He waited. The limp figure went swiftly out of the bus. It went swiftly to the place appointed for it. It had an iron-wire cap on its head. It wore Jim Hunt's garments. It was unconscious, and could not be questioned. But identification was complete. Just after sundown, the mob was told that the hunt was over.
Then, swiftly and smoothly and very promptly, the mobilization was reversed. Parked busses opened their doors to take on their loads of now-no-longer-raging men. Jim climbed into the first of them and took a place on the farthest-back seat. The bus filled to suffocation. Its turbine purred, and it rolled softly and gingerly over the uneven highway in Clearfield, and lurched cumbersomely over the narrow dirt-road beyond.
Presently it trundled down a ramp to a great trunk highway and picked up to its highest permitted speed. Jim leaned back against the end-wall and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He was very careful, though, not to let his iron-wire cap show.
In half an hour, the bus discharged its passengers in a city street. Early night grayed all the world. The bus's passengers melted away in as many directions as there were men. There had been no talk on the bus. There was none now.
Jim went to a pay-visiphone booth. He put a coin in the slot and said curtly, "Security."
The screen lighted, and he saw the reception-desk, with a uniformed Security Police officer looking uninterestedly at him.
"Business?" said the screen without animation.
"Look!" said Jim. "Here's something I found. I—don't know whether it means anything, but—"
He held out an object of which he had made several specimens, trying to arrive at one that would not be too uncomfortable for his own use. This, like the others, flattened out readily into a spiral disk of wire.
"It looks," said Jim, "like it was meant to be a cap. A sort of cap made out of iron wire—I wondered—"
Then he ceased to wonder. The face of the Security officer twisted with instant, commanded-reaction loathing. He reached quickly to press a button... Jim got out of the visiphone booth in a hurry. Even so, he was only a block and a half away when the patrols flashed into position from every direction and formed a cordon about all spaces within a block of the booth. Nobody would get out through that cordon without positive identification and a precise account of why he was at that particular spot at that particular time. If he wore an iron-wire cap-Jim had barely slipped through. He went on hastily, like everybody else when a Security cordon was thrown about an area. But he felt deathly sick and much more lonely than he had believed a man could be.
The Things had control of Security, too. At least here. If they had chosen to take over its very top levels— which was surely possible—if they controlled Security itself, there could be no hope for mankind.
11
Security, of course, had the final and overriding power among men, and it differed from previous tyrannies only in degree. The sincere belief of its top men that they were essential to mankind's continued existence had only little more reason behind it than the similar beliefs of previous dictatorships and empires. Men had reached a stage of technical progress where they could destroy themselves, and something like Security, to some degree, was needed. When it was a purely international affair and hardly operated below a national level, it was probably an unmixed blessing. It certainly prevented a second atomic war and assuredly kept biological warfare from being tried out full-scale.
Even later it was essentially useful. It wouldn't be wise to allow high-school students to learn the principles of induced atomic detonation. Common table-salt contains a fissionable isotope and adolescents playing with atomic energy could be more destructive than even with fast cars and sport-planes. Also, it was even necessary that cranks and crooks and lunatics should not be able to go into the nearest public library and find out just what a single individual can do in the way of damage with proper information and a minimum of aparatus. When Security managed only these things, even, it was not too bad. But there is a boundary to the safe suppression of knowledge.
Security no longer recognized limits. There is a point where risks have to be taken for progress. When Security extended its authority downward and prohibited all dangerous scientific experiments, its underlings ruled automatically that anything which could be dangerous should be forbidden, and that any experiment whose result was not certain could be dangerous. Interplanetary flight could not be developed because any but one-way guided-missile flights meant a danger of bringing back alien and possibly deadly micro-organisms. Microbiology became merely an art of cataloging observations, because bacteria sometimes mutate under cultivation. Experimental medicine became pure science without application to human life, and physics. All research involving nuclear fission was forbidden and physics came to a frustrated stop. Even electronics was suspect. When Jim Hunt essayed a daring excursion into the physical basis of consciousness, the foreseeable perils of the subject made Security clamp down swiftly and firmly for the safety of mankind.
The official motive for Security decisions could not be challenged. Its motive was the safety of the race. Nobody outside of Security was allowed to learn enough to be able to challenge its methods. The world as a whole tended to settle down into a comfortable stagnation, with due gratitude to Security for its continued life, and most people placidly confided in the protection they were not allowed to escape.
But this state of things was ideal for the purposes of the Things. Naturally enough, as parasites, they were not especially intelligent. Certainly not, compared to men. They were utterly uncreative. Essentially they were parasitic in exactly the fashion in which lice are parasitic, only with a highly specialized ability to implant desired thoughts into the consciousness of other organisms. That was all. Tin's odd power secured their survival, instead of small size and ability to hide which lice and fleas find so convenient. The Things thrived because they could make other creatures wish to serve them, instead of kill them. They had a very considerable cunning, and certainly they had the ability to learn a great deal about their hosts—or victims. But despite their success they were actually rather stupid.
They had exactly one desire, to be warm and comfortable and fed. That happy estate called for the enslavement of other creatures intelligent enough to provide warmth and comfort and food. Actually, the Things had only one technique and one trick, but the combination was deadly. The technique was the linkage of their thought-transmission power so that several could concentrate on an individual on whom they wished to prey. The trick was the use of slave-brains for contrivance.
When desire to serve the Things became a passion as sincere and unreasoning as patriotism, their victims set joyously about the enslavement of their fellow-men. They schemed for it. They planned for it. They devised far-reaching and beautifully-planned campaigns to bring it about. And they had no qualms, because everyone who was subject to the Things was very, very happy. It showed on their faces. But of course a man in a state of inner exaltation is not so good a workman, and there is a fine edge gone from his perceptions because he is lost in his contentment. Also there are times when he is desperately weak because of the Things' demands upon his strength. So where the Things held sway there was a slight slackening. Civilization seemed to falter just a little, in preparation for a quiet and contented descent into barbarism. But when the service of the Things was the high point in one's life, and they wanted only to be warm and lie soft and feed gluttonously,—why—there was no point in striving for anything more.