And built up again at once. “Mary,” I asked, “have you used your apartment since the morning you and I had breakfast there?”
“No. Why?”
“Don’t. Don’t go back there for any purpose. I recall thinking, while I was with them, that I would have to booby-trap it.”
“Well, you didn’t, did you? Or did you?”
“No, I did not. But it may have been booby-trapped since then. There may be the equivalent of Old John waiting, spider fashion, for you—or me—to return there.” I explained to her Mcllvaine’s theory about the slugs, the “group memory” idea. “I thought at the time he was spinning the dream stuff scientists are so fond of. But now I don’t know; it’s the only hypothesis I can think of that covers everything . . . unless we assume that the titans are so stupid that they would as soon try to catch fish in a bathtub as in a brook. Which they aren’t.”
“Just a moment, dear—by Dr. Mcllvaine’s theory each slug is really every other slug; is that it? In other words that thing that caught me last night was just as much the one that rode you when you were with them as was the one that actually did ride you—Oh, dear, I’m getting confused. I mean—”
“That’s the general idea. Apart, they are individuals; in direct conference they merge their memories and Tweedledum becomes exactly like Tweedledee. Then, if that is true, this one last night remembers everything it learned from me provided it had direct conference with the slug that rode me, or any other slug that had had, or a slug that had been linked through any number of slugs by direct conference to the slug that had ridden me, after the time it did—which you can bet it did, from what I know of their habits. It would have—the first one, I mean . . . wait a minute; this is getting involved. Take three slugs; Joe, Moe, and uh, Herbert. Herbert is the one last night; Moe is the one which—”
“Why give them names if they are not individuals?” Mary wanted to know.
“Just to keep them— No reason; let it lie that if McIlvaine is right there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of slugs who know exactly who you and I are, by name and by sight and everything, know where your apartment is, where my apartment is, and where our cabin is. They’ve got us on a list.”
“But—” She frowned. “That’s a horrid thought, Sam. How would they know when to find us at the cabin? You didn’t tell anybody we were going and I did not even know. Would they simply stake it out and wait? Yes, I suppose they would.”
“They must have. We don’t know that waiting matters to a slug; time may mean something entirely different to them.”
“Like Venerians,” she suggested. I nodded; a Venerian is likely as not to “marry” his own great-great-granddaughter—and be younger than his descendants. It depends on how they estivate, of course.
“In any case,” I went on, “I’ve got to report this, including our guesses as to what is behind it, for the boys in the analytical group to play with.”
I was about to go on to say that, if we were right, the Old Man would have to be especially careful, as it was he and not Mary and myself that they were after. But my phone sounded for the first time since my leave had started. I answered and the Old Man’s voice cut in ahead of the talker’s: “Report in person.”
“We’re on our way,” I acknowledged. “About thirty minutes.”
“Make it sooner. You use Kay Five; tell Mary to come in by Ell One. Move.” He switched off before I could ask him how he had known that Mary was with me.
“Did you get it?” I asked Mary.
“Yes, I was in the circuit.”
“Sounds as if the party was about to start.”
It was not until we had landed that I began to realize how drastically the situation had changed. We were complying with Schedule Bare Back; we had not heard of Schedule Sun Tan. Two cops stopped us as we got out. “Stay where you are!” one of them ordered. “Don’t make any sudden moves.”