The Lost Perception by Daniel F. Galouye Read Free Book Online Page A

simply turned and headed back for the house.
*  *  *
    Judging from her reticence at supper, he concluded that he had succeeded in discouraging her. It was an achievement which filled him with despair, though, and he was still glumly silent as he sat with Bill in the living room later that evening.
    “Things in New York?” Forsythe said in his casual manner of leaving the front end of sentences open.
    “Pure hell. Scarcities, shortages, long lines. Screamers dropping all over. Pickup Squad cars everywhere. You don’t know how lucky you have it here.”
    “Done a lot of thinking about the Screamies lately, Greg. Maybe it isn’t a disease after all.”
    “What else could it be?”
    “Don’t know. Used to think they were awful—the Screamies. People shouting themselves to death with ‘lights’ in their head.” He let out a frustrated breath. “Damn! I’d give my right arm to see a light—any kind of light!”
    Gregson thought of his own seizures, of the mercy killings, the pitchfork murder on Via del Fori Imperiali. And he wanted to shout Forsythe down on the utter stupidity of his selfish statement.
    But his resentment and pity he buried in a three-week-old edition of the Monroe County Clarion. And a four-column italicized headline at the top of page two caught his attention:
‘ALIENS-AMONG-US’ FAD BACK AGAIN
‘LITTLE GREEN MEN’ UP TO OLD TRICKS
    It was of course, tongue in cheek—a carbon copy of many similar stories that had given vent to editorial humor over the past two years, when any occasion was seized upon to lighten grim reports on ’95’s Nuclear Exchange, the Screamies and reconstruction.
    The writer had stepped off from, a recent local resurrection of rumors stemming from the Nina’s reports. He had polled opinion and written whimsically on backwoods superstitions.
    Gregson was about to cast the article aside when he encountered an observation solicited from an Enos Cromley, farmer who, coincidentally, lived not too far from Forsythe’s place.
    Cromley claimed to “have it from the horse’s mouth.” The aliens were most positively among us. He had spoken with them. They wanted to save humanity from a fate worse than the Screamies and Nuclear Exchange. And they had asked the farmer to find others who would help them.
    Gregson came rigidly erect in the chair. One—there were, of course, aliens-among-us.
    Two—they had somehow drawn a number of helpless humans into conspiracy with them.
    Consequently, there must be some system whereby humans were approached by aliens.
    Again, one—alien-human cells would not necessarily be located in the cities or close to points they intended to attack. Too risky. Chances for detection too favorable. Two—rural regions near those targets would present optimum opportunity for recruitment and preparation.
    “Bill, Doc Holt edits the Clarion, doesn’t he?”
    “Used to. All by himself. Practically a one-man operation.”
    “Used to?”
    Forsythe nodded “Up until a couple of weeks ago. Sold out to Secondary Publications. Got a good price, I understand. Packed up his wife and belongings and took off.”
    Secondary Publications—a public service instrument of the Security Bureau’s Communications Division, Gregson recalled. Another instance of the bureau’s tireless effort to hold civilization together. Many news media were folding up, depriving local communities of their right to be informed. So the bureau was stepping in to hold the pieces together until private journalistic enterprise could resume its obligations.
    Forsythe withdrew from his sightless isolation long enough to remind, “Next week’s Thanksgiving. You promised you’d spend it with us.”
    “I’ll be here,” Gregson confirmed. “Enos Cromley—he’s the farmer who lives a couple of miles down this road, isn’t he?”
    “Right If you’d call him a farmer. Has the most run-down place in the area. Figures, though. Jumped on the agricultural bandwagon just after NE. Used