I wondered, as I riffled through it, how much money I might have. Not that it mattered greatly. Just curiosity.
For money in a few more weeks, perhaps I gave him the bill and he groused about in a few more days, would begin to lose its value. And a short time after that the value would be lost. It would be no more than so much worthless paper. You couldn’t eat j and you couldn’t wear it and it would not shelter you from the wind or weather. For it was no more—had never been more—than a tool devised by Man to carry out his peculiar system of culture and of life. It had no more significance, actually, than the notches on the gun butt or the crude marks chalked upon the wall. It had been no more, at any time, than sophisticated counters.
I walked into the drugstore and picked a paper off the pile on top of the cigar counter and there, staring out at me, all grins and full of happiness, was a picture of the Dog.
There could be no doubt about it. I’d have known him anywhere. He sat there, bubbling with good-fellowship, and behind him was the White House.
The headline beneath the picture was the clincher. It said:
TALKING DOG ARRIVES
TO VISIT PRESIDENT
“Mister,” said the clerk, “do you want that paper?”
I gave him the bill and he groused about it.
“That the smallest that you got?”
I told him that it was.
He gave me the change and I stuffed it and the paper in my pocket and went back to the car. I wanted to read the story, but for some reason I did not understand, or even try to understand, I wanted to get back to the car to do it, to where I could sit and read it without the possibility of someone disturbing me.
The story was cute, just a shade too cute.
It told about this dog that had come to see the President. He’d trotted through the gate before anyone could stop him and he’d tried to get into the White House, but the guards had shoved him out. He went reluctantly, trying to explain, in his doggish manner, that he wanted to make no trouble but would be very much obliged if he could see the President. He tried to get in a couple of more times, and finally the guards put in a call to the dogcatcher.
The catcher came and got the dog, who went along with him willingly enough, without apparent malice. And in a little while the catcher came back and the dog was with him. The catcher explained to the guards that maybe it would be a good idea if they did let the dog see the President. The dog, he said, had talked to him, explaining that it was most important he see the chief executive.
So the guards went to the phone again and in a little while someone came and got the dogcatcher and took him to a hospital, where he still was under observation. The dog was allowed to stay, however, and one of the guards explained to him most emphatically that it was ridiculous of him to expect to see the President.
He was, the story said, polite and well behaved. He sat outside the White House and didn’t bother anything. He didn’t even chase the squirrels on the White House lawn.
“This reporter,” said the story, “tried to talk with him. We asked him several questions, but he never said a word. He just grinned at us.”
And there he was, in the picture on page one, just as big as life—a shaggy, friendly bum that no one for a moment would think of taking seriously.
But, perhaps, I thought, you couldn’t blame the newsman who had written that story or any of the rest of them, for there was nothing quite so outrageous as a shaggy dog that talked. And, perhaps, when you came to think of it, it was no whit more ridiculous than a bunch of bowling balls about to grab the Earth.
If the threat had been bloody or spectacular, then it could be comprehended. But, as it stood, it was neither, and all the more deadly because of that very fact.
Stirling had talked about a nonenvironmental being, and that was what these aliens were. They could adapt to anything; they could assume any sort of shape; they could assimilate and use to their own advantage any kind of thinking; they could twist to their own purposes any economic, political, or social system. They were things that were completely flexible; they could adapt to any condition which might be brought about to fight them.
And it could be, I told myself, that we were not facing here many bowling balls but one giant organism that could divide and split itself into many forms for many purposes, while still remaining its single self, aware of all the things its many parts were doing.
How do you thwart a thing like that? I asked myself. How do you stand against it?
Although, even if it should be one great organism, there were certain facets to it which were hard of explanation. Why had the girl without a name, instead of Atwood, been waiting for me at the Belmont house?
We knew nothing of them and there was no time to know anything of them, or it, whichever it might be. And such a knowledge was something one must have, for surely the life and culture of this enemy must be as complex and as peculiar in its many ways as the human culture.
They could become anything at all. They could see, apparently, in some restricted sense, into future happenings. And they were in ambush and would stay in ambush as long as they were able. Was it possible, I wondered, that mankind could go crashing to its death without ever knowing what had caused its death?
And I, myself, I wondered—what was I to do?
It would have been no more than human to have thrown the money in their faces, to have hurled defiance at them. It would, perhaps, have been an easy thing to do. Although, I remembered, at the time I had been so numb with fear that I’d been able to do nothing of the sort.
And, I realized with a start, I thought of them as them, not as him or her, not as Atwood, not as the girl who had no name because she’d never needed one. And did that mean, I wondered, that their human guise was thinner than it seemed?
I folded the paper and laid it on the seat beside me and slid beneath the wheel.
This was not the time for grand heroics. It was a time a man did what he could, no matter how it seemed. If, by pretending to go along with them, I could gain some fact, some insight, some hint that would help the humans, then, perhaps, that was the thing to do. And if it ever came to a point where I had to write the alien propaganda, might it not escape them if I wrote into it something that they had not intended and might not recognize but that would be crystal-clear to the human readers?
I started the engine and put the car in gear and the car slid out into the stream of traffic. It was a good car. It was the finest thing I had ever driven. In spite of where it came from, in spite of everything, I felt proud of driving it.
Back at the motel, Quinn’s car still was parked in front of his unit, and now there were two other cars parked in front of other units. Soon, I knew, the motel would be full. People would drive in and say to other people there how do you go about getting lodging here. And the people there would say you use a crowbar or sledgehammer and they might even, then, produce a bar or hammer and help them to break in. For the moment, at least, people would stick together. In adversity, they’d help one another. It only would be later that they would fall apart, each one on his own. And later, after that perhaps, come back together, knowing once again that human strength lay in unity.
When I got out of the car, Quinn came out of his unit and walked over to meet me.
“That’s quite a car you have,” he said.
“Belongs to a friend of mine,” I told him. “Get a good night’s sleep?”
He grinned. “Best in weeks. And the wife is happy. It isn’t very much, of course, but it’s the best we’ve had in a good long time.”
“See we have some neighbors.”
He nodded. “They came in and asked. I told them. I went out and got a gun, the way you told me. Felt a little foolish, but it won’t hurt to have it. Wanted a rifle, but all I could get was a shotgun. Just as well, I imagine. I’m no dead eye with a rifle.”