Or was it being dissolved and fed into a stockpile of organic matter?
Had I seen my son’s corpse?
Other thoughts came yammering and cavorting like demons. “Dr. Pitman’ had taken Sammy to the clinic in his own car, but he had been strangely delayed in arriving. Obviously he had taken the boy to the Guthrie place. Why? Because, according to his own dying statement, he had despaired of Sammy’s life, wanted to spare May the shock of losing her son and had arranged for a substitution—just in case. Altruistic. Unbelievably altruistic. How gullible did “Dr. Pitman’ think I was going to be? If Sammy had died naturally, or had been killed, and replaced by a being from beyond the stars I was going to make trouble for the aliens. I was going to shoot and burn and kill …
With an effort I controlled the sudden trembling in my limbs as the nurse opened the door to a small private room. The shaded light within showed Sammy sleeping peacefully in a single bed. My heart ached with the recognition of the flesh of my flesh.
“You may go in for a minute, but just a minute,” the nurse said. Her eyes lingered for a moment on May’s face and something she saw there prompted her to remain in the corridor while we went into the room. Sammy was pale but breathing easily. The skin of his forehead shone with gold borrowed from last summer’s sun. May held my arm with both hands as we stood beside the bed.
“He’s all right,” she breathed. “Oh, George—I would have died.”
At the sound of her voice Sammy’s eyelids seemed to flicker slightly, but he remained still. May began to sob, silently and effortlessly, adjusting emotional potentials.
“Take it easy, hon,” I said. “He’s all right, remember.”
“I know, but I felt it was all my fault.”
“Tour fault?”
“Yes. Yesterday at dinner he made me so angry by talking that way about my mother … I said I wanted him to drop dead.”
“That’s being silly.”
“I know, but I said it, and you should never say anything like that in case …’
“Fate isn’t so easily tempted,” I said with calm reasonableness. I had no right to assume. ‘Besides you didn’t mean it. Every parent knows that when a kid starts wearing you down you can say anything.”
Sammy’s eyes opened wide. “Mom?”
May dropped to her knees. “I’m here, Sammy. I’m here.”
“I’m sorry I made you mad.” His voice was small and drowsy.
“You didn’t make me mad, darling.” She took his hand and pressed her lips to it.
“I did. I shouldn’t have talked that way about seeing Gran.” He shifted his gaze to my face. “It was all a stupid joke like Dad said. I never saw Granny Cummins anywhere.” His eyes were bright and deliberate, holding mine.
I took a step back from the bed and the black flower, which had been poised and waiting, closed its hungry petals around me. Sammy, my Sammy, had seen the duplicate of Granny Cummins in the old Guthrie place—and no amount of punishment or bribery would have got him to back down on that point. Unlike me, my son had never compromised in his whole life.
Of its own accord, my right hand slid under my jacket and settled on the butt of the target pistol. My boy was dead and this—right here and now—was the time to begin avenging him.
But I looked down on May’s bowed, gently shaking shoulders; and all at once I understood why “Dr. Pitman’ had told me the whole story. Had the macabre scenes in the Guthrie place remained a mystery to me, had I not understood their purpose, I could never have remained silent. Eventually I would have had to go to the police, start investigations, cause trouble …
Now I knew that the very first casualty of any such action would be May—she would be destroyed, on learning the truth, as surely as if I had put a bullet through her head. My hand moved away from the butt of the pistol.
Sammy’s life, I thought, is her life.
In a way it isn’t a bad thing to be the compromising type—it makes life easier not only for yourself but for those around you. May smiles a lot now and she is very happy over the way Sammy has grown up to be a handsome, quick-minded fourteen-year-old. The discovery of a number of ‘human’ remains in the ashes of the Guthrie house was a nine-day wonder in our little town, but I doubt if May remembers it now. As I said, she smiles a lot.
I still think about my son, of course, and occasionally it occurs to me that if May were to die, say in an accident, all restraints would be removed from me. But the years are slipping by and there’s no sign of the human race coming to harm as a result of the quiet invasion. For all I know it never amounted to anything more than a local phenomenon, an experiment which didn’t quite work out. And when I look at Sammy growing up tall and straight—looking so much like his mother—it is easy to convince myself that I could have made a mistake. After all, I’m only human.