Nilson continued, “Anyway, your sister-in-law was worried about you, living here, so we came to talk to you to ask if you knew of anything else strange, anything that’s gone wrong lately, or seemed peculiar or out of place.”
Kate looked utterly mystified. “No,” she said, “No, there’s nothing I can think of.” She turned to her sister-in-law and asked, “Annie, are you feeling well?”
Annie gasped at the sheer audacity of the thing. “Am I feeling well?” she asked. “Me? You’re the one who’s forgotten how to knit, which you’ve known since you were a girl! You’re the one pretending to be Katie, when you aren’t anything like her, really, you’re just acting the part. Officer, I’ll show you – she’s wearing my sister’s skin, that’s not…”
Annie was up and moving toward the Kate thing before she even knew it, intending to tear that stolen face right off her, but Officer Nilson was up as well, blocking her, and his hands were on her arms, the thumbs digging solidly into the insides of her elbows as he forced her back a step.
“Take it easy,” he said gently. “Take it easy, Mrs. McGowan.”
Dr. Dodge was there, too, standing behind her, listening.
“Take it easy!” Annie snapped, “Take it easy? That’s not Kate! It’s not even human!”
“Annie, are you all right?” the thing asked, and the voice was just like Kate’s, but when she looked into its eyes she saw no honest concern, she saw mockery, and a hint of warm red that shouldn’t be there.
Annie didn’t fight against Officer Nilson. She was outmatched. The police believed the creature, instead of her.
Mr. Smith and the others had been right. She forced herself to appear calm, forced her muscles to relax.
It wasn’t that hard. All her life she had taken what came her way without undue protest, doing as she was told, even when she hated it. She had thought that was done with when Pat died and left her on her own, but now she saw it wasn’t.
“No,” she said, “I’m not all right. I’m sorry. Officer, could you take me home, please? I’m afraid I’m not well.”
Nilson glanced at Dodge, who nodded.
“Come on, Mrs. McGowan,” Nilson said, “I’ll take you home. Miss McGowan, I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed you.” He escorted Annie to the door, holding one elbow with his left hand; she did not resist, made no attempt to pull away.
Kate stood up, looking a trifle dazed. “It’s all right, officer,” she said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea?”
They were both nuts, Nilson decided.
Dodge picked up Annie’s umbrella, then stepped out, closing the door of the apartment behind himself. Nilson raised a questioning eyebrow at him.
“We’ll take you home now, Mrs. McGowan,” Dodge said. “If there’s anything you’d like to tell me, though, I’d be glad to listen. Did you say something about an imposter wearing your sister’s skin? Did you mean that literally?”
Annie shook her head as she started down the steps. There was no point in telling these people the truth, because they would either treat her as a silly old woman and ignore her, or as a genuine lunatic, in which case they might take her away somewhere.
All she wanted now was to go home.
She had to give it one more try, though – just one, and if it didn’t work, then she would be meek and mild and they would let her go home.
“I thought,” she began, “that maybe something had, well…”
She let her voice trail off as she realized how utterly unbelievable anything she could say would sound. Frustrated, she tried again.
“I don’t know what I thought,” she said, “but I really do think that there’s something very wrong with Kate, and I wish that you could get a doctor to check her. Dr. Dodge, couldn’t you examine her, somehow?”
Surely, Annie thought, the creature wouldn’t be able to fool a doctor.
Dr. Dodge shook his head. “You may be right,” he said, “But I’m afraid it’s not my line. I would suggest that both of you might want to talk to your own doctors – I’ll call your sister-in-law later and explain how worried you are, and suggest that, if I may. I can’t examine her myself, though, unless she asks me to. To be honest, Mrs. McGowan, I didn’t see anything strange about her, but then I don’t know her as you do. It may be that whatever’s changed her, if something really has, has you so upset that you’re not thinking clearly about it. I really think you should both see a physician – but I can’t make either of you do anything you don’t want to, I can only make the suggestion.”
Annie nodded. “Thank you, Doctor,” she said, her voice lifeless.
That was another dead end. That thing would never go near a doctor of its own free will.
No help from the police. No help from doctors. That just left Mr. Smith and his vigilantes.
She wondered how their expedition had gone the day before.
4.
Smith stared at the screen, trying to see why the routine didn’t work. He didn’t hear Einar come up behind him.
“So, Ed,” Einar said suddenly.
Smith started, and his hand hit the keyboard, transforming line 16186 into gibberish.
“How’s it going?” Einar asked. “You over whatever you had last week?”
Smith said, “Uh… oh. Yeah, I guess. Sure, I’m over it.”
What had that line said, anyway? He had lost five characters that he had typed over, or possibly six, and the line had no notation attached that would tell him what it was. He’d always been sloppy about documenting his work.
What was it he wanted this line to do? “How’s it coming?” Einar asked, distracting him again. “Still on schedule?”
“I think so,” Smith said, trying to ignore Einar without being rude about it. He needed to concentrate on the program. Was that supposed to be the line that specified the data string for the page header subroutine? No, that was 16180.
This wasn’t working; he couldn’t think clearly.
“What happened there?” Einar asked, peering over his shoulder and pointing at line 16186.
“Bumped the keyboard,” Smith said.
“Oh,” Einar said. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to fix it, then.”
“Right,” Smith said.
He had the old line 16186 on disk somewhere, he realized, and he set out to retrieve it.
He wished he weren’t so tired, but the lack of sleep and the unusual hours he had been keeping were catching up with him – not to mention the strain of trying to concentrate on his work when the nightmare people were always lurking in the back of his mind, worrying him, intruding on his every thought.
He called up the file he wanted, and only after he had done it did he realize that he had forgotten to save the changes he had spent the last half-hour on.
“Damn!” he said.
Choong Fu, at the next terminal, straightened up from his own keyboard and glanced over at Smith. Smith waved at him half-heartedly, then went back to the screen and started over.
5.
Maggie had stayed in the house all morning, and she knew her mother had noticed that. That wasn’t her usual pattern. One day, though, wasn’t anything for anyone to get upset about, and she could blame it on the rain.
Even so, when the postman came by not long after the rain stopped, Maggie decided it was time to get outside at least long enough to walk out to the curb and get the mail.
She trotted across the porch, down the steps and along the walk, and was almost to the mailbox when she noticed someone waving from up the street, on the other side. She turned and looked.
It was Elias.
Elias, who she had seen butchered the day before, was standing there waving at her.
She didn’t run.
She didn’t run, but it took all the determination she could muster not to. She went on to the mailbox, collected the day’s delivery, and walked back to the house. She didn’t run.