Collectivum Part 3

"Yeah."

"Have you always?"

"No--I don't think I used to."

He was silent for a long time; then he hissed, "Are you _sure_ you haven't been stung recently?"

Another brief silence. Then the girl laughed softly. A wave of p.r.i.c.kles crept along his scalp.

"I've got the shotgun in my lap, Morgan."

"How long?" he whispered in horror.

"Six months."

"_Six months!_ You're lying! You'd be fully depersonalized! You'd be in complete liaison with Oren!"

"But I'm not. Sometimes I can feel when they're near. That's all."

"But if it were true--your brain would be replaced by the parasite!"

"I wouldn't know. Apparently it's not."

Morgan couldn't believe it. But he sat stunned in the darkness. What was this thing in the cabin with him? Was she still human? He began inching along the wall, but a board creaked.

"I don't want to shoot you, Morgan. Don't rush me. Besides--there's something outside, I tell you."

"Why should _you_ worry about that?--if you've really been stung."

"The first sting evidently didn't take. The next one might. That's why."

"You weren't sick?"

"During the incubation period? I was sick. Plenty sick."

Morgan shook his head thoughtfully. If she had been through the violent illness of the parasite's incubation, she should now have one of the squeaking little degenerates in place of a brain. The fibers of the small animals grew slowly along the neural arcs, replacing each nerve cell, forming a junction at each synapse. There was reason to believe that the parasite preserved the memories that had been stored in the brain, but they became blended with all the other individualities that comprised Oren, thereby losing the personality in the mental ocean of the herd-mind. Was it possible that if one invader were out of mental contact with the herd-mind, that the individual host might retain its personality? But how could she be out of contact?

"They're getting close to the door," she whispered.

Morgan gripped his hatchet and waited, not knowing who would be the greater enemy--the girl or the prowlers.

"When the door opens, strike a match. So I can see to shoot."

Morgan crouched low. There came a light tapping at the torn screen, then several seconds of silence. Someone pushed at the door. It swung slowly open.

"Jerry?" called a faint voice. "Jerry--thet you in theah?"

Morgan breathed easily again. An Orenian would not have called out.

"Who is it?" he barked.

There was no answer. Morgan groped for the lamp, found it, and held the match poised but not lighted.

"Come in here!" he ordered. "We've got a gun."

"Yes, suh!"

A shadow appeared in the door frame. Morgan struck the match. It was an ancient Negro with a burlap sack in one hand and a bloodstained pitchfork in the other. He stood blinking at Shera's shotgun and at the lamp as Morgan lit it. His overalls were rainsoaked, his eyes wild.

"Come in and sit down."

"Thankya suh, thankya." He shuffled inside and slumped into a rickety chair.

"What're you doing wandering around like this?"

"Been a hunting. Yes, suh, been doing me a little hunting." He sighed wearily and mopped the rain out of his tight coils of graying hair.

Morgan eyed the burlap sack suspiciously. It was wet, and it wriggled.

"What's that?"

"'a.s.s my night's work," said the man and jerked a corner of the sack.

It opened, and three Oren parasites spilled out with weak squeaks of anguish.

The girl gasped angrily. "They're still in contact with Oren. Kill them!"

"Yes'm, they're in contact--but without eyes, how're they gonna know wheah they are?"

Morgan made a wry mouth at Shera. The old man was smart--and right.

But he felt another uneasy suspicion. The old man said "hunting."

Hunting for what--food? The idea twisted disgust in Morgan's stomach.

"What're you going to do with them?"

"Oh--" The oldster kicked one of them lightly with his toe. The pink thing rolled against the wall. There were vestigial signs of arms, legs, but tiny and useless, grown fast to the body. The visitor glanced up with a sheepish grin.

"I feed 'em to my dawgs, suh. Dawgs like 'em. Getting so my dawgs can smell the difference twixt a man and an Orenian. I'm training 'em.

They help me with my hunting."

Morgan sat up sharply. "How many dogs you got, and where do you live?"

"Fo' dawgs. I live in the swamp. They's a big hollow cypress--I got my bed in it."

"Why didn't you move in here?"

The old man looked at the place in the center of the floor where the dust outlined the shape of a human body. "Suicide," he muttered. Then he looked up. "'Tain't superst.i.tion, exactly. I just don't--"

"Never mind," Morgan murmured. He glanced at the girl. She had laid the shotgun aside and was lighting a cigarette. He tensed himself, then sprang like a cat.