He was heading for his car when someone called out “Hey, Staunton.” It was Dr. Gruen, and he came closer so he wouldn’t have to yell the rest of what he had to say. “Getting a little poker game and we need one more sucker. How’s about it?”
“Well,” Doc said, “guess I can sit in an hour or two. Back room at the tavern?”
Gruen nodded. “I’m going over to get Lem. We’ll be starting in about fifteen minutes.”
“Good,” Doc said. “Just time for me to get a spot of fortification at the bar. See you when you get there.”
Time can be subjective; a few minutes in a dentist’s chair can be longer than a few hours in a good poker game. Doc played what he thought was a short time and suddenly realized, when they quit playing, that it was almost midnight. And also that he was hungry again; but both of the Bartlesville restaurants would be closed by now; he would have to wait till he got home and then make himself a sandwich.
At the house he parked his car in the yard and was almost at the door before he remembered that, unless Miss Talley had had a momentary hallucination, there was a cat in his house.
He let himself in by way of the kitchen door, being careful that nothing got past him. The moonlight was so bright that, until he closed the kitchen door, he could not possibly have missed seeing anything as large as a mouse. He heard no sound.
He flicked on the kitchen light and looked around. He remembered the flour he had sprinkled on the floor and walked over to the doorway.
There were cat tracks in the flour.
He called out, “All right, Cat. Show yourself if you want anything to eat or drink. I’m not going to hunt for you, but you’re not getting out of here till I’ve met you.”
He went to the refrigerator and opened it. He got out the necessary ingredients and made himself a ham sandwich and took it and a bottle of beer over to the table and sat down.
He did a lot of thinking while he ate the sandwich slowly and sipped the beer. He didn’t think he liked what he was thinking. He was frightened, without knowing what he was frightened about. He knew that he didn’t want to turn out the kitchen lights and go upstairs to bed in the dark. Although he knew the house so well by now that he seldom used his flashlight, he got it from a cupboard drawer. He had it in his hand and turned on when he flicked off the kitchen light.
He played it ahead of him as he went through the hallway and up the steps. He felt foolish doing it (how could a cat harm him?) but he did it just the same.
He saw nothing in the hall or on the stairs. In his bedroom he closed the door before he turned on the light and then, using the flashlight to help him, he searched the room thoroughly. This time he looked under the bed.
Wherever the cat was, it wasn’t in this room. And, harmless and ordinary though it might be, it wasn’t going to get in while he was sleeping. Luckily it was not a warm night and he would do without ventilation for once by sleeping with both the door and the window closed. Not, in the case of the window, because the cat could get through it from wherever it now was; but the cat must have got into the house that way in the first place, and what else might decide to come that way?
For some strange reason he wished he’d brought one of his guns upstairs with him.
But eventually he slept, and slept soundly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The mind thing had panicked when he had heard the man he now knew was Doc Staunton call out: “All right, Cat…”
It was the reaction, mostly, from learning that, in addition to being the optimum host he could possibly expect to find, the man suspected something close to the truth, and could be dangerous. He’d had only contempt for any human intellect he’d hitherto encountered.
But Staunton was the perfect host—a top electronicist, solvent and free to travel, single and without responsibilities. He’d listened with increasing fascination to the conversation between Staunton and Miss Talley, and to what Staunton had dictated to her.
And, although this was extrapolating, he felt sure that Staunton would have, or have access to, every item of equipment that he would need. With Staunton as a host, he could be back on his own planet as soon as within a few weeks—and a hero of his race for having discovered a planet definitely worthy of colonization.
But why had he made the initial mistake of drawing back and hiding when Miss Talley had looked up suddenly and had caught a glimpse of him in the hall? If only he’d remembered—which he hadn’t because of his excitement over the things he was learning about Staunton—to act like an ordinary cat! Once glimpsed, he should have strolled on out in the kitchen, right into their sight. If he’d acted friendly they might have petted him, if they were people who liked cats; possibly given him a bowl of milk and then let him out when he miaouwed and scratched at the door. At worst, if they were people who didn’t like cats, they’d have opened the door and shooed him out with a broom. And he’d have been free, those many hours ago, to make an inconspicuous death and be back in his own body, his shell, under the back steps of the Gross farmhouse.
Free to plan and then choose his next host, one who could move his shell from the Gross farm to the Staunton place here, near enough for Staunton’s bed to be within his range of perception so he could take over Staunton’s mind the first time Staunton slept.
That is what he should have done, certainly. But having once hidden, he’d decided that the safest thing to do was to stay hidden until, through the first door or window left open, he could escape and be free. But Staunton—damn him for being so clever!—had left nothing open. And now, because of the catprints in that scattered flour, Staunton knew for sure that he was here.
How much more did Staunton guess? He’d definitely suspected something, even before he’d left the house, to have set that telltale trap with the flour. Alone in the house and wandering around to explore, he’d not known that he was walking in the thin film of flour until the sensitive pads of his feet had told him he was walking in something, and he’d looked down, too late. How hard he’d tried to think of a way of obliterating those paw prints, or of cleaning up the flour and spreading fresh flour! It was simply impossible, in this tiny body he now occupied. Not the cleaning up of the flour; he could have licked it up, but the problem of spreading fresh flour and doing it evenly and neatly was insuperable. He might have been able to open the cupboard door to get at the flour sifter but, small as he was and without hands, there was no way at all of his using it as the man had done. No way at all.
His real panic had come when Staunton, returning, had called him, addressing him as one intelligent being speaking to another. Had Staunton determined by logic or by intuition that a cat trapped in his house wasn’t really a cat at all? It seemed incredible that he had worked it out from such slender evidence.
But it could be. Staunton, he must remember, was a scientist. The mind thing’s contact, from inside, with human minds had been with the mind of a boy not yet out of high school and the mind of a stupid and barely literate old man. Perhaps there were things, many things, on this world that neither Tommy nor Gross knew or even suspected, but that would be elementary to Staunton. Perhaps there were species here on Earth which were capable of taking over and using hosts, as his species did. Perhaps some human beings could, with special abilities or special training, take over lesser creatures. Well, he’d find the answer to that in Staunton’s mind if and when he could take it over.
The immediate problem was escape, getting out of this house. Suicide was definitely out, even if he could find the means of accomplishing it here. It had been the unexplained series of suicides of men, animals, and birds that had roused Staunton’s scientific curiosity in the first place. Having one happen right here in his own house, and under these circumstances, might be just the final evidence that would convince him completely of what he now—the mind thing hoped—only suspected.
There was, he realized now, only one thing he could possibly do, and that was to come out of hiding in the morning, let Staunton see him, and
try to the utmost of his ability to act like a cat, an ordinary cat. It would be dangerous, but there was no alternative. The danger was not that for any reason Staunton might kill him; that would free him immediately—and if Staunton knew about hosts, killing him was the last thing he’d do. He’d know that killing the host would free the being controlling it. The danger was that Staunton, knowing this, would catch him and keep him caged for study. If nothing worse, that would waste time; maybe he wouldn’t be able to escape until the cat died a natural death, and cats lived for years. The danger was even greater that Staunton would know the psychological tests that could distinguish a controlled creature from a free one.
And if Staunton could prove that—? There’d been some vague knowledge in Tommy Hoffman’s mind that something called truth serum existed. If Staunton injected that and forced him to communicate under its influence, he was through. He’d be forced to communicate the location of his own body, helpless at the Gross farm, and they’d have him.
Even, he realized in sudden despair, Staunton’s caging the cat for study and keeping it caged indefinitely, would cause his death if the cat lived long enough. In less than the natural length of a cat’s life his own body would perish for lack of nourishment. The immersion in nutrient solution he’d had Gross give it was enough to last for months, but not for as much as a year. Being imprisoned indefinitely in the body of any host unable to feed him would be fatal for his own body.
He spent the whole night thinking, weighing odds. He considered leaping against a window in the hope that the glass would break and let him through—but the objection to that was the same as that to an attempt at suicide. Even if successful, either would confirm his captor’s suspicions.
He could only hope that they were only suspicions and not certainties, and that Staunton would let him go in the morning. He could only hope so, and do his best to make the man think that he was only an ordinary cat, after all.
* * *
Doc Staunton hadn’t got to bed until one o’clock, and hadn’t gone to sleep until a good hour after that, so he slept later than he usually did, even on vacation. A little after ten in the morning he woke from a confused dream in which he was trying to design a metering device for a satellite but couldn’t remember, or find out from anyone, just what it was supposed to meter. He lay a moment trying to recapture the earlier part of the dream, which still evaded him, and then suddenly remembered the matter of the cat in this house; he forgot about the dream and lay thinking about the cat.
But the matter didn’t seem nearly so sinister now, in the light of day, as it had last night. Hadn’t he been exaggerating the possibility of any connection between having a stray cat in his house and the strange deaths that had happened during the previous ten days?
Well… probably. But still there was something that needed explanation. It wasn’t strange that a cat might enter a house out of curiosity, or out of hunger, through a door or window that had been left open. He doubted that many cats did, at least ones that had homes; but it was not too odd that one should do so. The strange thing was its method of entry.
Yet even that could be explained—if the cat was a homeless one, and hungry. Perhaps it had climbed the tree because it had seen a bird sleeping there and thought it might catch the bird. And then, once out on that particular branch and losing its quarry, the sight of an open window just might tempt it. Any cat, even a stray one, would know that there was food in houses.
But then it had hidden in the hall, near the kitchen doorway, almost as though spying on them, listening to their conversation. And hiding ever since…
Still, if it was a cat that had never had a home and, possibly because boys or a farmer had once thrown stones at it, was afraid of human beings…
He got out of bed and started dressing, deciding that he’d find the cat first, no matter how much searching he’d have to do, and then make up his mind.
He remembered there was a pair of fairly heavy leather gloves in a drawer of the dresser; he got them and put them in a pocket. If he was forced to corner the cat and catch it, and if it was a cat that was wild and might fight against being picked up—and even domestic cats sometimes did that with strangers—those gloves would come in handy. With them on, he should be able to handle it. From the size of the paw prints it had left in the flour, it certainly wasn’t very large. And wild though it might be, it definitely wasn’t a wildcat; his brief study of the prints had convinced him of that. He’d seen prints of a wildcat and they were quite different.
When he left the room he’d slept in he closed the door behind him. Might as well be systematic about his hunting, take the upstairs rooms before he went downstairs, and close the door of each after he’d searched it. He took the bathroom first, since he had to go there anyway, and then the other two bedrooms.
The cat wasn’t upstairs.
He saw it when he was halfway down the steps. It was sitting calmly at the front door, as a cat or dog does when it wants to be let out.
It didn’t look dangerous in the slightest. It was a small gray cat, perfectly ordinary-looking. It didn’t look at all starved and it didn’t seem frightened of him. In fact, it looked up at him as though quite friendly. It miaouwed and scratched lightly against the door.
Just a cat, a very normal cat, asking to be let out of the house.
Almost too normal, Doc thought, for a cat that had hidden from him for so long yesterday. He sat down on the bottom step of the staircase and stared at it, still at the front door, still wanting out. “Miaouw,” it said.
Doc shook his head. “Not just yet, Cat. I’ll let you out later, I guess, but I want to have a little talk with you first. And how about breakfast? I’m going to have some myself.”
He got up and went into the kitchen, not looking behind him until he was at the refrigerator.
The cat had followed him, but not closely at his heels. Now it was sitting staring at him. Then, as though it had a sudden idea, it went past him—but, he noticed, circling far enough to keep out of his reach—and to the kitchen door. It scratched at that, miaouwed again, and looked back at him. It was saying “Let me out, please” as clearly as a cat can say it. An ordinary cat, that is.
Doc shook his head firmly. “No, Cat. Later, but not now. I want to think it over first.”
He got milk from the refrigerator and put a bowl of it down on the floor. The cat didn’t approach it; it stayed at the door while he got his own breakfast, frying himself a couple of eggs and boiling water for instant coffee.
When he took his breakfast across the room and sat down at the big table with it, the cat left the door and went to the bowl of milk. It started lapping hungrily.
“Nice kitty,” Doc said through a bite of egg. “How’d you like to stay around and visit me a while?”
The cat didn’t answer, but, staring at it, Doc decided he hadn’t really been kidding. It would be pleasant to have a cat around, something to talk to. And if there was really anything strange about the cat, it would give him a chance to watch it for a while.
Of course he couldn’t keep it shut up indefinitely, not without suffocating himself on hot days. Or could he, by buying some half-screens, the kind you could fit into a window opened halfway? There seemed to be so few flies around that the owner of the house had never bothered to screen it. Yes, Doc thought, he could go even further than that and have a carpenter come out from town and fit him a full set of screens. He’d been wanting to add some small improvement to the house as a token of gratitude for being allowed to use it. And after all there were some flies, and moths at night unless you closed the windows when you put on the lights. A set of screens would be just about right as a contribution. Maybe he’d have them put on, cat or no cat.
Of course he didn’t want to steal anyone’s cat, if its owner really wanted it back. He could take care of that by asking around town. If he found an owner, the man would probably gladly sell it to him for a few dollars, unless it was a child’s particular pet. Cats are plent
iful and cheap around a farming community, and they breed so fast that the supply always exceeds the demand.
When he left to go back to M. I. T. to resume his teaching, he’d have to find a home for it before leaving, but that shouldn’t be too difficult if he was willing to subsidize the deal by offering a slight bonus along with the cat. Feeding one more cat wouldn’t matter much to a farmer who already had several, and even the most domesticated cats largely earn their own living in this kind of country by keeping down the field mice.
“Cat,” he said, “speaking seriously, how would you like to live here a while? Oh, and by the way what’s your name?” The cat, still lapping milk, didn’t answer.
“All right, you won’t tell me,” Doc said. “In that case you’re all set with a brand new name, the one I’ve been calling you. Cat. It’s appropriate… I hope.”
The cat had drunk only about half of the milk, but that was all right; he’d probably given it much too much for a cat its size to drink, and it was back sitting at the door again.
“Miaouw,” it said.
“I understand, Cat,” Doc said. “A call of nature, and that’s not surprising considering how long you’ve been here. But the very fact that you want out so badly proves that you’re housebroken. I’ll take care of things.”
He’d finished eating by then and went across to the door that led to the basement stairs, went down them. Someone who had stayed here, luckily, had done a lot of sawing for something or other; there was a fairish pile of dry sawdust in one corner of the basement. He found a shallow carton of about the proper dimensions and filled it with sawdust, took it up to the kitchen and put it in a corner.
“You’ll have to use that, Cat,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re not going out for a few days.”
The Mind Thing Page 13
