving, stroking Becky's hair, gently massaging her neck, comforting her, or trying to, in the only way I could. And then I wondered if it was the only way. I was tired; I could feel it behind my eyes, and in the slackening of my facial muscles; I could feel the weariness of my legs and arms. I wasn't exhausted; I could hold out for a time, but not for too long, nor could Becky. And the idea of sleep, of just dropping my problems and letting go; letting sleep pour through me, and then waking up, feeling just the same as I did now, still Miles Bennell - it was shocking to realize how terribly tempting the idea was.

I looked up at Mannie, sitting there on the edge of the davenport, eyes wide, his face looking compassionate and anxious, wanting me to believe him; and I wondered if what he said weren't the simple truth. Even if it weren't, holding Becky, feeling the tiny tremble of her body, and knowing how terrified she was, was more than I could take, and I knew there was something more I could do for her than simply sitting there stroking her hair. I could persuade her. I could accept what Mannie had said - accept and
believe
it - and then let my conviction convince her. It might even be true; it
might
.

My hand steadily stroking Becky's hair, holding her tight to me, I thought about it, feeling the steady trembling of her body, feeling my own weariness, letting the will to believe strengthen and grow. Then… Budlong was right; the will to survive cannot be denied - and I knew we'd fight, that we had to. Like a condemned man futilely holding his last breath in a gas chamber, we had to hold out as long as we possibly could, struggling and hoping even when there was no possible hope left. And now I turned to Budlong, trying to think of something, anything, to say, to keep us awake, to find some point of attack, hoping for I didn't know what.

"How did it happen?" I said conversationally. "All of Santa Mira - how did it work?"

He was willing to answer, and I knew Mannie was right; they were simply going to wait, till finally we had to sleep. "A little blindly, at first," Budlong said pleasantly. "The hulls, the pods, drifted down in this area; it could have been anywhere, but it happened to be here. They came to rest on the Parnell farm, on a trash pile, and their first efforts were merely a blind duplication of what they encountered first: an empty tin can stained with the juice of once-living fruit, a broken axe handle of wood. It's a natural waste; the waste of any kind of seed spore falling in the wrong places. Others, though, a few of them - and as a matter of fact, it would have taken only one success - fell, or drifted, or were blown, or carried by curious people, into the right places. And then those who were changed recruited others, usually their own families. The case of your friend, Wilma Lentz, is a typical one; it was her uncle, of course, who placed the hull in their basement that - effected her change. It was Becky's father who-" Politely, he didn't finish that sentence.

"In any event, from the moment the first effective changeover occurred, chance was no longer a factor. One man alone, Charley Bucholtz, the local gas- and electric-meter reader, brought about over seventy changeovers; he enters basements freely, and usually with no one accompanying him. Delivery men, plumbers, carpenters, effected others. And of course once a changeover had occurred in a household, the rest were usually rather easily and quickly made."

He sighed regretfully. "There were accidents, of course; slip-ups. One woman saw her sister lying in bed, asleep, and a moment later - the process unfinished, as yet - she also saw her sister, apparently, lying asleep in a guest-room closet. She simply lost her mind. Some people, realizing - struggled. They resisted and fought - it's hard to see why - and it was… unpleasant for everyone. Households with children were occasionally a little difficult; they're sometimes quick to recognize even tiny and trivial differences. But all in all, it was simple and fast.Your friend,Wilma Lentz, and you, Miss Driscoll, are sensitive people; most people weren't aware of any change at all, because there is none of significance. And of course, the more changeovers made, the more rapidly the remainder go."

And now I'd found a point of attack. "But there is a difference; you just said so."

"Not really, and nothing lasting."

But I wouldn't let it go; he'd reminded me of something. "I saw something in your study," I said slowly, thinking about it. "It meant nothing to me at the time, but now you've made me remember it. And I'm remembering something Wilma Lentz said, too, before she changed." They sat watching, quietly waiting. "You told me in your study that you were working on a thesis, or paper of some sort; a scientific study, and an important one to you."

"Yes."

I leaned toward him, my eyes holding his, and Becky lifted her head, to stare at my face, then turned to Budlong. "There was only one way Wilma Lentz knew Ira wasn't Ira. Just one way to tell, because it was the only difference. There was no
emotion
, not really, not strong and human, but only the memory and pretence of it, in the thing that looked, talked, and acted like Ira in every other way."

My voice dropped. "And there's none in you, Budlong; you can only remember it. There's no real joy, fear, hope, or excitement in you, not any more. You live in the same kind of greyness as the filthy stuff that formed you." I smiled at him. "Professor, there's a look papers get when they're left spread out on a desk for days. They lose their freshness, somehow; they look different; the paper wilts, wrinkles a little from the air and moisture, or I don't know what. But you can tell by looking that they've been there a long time. And that's how yours looked; you haven't touched them since the day, whenever it was, that you stopped being Budlong. Because you don't care any more; they mean nothing to you! Ambition, hope, excitement - you haven't any.

"Mannie" - I swung to him. "The high-school textbook you were planning:
An Introduction to Psychiatry
. The draft you were working on every spare minute you had - what's happened to it, Mannie? When did you last work on it, or even look at it?"

"All right, Miles," he said quietly, "so you know. We tried to make it easy on you, that's all; because after it was over, it wouldn't have mattered, you just wouldn't have cared. Miles, I mean it" - his brows raised persuasively - "it's not so bad. Ambition, excitement - what's so good about them?" he said, and I could tell he meant it. "And do you mean to say you'll miss the strain and worry that goes along with them? It's not bad, Miles, and I mean that. It's peaceful, it's quiet. And food still tastes good, books are still good to read-"

"But not to write," I said quietly. "Not the labour, hope, and struggle of writing them. Or feeling the emotions that make them. That's all gone, isn't it, Mannie?"

He shrugged." I won't argue with you, Miles. You seem to have guessed pretty well how things are."

"No emotion." I said it aloud, but wonderingly, speaking to myself. "Mannie," I said, as it occurred to me, "can you make love, have children?"

He looked at me for a moment. "I think you know that we can't, Miles. Hell," he said then, and it was as close to anger as he was capable of coming, "you might as well know the truth; you're insisting on it. The duplication
isn't
perfect. And can't be. It's like the artificial compounds nuclear physicists are fooling with: unstable, unable to hold their form. We can't live, Miles. The last of us will be dead" - he gestured with a hand, as though it didn't matter - "in five years at the most."

"And that's not all," I said softly. "It's everything living; not just men, but animals, trees, grass, everything that lives. Isn't that right, Mannie?"

He smiled wryly, tiredly. Then he stood, walked to the windows, and pointed. There, in the afternoon sky, hung a crescent moon, pale and silvery in the daylight, but very clear. A thin streamer of fog was moving across it. "Look at it, Miles - it's dead; there hasn't been a particle of change on its surface since man began studying it. But haven't you ever wondered why the moon is a desert of nothingness? The
moon
, so close to the earth, so very much like it, once even a part of it; why should it be dead?"

He was silent for a moment, and we stared at the silent, unchanging surface of the moon. "Well, it wasn't always," Mannie said softly. "Once it was alive." He turned away, back to the davenport. "And the other planets, revolving around the same life-giving sun as this one; Mars, for example." His shoulder lifted slightly. "Traces of the beings that once lived there still survive in the deserts. And now… it's the earth's turn. And when all of these planets are used up, it doesn't matter. The spores will move on, back into space again, to drift for - it doesn't matter for how long or to where. Eventually they'll arrive… somewhere. Budlong said it: parasites. Parasites of the universe, and they'll be the last and final survivors in it."

"Don't look so shocked, Doctor," Budlong was saying mildly. "After all, what have you people done - with the forests that covered the continent? And the farm lands you've turned into dust? You, too, have used them up, and then… moved on. Don't look so shocked."

I could hardly say it. "The world," I whispered. "You're going to spread over the
world
?"

He smiled tolerantly. "What did you think. This county, then the next ones; and presently northern California. Oregon, Washington, the West Coast, finally; it's an accelerating process, ever faster, always more of us, fewer of you. Presently, fairly quickly, the continent. And then - yes, of course, the world."

I whispered it. "But …where do they come from, the pods?"

"They grow, of course. We grow them. Always more and more."

I couldn't help it. "The world," I said softly, then I cried out, "But
why?
Oh, my God,
why?
"