It walked its two hosts up the porch steps and used Pleever to knock loudly on the front door.
When no man, woman, or child on earth remained free, Seed would advance to the next stage, the Day of Release, abruptly allowing its hosts to resume control of their bodies, though in each of them would remain an aspect of the puppetmaster, always gazing out through their eyes and monitoring their thoughts. By the Day of Release, of course, at least half of the hosts would be insane. Others, having held on to sanity in hope of eventual release from torment, would be rocked by the realization that even after regaining control of themselves, they must endure the cold, parasitic presence of the intruder forever; they too would then go slowly mad. That was what always happened. A smaller group would inevitably seek solace in religion, forming a socially disruptive cult that would worship Seed. And the smallest group of all, the tough ones, would remain sane and either adapt to Seed's presence or seek ways to evict it, a crusade that would not prove successful.
Seed rapped on the door again. Perhaps no one was at home.
"Coming, coming," a man called from inside.
Ah, good.
Following the Day of Release, the fate of this sorry world would conform to the usual pattern: mass suicides, millions of homicides committed by psychopaths, complete and bloody social collapse, and an irreversible slide into anarchy, barbarism.
Chaos.
Creating chaos, spreading chaos, nurturing chaos, observing and relishing chaos were Seed's only purposes. The thing had been born in the genesis explosion at the start of time. Before that, it had been part of the supreme chaos of supercondensed matter in the time before time began. When that great undifferentiated ball of genesis matter exploded, the universe was formed; unprecedented order arose in the void, but Seed was not part of that order. It was a remnant of precreation chaos; protected by an invincible shell, it drifted forth into the blossoming galaxies, in the service of entropy.
A man opened the door. He was leaning on a cane.
"Mr. Pleever, isn't it?" he said.
From Jane Halliwell, Seed extruded black tendrils.
The man with the cane cried out as he was seized.
A blue-spotted black stalk burst from Jane Halliwell's mouth, pierced the crippled man's chest, and in seconds Seed had its third host: Jack Caswell.
The man's legs had been so badly damaged in an accident that he wore metal braces. Because Seed did not want to be slowed down by a crippled host, it healed Caswell's body and shucked off the braces.
Drawing upon Caswell's knowledge, Seed discovered that no one else was at home. It also learned that Caswell's wife taught at an elementary school and that this school, containing at least a hundred and sixty children and their teachers, was only three miles away. Rather than stop at every dwelling on the road into Pineridge, Seed could more effectively go to the school, seize control of everyone, and then spread out with all those hosts in every direction.
Jack Caswell, though imprisoned by Seed, was privy to his alien master's thoughts, because they shared the same cerebral tissue and neural pathways. Upon realizing that the school was to be attacked, Caswell's trapped mind squirmed violently, trying to slip free of its shackles.
Seed was surprised by the vigor and persistence with which the man resisted. With Pleever and the Halliwell woman, it had noticed that human beings — as they called themselves — possessed a far more powerful will than any species with which it had previously enjoyed contact. Now Caswell proved to have a considerably stronger will than either Pleever or Halliwell. Here was a species that obviously struggled relentlessly to create order out of chaos, that tried to make sense of existence, and that was determined to impose order on the natural world by the sheer power of its will. Seed was going to take special pleasure in leading humanity into chaos, degeneration, and ultimately into devolution.
Seed shoved the man's mind into an even darker, tighter corner than that to which it first confined him, chained him more securely. Then, in the form of its three hosts, it set out for the elementary school.
JAMIE WATLEY WAS EMBARRASSED TO ASK MRS. CASWELL FOR PERMISSION to go to the bathroom. He wanted her to think that he was special, wanted her to notice him in a way that she did not notice the other kids, wanted her to love him as much as he loved her — but how could she think that he was special if she knew that he had to pee like any other boy? He was being silly, of course. Having to go to the bathroom was nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone peed. Even Mrs. Caswell
No! He wouldn't think about that. Impossible.
But all through the history lesson he did keep thinking about his own need to pee, and by the time they were finished with history and halfway through math, he could no longer contain himself.
"Yes, Jamie?"
"May I have a lavatory pass, Mrs. Caswell?"
"Certainly."
The lavatory passes were on a corner of her desk, and he had to walk by her to reach them. He hung his head and refused to look at her because he didn't want her to see that he was blushing brightly. He snatched the pass off the desk and hurried into the hall.
Unlike other boys, he did not dawdle in the restroom. He was eager to get back to class so he could listen to Mrs. Caswell's musical voice and watch her move back and forth through the room.
When he came out of the lav, three people were entering the end of the corridor through the outside door to the parking lot: a man dressed in hunting clothes, a woman in a housedress, and a guy in khaki pants and a maroon sweatshirt. They were an odd trio.
Jamie waited for them to pass because they looked as if they were in a hurry about something and might knock him down if he got in their way. Besides, he suspected that they might ask where to find the principal or the school nurse or somebody important, and Jamie enjoyed being helpful. As they drew abreast of him, they turned toward him, as one.
He was snared.
SEED WAS NOW FOUR.
By nightfall it would be thousands.
In its four parts, it walked down the hall toward the classroom to which Jamie Watley had been returning.
A year or two hence, after the entire population of the world had become part of Seed, when bloodshed and chaos were then initiated with the Day of Release, the entity would remain entirely on — planet only a few weeks to witness firsthand the beginning of the human decline. Then it would form a new shell, fill that vessel with part of itself, and break free of the earth's gravity. Returning to the void, it would drift for tens of thousands or even millions of years until it found another likely world, where it would descend and await contact with a member of the dominant species.
During its long cosmic journeying, Seed would remain in contact with the billions of parts of itself that it left behind on earth, although only as long as those fragments had hosts to inhabit. In a way, therefore, it would never really leave this planet until the last human being was destroyed centuries hence in one terminal act of chaotic violence, whereupon the remaining bit of earthbound Seed would die with that final host.
Seed reached the door of Laura Caswell's classroom.