The Mind Thing

by Fredric Brown

  Garner scratched his head and thought a minute. He said, “I guess not, Sheriff. I think I can answer for her that she’d just as soon testify in front of everybody. Hell, the whole story’s going to get out anyway and maybe sound worse, and like we’re ashamed of her. Damn it, what they did wasn’t so bad—they were in love and engaged, just jumped the gun a little. Don’t tell my wife I told you this, but she and I did the same thing, so how can we bawl out Charlotte? And if the town or the neighbors turn thumbs down on her for it, the hell with ’em. I’ll sell the farm and move. Always kind of wanted to go to California anyway.”

  So things had been left. Gus Hoffman had got home by one o’clock, home to the loneliest, emptiest house he’d ever known. He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, until he remembered that there was most of a pint of medicinal whisky in the cupboard. He got it, and a glass. He wasn’t a drinking man; he took an occasional nip on special occasions to be sociable, but this was more whisky than he ordinarily drank in the course of a year. Tonight, though, if this was enough whisky to bring oblivion, he was willing to let it. Tonight was the worst night of his life, even worse than the night his wife had died. For one thing, he’d known for weeks that she was dying; he’d been prepared for it. For another, he’d still had Tommy. Tommy had been three then, but Gus had managed to keep him on the farm and raise him there, with the help, until Tommy was of school age, of a woman who came daily to take care of him while Gus worked the farm.

  Now he was completely alone, permanently alone. He knew that he’d never marry again. Not because he was too old—he was still a year short of fifty—but because never since his wife’s death had he ever even thought about living with another woman, or wanting one. He didn’t know why it was impossible for him, but it was. Something in him had died when his wife had died. It was something psychological, of course, but it was something more than psychological impotence. A man suffering from that can still want a woman, at least in the abstract, and freeze only when he tries to have one in the flesh. But Gus Hoffman couldn’t even want one; nor could he entertain the thought of making a sexless marriage just to have a woman around the house for companionship and as a helpmate. He didn’t want a woman around the house, even on that basis. (Having Charlotte around as Tommy’s wife would have been different, of course; he’d looked forward to that.)

  All his hopes had been in Tommy. He was not a demonstrative man and had never let Tommy know how important to him had been the boy’s decision to stay on the farm with him, even after his marriage. He’d wanted grandchildren and now he’d never have them; he was now the last of his line, a dead end.

  Unless— With his third drink a sudden blazing hope came to him. Unless he was already scheduled to have a grandson. Charlotte could be pregnant and not even know it yet. Or had Tommy taken precautions against that happening?

  Suddenly he wanted to know right away. He got up from the kitchen table to go to the telephone. Then he sat down again, realizing he shouldn’t call the Garners in the middle of the night to ask them that. In fact, he shouldn’t ask them at all. He should wait and see, and keep his hope alive for as long as he could.

  Meanwhile it would give him something to think about besides his grief and loneliness. He could even plan. If and when Garner learned that Charlotte was pregnant he’d surely sell out and move away; he’d said he’d do that anyway if he found Charlotte in disgrace in the town or neighborhood—and while an affair might be forgiven her, an illegitimate child certainly wouldn’t. Well, Gus Hoffman would sell out too and go with them, wherever they went, California or the moon. If possible, he’d talk Garner into their buying a farm together so he could live with them—or make himself living quarters in the barn if they didn’t want him underfoot in the house—and help raise his grandson. Or granddaughter; he’d even settle for that. If Jed wouldn’t agree to buying a farm jointly, he’d buy his as near as possible. The next-door one if he could get it, even if he had to pay a premium price to talk someone into selling it. Price need be no object, thank God; he had twelve thousand dollars in the bank and in investments, besides what he’d get for his farm here. And he’d had some pretty good offers for that.

  He finished the whisky and realized that for almost the first time in his life, certainly for the first time since his twenties, he was drunk. When he stood up he found he had to hold onto things to keep from falling. He didn’t bother to go upstairs or to undress; he made his way as far as the living-room sofa. He managed to get his shoes off, and that was the last he remembered.

  That had been last night.

  And now it was morning. He’d wakened at dawn. He’d made coffee and forced himself to eat some oatmeal. He’d done his milking and put out the cans for the dairy’s route man to pick up, and had done the few other things that had to be done. All that took two hours, and it was still early. There was still work—there’s always work to do on a farm—but nothing that couldn’t wait until late afternoon, after the inquest. And he’d thought of something more important than work that he wanted to do.

  He felt to make sure that Buck’s leash and Tommy’s sock were still in his pocket from last night, and then called Buck and walked across the fields to Jed Garner’s farm.

  Garner was hoeing in a small garden patch behind the house. He stopped and leaned on his hoe as Hoffman came up.

  “Morning,” Hoffman said. “How’s Charlotte?”

  “Still asleep, I hope. Didn’t get to sleep till God knows when last night. What’s on your mind, Gus?”

  “Just dropped by to tell you where I’m heading. Back to where—where we were last night.”

  “Why?”

  “Just want a look around by daylight. The place where we found Tommy’s clothes, the place where we found him. We might’ve missed something, just with lanterns. I don’t know what, but if there’s anything to find now’s the time, before the inquest.”

  “Makes sense,” Garner said.

  “Another thing, why I’m taking Buck. I’m going to where we first saw Tommy, when he ran up to us. See if Buck can back-trail him from there, find out where he’d been, in that direction. Dunno it’ll tell me anything, but I want to know.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Garner said. “Might as well. Don’t feel like working and I guess you’re the same way. Wait till I tell Maw.”

  Gus Hoffman waited for him, and the two men started off.

  * * *

  The mind thing wasn’t worried, but he was annoyed with himself for having panicked and killed his first, and thus far only, human host. Subsequent and calmer thought showed him that it hadn’t been necessary. He had to lead them away from the cave, yes, but after that there had been no need for him to make his host kill himself. After he’d led them a safe distance he could have fallen and pretended to be asleep or unconscious when they reached him. When they awakened him he could have been surprised to find himself there, especially to find himself naked, and he could have remembered nothing since going to sleep beside his girl at their trysting place. True, his case would not have been diagnosed as simple amnesia, not after running away from his father as he had, but, it would still have been called only temporary insanity. They wouldn’t have locked him up in an asylum for that, which had been the thought that had made him make Tommy destroy himself—incarcerated, he would have been completely valueless as a host; also, he knew from Tommy’s mind that mental institutions take elaborate precautions to prevent their inmates from committing suicide, and he might have been stuck in Tommy’s mind for quite a while. And an unsuccessful attempt at suicide might have got him into a padded cell, which would have made it impossible.

  But he realized now that they would not have incarcerated Tommy, not for one brief period of temporary insanity. They’d have watched him for a while, but not too closely or for too long, if he seemed again perfectly normal. There’d have been a talk with the doctor, of course, and he would probably have recommended taking Tommy to a specialist, a psychiatrist. But that would be good
because, since there were no psychiatrists in Bartlesville or even in Wilcox (that Tommy had known of), it would have meant a trip to Green Bay or possibly even to Milwaukee. Either of those places would have a public library large enough to be worth while for him, and if he could have had some free time—or even have made a getaway for a while, if accompanied—he could have made at least a good start on learning some of the things he would have to know.

  Yes, as Tommy’s mind would have expressed it, he had goofed. However, he couldn’t blame himself too much. It is tremendously difficult to understand immediately all the ins and outs of a completely alien world, a completely alien culture, Especially since thus far his only concepts of that world, beyond his immediate range of perception, had come from the mind of a not too bright, not too well educated high school boy who had taken no interest in any serious subject except farming. Tommy would have made an excellent farmer.

  The main disadvantage of his present position, safe though he thought it was, was the fact that from here it would be almost impossible to get another human host. Men came through these woods, usually to hunt, but the chances of one happening to go to sleep near enough, within the forty-yard extreme range of his perceptive sense, were remote.

  To get his next human host he’d have to use an animal host first, to transport him near enough to a place where a human would be sleeping. There would be risk in that, during transport, but it was a risk he would have to take. And, although he had actually not encountered as yet any animals within his range, he’d learned from Tommy that there were such animals, several of them. A deer could carry him easily in its mouth; so could a bear. There might be air transport, too. A chicken hawk, since it could carry off a chicken heavier than he was, would be ideal. An owl might serve; Tommy had known that owls swoop down on mice and fly off with them, but he’d had no clear idea of how heavy an object an owl could fly with.

  On the whole, he thought, a bird would be best. A deer or a bear might have trouble with fences, and if there was a dog in the farmyard it would bark and waken the household. But a dog would not notice a chicken hawk circling down in the middle of the night to leave something on the roof. Then, as soon as the hawk had flown away and killed itself or got itself killed, he would have his choice of hosts among however many people would be sleeping in the house. The first act of his new host would be to retrieve the mind thing’s corporeal self from its exposed position on the roof and put it in a safe place of concealment.

  There was no hurry; this time he would think every detail through and make no more mistakes. Besides, no owl or chicken hawk had as yet come within his perception range.

  Nor a deer nor a bear. Only field mice, rabbits, and other small creatures had as yet passed within range.

  But he had studied them, each of them. One can never tell when a small animal might, for some special purpose—burrowing under a wall, for instance—make a better host, temporarily, than a larger one.

  Once he had studied an animal inside and out—studied it himself, not just examined the concept of it in a host’s mind—he could get himself a host of that species at any distance up to about ten miles, provided that one was sleeping within that range. Having studied a rabbit, for instance, he had only to concentrate on the concept of a rabbit, if one was sleeping within ten miles or so—the nearest one, if there were several. Once a hawk had flown past within his range—no matter at how fast a speed—he’d be able to get himself a hawk for a host any time he wanted one, if it was during the night when hawks slept. Sooner or later hawk, owl, deer, bear would come within range; he’d have himself a wide variety of potential animal hosts.

  Things would have been easy for him—there’d have been no problem at all to speak of—if the same thing could have been done to highly intelligent hosts—which in the case of this planet meant human beings. Such creatures automatically resisted being taken over, and there was always a mental struggle sometimes lasting for seconds. To win he had to use all his power and to have the creature, the individual creature, within the limit of his senses of perception. And, of course, asleep.

  That had been found to be true on almost all the inhabited planets which his species had visited or occupied. But there were rare exceptions, and during the night he had experimented to make sure Earth was not one of them.

  He tried a field mouse first, concentrating on one by using the one which had been his first terrestrial host as a prototype. Annoyingly, it took him almost an hour to kill it so he could get his mind back into himself. First he had tried running it head-on into a tree and then into a stone. But it was so light, had so little inertial mass, that even against the stone the impact had served only to stun it momentarily. It couldn’t climb well enough, he discovered, to get sufficiently high into a tree for a fall to kill it. He had taken it into the open, into a patch of bright moonlight, and had run it in circles there, hoping that the movement would draw the attention of an owl or some other nocturnal predator. But no predator seemed to be around. Finally he did what he should have done in the first place: he examined its thoughts and memories, such as they were. And he learned that there was water nearby, a shallow brook. The field mouse had immediately run toward it and into the water, and drowned itself.

  Then back in himself in the cave again, he made his second experiment. He knew that there would be men sleeping within a few miles, past the edge of the woods to the south. Within ten miles in that direction was the town of Bartlesville where hundreds of men would be asleep. Using Tommy as his prototype, he concentrated on man, any man asleep. Nothing happened.

  He made one further experiment. With some intelligent species it was possible to take over one at a distance if, instead of concentrating on the species, one concentrated on an individual, one which had already been studied and memorized. After studying Tommy, but before entering him, he had studied the girl Charlotte, inside and out. He tried concentrating again. And again nothing happened.

  Although he couldn’t have known it, Charlotte wasn’t asleep as yet; she had gone to bed but was still crying into her pillow. But that didn’t matter because it wouldn’t have worked if she had been sleeping; mankind was no exception to the general run of intelligent creatures in respect to the distance at which he could make one his host.

  After that he had rested; not sleeping, for his species never slept, but postponing further active thinking and planning. In any case he would have to wait until he had had a chance to study more useful potential hosts than the rabbits, field mice, and other small creatures which were all that had thus far passed within his ken. No larger creature came that night.

  But now he heard—felt the vibrations of—something large coming his way. Two somethings, he decided—then three. Two bipeds and a quadruped, but one much larger than a rabbit. He concentrated his perception to its utmost limit and within a minute or two they were within its range. It was the same trio that had come last night trailing Tommy —Tommy’s father, Charlotte’s father, and Buck, the dog, straining at the leash and heading straight for the cave. They were taking Tommy’s back trail to see where he had been before he had run toward them.

  But why? He had recognized the possibility of their doing so, but had discounted it, not seeing any reason why they would be interested in where Tommy had been, once he was dead. Besides, since Tommy he had had no host or potential host capable of defending him or moving him. Nothing bigger than a rabbit. The sudden thought came to him of finding a rabbit, if one was sleeping near enough, and having it run across the trail to distract the dog. But as quickly, he realized that it wouldn’t work. The dog was on a leash and if he tried to run after a rabbit they’d hold him back and put him on the trail again.

  He was completely helpless. If they found him there was nothing he could do about it, nothing at all. But he didn’t panic because the chance that they would find him was slight. They’d have no reason for digging. They’d find the cave, of course, and enter it. They’d wonder why Tommy had come here—but they wouldn’t
dig, he felt almost sure.

  Now Buck was leading them around the bushes into sight of the entrance. He paused briefly to sniff where Tommy had crouched behind the bushes, and then started into the cave. Hoffman pulled him back.

  “Damn,” Garner said. “A cave, he came to. Wish now we’d of brought a gun or two and a flashlight or two. Size of that entrance, it’s just the kind of cave a bear might pick.”

  Hoffman said, “If Tommy was in there last night, there wasn’t a bear there then. And a bear’s more likely to be to home by night than by day.”

  The mind thing understood, for it now knew the language that was being spoken. Before it had had a human host, such words would have been only meaningless sounds—like the sounds Tommy and the girl had made to each other along the path and in their hiding place before they had gone to sleep.

  “Just the same, I’m going in,” Hoffman said.

  “Just a minute, Gus. I’ll go in with you. But we might as well be sensible. Take that leash off Buck’s collar and let him go in first. If there is anything dangerous in there, he’s got a hell of a lot better chance than either of us of getting out safe. He’ll be on his feet and we’ll be on hands and knees.”

  “Guess that’s sensible.” Hoffman unsnapped the leash from Buck’s collar, and Buck darted into the cave. Halfway, as far as Tommy bad gone, and that was the end of the trail. He lay down.

  The men listened for a while. “Guess it’s all right,” Hoffman said. “Nothing could of hurt him so fast he couldn’t of let out a yip. I’m going in.”

  He entered on his hands and knees, and Garner followed.

  When they reached the center of the cave where Buck lay, they found the ceiling high enough and stood up. It was dim, but they could see a little.

  “Well, this is it,” Garner said. “Reckon this is as far in as he came, since Buck stopped here. And there’s nothing here, but it’s nice and cool. Let’s sit down and rest a minute before we go back.”