Specimens Part 7

Outside, the sun was lowering into the treetops just behind the Folletts' house.

He said: "If you want me to devise a plan, I'll need more information on what kind of powers I'm working with. Your powers, I mean." A pause, with nothing happening. ''I know you can control people's bodies as you do mine, and also people's minds, as you did the police. But there must be some limit, or you wouldn't want my help. For example, I don't suppose you can force some nurse over there at the nursing home to just wheel some patient over here for me to put into the vault; and then force everyone to forget that that patient ever existed."

While he was waiting for an answer he was thinking also that the enemy might very well have been telling him the truth about the time for its departure growing near. As he had seen, its specimen racks were now nearly full. Also - and this was just a hunch on his part - it might want to go because it had now observed a really radical change, a quantum jump, in the nature of the organization of human life upon this planet. In the few decades since the 1850s the people of the planet had bound themselves together in networks of communications and transport much tighter than any known before; they had sent their representatives into outer s.p.a.ce; and they had begun to gain great powers not only over the gross physical world, but over the world of knowledge, of information- handling, in itself. Such radical changes might well be of more than pa.s.sing interest to whomever had designed the probe and sent it here.

This time Dan was kept waiting for his answer for nearly a full minute. It was a much longer pause for thought than any that the enemy had taken before. But at last Dan's right hand was made to reach out for the pencil.

THERE ARE INDEED LIMITS TO MY ABILITY TO CONTROL. ONCE PHYSICAL.

CONTROL HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED, AS IN YOUR CASE, IT CAN BE MAINTAINED.

AT VERY GREAT DISTANCES. BUT TO ESTABLISH PHYSICAL CONTROL OVER A NURSE, AS IN YOUR EXAMPLE, WOULD REQUIRE THAT SHE SPEND SIX HOURS.

A DAY OR MORE, FOR TWO OR THREE DAYS CONSECUTIVELY, WITHIN A FEW.

YARDS OF THIS HOUSE OR IN IT.

"The police weren't here that long."

IMPOSITION OF WHAT YOU CALL MENTAL CONTROL, AS ON THE POLICE,.

REQUIRES ONLY A FEW MINUTES. BUT IT PRODUCES ONLY MENTAL.

CONFUSION AND SELECTIVE FORGETFULNESS IN THE SUBJECT AND IS.

USELESS FOR OBTAINING ACTIVE CO-OPERATION.

Studying the note Dan wondered how many plumbers, watermain ditchdiggers, gas company workers and unguessable others had labored at some routine job on the hilltop and then come away from it with vague feelings of confusion, unable to recall everything they had seen and done while working there. Now he remembered certain oddities in the angles and depths at which his bas.e.m.e.nt waterpipes had been laid and the drains placed - all necessary, he saw now, if the earth under the oldest part of the house were to remain perfectly undisturbed. The enemy was no doubt telling him the truth now, but only part of it; it was not going to reveal all its powers to him unless it had to.

"And the machine?" he asked. "That thing down below that looks like a giant crab.

What can that do?"

DO NOT COUNT ON USING THAT MACHINE IN YOUR PLAN TO OBTAIN.

SPECIMENS.

He got up and went to the cabinet and took another half-drink, straight from the bottle. He was ready to trade his right thumb for a cigarette. "Let me have a little more time to think."

YOU HAVE UNTIL TOMORROW MORNING TO PRESENT A PLAN.

And then his limbs were taken from him, and the sc.r.a.ps of paper that held the enemy's messages, together with the marked newspaper, were taken up and stuffed into the bag of garbage that waited beneath the lid of its bright plastic holder beside the sink.

Whether because of the greater knowledge it had just granted Dan, or the more extensive freedom he was perhaps to be allowed, or a new estimate of his intelligence, it was no longer taking him quite so lightly.

He was halfway through the preparation of a light dinner when the front doorbell chimed and control clamped down on him. His hand went to turn off the burner under the beans before he left the kitchen. Through the gla.s.s panels beside the front door he caught sight of the edge of Nancy's familiar handbag, and he experienced a feeling of heart stoppage that could not have been physiological because in fact his heart and lungs went working on in utter calm as his body walked to the door and opened it.

"In!" Her face was bright and innocent and smiling, anxious to see his.

"In!" Perhaps the slave-master too was capable of being briefly immobilized by surprise. It got out the one word and then just held Dan standing there, motionless inside the half-open door, looking at Nancy's j.a.panese eyes. At last it added: "Come in, Nancy." Perhaps the one brief syllable of her greeting had been enough to let it recognize her voice as mat of the phone conversation.

She came in, already troubled by the change she obviously felt in him. She had an old suitcase in one hand - she had been moving in piecemeal, and never came emptyhanded. In the other hand she carried a small brown paper bag.

In the middle of the living room she stopped and turned, before even setting down her cargo anywhere, and asked: "How are you, Dan?"

''Getting along. Getting along all right, Nancy. Did you come here straight from work?" No, no! Nancy, love, tell the d.a.m.ned thing that someone knows where you are . .

"Yes, of course." She held up her little paper bag. "A couple of yo-yos for the kids.

Danny, you don't look right, you don't sound right. How are you, really?"

"As I say, getting along."

She shook her head in brisk doubt and tossed the things she was carrying onto the sofa and came to Dan and put a questioning hand on his arm. Then her face tilted up and waited to be kissed. Of course the kiss was not right either.

She let go of him and stepped back with a long, troubled look. "How are the children?"

"All right. How are things at home?"

"With my folks? Oh, all right. I called Mom this afternoon. Dad has some kind of pain in his back. Maybe the moving was too much for him. But he went to work today anyway.'' A pause. ''Dan, did you see a doctor yet?"

"Yes. Said it was only a virus, nothing to worry about.'' That line, Dan realized as soon as his lips had uttered it, was straight out of one of the afternoon's soap operas.

Even as he spoke his body turned away from her, and stood for a moment looking out of the window at her car parked just in front of the house, where the police car had been.

"I'm not going to stay very long tonight," she said behind him. "Promised mother I'd be a good girl and come right home as soon as I saw you were getting on all right." Her voice tried to be lighter. "She doesn't like me visiting a bachelor in his pad after dark, fiancee or not."

His fingers that had lifted the curtain let it drop back, and he turned. ''Some day soon I think I'll drive in and pick you up." Was this from television again? Dan couldn't remember well enough to be sure. "We'll sneak out somewhere, just the two of us, like old times."

"Why, how romantic, sir." She smiled a little, but then continued giving him that worried look. She turned toward the kitchen. "I'll bet you haven't had your dinner. I'll fix you something. Where are the kids? It's getting dark."

"They're dining with some friends this evening."

"Oh! That's good, they're making friends out here so rapidly. Who are the people?"

"Just some neighbors."

She turned her back on the kitchen and came back to him, looking into his face more searchingly than ever. "Dan, it's me, you know, Nancy? I'm supposed to be moving in here in a few weeks, remember, like one of the family sort of?"

"I . . . "His hands took one of hers and held it, clumsily. "Nancy, I've just been going through a bad few days. Trust me, and things will work out all right.'' Straight from the soap operas again. Oh, if Nancy had come only a few hours ago, she would have known that something was hideously, vitally wrong, known it at once and without a doubt; but already the enemy was becoming d.a.m.nably good in its portrayal.

She started to answer him sharply and then held back. Instead she asked: ''When are the children coming home?"

He cleared his throat. "Later."

''Dan, what is it? What's the big mystery? Now I can tell that something's wrong. Did the doctor really say that it was just a simple virus?"

"Of course." The words came quickly and in a rea.s.suring tone. Still the tone was not really, not quite, Dan's.

''Then what's wrong? Don't tell me there isn't something."

The enemy, being driven into a corner, only looked at Nancy steadily. She was going to have to find her own answer for her question, and of course she did.

''It's the children, isn't it, Dan? They don't want you to marry me."

He only looked at her.

''You got them out of here tonight when you thought I might come around. It's really that bad this time, huh?"

"Nancy, I think it may be best if you - don't see them for a few days."

Her eyes searched his, and evidently managed to find in them confirmation of her fear. But she was not despairing. "Dan, I can make the grade with them, really I can.

Maybe I try too hard sometimes, bringing them yo-yos and stuff, presents every time I come. Maybe if I stop trying so hard ... of course they're still going to remember their mother, and resent me sometimes. But I can live with that."

"You're a wonderful woman, Nancy." The actor's voice was gentle. "Nancy, will you just let me deal with things for a few days in my own way? Trust me?'' Maybe life was in fact a soap opera, therefore the television dialogue all fit. "In a little while it'll all work out, I promise you." When Nancy started to drift again, in a slightly dazed way, toward the kitchen, he added: "I've eaten already, I was just cleaning up."

When she stopped, with a little shrug and a helpless half smile, he went to her and touched her cheek caressingly. "Look. What's today? Wednesday? Friday night I'm going to pick you up and we're going out somewhere, just the two of us."

She looked up at him, plainly wanting very much to be comforted. And she was; this kiss was much better than the first had been.

Nancy maintained her smile, and patted him briskly on the arms. "Danny, I'm going to start back, then. You can tell the kids it's safe to come home. Tell them I . . . well, handle it your way. You must know best.''

"I'll handle it. Trust me, it's all going to work out."

As she was going out the front door, she said: "By the way, I gave your book to Dr.

Baer."

"Oh?" The controlled voice was non-committal, mildly interested.

As they walked out onto the lawn, her eyes probed his. "The diary that you found up in the attic here, remember?"

"And what did Dr. Baer say?"

"I spoke to him again at lunch and he said he hadn't had a chance to look at it yet. He said perhaps by tomorrow."

Dan's body walked her to the Volks where it waited on their summer gra.s.s, and they kissed goodbye, and a few moments later she was gone, making a neat U-turn to get back to the highway. He was at once marched under control straight back to the kitchen, where his hand switched on the electric light and then picked up the pencil.

WHOSE WAS THE DIARY?.

"I don't know whose it was, I hardly looked at the thing. I found it the day we were moving in, stuck away behind the chimney up there, buried in sawdust. I brought it right downstairs and gave it to Nancy, because she's interested in history . . . but she doesn't have it any more, you heard her say that."

WHO IS DR. BAER?.

''He's one of the curators at the Museum, in the city, where Nancy works. I don't know why she gave the book to him."

YOU WILL TELL ME ALL ABOUT THIS DIARY.

"It had a red cover. It wasn't very big. I... I told you I hardly looked inside it. There's nothing else I can tell."

He was brought to his feet so hard that the kitchen chair went over behind him with a crash. Marched into the first floor bathroom. Angry red burn mark right under the hot water faucet. Right hand brought across his body and held ready to turn the faucet on.

Speech given back, but at whisper volume only.

"I don't know any more. I don't know. I did just barely look inside the book. Only a few pages had writing. There was a date, eighteen-fifty-something as I recall. The writing was hard to read, and I didn't care about it. I swear there's no more I can tell. No more.''

After what seemed a long, long time, he was moved away from the sink, and, still under total control, back to the kitchen, where his hand wrote: THE BOX IN WHICH YOUR DAUGHTER LIES IS BEING OPENED NOW.

"What? Why?" He still could do no more than whisper his replies.

The hand went back and underlined the last two words of the next-to-last printed message. - THIS DIARY.

"I don't know any more. I've told you I don't know."

A m.u.f.fled scream, in a high childish voice, came up from far below.

Dan's muscles would not lift him from his chair. He could do nothing but bring out his softened voice. "Stop it. I don't know, I don't know, I don't - "

THEY DO NOT SUFFER IN THE BOXES UNLESS WHAT YOU MAY CALL A SMALL.

GALVANIC CHARGE IS APPLIED TO A CERTAIN PART OF THE BRAIN.

"Stopstopstop. I'll do anything you say but I don't know any more about the diary."

A truck s.h.i.+fted gears going up Main. Someone drove by the house with rock music blaring from the car radio.

I WILL ACCEPT YOUR WORD FOR NOW. UNLESS YOU AGAIN FAIL.

DELIBERATELY TO HELP ME. YOU DID NOT TELL ME NANCY'S RACE.

"I won't fail again. I won't fail."

YOUR DAUGHTER MAY REST FOR NOW. IF IT IS NECESSARY TO PUNISH YOU.

AGAIN I WILL USE YOUR HANDS TO INFLICT PAIN ON HER. EAT NOW. BODY.

STRENGTH MUST BE MAINTAINED.

When control was released, he sat there in his chair like a string-cut puppet for a little while, even his eyelids sagging. Had to keep going, had to, had to. Millie and Sam. He was their only hope. Millie and Sam. Millie and Sam.

"I want to go out and get some cigarettes," he said into the air.