He thought of reproducing himself, a voluntary process with his species, but immediately discarded it as impractical Once the process of fission was started it could not be stopped, and for a long while he would be helplessly schizophrenic, in partial control of each of the two parts into which his shell would be forming, in insufficient control of either part to be able to take or direct a host. It was a penalty his species had paid for their highly specialized evolution, this state of helplessness during reproduction; each part needed the help of another or others of his kind to direct a host or hosts to care for him during a period of almost a terrestrial year.
On only a very few planets could a member of his species propagate alone; there were a few, a very few, moderately intelligent races in the galaxy which accepted host status willingly and could be trained in advance to continue to care for a mind thing during the period when he was helpless to keep a host under control.
He was resigned to waiting out the death of the sparrow even if it took days, but shortly after full dark he heard the flutter of an owl’s wings overhead. He fluttered his own good wing to attract its attention, and the owl saw and flew down. Less than a minute later its cruel beak had killed the crippled sparrow, and the mind thing was back in his shell, on the Gross farm.
He was just in time to hear knocking at the door and to see—with his perceptive sense that made things simultaneously visible and transparent—the sheriff standing outside the front door and Elsa Gross going to open it. She was taking off a white apron that she was wearing over a plain black dress. Mrs. Gross would not have to spend money for mourning clothes, the mind thing knew from the contents of her closet upstairs. Almost all of her “good” clothes were black already.
“Evening, ma’am,” the sheriff said, when she had opened the door. “Came out to take you in to see the undertaker, if you’re ready to go.”
“Thanks, Sheriff, but Mr. Loursat next door was here. He’s coming in half an hour to take me in. Didn’t he phone you? He said he would.”
“Probably tried but didn’t reach me. Been lots of places, but not home or back to the office.” He took off his hat and rubbed the top of his balding head. “Well, if you don’t need me—”
“Won’t you come in anyway, just for a minute? Maybe have a cup of coffee? It’s still hot, I think.”
“Well—guess I could use a cup. All right, thanks.”
She stepped back and he followed her in and closed the door.
“You set there, Sheriff.” Mrs. Gross indicated a comfortable chair. “I’ll bring us each a cup. Cream and sugar?”
“Just a little sugar.”
She came back a moment later, handed the sheriff a cup, and sat down with another one in her lap. “Is it still hot enough?”
The sheriff took a sip. “Just fine. I don’t like it too hot. Ma’am, have you made any plans? I mean, you don’t intend to try to run the farm yourself, do you? I guess you could, with a hired hand, but—”
“I’m getting a little old for that, I guess, Sheriff. No, if I can sell the farm, I will. And maybe it’s sold already, kind of.”
“Who to, if I may ask, ma’am?”
“Mr. Loursat’s got a brother, working in Menominee. He’s a machinist but he was raised on a farm and likes farming; he’s been talking about getting himself a little one instead of working in a town. Mr. Loursat’s going to write him about it. They’re close to one another, and he thinks his brother will jump at a chance to get a farm next to his. He says, too, he can raise enough money to lend his brother for a down payment if he hasn’t got that much saved.”
“Sounds like a good idea, ma’am.”
“Yes, it does. And if it takes a little while to work out, I’ve got enough help to get me by, at least till the end of school vacation. Mr. Kramer, who owns the farm on the other side, has a boy in high school, doing nothing this summer but helping his father. He dropped in to tell me the boy’s a good worker and would work half days for me if I wanted, the rest of the summer.”
“Sounds fine, ma’am. Looks like you’ll make out all right. Plan to live in town? Here, I mean, in Bartlesville?”
“I—haven’t decided yet.”
“Don’t I remember you got a son and a daughter?”
“I—had. But Siegfried quarreled with them both, and wouldn’t let me write to either. And they gave up writing, it’s been over ten years now.”
“You don’t know the last addresses?”
“Not street addresses. Bertha was in Cincinnati, Max was in Milwaukee. But that was ten years ago.”
The sheriff smiled. “Knew if I kept asking questions I’d find something I could do for you. I’ll write the chief of police in both places. They’ll be able to find a lead to at least one of them, maybe as easy as looking in the phone book. And if you find one, you’ll find both; they’re probably in touch with one another.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.” Mrs. Gross smiled, but then suddenly there were tears running down her cheeks.
Another knock, Loursat’s, sent her to the door, hastily wiping her eyes and her cheeks as she went.
Within ten minutes they had all gone; the sheriff first and, a few minutes later, Mrs. Grass and Loursat; he had waited to show her the letter he had just written to his brother in Menominee, Michigan, which he intended to mail while they were in town.
The mind thing considered.
He had plenty of time to consider, during the two hours she was away, and afterwards when she had gone to bed and to sleep.
He planned. Now that he knew her plans, Elsa Gross was a possible next host. He planned ahead, but tentatively, contingent upon two ifs. One, that she should be able, as she hoped, to sell the farm. Two, that by that time—which would no doubt be a few weeks hence—the sheriff would have been able to locate either her daughter or her son, in Cincinnati or in Milwaukee—or for that matter, elsewhere, if elsewhere turned out to be any relatively major city.
She was asleep now and he could have taken over, but he didn’t; he could wait—she’d be sleeping here every night for at least a couple of weeks. And after all, there was the possibility things wouldn’t work out as she had planned; maybe Loursat’s brother wouldn’t want the farm, and maybe the sheriff would be unable to locate either her son or her daughter. Also, it would be bad to have to make her kill herself here, even if he could arrange to make it look like an accident; two deaths by violence would draw altogether too much interest to the farm.
But he could wait, and plan while he waited, always taking a better chance in another direction if he could find one. The sheriff would be an excellent next host, better than Elsa Gross even if her plans worked out; the sheriff could find reason any time to take a trip to Milwaukee and would have complete freedom of movement there to investigate things and people the mind thing would want investigated. And the sheriff drove a car, so it would be easy to get him killed when he had served his purpose; he could simply have a head-on collision in such a way that it would be presumed that he had gone to sleep at the wheel, or blacked out. If the sheriff turned out to be a drinking man so that getting drunk wouldn’t be too out of character for him, it could be worked that way.
But getting the sheriff for a host was an outside chance, in any case. He lived, and slept, in the county seat. In Wilcox, not in Bartlesville. That was too far for the mind thing to risk having himself transported there by an animal host.