"Yeah. Well, he's caused trouble before this when he caught her with
some kid. He hangs around her place and he beat her up a couple of
times. So it looks like he was jealous and they had a battle and he
lost his head." The sergeant shrugged. "Happens every day."
Still stunned, I stared at the two officers. The full implications of
what Sgt. Bullock had said were just beginning to penetrate. If Harry
was the killer--
"Are you sure?" I asked.
The sergeant appeared surprised. "Oh, he hasn't confessed yet. We
picked him up a few hours ago and he wouldn't say anything. Stubborn
guy. But we'll have the results of the lie detector and serum tests
within a few hours and that'll wrap it up. He did it, all right. He
was seen near her place that night, and the neighbors heard them
quarreling. We'll be digging up more stuff on him, now that we got it
pinned down."
I felt a numbing cold settling at the base of my neck. "Thanks for
taking the trouble to tell me this," I said thickly.
"No trouble, Mr. Cameron. This is our patrol area anyway. We're around
here pretty regular. Just thought we'd drop by and take a load off your
mind."
"Thanks."
The thin, silent partner spoke for the first time. "Never thought you
did it anyway," he said laconically.
I tried a smile. My lips felt like stiff rubber. "You had me worried.
I'm glad it's all cleared up."
"Yeah," the sergeant said heavily. "So are we."
They turned away. I managed to utter a reply to their casual goodbyes.
They crossed the street and climbed into the helicopter. A moment
later, it rose slowly into the air. I watched it until it had dwindled
out of sight, lost in the afternoon haze.
All over, I thought. The mystery all cleared up. No mystery at all.
There never had been one. Lois Worthington's murder had been the one
tangible proof I had that the aliens were real and dangerous. But she
had been killed by a jealous lover.
There were no more threads to cling to.
I stumbled back into the trailer. Dropping onto the couch under the
long window, I lay motionless, my eyes open and unseeing, fixed on
some distant point beyond the ceiling. My mind turned over sluggishly.
With careful logic I tried to examine all the facts. Like a policeman,
I thought, investigating a crime. A reported crime. You check each
suspect, eliminating them one by one. When the list is limited that's
not hard. I had done that. None of my four suspects was capable of
the monstrous plot I had imagined. None had super-human powers. So
there were no suspects. Better take another look at the crime, a close
look. Question the witnesses, see if their testimony is reliable, make
sure it stands up. This time there was only one witness who claimed
that a crime had been committed, an attempt at murder. The victim
himself, Paul Cameron. Queer duck, a bastard, mother's dead so he lives
alone, keeps pretty much to himself, no close friends. Got a vivid
imagination. Keeps hearing things. Is he the only witness to the fact
that there was a crime? Yes. Well, how do we know he's not lying? How
do we know it's not all in his mind?
And that was it. Investigation completed. There was no crime. There
were no aliens.
For long, painful, unaccounted minutes I confronted this inevitable
conclusion. Then, in one of those odd mental leaps that seem to have
no apparent motive, like the sudden sideways jump of a grasshopper, I
thought of Swami Fallaninda, the Exalted One. I could hear the vibrant
echo of his voice. "Know that when your mind is opened to truth the
powers of darkness can hold no influence over you." A wise platitude,
I thought. When you examined with the cold objectivity of distance any
of the little man's pompous phrases, they resolved themselves into very
ordinary statements. His devoted circle of followers thought he was a
man apart, a special being in touch with the Cosmic Consciousness, a
man one with God. The brief episode with the little mystic had left an
unusually deep impression on me--but the message he brought back from
his astral plane could not save me.
There was another god left to me, one I had not turned to, the last one
who stood between me and the powers of darkness which sought to possess
my mind--the man of science.
18
Dr. Jonas Temple was a man of about sixty, whose appearance belied
his years. His hair was a crisp iron gray, cropped close to a large,
strongly-modeled head. His features were heavy without being coarse and
the flesh was firm and ruddy. Of medium height and powerfully built,
he looked more like an athletically vigorous man who was capable of
exhausting physical labor than a renowned geophysicist who seldom left
the pale blue atmosphere of his laboratory.
His eyes, bright blue and intelligent, regarded me steadily. Their
expression was thoughtful and appraising rather than mocking. I felt
grateful.
I knew that I had been fortunate in finding him in his office alone on
a Saturday evening. The building was almost empty. One of Dr. Temple's
assistants was working in a small laboratory down the hall and janitors
were puttering about the building on their routine cleanup chores. I
reflected that it was an index to the character of the man in front
of me that I would have found him here, still working at the end of a
long day, tireless and dedicated. And it was even more characteristic
that he would take the time to listen to my story without laughing or
showing impatience.
"Let's review what you're suggesting," Dr. Temple said. He touched a
jet of flame to the fragrant ash in the deep bowl of his pipe. "What
you're asking me to believe is that some form of alien life has assumed
human form--"
"Possessed human bodies."
"Ah, yes. Possessed." The blue eyes squinted at me speculatively,
and I knew that the word had called to mind the devil-possessions
and exorcisms which had once been so prominent a part of the history
of Christianity. "They control these bodies as their own. A
kind--intelligent parasite."
I nodded. I could feel the tension in my body as I waited, like a
network of wires being stretched tighter.
"And you can hear their thoughts?" Dr. Temple asked.
"They're telepaths."
"But that means you are, too, because you're the only one who hears
them."
"Yes," I said stubbornly.
"Can you hear mine? Can you project yours to me?"
I was silent. This was one of the barriers I had run into every time
I reviewed the facts in my mind. There was one answer I had tried to
accept, but even as I voiced it now I knew it didn't sound convincing.
"Perhaps true telepathy--direct and conscious tele-communication
as opposed to the random reception of a thought--requires two
beings capable of extra-sensory perception in a highly developed
degree--sender and receiver."
"Which would help to explain why this--this talent of yours hasn't
revealed itself before now."
"But it has! That is, there were things like the vision of my father's
death--not telepathy but related experience, clairvoyance."
"Yes." The scientist frowned. "You will forgive me, Mr. Cameron, if
I do not give too much weight to that experience. It's not at all
uncommon. People envision harm to those close to them every day and
it is inevitable that they will think it extraordinary when one day
something does happen."
"But I didn't even know my father existed!"
"Perhaps." The voice was gentle, the blue eyes kindly. "You could
easily have known that he did, by deduction or through some chance
remark of your mother's. You could have reached the conclusion
subconsciously while not admitting it on a conscious level because you
found the fact unpleasant to face."
"That's possible," I said slowly, unconvinced.
"Mr. Cameron, I'm not trying to ridicule what you have suggested. I am
just trying to review all the implications of what you're asking for me
to believe--asking yourself to believe--and we must restrict ourselves
to directly pertinent information. Your vision of your father's death
could or could not be relevant. There are, I admit, fairly well
authenticated cases of clairvoyance. But with reference to your recent
experiences, that earlier vision is inconclusive and subject to varying
interpretations."
He shifted in his chair and sucked vigorously at his pipe until the
bowl glowed red. As I waited in the stillness of his office for him to
continue, my eyes strayed past him to the cabinets along one entire
wall. Behind glass doors was the famous collection of Martian crystal
and fossil formations, to the study of which the scientist had devoted
his life. Surely these must have revealed something of the nature of
Martian life. If some kind of intelligent parasite had existed there,
wouldn't it leave traces detectible to a man like Temple?
"This alien form of life you postulate could exist," Dr. Temple said.
"Grant that. There is no reason why life, intelligent life, on other
planets would have to be recognizable to us. What you postulate is
essentially a form of parasite, and the idea of a parasitical being
which is also intelligent is not completely beyond the evidence of
life we know even on earth. Let us concede that it could happen. An
intelligent being, evolving under vastly different environmental
conditions, might discover early in the progress of evolution that
it could use a material host with a more highly developed physical
organism but an undeveloped intelligence. And through the eons of
change and self-improvement such an intelligent being might evolve
physically only along those lines which would be necessary to its
survival and its mental development. If it could use the body of a
host, it would tend not to improve its own self-sufficient physical
organism, as man has developed his body, but rather to perfect the
ability to seize and to control its varied hosts."