With tranquil certainty, Jim drew the pistol from the guard's holster. He raised it as to his own head—And struck with the raging fury of the madman he had become. The first guard reeled. Before he crashed to the floor, Jim had struck the second an equally terrible blow. He armed himself with their weapons, shaking all over with the fury he strove to make ever more overwhelming, hating so fiercely that he even allowed himself to imagine pumping bullets into the two still figures on the floor....
But the Things' thoughts still came into his mind. In this corridor, and for a certain while only, he could hold at bay their cumulative influence. But his wire cap was gone. If he moved from this corridor the thoughts of the Things would again fill all his brain, driving his own thoughts and his own will down and down and out of existence....
Then he saw a desk at the end of the corridor. There was an inkwell and pens on it, and a few odd papers, and a metal wastebasket beside it. Jim made a dash for the desk, panting to himself of his hatred of the Things.
At that almost he failed. The Things' thoughts filled every corner of his mind but one when he reached the desk. It was almost incredible that the pattern of action he had commanded his muscles to follow should be carried out. But it was.
Papers spilled all about him. Then he sobbed in mingled rage and relief. He had the pistols of two guards in his hands, and their cartridge-belts slung about his middle. And he was free of the Things' control. He was, at the moment, probably the only member of the human race not raptly absorbing the overwhelming rhythm of the thousands of Thing-minds, linked together.
He stood panting and raging and filled with despair, looking like a lunatic with an upside-down woven-wire wastebasket covering his head and resting on his shoulders —but the only really sane man in all the world.
23
There was probably only one hour in all of time when he could have escaped from Security Headquarters. That was the first hour of complete human submission to the Things. During that hour the Things conditioned humanity to their rule. They implanted in every human mind the rules and beliefs and habits of reaction they had found most desirable in this particular species of domestic animal. Each rule and each belief and each command to some certain reaction-pattern had to be repeated many times and in many forms. And each had to be stated and repeated with such energy that it would fill a human mind to the exclusion of all other matters at the time. So, during the first hour of their submission, humans were apt to be absent-minded. They were thinking the thoughts of the Things.
And it was during that hour that Jim went raging through the headquarters of Security with a wastebasket on his head. For safety, he added a second. He hid in a closet while he tore strips of cloth and tied both waste-baskets down to each shoulder so that by no possibility could they be knocked or fall off.
In his escape Jim shot just one man, and that man in the leg, and then only at the moment of his departure from Security Headquarters in an official Security car. That one man tried vaguely to stop him because it seemed a little remarkable even at such a time for a man wearing wastebaskets for headgear to climb into an official car and try to drive off in it.
But Jim got away. The traffic in the streets had slowed or stopped because almost everyone had ceased all activity to listen to the convincing, delightful assurances that they were very happy, happier than they had ever been before, and that earth was now a paradise because Little Fellas had come to rule it and tell humans what to do.
But when the Things in their stinking nests considered that men were conquered for all time, they broke their linkage, one by one—and fed. Only then did human activities tend to go on as usual. But they were not normal. There was an expression of unearthly tranquility on every face. The world had become transfigured. It was nice.... nice... It was paradise. Everyone was happy.
Some few humans, of course, rallied a little from even an hour-long exposure to suggestion of such intensity, possessing all the authority their own minds gave it. But those rebels were very few. Even they had had their defenses completely destroyed. Any Thing could send a thought into the mind of any one of them at any time, and any possible emotion would die at its nibbling touch to allow the thought to enter.
But Jim went raging over highways in an armed Security car with wastebaskets on his head. He was the only free man in a world of slaves to beasts. He would be hunted mercilessly by all of mankind. He must live with some such absurdity as this upon his head, and he must steal all his food. There was but one place where he was safe—in the rusty iron vault of an abandoned bank-building, on the site of a rotted-away, deserted village. His only occupation would be the hating of the Things, because he had fried to make a device which would defeat them, and had failed. Well! He would smash that first of all, to be rid of tantalizing hope....
Then the Security car wobbled and almost left the road. Because in a blinding flash Jim saw again a thing that had happened.
It was a moment in the rusty vault. He'd given up the transmitter as hopeless. Brandon was going to take some pictures of the Thing in its cage, the Thing that had been rescued by the slaves of the Things, because they knew he was going to turn it over to Security at a certain time and place.
Jim had untwisted the wires which held the cover on, and the Thing came out and glared at them. It was arrogant and furious and somehow utterly confident. It was so completely confident that it was menacing, and Brandon stumbled against the useless transmitter and almost toppled it over. He'd caught it, shakily. Then he'd said, "The damned thing thinks it can control us!"
And then the Thing quivered and its defiance suddenly left it, and it appeared to go into a panic. When Jim kicked at it, it buried its fangs in his shoe, but when he shook it loose it fled back into its cage. He had to shake it out so they could take the pictures they wanted. It was cowed. And later, he'd noticed that the transmitter was turned on!
Driving in a speeding car that veered crazily from the shock of the discovery, Jim understood now. He understood everything that had happened. And very, very suddenly, he realized that just as the Things had had a trick with which they could enslave all humanity as soon as they thought of it, he'd had a trick that could have preserved human freedom if he'd thought of it in time, and even now could restore that freedom if only he could get back to the transmitter....
He braked the car. He slowed it to the safest of speeds. He watched all traffic with a terrified fear, because a traffic accident would end the future of the human race. And he remembered the weirdness of his own appearance, with his head encased in wastebaskets, and turned the polarizing switch of the windshield and side-windows to cut down not only the light that came in, but the clarity with which anyone could see him.
And he shivered with anxiety.
When at long, long, long last he turned off a highway and followed a disused trail into wilderness, his clothes were soaked with the sweat of terror. But he reached the open space where mounds of climbing vines lay over the ruins of what had been homes. It was night, by then, and a bright moon shone on a world of abject slaves and feasting Things.
Jim got out of the car and stumbled to the vault. It was untouched. His hands shook as he made a light and verified that the transmitter was exactly as he had left it. Brandon, doubtless, had left this hiding-place severely alone, because he was skeptical that Jim would convince Security, and if Jim were enslaved he would surely lead someone here.
Yes, everything was quite all right. He checked the batteries—those wonderful batteries of neutron-bombarded alloy which yielded power steadily for years on end.