“Watching the rain,” he said.
“Restful, isn't it?”
“No.”
“It isn't?”
“It puzzles me,” he said.
She looked quickly at the window, frowned, stared hard at him. Her nervousness was an act, an obvious performance. Why? “Puzzles you?” she asked.
“Never mind.”
“Do you feel all right?” she asked.
“Better than ever.”
“You're sure?”
He forced a smile. “Positive.”
“I've brought your supper.” She grinned again. Her blue eyes seemed as large as half dollars, brighter than ever, as if the beauty of her own smile surprised her. “Your favorite dessert,” she said.
“What's that?”
She put the tray down and lifted the silver lid. “Apple pie with raisins.”
And it figured.
V
Joel waited until he knew that she was asleep before he got out of bed.
For awhile there, when they had finished making love, he had seriously considered forgetting the whole thing. If he were being misled, it was for a good reason. Wasn't it? Had to be. How could Allison be engaged in anything sinister…?
However, when she grew drowsy and slept, leaving him alone with his thoughts, his determination to know the truth returned. He had been acting and reacting as if he were drugged or witless. Now, while the others were not up and about to keep tabs on him, he dressed quickly and quietly, opened the bedroom door, stepped into the dark second floor hallway, closed the door again without waking Allison.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet?
He leaned against the wall for several minutes until his eyes adjusted to the darkness — and until he was certain that Allison was not going to get out of bed and follow him. Treading lightly and cautiously to avoid the loose floorboards under the carpet, he went to the head of the main stairs.
A light burned somewhere below; a weak glow leaked into the downstairs hall and spilled across the first two steps. He could hear voices rising suddenly from the back of the house. Two of them. Both men. Talking softly but heatedly. Henry and the male servant, Richard?
He went down the stairs to the main hall. Holding the polished mahogany railing, he kept away from the center of each step where the loose boards might sag, squeak, and betray him. He made no noise at all going down.
Originally, he had intended to investigate the ground floor exits to see what landscape they opened onto, and he had wanted to burglarize the drawers of Henry Galing's desk in the book-lined den. But now he would have to know for certain who was up and about and what their conversation might concern. The light and the voices came from the den where the door was ajar, and Joel crept in that direction.
As he stood against the wall by the partly opened door, he recognized Henry Galing's deep, officious tones. The other voice was that of a stranger.
“How much longer?” the stranger asked.
“How much longer until what?” Galing asked. He sounded peeved, disdainful.
“Until we stop with this damned 'recover' act,” the stranger said.
“When the program was devised, it was decided he'd stay in bed for five days,” Galing said. “That leaves three to go.”
“It won't work.”
“We have to try to make it work.”
“Impossible,” the stranger insisted.
Galing sighed. “I suppose you're right. He's become much too inquisitive. He's already discovered that the view from his window is an artificial construction.”
“I've heard,” the stranger said. “That window should have been locked.” He was angry and concerned. He had raised his voice above a murmur, but now he softened it again. “You overlooked an important detail.”
“Nonsense,” Galing said. The stranger didn't press the accusation, and it was clear that the old man had the final word. “If the window had been locked, he'd have picked it open to find out if what he suspected were true or not. You know him. You know how persistent he is.”
“Only too well,” the stranger said.
“And I'm worried about the girl,” Galing said. “Despite the drugs, she seems to be getting suspicious about me, the house, the whole deal.”
“Increase her dosage.”
“It isn't that simple,” Galing said. “If we raise her milligram intake, Amslow's going to realize she's hopped up. And that's no good at all.”
It was the stranger's turn to sigh. “Then what in the hell do you suggest?”
“We'll go to the next stage of the program ahead of schedule,” Galing said.
“That might not be wise.”
“It's our only choice,” Galing said. He opened his desk drawer and rustled some papers.
In the pause between their exchanges, Joel leaned away from the wall and peered into the den through the two-inch crack between the door and the jamb. Galing stood behind his desk, leafing through a sheaf of papers, absorbed in his search for something. In the chair beside the desk, slumped as if he were exhausted, sat the faceless man.
VI
Henry Galing said, “You'd better wake Richard and Gina so we can go over this together step by step. We don't want any mistakes. We have enough problems already.”
“Of course, Henry,” the faceless man said. The smooth plane of his face did not even wrinkle as he spoke. He got up, stretched, and started for the door.
With the swiftness of instinct, Joel backstepped to the next door along the corridor and went into the darkened library. He closed the door most of the way but left a narrow crack through which he could observe the hall.
The faceless man walked past without seeing him and went up the stairs even more quietly than Joel had descended them.
Joel hoped no one planned a bed check.
Two minutes later the faceless man returned with Richard and Gina in tow. None of them was particularly excited. They'd have been whooping if they had known that he wasn't tucked in bed with Allison, exhausted from lovemaking. The three of them entered the den and this time they closed the door all the way.
He remained in the library for a few minutes, then returned to the hall and sidled down to the den door. But the heavy oak door was too thick to permit eavesdropping. What were they saying in there? What had they planned for him? Why? Well, whatever the hell they were doing, they didn't have his best interest at heart. It hardly mattered whether or not he knew all the details or even the main intent. They were not humanitarians.
Noiselessly, he returned to the second floor bedroom. He found well cut, expensive streetclothes in the closet, and he slipped into them: knitted slacks, a blue silk shirt, a lightweight rayon jacket that had never come off any department store rack.
He sat on the edge of the bed and gently shook Allison's shoulder until she stopped mumbling, opened her eyes, and yawned at him. “What is it? Hmmm?”
“We're going away now,” he said. He tried to remain calm, tried not to consider the possibility that he'd lost his mind.
“Away?” she asked.
“Whisper,” he said.
“Why are we going away?”
Looking at her closely, he fancied that he could see the effects of some drug in the circles around her eyes, although she was otherwise fresh and healthy.
She didn't like the way he was staring at her. “What are you doing? What's wrong?”
“Get dressed while I explain.”
“It's that urgent?”
“Yes. Hurry.”
She did as she was told, although she was obviously confused by his story of sinister plots and faceless men. When he was done, she took both his hands in her hands. “Joel, I think this was a bad dream. Just a nightmare, darling.”
“It's true.”
She touched his face. Her fingers were cool. “You did have a head injury. I don't want you to feel I'm being—”
Her tone precluded his getting angry, for she was only concerned about him, nothing mo
re. “If I fell off the garage roof,” he said, interrupting her to save time, “where's my head wound?”
She was startled by the question.
“Well?”
“I… I don't understand.”
He went to the window and opened it. “Come here.” He held her up so she could touch the hologram screen which was now showing a very realistic, three-dimension night scene complete with moon and stars. The traffic on the highway was preceded by headlights.
She was stunned by the revelation. “But what in the world does it mean?”
“I don't know. But I do know we aren't going to find out until we're away from here.”
Clutching his arm, leaning on him for support, she said, “I'm scared, Joel.”
“Me too.”
He kissed her. He was pleased that implicit in her statement was a willingness to do whatever he wished. She had adjusted to the bizarre situation much faster than he had expected she would.
“What now?” she whispered.
“Do you have any money?”
“Quite a bit in my purse.”
“Good enough,” he said. “We may need it when we get away from here. We might be in another country; we might be a long way from home.”
“But why?'
“I keep asking myself the same question,” he said. “So far, I can't find an answer to it.” He kissed her again. Then: “Stay close behind me. Once we're out of the house, we can decide what to do. With money, we aren't helpless.”
“Uncle Henry's no villain, though,” she said, still worrying at it.
“Are you sure you have an Uncle Henry?”
“Of course! There may be deception here… illusions… But that's part of the truth. Uncle Henry's real. And so is his Galing Research — and our marriage. I don't understand the faceless man. That's incredible! And the window… But the rest of it isn't a lie, Joel!”
She unsettled him, for he was more ready to accept an entire fraud, no matter how fantastic it might be, rather than have to explain half of one. But in either case, how could you explain a man without a face?
There could be no such thing.
But there was.
In the upstairs corridor they paused, as he had done earlier, to adjust to the darkness. Then they went downstairs, past the den where the voices of the four conspirators seeped through the door too soft to be distinguished word for word.
In the kitchen, he almost fell over a straight-backed chair, caught himself just in time. He opened the back door and stared out at a lawn and trees much like the scene which the hologram had shown them from his upstairs window. The highway and the cars were the only things missing.
“Why show us a fake when the real thing isn't that much different?” he asked.
“Let's hurry,” she said. Her tone, the expression on her face were the first indications he'd had, aside from her word, that she was really frightened.
He wondered briefly if her fear was generated by the absurd circumstances in which they found themselves — or whether she knew more about all of this than he did, knew something that especially put her on edge. He had overheard Galing say that she was drugged. But wasn't it possible… No. For Christ's sake, he couldn't let himself think a thing like that. It smacked of paranoia. He needed someone to trust in the middle of the surreal nightmare, some touch with reality, someone with whom he could make plans.
He took her hand and led her quickly across the lawn toward the trees; in fact, the journey was too quick. Although the lawn appeared to be several acres deep they crossed it in only a dozen paces. When they turned and looked back at the mansion, which was surely no more than thirty feet away, it appeared to be distant, shrunken as if a full quarter of a mile lav between them and the kitchen door from which they had just departed.
“Am I crazy?” she asked.
“If you are, it's group insanity,” he said. “How in the hell is that done?”
“And why?”
He was bewildered.
He could see that a man, desirous of a lot of land but with a bank account much too small to permit an estate of any size, might want to employ this sort of ruse to give himself the feeling of distance, possessions, wealth. That made sense — even if the science behind it seemed quite impossible. But the rest of it made no damned sense at all… Even if such an illusion could be created, surely the cost of it would be higher than the price of the land itself. Furthermore, for Galing to go to the trouble of creating this excellent illusion — and for him to go to the extra trouble of using a hologram screen on the bedroom window so that the genuine article could not be seen—that was insanity…
“What are they trying to prove?”
She clutched his arm. “Joel, he's here.”
“Who?”
Standing in the shadow of the trees, cloaked in darkness, she shrank back as if pinned in a spotlight. “Back at the house. Uncle Henry.”
Galing stood in the open kitchen doorway, staring hard at the trees.
“He can't see us,” Joel said.
“How do you know he can't hear us?” she whispered. “He's only thirty feet away.”
“Come on,” he said. “We can lose them in the woods.”
VII
The forest had looked deep and cool and serene, but it turned out to be no more extensive than the lawn, no less an illusion than everything that had come before it. In only twenty steps they had crossed the carpet of dry brown leaves, threaded their way through the maples and pines and oaks, left behind the smell of moist earth and green growing foliage and the shatter of insects. Beyond the trees was a sidewalk and a quiet residential street.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Joel said.
Mercury vapor lamps were spaced fifty feet apart on the far side of the street. Dragon-necked, they thrust into the center of the roadway and shed soft light on the neatly painted fronts of middle-class, white frame houses with contrastingly painted shutters. Some porches had swings. Some had no swings. Some had rockers and potted flowers. All the windows were dark, the houses either deserted or the occupants all asleep. The lawn directly across the street contained a white plaster bird-bath, a crystal ball on a plaster pedestal, and six hideous plastic ducks lined up along the walk: modern American bad taste, undeniably American. Some houses had fenced-in lawns; some did not. Here and there a weeping willow tree bent across a fence and dipped feathery branches over the sidewalk and street. Three cars were parked on the street: two late model fan shuttles and one older vehicle that was scraped and dented and rusting out along the fan skirt. This last one had a double fan system like the first electric hovercars that had been built in the 1980's ten years ago. Or, if Dr. Harttle had been telling the truth, well over two hundred years ago.
Behind them, footsteps sounded in the forest. Twigs snapped. Branches were thrust noisily aside.
He grabbed Allison's hand more tightly and ran for the nearest automobile.
Behind them, Henry Galing shouted, “Wait!”
Joel pulled open the car door. “Get in.”
Allison slid across the seat.
He got behind the wheel and slammed the door. The sound echoed along the quiet street.
The keys were in the ignition.
He knew then that they were never going to get away from Henry Galing and his fun house. He hadn't thought how he would start the shuttle, perhaps he would have had to cross the wires beneath the dashboard… But he knew this easy ride was a trap. They were meant to find this shuttle and use it. Nevertheless, he had to go ahead with it.
Twisting the key in the ignition, he stamped the starter. The engine purred. The blades beneath them stuttered, then lifted the car off the pavement.
He saw she had not pulled on her safety harness, and he made her latch it in place.
“Hold on,” he said.
As he pulled the car from the curb, he nearly struck Henry Galing who had run out of the forest and was trying to block their escape. The old man shouted something at them but his words we
re drowned out by the thundering blades. Joel pulled past him and took the shuttle down the deserted street.
The wheel was much too stiff. He could barely handle it. The damned shuttle bobbed and swayed, maneuvered like a tank with one broken tread.
“Be careful!” Allison said.
An intersection loomed ahead.
He made the mistake of trying to corner, and he suddenly found the wheel frozen altogether. He took his foot of the accelerator and discovered that was frozen too. The air speed brakes didn't work. They were completely out of control.
Allison screamed.
The fan shuttle tilted as if the gyros were as worn out as the rest of it, turned on its side and drove Allison down against him as far as her safety harness would permit.
Was this why the keys were in the ignition? Did Galing intend for them to die in the shuttle? If that were the case, what in the name of God had been the purpose of this entire charade?
A building lay directly ahead of them.
They struck the side of it and were pitched away like a scrap of paper in an ocean tide.
This is it, he thought. It's over now.
Galing has won.
The shuttle blades beneath them coughed, stuttered, cut in, cut out… The small craft rolled onto the roof with a resounding crash.
Joel was thrown against the steering wheel despite the safety harness, then was jerked upright again as the harness automatically compensated for the impact.
Metal screamed against macadam as they slid down the street, and sparks showered into the night air. An instant later they were brought up hard against the trunk of a willow tree and finally came to a full stop.
Alive.
But what about Allison?
Unconsciousness threatened, but he refused to sink into it. He saw that Allison was slumped against her restraining straps, not moving at all, face pale, mouth slack, eyes closed. He couldn't see any blood, no bruises on her face. She must be fine. Just unconscious. That was all. That had to be all.
The Long Sleep Page 4
