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Title: The Mindworm
Author: Kornbluth, Cyril M. (1924-1958)
Date of first publication: 1950
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   The Explorers. Short Stories by C. M. Kornbluth. 
   New York: Ballantine Books, 1954
Date first posted: 12 September 2016
Date last updated: 12 September 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1353

This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

We have made one minor correction to the text, printing
"I don't know what you're talking about" instead of
"I don't know what your talking about".

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.
All of the author's original text has been included.






THE MINDWORM

by C. M. Kornbluth




The handsome j.g. and the pretty nurse held out against it as long as
they reasonably could, but blue Pacific water, languid tropical nights
and the low atoll dreaming on the horizon--and the complete absence of
any other nice young people for company on the small, uncomfortable
parts boat--did their work.  On June 30th they watched through dark
glasses as the dazzling thing burst over the fleet and the atoll.  Her
manicured hand gripped his arm in excitement and terror.  Unfelt
radiation sleeted through their loins.

A storekeeper-third-class named Bielaski watched the young couple with
more interest than he showed in Test Able.  After all, he had
twenty-five dollars riding on the nurse.  That night he lost it to a
chief bosun's mate who had backed the j.g.

In the course of time, the careless nurse was discharged under
conditions other than honorable.  The j.g., who didn't like to put
things in writing, phoned her all the way from Manila to say it was a
damned shame.  When her gratitude gave way to specific inquiry, their
overseas connection went bad and he had to hang up.

She had a child, a boy, turned it over to a foundling home and vanished
from his life into a series of good jobs and finally marriage.


The boy grew up stupid, puny and stubborn, greedy and miserable.  To
the home's hilarious young athletics director he suddenly said: "You
hate me.  You think I make the rest of the boys look bad."

The athletics director blustered and laughed, and later told the doctor
over coffee: "I watch myself around the kids.  They're sharp--they
catch a look or a gesture and it's like a blow in the face to them, I
know that, so I watch myself.  So how did he know?"

The doctor told the boy: "Three pounds more this month isn't bad, but
how about you pitch in and clean up your plate _every_ day?  Can't live
on meat and water; those vegetables make you big and strong."

The boy said: "What's 'neurasthenic' mean?"

The doctor later said to the director: "It made my flesh creep.  I was
looking at his little spindling body and dishing out the old pep-talk
about growing big and strong, and inside my head I was thinking 'we'd
call him neurasthenic in the old days' and then out he popped with it.
What should we do?  Should we do anything?  Maybe it'll go away.  I
don't know anything about these things.  I don't know whether anybody
does."

"Reads minds, does he?" asked the director.  _Be damned if he's going
to read my mind about Schultz Meat Market's ten per cent_.  "Doctor, I
think I'm going to take my vacation a little early this year.  Has
anybody shown any interest in adopting the child?"

"Not him.  He wasn't a baby-doll when we got him, and at present he's
an exceptionally unattractive-looking kid.  You know how people don't
give a damn about anything but their looks."

"Some couples would take anything, or so they tell me."

"Unapproved for foster-parenthood, you mean?"

"Red tape and arbitrary classifications sometimes limit us too severely
in our adoptions."

"If you're going to wish him on some screwball couple that the courts
turned down as unfit, I want no part of it."

"You don't have to have any part of it, doctor.  By the way, which dorm
does he sleep in?"

"West," grunted the doctor, leaving the office.

The director called a few friends--a judge, a couple the judge referred
him to, a court clerk.  Then he left by way of the east wing of the
building.

The boy survived three months with the Berrymans.  Hard-drinking Mimi
alternately caressed and shrieked at him; Edward W. tried to be a good
scout and just gradually lost interest, looking clean through him.  He
hit the road in June and got by with it for a while.  He wore a Boy
Scout uniform, and Boy Scouts can turn up anywhere, any time.  The
money he had taken with him lasted a month.  When the last penny of the
last dollar was three days spent, he was adrift on a Nebraska prairie.
He had walked out of the last small town because the constable was
beginning to wonder what on earth he was hanging around for and who he
belonged to.  The town was miles behind on the two-lane highway; the
infrequent cars did not stop.

One of Nebraska's "rivers", a dry bed at this time of year, lay ahead,
spanned by a railroad culvert.  There were some men in its shade, and
he was hungry.

They were ugly, dirty men, and their thoughts were muddled and stupid.
They called him "Shorty" and gave him a little dirty bread and some
stinking sardines from a can.  The thoughts of one of them became less
muddled and uglier.  He talked to the rest out of the boy's hearing,
and they whooped with laughter.  The boy got ready to run, but his legs
wouldn't hold him up.

He could read the thoughts of the men quite clearly as they headed for
him.  Outrage, fear and disgust blended in him and somehow turned
inside-out and one of the men was dead on the dry ground, grasshoppers
vaulting onto his flannel shirt, the others backing away, frightened
now, not frightening.

He wasn't hungry any more; he felt quite comfortable and satisfied.  He
got up and headed for the other men, who ran.  The rearmost of them was
thinking _Jeez he folded up the evil eye we was only gonna--_

Again the boy let the thoughts flow into his head and again he flipped
his own thoughts around them; it was quite easy to do.  It was
different--this man's terror from the other's lustful anticipation.
But both had their points....

At his leisure, he robbed the bodies of three dollars and twenty-four
cents.

Thereafter his fame preceded him like a death-wind.  Two years on the
road and he had his growth, and his fill of the dull and stupid minds
he met there.  He moved to northern cities, a year here, a year there,
quiet, unobtrusive, prudent, an epicure.


Sebastian Long woke suddenly, with something on his mind.  As night-fog
cleared away he remembered, happily.  Today he started the Demeter
Bowl!  At last there was time, at last there was money--six hundred and
twenty-three dollars in the bank.  He had packed and shipped the three
dozen cocktail glasses last night, engraved with Mrs. Klausman's
initials--his last commercial order for as many months as the Bowl
would take.

He shifted from nightshirt to denims, gulped coffee, boiled an egg but
was too excited to eat it.  He went to the front of his
shop-workroom-apartment, checked the lock, waved at neighbors' children
on their way to school, and ceremoniously set a sign in the cluttered
window.

It said: "NO COMMERCIAL ORDERS TAKEN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE."

From a closet he tenderly carried a shrouded object that made a double
armful and laid it on his workbench.  Unshrouded, it was a glass
bowl--_what_ a glass bowl!  The clearest Swedish lead glass, the purest
lines he had even seen, his secret treasure since the crazy day he had
bought it, long ago, for six months' earnings.  His wife had given him
hell for that until the day she died.  From the closet he brought a
portfolio filled with sketches and designs dating back to the day he
had bought the bowl.  He smiled over the first, excitedly scrawled--a
florid, rococo conception, unsuited to the classicism of the lines and
the serenity of the perfect glass.

Through many years and hundreds of sketches he had refined his
conception to the point where it was, he humbly felt, not unsuited to
the medium.  A strongly-molded Demeter was to dominate the piece, a
matron as serene as the glass, and all the fruits of the earth would
flow from her gravely outstretched arms.

Suddenly and surely, he began to work.  With a candle he thinly smoked
an oval area on the outside of the bowl.  Two steady fingers clipped
the Demeter drawing against the carbon black; a hair-fine needle in his
other hand traced her lines.  When the transfer of the design was done,
Sebastian Long readied his lathe.  He fitted a small copper wheel,
slightly worn as he liked them, into the chuck and with his fingers
charged it with the finest rouge from Rouen.  He took an ashtray
cracked in delivery and held it against the spinning disk.  It bit in
smoothly, with the wiping feel to it that was exactly right.

Holding out his hands, seeing that the fingers did not tremble with
excitement, he eased the great bowl to the lathe and was about to make
the first tiny cut of the millions that would go into the masterpiece.

Somebody knocked on his door and rattled the doorknob.

Sebastian Long did not move or look toward the door.  Soon the busybody
would read the sign and go away.  But the pounding and the rattling of
the knob went on.  He eased down the bowl and angrily went to the
window, picked up the sign and shook it at whoever it was--he couldn't
make out the face very well.  But the idiot wouldn't go away.

The engraver unlocked the door, opened it a bit and snapped: "The shop
is closed.  I shall not be taking any orders for several months.
Please don't bother me now."

"It's about the Demeter Bowl," said the intruder.

Sebastian Long stared at him.  "What the devil do you know about my
Demeter Bowl?"  He saw the man was a stranger, undersized by a little,
middle-aged....

"Just let me in please," urged the man.  "It's important.  Please!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said the engraver.  "But what
do you know about my Demeter Bowl?"  He hooked his thumbs pugnaciously
over the waistband of his denims and glowered at the stranger.  The
stranger promptly took advantage of his hand being removed from the
door and glided in.

Sebastian Long thought briefly that it might be a nightmare as the man
darted quickly about his shop, picking up a graver and throwing it
down, picking up a wire scratch-wheel and throwing it down.  "Here,
you!" he roared, as the stranger picked up a crescent wrench which he
did not throw down.

As Long started for him, the stranger darted to the workbench and
brought the crescent wrench down shatteringly on the bowl.

Sebastian Long's heart was bursting with sorrow and rage; such a storm
of emotions as he never had known thundered through him.  Paralyzed, he
saw the stranger smile with anticipation.

The engraver's legs folded under him and he fell to the floor, drained
and dead.


The Mindworm, locked in the bedroom of his brownstone front, smiled
again, reminiscently.

Smiling, he checked the day on a wall calendar.


"Dolores!" yelled her mother in Spanish.  "Are you going to pass the
whole day in there?"

She had been practicing low-lidded, sexy half-smiles like Lauren Bacall
in the bathroom mirror.  She stormed out and yelled in English: "I
don't know how many times I tell you not to call me that Spick name no
more!"

"Dolly!" sneered her mother.  "Dah-lee!  When was there a Saint Dah-lee
that you call yourself after, eh?"

The girl snarled a Spanish obscenity at her mother and ran down the
tenement stairs.  Jeez, she was gonna be late for sure!

Held up by a stream of traffic between her and her streetcar, she
danced with impatience.  Then the miracle happened.  Just like in the
movies, a big convertible pulled up before her and its lounging driver
said, opening the door: "You seem to be in a hurry.  Could I drop you
somewhere?"

Dazed at the sudden realization of a hundred daydreams, she did not
fail to give the driver a low-lidded, sexy smile as she said: "Why,
_thanks!_" and climbed in.  He wasn't no Cary Grant, but he had all his
hair ... kind of small, but so was she ... and jeez, the convertible
had _leopard-skin seat covers!_

The car was in the stream of traffic, purring down the avenue.  "It's a
lovely day," she said.  "Really too nice to work."

The driver smiled shyly, kind of like Jimmy Stewart but of course not
so tall, and said: "I feel like playing hooky myself.  How would you
like a spin down Long Island?"

"Be wonderful!"  The convertible cut left on an odd-numbered street.

"Play hooky, you said.  What do you do?"

"Advertising."

"_Advertising!_"  Dolly wanted to kick herself for ever having doubted,
for ever having thought in low, self-loathing moments that it wouldn't
work out, that she'd marry a grocer or a mechanic and live forever
after in a smelly tenement and grow old and sick and stooped.  She felt
vaguely in her happy daze that it might have been cuter, she might have
accidentally pushed him into a pond or something, but this was cute
enough.  An advertising man, leopard-skin seat covers ... what more
could a girl with a sexy smile and a nice little figure want?

Speeding down the South Shore she learned that his name was Michael
Brent, exactly as it ought to be.  She wished she could tell him she
was Jennifer Brown or one of those real cute names they had nowadays,
but was reassured when he told her he thought Dolly Gonzalez was a
beautiful name.  He didn't, and she noticed the omission, add: "It's
the most beautiful name I ever heard!"  That, she comfortably thought
as she settled herself against the cushions, would come later.

They stopped at Medford for lunch, a wonderful lunch in a little
restaurant where you went down some steps and there were candles on the
table.  She called him "Michael" and he called her "Dolly."  She
learned that he liked dark girls and thought the stories in _True
Story_ really were true, and that he thought she was just tall enough,
and that Greer Garson was wonderful, but not the way she was, and that
he thought her dress was just wonderful.

They drove slowly after Medford, and Michael Brent did most of the
talking.  He had traveled all over the world.  He had been in the war
and wounded--just a flesh wound.  He was 38, and had been married once,
but she died.  There were no children.  He was alone in the world.  He
had nobody to share his town house in the 50's, his country place in
Westchester, his lodge in the Maine woods.  Every word sent the girl
floating higher and higher on a tide of happiness; the signs were
unmistakable.

When they reached Montauk Point, the last sandy bit of the continent
before blue water and Europe, it was sunset, with a great wrinkled
sheet of purple and rose stretching half across the sky and the first
stars appearing above the dark horizon of the water.

The two of them walked from the parked car out onto the sand, alone,
bathed in glorious Technicolor.  Her heart was nearly bursting with joy
as she heard Michael Brent say, his arms tightening around her:
"Darling, will you marry me?"

"Oh, _yes_ Michael!" she breathed, dying.


The Mindworm, drowsing, suddenly felt the sharp sting of danger.  He
cast out through the great city, dragging tentacles of thought:

"... die if she don't let me ..."

"... six an' six is twelve an' carry one an' three is four ..."

"... gobblegobble madre de dios pero soy gobblegobble ..."

"... parlay Domino an' Missab and shoot the roll on Duchess Peg in the
feature ..."

"... melt resin add the silver chloride and dissolve in oil of lavender
stand and decant and fire to cone 012 give you shimmering streaks of
luster down the walls ..."

"... moiderin' square-headed gobblegobble tried ta poke his eye out
wassamatta witta ref ..."

"... O God I am most heartily sorry I have offended thee in ..."

"... talk like a commie ..."

"... gobblegobblegobble two dolla twenny-fi' sense gobble ..."

"... just a nip and fill it up with water and brush my teeth ..."

"... really know I'm God but fear to confess their sins ..."

"... dirty lousy rock-headed claw-handed paddle-footed goggle-eyed
snot-nosed hunch-backed feeble-minded pot-bellied son of ..."

"... write on the wall alfie is a stunkur and then ..."

"... thinks I believe it's a television set but I know he's got a bomb
in there but who can I tell who can help so alone ..."

"... gabble was ich weiss nicht gabble geh bei Broadvay gabble ..."

"... habt mein daughter Rosie such a fella gobble-gobble ..."

"... wonder if that's one didn't look back ..."

"... seen with her in the Medford restaurant ..."

The Mindworm struck into that thought.

"... not a mark on her but the M.E.'s have been wrong before and heart
failure don't mean a thing anyway try to talk to her old lady authorize
an autopsy get Pancho little guy talks Spanish be best ..."

The Mindworm knew he would have to be moving again--soon.  He was
sorry; some of the thoughts he had tapped indicated good ... hunting?

Regretfully, he again dragged his net:

"... with chartreuse drinks I mean drapes could use a drink come to
think of it ..."

"... reep-beep-reep-beep reepiddy-beepiddy-beep bop man wadda beat ..."

[Illustration: alien characters]  _What the Hell was that?_"

The Mindworm withdrew, in frantic haste.  The intelligence was massive,
its overtones those of a vigorous adult.  He had learned from certain
dangerous children that there was peril of a leveling flow.  Shaken and
scared, he contemplated traveling.  He would need more than that
wretched girl had supplied, and it would not be epicurean.  There would
be no time to find individuals at a ripe emotional crisis, or goad them
to one.  It would be plain--munching.  The Mindworm drank a glass of
water, also necessary to his metabolism.


    EIGHT FOUND DEAD
      IN UPTOWN MOVIE;
        "MOLESTERS" SOUGHT


    Eight persons, including three women, were found dead Wednesday
    night of unknown causes in widely-separated seats in the balcony of
    the Odeon Theater at 117th St. and Broadway.  Police are seeking a
    man described by the balcony usher, Michael Fenelly, 18, as "acting
    like a woman-molester."

    Fenelly discovered the first of the fatalities after seeing the man
    "moving from one empty seat to another several times."  He went to
    ask a woman in a seat next to one the man had just vacated whether
    he had annoyed her.  She was dead.

    Almost at once, a scream rang out.  In another part of the balcony
    Mrs. Sadie Rabinowitz, 40, uttered the cry when another victim
    toppled from his seat next to her.

    Theater manager I. J. Marcusohn stopped the show and turned on the
    house lights.  He tried to instruct his staff to keep the audience
    from leaving before the police arrived.  He failed to get word to
    them in time, however, and most of the audience was gone when a
    detail from the 24th Pct. and an ambulance from Harlem hospital
    took over at the scene of the tragedy.

    The Medical Examiner's office has not yet made a report as to the
    causes of death.  A spokesman said the victims showed no signs of
    poisoning or violence.  He added that it "was inconceivable that it
    could be a coincidence."

    Lt. John Braidwood of the 24th Pct. said of the alleged molester:
    "We got a fair description of him and naturally we will try to
    bring him in for questioning."


_Clickety-click, clickety-click, clickety-click_ sang the rails as the
Mindworm drowsed in his coach seat.

Some people were walking forward from the diner.  One was thinking:
"Different-looking fellow, (a) he's aberrant, (b) he's nonaberrant and
ill.  Cancel (b)--respiration normal, skin smooth and healthy, no
tremor of limbs, well-groomed.  Is aberrant (1) trivially.  (2)
significantly.  Cancel (1)--displayed no involuntary interest when ...
odd!  _Running_ for the washroom!  Unexpected because (a) neat grooming
indicates amour propre inconsistent with amusing others; (b) evident
health inconsistent with..."  It had taken one second, was fully
detailed.

The Mindworm, locked in the toilet of the coach, wondered what the next
stop was.  He was getting off at it--not frightened, just careful.
Dodge them, keep dodging them and everything would be all right.  Send
out no mental taps until the train was far away and everything would be
all right.


He got off at a West Virginia coal and iron town surrounded by ruined
mountains and filled with the offscourings of Eastern Europe.  Serbs,
Albanians, Croats, Hungarians, Slovenes, Bulgarians and all possible
combinations and permutations thereof.  He walked slowly from the
smoke-stained, brownstone passenger station.  The train had roared on
its way.

"... ain' no gemmum that's fo sho', fi-cen' tip fo' a good shine lak ah
give um ..."

"... dumb bassar don't know how to make out a billa lading yet he ain't
never gonna know so fire him get it over with ..."

"... gabblegabblegabble ..."  Not a word he recognized in it.

"... gobblegobble dat tam vooman I brek she nack ..."

"... gobble trink visky chin glassabeer gobblegobble-gobble ..."

"... gabblegabblegabble ..."

"... makes me so gobblegobble mad little no-good tramp no she ain' but
I don' like no standup from no dame ..."

A blond, square-headed boy fuming under a street light.

"... out wit' Casey Oswiak I could kill that dumb bohunk alla time
trine ta paw her ..."

It was a possibility.  The Mindworm drew near.

"... stand me up for that gobblegobble bohunk I oughtta slap her inna
mush like my ole man says ..."

"Hello," said the Mindworm.

"Waddaya wan'?"

"Casey Oswiak told me to tell you not to wait up for your girl.  He's
taking her out tonight."

The blond boy's rage boiled into his face and shot from his eyes.  He
was about to swing when the Mindworm began to feed.  It was like
pheasant after chicken, venison after beef.  The coarseness of the
environment, or the ancient strain?  The Mindworm wondered as he
strolled down the street.  A girl passed him:

"... oh but he's gonna be mad like last time wish I came right away so
jealous kinda nice but he might bust me one some day be nice to him
tonight there he is lam'post leaning on it looks kinda funny gawd I
hope he ain't drunk looks kinda funny sleeping sick or bozhe moi
gabblegabblegabble ..."

Her thoughts trailed into a foreign language of which the Mindwonn knew
not a word.  After hysteria had gone she recalled, in the foreign
language, that she had passed him.

The Mindworm, stimulated by the unfamiliar quality of the last feeding,
determined to stay for some days.  He checked in at a Main Street hotel.

Musing, he dragged his net:

"... gobblegobblewhompyeargobblecheskygobblegabblechyesh ..."

"... take him down cellar beat the can off the damn chesky thief put
the fear of god into him teach him can't bust into no boxcars in mah
parta the caounty ..."

"... gabblegabble ..."

"... phone ole Mister Ryan in She-cawgo and he'll tell them three-card
monte grifters who got the horse-room rights in this necka the woods by
damn don't pay protection money for no protection ..."

The Mindworm followed that one further; it sounded as though it could
lead to some money if he wanted to stay in the town long enough.

The Eastern Europeans of the town, he mistakenly thought, were like the
tramps and bums he had known and fed on during his years on the
road--stupid and safe, safe and stupid, quite the same thing.

In the morning he found no mention of the square-headed boy's death in
the town's paper and thought it had gone practically unnoticed.  It
had--by the paper, which was of, by and for the coal and iron company
and its native-American bosses and straw bosses.  The other town, the
one without a charter or police force, with only an imported weekly
newspaper or two from the nearest city, noticed it.  The other town had
roots more than two thousand years deep, which are hard to pull up.
But the Mindworm didn't know it was there.

He fed again that night, on a giddy young streetwalker in her room.  He
had astounded and delighted her with a fistful of ten-dollar bills
before he began to gorge.  Again the delightful difference from
city-bred folk was there....

Again in the morning he had been unnoticed, he thought.  The chartered
town, unwilling to admit that there were street-walkers or that they
were found dead, wiped the slate clean; its only member who really
cared was the native-American cop on the beat who had collected weekly
from the dead girl.

The other town, unknown to the Mindworm, buzzed with it.  A delegation
went to the other town's only public officer.  Unfortunately he was
young, American-trained, perhaps even ignorant about some important
things.  For what he told them was: "My children, that is foolish
superstition.  Go home."

The Mindworm, through the day, roiled the surface of the town proper by
allowing himself to be roped into a poker game in a parlor of the
hotel.  He wasn't good at it, he didn't like it, and he quit with
relief when he had cleaned six shifty-eyed, hard-drinking loafers out
of about three hundred dollars.  One of them went straight to the
police station and accused the unknown of being a sharper.  A humorous
sergeant, the Mindworm was pleased to note, joshed the loafer out of
his temper.

Nightfall again, hunger again....

He walked the streets of the town and found them empty.  It was
strange.  The native-American citizens were out, tending bar, walking
their beats, locking up their newspaper on the stones, collecting their
rents, managing their movies--but where were the others?  He cast his
net:

"... gobblegobblegobble whomp year gobble ..."

"... crazy old pollack mama of mine try to lock me in with Errol Flynn
at the Majestic never know the difference if I sneak out the back ..."

That was near.  He crossed the street and it was nearer.  He homed on
the thought:

"... jeez he's a hunka man like Stanley but he never looks at me that
Vera Kowalik I'd like to kick her just once in the gobblegobblegobble
crazy old mama won't be American so ashamed ..."

It was half a block, no more, down a side street.  Brick houses, two
stories, with back yards on an alley.  She was going out the back way.

How strangely quiet it was in the alley.

"... ea-sy down them steps fix that damn board that's how she caught me
last time what the hell are they all so scared of went to see Father
Drugas won't talk bet somebody got it again that Vera Kowalik and her
big ..."

"... gobble bozhe gobble whomp year gobble ..."

She was closer; she was closer.

"All think I'm a kid show them who's a kid bet if Stanley caught me all
alone out here in the alley dark and all he wouldn't think I was a kid
that damn Vera Kowalik her folks don't think she's a kid ..."

For all her bravado she was stark terrified when he said: "Hello."

"Who--who--who--?" she stammered.

Quick, before she screamed.  Her terror was delightful.

Not too replete to be alert, he cast about, questing.

"... gobblegobblegobble whomp year."

The countless eyes of the other town, with more than two thousand years
of experience in such things, had been following him.  What he had
sensed as a meaningless hash of noise was actually an impassioned
outburst in a nearby darkened house.

"Fools! fools!  Now he has taken a virgin!  I said not to wait.  What
will we say to her mother?"

An old man with handlebar mustache and, in spite of the heat, his shirt
sleeves decently rolled down and buttoned at the cuffs, evenly replied:
"My heart in me died with hers, Casimir, but one must be sure.  It
would be a terrible thing to make a mistake in such an affair."

The weight of conservative elder opinion was with him.  Other old men
with mustaches, some perhaps remembering mistakes long ago, nodded and
said: "A terrible thing.  A terrible thing."

The Mindworm strolled back to his hotel and napped on the made bed
briefly.  A tingle of danger awakened him.  Instantly he cast out:

"... gobblegobble whompyear."

"... whampyir."

"WAMPYIR!"

_Close!  Close and deadly!_

The door of his room burst open, and mustached old men with their shirt
sleeves rolled down and decently buttoned at the cuffs unhesitatingly
marched in, their thoughts a turmoil of alien noises, foreign gibberish
that he could not wrap his mind around, disconcerting, from every
direction.

The sharpened stake was through his heart and the scythe blade through
his throat before he could realize that he had not been the first of
his kind; and that what clever people have not yet learned, some quite
ordinary people have not yet entirely forgotten.






[End of The Mindworm, by C. M. Kornbluth]
