by Anthology
He reached the door to the service stair, recoiled violently as a dirty gray shape sprang at him with a yowl from the darkness—in the instant before a gun flashed and racketed in the narrow space, shattering plaster dust from the wall above his head. A thickset man in the dark uniform of the Security Police, advancing up the stair at a run, checked momentarily as he saw the gun in Mallory’s hands—and before he recovered himself, Mallory had swung the empty weapon, knocked him spinning back down onto the landing. The cat that had saved his life—an immense, battle-scarred Tom—lay on the floor, half its head blown away by the blast it had intercepted. Its lone yellow eye was fixed on him; its claws raked the floor, as, even in death, it advanced to the attack. Mallory jumped over the stricken beast, went up the stairs.
Three flights higher, the stair ended in a loft stacked with bundled newspapers and rotting cartons from which mice scuttled as he approached. There was a single window, opaque with grime. Mallory tossed aside the useless gun, scanned the ceiling for evidence of an escape hatch, saw nothing. His side ached abominably.
Relentless feet sounded beyond the door. Mallory backed to a corner of the room—and again, the deafening shriek of the SURF-gun sounded, and the flimsy door bucked, disintegrated. For a moment there was total silence. Then:
“Walk out with your hands up, Mallory!” a brassy voice snarled. In the gloom, pale flames were licking over the bundled papers, set afire by the torrent of steel-jacketed slugs. Smoke rose, thickened.
“Come out before you fry,” the voice called.
“Let’s get out of here,” another man bawled. “This dump will go up like tinder!”
“Last chance, Mallory!” the first man shouted, and now the flames, feeding on the dry paper, were reaching for the ceiling, roaring as they grew. Mallory went along the wall to the window, ripped aside the torn roller shade, tugged at the sash. It didn’t move. He kicked out the glass, threw a leg over the sill, and stepped out onto a rusted fire escape. Five stories down, light puddled on grimy concrete, the white dots of upturned faces—and half a dozen police cars blocking the rain-wet street. He put his back to the railing, looked up. The fire escape extended three, perhaps four stories higher. He threw his arm across his face to shield it from the billowing flames, forced his aching legs to carry him up the iron treads three at a time.
The topmost landing was six feet below an overhanging cornice. Mallory stepped up on the rail, caught the edge of the carved stone trim with both hands, swung himself out. For a moment he dangled, ninety feet above the street; then he pulled himself up, got a knee over the coping, and rolled onto the roof.
Lying flat, he scanned the darkness around him. The level was broken only by a ventilator stack and a shack housing a stair or elevator head.
He reconnoitered, found that the hotel occupied a corner, with a parking lot behind it. On the alley side, the adjoining roof was at a level ten feet lower, separated by a sixteen-foot gap. As Mallory stared across at it, a heavy rumbling shook the deck under his feet: one of the floors of the ancient building, collapsing as the fire ate through its supports.
Smoke was rising all around him now. On the parking lot side, dusky flames soared up thirty feet above him, trailing an inverted cascade of sparks into the wet night sky. He went to the stairhead, found the metal door locked. A rusty ladder was clamped to the side of the structure. He wrenched it free, carried it to the alley side. It took all his strength to force the corroded catches free, pull the ladder out to its full extension. Twenty feet, he estimated. Enough—maybe.
He shoved the end of the ladder out, wrestled it across to rest on the roof below. The flimsy bridge sagged under his weight as he crawled up on it. He moved carefully out, ignoring the swaying of the fragile support. He was six feet from the far roof when he felt the rotten metal crumple under him; with a frantic lunge, he threw himself forward. Only the fact that the roof was at a lower level saved him. He clawed his way over the sheet-metal gutter, hearing shouts ring out below as the ladder crashed to the bricks of the alley.
A bad break, he thought. Now they know where I am. . . .
There was a heavy trap door set in the roof. He lifted it, descended an iron ladder into darkness, found his way to a corridor, along it to a stair. Faint sounds rose from below. He went down.
At the fourth floor, lights showed below, voices sounded, the clump of feet. He left the stair at the third floor, prowled along a hall, entered an abandoned office. Searchlights in the street below threw oblique shadows across the discolored walls.
He went on, through a connecting door into a room on the alley side. A cold draft, reeking of smoke, blew in through a glassless window. Below, the narrow way appeared to be deserted. Paul’s body was gone. The broken ladder lay where it had fallen. It was, he estimated, a twenty-foot drop to the bricks; even if he let himself down to arm’s length and dropped, a leg-breaker. . . .
Something moved below him. A uniformed policeman was standing at a spot directly beneath the window, his back against the wall. A wolf smile drew Mallory’s face tight. In a single motion, he slid his body out over the sill, chest down, held on for an instant, seeing the startled face below turn upward, the mouth open for a yell—
He dropped; his feet struck the man’s back, breaking his fall. He rolled clear, sat up, half dazed. The policeman sprawled on his face, his spine twisted at an awkward angle.
Mallory got to his feet—and almost fell at the stab of pain from his right ankle. Sprained, or broken. His teeth set against the pain, he moved along the wall. Icy rain water, sluicing from the downspout ahead, swirled about his ankles. He slipped, almost went down on the slimy bricks. The lesser darkness of the parking lot behind the building showed ahead. If he could reach it, cross it—then he might still have a chance. He had to succeed—for Monica, for the child, for the future of a world.
Another step, and another. It was as though there were a steel spike through his ankle. The bullet wound in his side was a vast ache that caught at him with every breath. His blood-soaked shirt and pants leg hung against him, icy cold. Ten feet more, and he would make his run for it—
Two men in the black uniforms of the State Security Police stepped out into his path, stood with blast-guns leveled at his chest. Mallory pushed away from the wall, braced himself for the burst of slugs that would end his life. Instead, a beam of light speared out through the misty rain, dazzling his eyes.
“You’ll come with us, Mr. Mallory.”
FOUR
Still no contact, the Perceptors reported. The prime-level minds below lack cohesion; they flicker and dart away even as I/we touch them.
The Initiators made a proposal: By the use of appropriate harmonics a resonance field can be set up which will reinforce any native mind functioning in an analogous rhythm.
I/we find that a pattern of the following character will be most suitable. . . . A complex symbolism was displayed.
PERSEVERE IN THE FASHION DESCRIBED, the Egon commanded. ALL EXTRANEOUS FUNCTIONS WILL BE DISCONTINUED UNTIL SUCCESS IS ACHIEVED.
With total singleness of purpose, the Ree sensors probed across space from the dark and silent ship, searching for a receptive human mind.
FIVE
The Interrogation Room was a totally bare cube of white enamel. At its geometric center, under a blinding white glare panel, sat a massive chair constructed of polished steel, casting an ink-black shadow.
A silent minute ticked past; then heels clicked in the corridor. A tall man in a plain, dark military tunic came through the open door, halted, studying his prisoner. His wide, sagging face was as gray and bleak as a tombstone.
“I warned you, Mallory,” he said in a deep, growling tone.
“You’re making a mistake, Koslo,” Mallory said.
“Openly arresting the people’s hero, eh?” Koslo curved his wide, gray lips in a death’s-head smile. “Don’t delude yourself. The malcontents will do nothing without their leader.”
“Are you sure you’re ready
to put your regime to the test so soon?”
“It’s that or wait, while your party gains strength. I chose the quicker course. I was never as good at waiting as you, Mallory.”
“Well—you’ll know by morning.”
“That close, eh?” Koslo’s heavy-lidded eyes pinched down on glints of light. He grunted. “I’ll know many things by morning. You realize that your personal position is hopeless?” His eyes went to the chair.
“In other words, I should sell out to you now in return for—what? Another of your promises?”
“The alternative is the chair,” Koslo said flatly.
“You have great confidence in machinery, Koslo—more than in men. That’s your great weakness.”
Koslo’s hand went out, caressing the rectilinear metal of the chair. “This is a scientific apparatus designed to accomplish a specific task with the least possible difficulty to me. It creates conditions within the subject’s neural system conducive to total recall, and at the same time amplifies the subvocalizations that accompany all highly cerebral activity. The subject is also rendered amenable to verbal cuing.” He paused. “If you resist, it will destroy your mind—but not before you’ve told me everything: names, locations, dates, organization, operational plans—everything. It will be simpler for us both if you acknowledge the inevitable and tell me freely what I require to know.”
“And after you’ve got the information?”
“You know my regime can’t tolerate opposition. The more complete my information, the less bloodshed will be necessary.”
Mallory shook his head. “No,” he said bluntly.
“Don’t be a fool, Mallory! This isn’t a test of your manhood!”
“Perhaps it is, Koslo: man against machine.”
Koslo’s eyes probed at him. He made a quick gesture with one hand.
“Strap him in.”
Seated in the chair, Mallory felt the cold metal suck the heat from his body. Bands restrained his arms, legs, torso. A wide ring of woven wire and plastic clamped his skull firmly to the formed headrest. Across the room, Fey Koslo watched.
“Ready, Excellency,” a technician said.
“Proceed.”
Mallory tensed. An unwholesome excitement churned his stomach. He’d heard of the chair, of its power to scour a man’s mind clean and leave him a gibbering hulk.
Only a free society, he thought, can produce the technology that makes tyranny possible. . . .
He watched as a white-smocked technician approached, reached for the control panel. There was only one hope left: if he could fight the power of the machine, drag out the interrogation, delay Koslo until dawn . . .
A needle-studded vise clamped down against Mallory’s temples. Instantly his mind was filled with whirling fever images. He felt his throat tighten in an aborted scream. Fingers of pure force struck into his brain, dislodging old memories, ripping open the healed wounds of time. From somewhere, he was aware of a voice, questioning. Words trembled in his throat, yearning to be shouted aloud.
I’ve got to resist! The thought flashed through his mind and was gone, borne away on a tide of probing impulses that swept through his brain like a millrace. I’ve got to hold out . . . long enough . . . to give the others a chance. . . .
SIX
Aboard the Ree ship, dim lights glowed and winked on the panel that encircled the control center.
I/we sense a new mind—a transmitter of great power, the Perceptors announced suddenly. But the images are confused. I/we sense struggle, resistance. . . .
IMPOSE CLOSE CONTROL, the Egon ordered. NARROW FOCUS AND EXTRACT A REPRESENTATIVE PERSONALITY FRACTION!
It is difficult; I/we sense powerful neural currents, at odds with the basic brain rhythms.
COMBAT THEM!
Again the Ree mind reached out, insinuated itself into the complex field-matrix that was Mallory’s mind, and began, painstakingly, to trace out and reinforce its native symmetries, permitting the natural ego-mosaic to emerge, free from distracting counterimpulses.
SEVEN
The technician’s face went chalk-white as Mallory’s body went rigid against the restraining bands.
“You fool!” Koslo’s voice cut at him like a whipping rod. “If he dies before he talks—”
“He . . . he fights strongly, Excellency.” The man’s eyes scanned instrument faces. “Alpha through delta rhythms normal, though exaggerated,” he muttered. “Metabolic index .99 . . .”
Mallory’s body jerked. His eyes opened, shut. His mouth worked.
“Why doesn’t he speak?” Koslo barked.
“It may require a few moments, Excellency, to adjust the power flows to ten-point resonance—”
“Then get on with it, man! I risked too much in arresting this man to lose him now!”
EIGHT
White-hot fingers of pure force lanced from the chair along the neural pathways within Mallory’s brain—and met the adamantine resistance of the Ree probe. In the resultant confrontation, Mallory’s battered self-awareness was tossed like a leaf in a gale.
Fight! The remaining wisp of his conscious intellect gathered itself—
—and was grasped, encapsulated, swept up and away. He was aware of spinning through a whirling fog of white light shot through with flashes and streamers of red, blue, violet. There was a sensation of great forces that pressed at him, flung him to and fro, drew his mind out like a ductile wire until it spanned the Galaxy. The filament grew broad, expanded into a diaphragm that bisected the universe. The plane assumed thickness, swelled out to encompass all space/time. Faint and far away, he sensed the tumultuous coursing of the energies that ravened just beyond the impenetrable membrane of force—
The imprisoning sphere shrank, pressed in, forcing his awareness into needle-sharp focus. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that he was locked in a sealed and airless chamber, constricting, claustrophobic, all sound and sensation cut off. He drew breath to scream—
No breath came. Only a weak pulse of terror, quickly fading, as if damped by an inhibiting hand. Alone in the dark, Mallory waited, every sense tuned, monitoring the surrounding blankness. . . .
NINE
I/we have him! The Perceptors pulsed, and fell away. At the center of the chamber, the mind trap pulsed with the flowing energies that confined and controlled the captive brain pattern.
TESTING WILL COMMENCE AT ONCE. The Egon brushed aside the interrogatory impulses from the mind-segments concerned with speculation. INITIAL STIMULI WILL BE APPLIED AND RESULTS NOTED. NOW!
TEN
. . . and was aware of a faint glimmer of light across the room: the outline of a window. He blinked, raised himself on one elbow. Bed-springs creaked under him. He sniffed. An acrid odor of smoke hung in the stifling air. He seemed to be in a cheap hotel room. He had no memory of how he came to be there. He threw back the coarse blanket and felt warped floor boards under his bare feet—
The boards were hot.
He jumped up, went to the door, grasped the knob—and jerked his hand back. The metal had blistered his palm.
He ran to the window, ripped aside the dirt-stiff gauze curtains, snapped open the latch, tugged at the sash. It didn’t budge. He stepped back, kicked out the glass. Instantly a coil of smoke whipped in through the broken pane. Using the curtain to protect his hand, he knocked out the shards, swung a leg over the sill, stumbled onto the fire escape. The rusted metal cut at his bare feet. Groping, he made his way down half a dozen steps—and fell back as a sheet of red flame billowed from below.
Over the rail he saw the street, lights puddled on grimy concrete ten stories down, white faces, like pale dots, upturned. A hundred feet away, an extension ladder swayed, approaching another wing of the flaming building, not concerned with him. He was lost, abandoned. Nothing could save him. For forty feet below, the iron ladder was an inferno.
It would be easier, quicker, to go over the rail, escape the pain, die cleanly, the thought came into his mind with dreadful clarity.
There was a tinkling crash and a window above blew out. Scalding embers rained down on his back. The iron was hot underfoot. He drew a breath, shielded his face with one arm, and plunged downward through the whipping flames. . . .
He was crawling, falling down the cruel metal treads and risers. The pain across his face, his back, his shoulder, his arm, was like a red-hot iron, applied and forgotten. He caught a glimpse of his arm, flayed, oozing, black-edged. . . .
His hands and feet were no longer his own. He used his knees and elbows, tumbled himself over yet another edge, sliding down to the next landing. The faces were closer now; hands were reaching up. He groped, got to his feet, felt the last section swing down as his weight went on it. His vision was a blur of red. He sensed the blistered skin sloughing from his thighs. A woman screamed.
“. . . my God, burned alive and still walking!” a thin voice cawed.
“. . . poor devil . . .”
“. . . his hands . . . no fingers . . .”
Something rose, smashed at him, a ghostly blow as blackness closed in. . . .
ELEVEN
The response of the entity was anomalous, the Analyzers reported. Its life tenacity is enormous! Confronted with apparent imminent physical destruction, it chose agony and mutilation merely to extend survival for a brief period.
The possibility exists that such a response represents a mere instinctive mechanism of unusual form, the Analyzers pointed out.
If so, it might prove dangerous. More data on the point is required.
I/WE WILL RESTIMULATE THE SUBJECT, the Egon ordered. THE PARAMETERS OF THE SURVIVAL DRIVE MUST BE ESTABLISHED WITH PRECISION. RESUME TESTING!
