CYCLE FOR ADMITTANCE.
Joel did as it said.
WAIT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
COMPUTER DATA LINKAGES.
WAIT FOR VERIFICATION OF
VIEW CHAMBER'S SANCTITY.
He took her hand.
“I don't want to go in.”
“You have to,” he said.
The light turned green.
LIGHT BURNING.
PROCEED SAFELY ON GREEN.
As he pulled open the door, she began to cry softly. He put his arm around her, although he could not offer her much support. He was every bit as frightened and demoralized as she was. This was one more thing taken from him by the incredible events of the last few years: his man's strength.
They walked reluctantly into the view chamber …
He woke in the pod chamber observation room. He was sitting in a command chair, staring through a porthole at a lazily swimming aquaman.
He turned to Henry Galing who occupied the chair on his right, and he said. “It won't work, you know.”
“The illusion.”
“What illusion?”
“Stop the game.”
Galing frowned, nodded slowly. “Very well. But do you know who you are, who the girl is, the whole story?”
“I'm Joel Amslow.”
“That's just a name.” *
“I know her name's not Allison. It's Alicia. But I won't tell you anything else.”
“Because you don't know anything else,” Galing said, smiling.
“Yes, I do.”
“You're lying.” He turned to someone behind Joel. “He hasn't doped it out yet. We'll have to go on with it.”
“No!” Joel said.
“Yes,” Galing said. “It's what you want me to do, you know. It really is.”
The faceless man loomed at Joel's right side. The needles of the hypodermic glove were icy…
Joel and Alicia crossed the dimly lighted view chamber and stopped before the window.
“Oh…” she said.
They looked out at the gray scene, grayed themselves by its reflection. The view was one of everlasting death, death without equal, death to stagger the mind, death beyond conception, death very nearly beyond endurance, death that was — in its own awful way — full of hideous movement and intelligence.
She shuddered but didn't run. She remained at his side, taking strength from him, unaware that he had gained his strength from her.
The required minutes ticked past…
The overhead speakers crackled and produced a lecture the subject of which was the scene they were required to observe. Each word on the tape had been carefully chosen by the community's psychologists and semanticists; no propaganda had ever been so meticulously constructed. “This,” the speaker said, “is what you have done and what you can never undo, even until the ends of your days.”
Others watched from viewpoints along the thick glass, but no one spoke. The scene was its own comment. It needed no analysis, no interpretation, produced no gossip. The scene was—
The bridal suite had flame red wallpaper and a mirrored ceiling, and it was costing him a hundred bucks a day.
He knew immediately that it was not real. He had not yet been able to break down the wall of amnesia to discover who he was and why he was here, but at least he could no longer be deceived by a lot of fancy props in a hypno-structured illusion. He knew that if he opened the door of the honeymoon suite, he would find Henry Galing's house beyond it, rather than a hotel.
His first impulse was to wake Allison and question her. Even if she called for help, and even if her call were quickly answered, he should be able to force her to tell him…
But that was no good. He would not be able to force her to tell him anything. Even though she had betrayed him, he would not be able to hurt her or even threaten her; he cared for her too much. His love was based on some relationship they had enjoyed when she was called Alicia, back on the other side of the amnesic wall, in those days when he had been totally familiar with the purpose of the pyramid. Now, regardless of her behavior, he knew that she loved him as he did her.
Besides, even if he could learn something from her he would gain no edge from the knowledge. He would be put to sleep again. And the next time he woke up they might take more care with the illusion so that he would not recognize it, immediately, for what it was.
And ever since this nightmare had begun, he'd been afraid that he would be put to sleep and never brought back again, or not for a long, long time, anyway. He was afraid he'd sleep for years and then regain consciousness in a life support pod — and have to start all over from scratch. He remembered that note he'd found on the porch of that fake house, the note he had left for himself. He had been through this before, the note said; well, he didn't want to go through it again.
So… What next?
Lying on the edge of the king-size bed, staring at his reflection in the ceiling mirrors, he decided that his best bet was to appear to be fooled, lull them into thinking that he was so dumb he didn't suspect a thing. They could be tricked. He'd proven that already. Now it was time to trick them again, though more subtly than he had done the other times. He would put them off balance, take his time, then make a move when they were least expecting it.
The only thing he needed was a hypodermic glove. He'd have to take it from them. With that, he could sedate all of them and have plenty of time to probe more deeply into the background of their game.
Two days…
In two days he'd make his move and become master of the house. He saw now that escape was not enough. Galing and the others must become his prisoners. Whereas he wouldn't have harmed Allison, he had no compunctions against torturing Galing to extract the information he needed.
Beyond the room's single window, skyscrapers thrust at an overcast sky. Distant traffic noises rose against the window.
He knew that he could open that window and smash the hologram scene to bits. But he would not.
Not yet.
But soon. “Soon,” he said softly.
Allison rolled over and blinked at him. She covered a yawn with the back of her hand. “Did you say something?”
“No.”
“No?”
“That's right.”
She sat up and brushed her long hair out of her face, tucked it behind her ears. “I thought for sure I heard you say something.” She was wary.
He pointed to the mirrors overhead and smiled at her. “Just talking to myself.”
“Nice place for mirrors, huh?” She grinned at him, then broke into another yawn.
“Sleepyhead,” he said.
“Narcissist.”
“I was only looking at myself because you were all covered up with sheets.”
“Likely story.”
He grabbed for her.
She playfully fended him off. But behind the playfulness, there was a look of uncertainty.
He kissed her, caressed her breasts, let his hands slide down her slim flanks, cupped her buttocks and kneaded them gently. “Old sleepyhead.”
She smiled, slipping back into her role now, sure of him now. “Sex fiend,” she said.
“Better than a narcissist.”
“Oh, you're still a narcissist.”
“A narcissist sex fiend,” he said. “I guess that means I shouldn't be in a room alone with myself.”
She laughed and pushed him back and rolled atop him, and she began to plant kisses all over his chest and stomach. He didn't mind at all when they began to add a dash of verisimilitude to the phony honeymoon setting.
XXI
His deception worked well.
They passed two days alone in their suite. They made love in every style, every position, at any hour of the day or night. They read and watched old movies on the gram screen and made love again and slept and napped and talked. She was quick to laugh, witty, and beautiful: she entranced him, even though he knew that they were living a lie. He supposed that he had been hypno-
programmed not to want to leave the room; therefore, he didn't once mention the world outside, as if they would spend the rest of their natural lives inside the hotel.
Two days later, when Richard delivered their dinner on a silver cart, he was confident enough to turn his back on Joel. He knelt down and took the food out of the heated storage compartment beneath the cart,
That was a mistake.
Joel picked up a silver wine goblet and knocked the other man unconscious with two savage blows.
Red wine speckled the carpet and showered across the rumpled bed sheets.
Allison said: “You weren't fooled.”
“No.”
“Don't hurt me.”
“Only a little.”
He clipped her gently on her delicate chin. She should have gone down, but she only swayed on the balls of her feet and made a face as if she were about to scream for help. He chopped at her jaw again, harder this time, surprised at her strength. She slumped into his arms.
“Sorry,” he said. He lifted her and carried, her to the bed where she would be comfortable.
Richard groaned, shook his head, and tried to get back onto his knees.
“Hold it,” Joel said. He used the goblet again: two sharp blows to the back of the neck.
He listened.
The house was quiet. No alarm had gone off; no one had heard or seen what he'd done. Yet. However, if Richard were too long in reporting back to Galing, it was all over before it began.
He bent down, rolled Richard onto his back, and searched the man's pockets. He found the hypodermic glove in the inside pocket of the white serving jacket. It was thicker than he had thought it would be, and the rolled cuff was a hollow tube in which most of the glove's mechanisms lay. He pulled it on and gave both Richard and Allison a dose of their own medicine.
Then he picked up the room service phone and, when Henry Galing answered, said, “I think you'd better come up here right away.” He hung up.
He went and stood by the door, stretched his fingers in the glove, and raised his hand.
A minute passed.
Then another…
Come on, dammit!
No one knocked. The door was suddenly flung open, and the faceless man came into the room. He was wearing a hypodermic glove.
Joel stepped away from the wall and used his own glove on the back of the freak's neck before it had time to turn on him.
Galing came in a moment later, confident, sure that all was in order now, not aware of how drastically the balance of power had shifted. When he saw Joel, he turned and ran. He didn't make it out of the room. When Joel's glove touched him, he sighed and took one more step and crumbled.
For an instant Joel was elated-and then he heard quick footsteps on the stairs. Gina! He had forgotten the damned maid.
He ran out into the upstairs corridor of the Galing mansion and hurried to the stairs. She was in the downstairs hall. He went after her, taking two steps at a time. By the time he gained the downstairs hall, she was in the kitchen.
“Wait!”
She didn't wait, of course.
She started for the back door, but she realized that she would never make it across the lawn with him at her heels. As a small cry escaped her lips, she turned, pushed a chair at him, and ran for the cellar door.
Stumbling over the chair, kicking it out of his way, he lunged for her.
She went through the cellar door and pulled it shut behind her, barely avoiding the swipe of his glove. The hypodermic needles struck the door and bent. He tried the knob; it was locked. When he put his ear to the door, he heard her going down the basement steps as fast as she could.
So close. So damned close!
He tried to force the door. He wrenched the knob violently back and forth, applied his shoulder to the panel. It was stronger than it appeared to be. Perhaps the wood veneer concealed not porous panelboard but metal.
He pulled open one kitchen drawer after another until he found a knife, then went back to the cellar door. He slipped the blade between the edge of the door and the frame, tried to force up the lock. But it was too sophisticated a mechanism for that crude an approach.
Worried now, he threw the knife down.
If there had been nothing down there except an empty cellar, he would have blockaded the door from this side and would have forgotten all about her. As long as she was out of his way, he didn't care if she were conscious or drugged. But she now had access to those nutrient tanks in which other men and women rested and waited to be called to action.
She would know how to wake them. He was positive of that. In no time at all, she would rally a small army. And then she would move against him.
He stripped off the damaged glove and threw if down.
He had still not won.
XXII
He ran upstairs again to the “hotel” room. Richard, Galing, and the faceless man were all sprawled on the floor where he had left them. None of them seemed to be waking up yet. Allison was on the unmade bridal bed, her flimsy nightgown rolled above her knees, her black hair fanned out around her like a puff of smoke. He wrapped her in a blanket, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her downstairs to the kitchen.
The cellar door was closed, and no one was waiting for him. He had not expected anything else. No matter how familiar she was with the machinery, Gina couldn't possibly revitalize her zombie friends in such short order.
Outside, he crossed the sun-dappled, telescoped lawn, went through the forest where birds were singing and bees were buzzing, and came out onto the fake street in Anytown, U.S.A. They would expect him to go up to the intersection and down the side street to the door which he had discovered earlier. Therefore, he turned away from the intersection and eventually found another door that led out of the disguised corridor.
Five minutes later he had oriented himself. And five minutes after that, he brought Allison into one of the two garages where fan shuttles, jeeps, and military vehicles of every description were parked in even rows. He walked down one row and up another, quickly surveyed what was available, and chose one of the largest pieces. Resting Allison on the wide tread, he struggled with the door and got it open, picked her up again, lifted her almost above his head, and slid her onto the front seat.
She slept soundly.
He looked behind at the poorly lighted garage, at the rows of silent fan shuttles and hideous war machines, at the door through which he had come. The door was closed. And although the shuttles provided hundreds of hiding places, he was sure they were still alone. As yet there was no pursuit. But there would be. And soon now, real soon.
Walking around the vehicle to get some idea of what he would be handling, he decided that it was the equivalent of a tank, though more modern and considerably more formidable than a tank. Bigger than most tanks. Forty feet long if it was an inch. Twelve feet wide, maybe fifteen feet high. Brutish. Ugly. It would have been right at home in the age of the dinosaurs. Lower in the back than in front. Five-foot-high treads rather than shuttle blade. Cruised along the ground, not over it. Weapons systems. Curious gun barrels without bores in them. Twin rocket launchers, a slim missile locked in each. Steel plating. Solid. He nodded approvingly; it should get them through anything.
He didn't know why he was so sure that he needed a tank for the world which lay beyond the pyramid. It was a gut feeling, and he hadn't a shred of evidence to back it up. But he knew that if he ignored it, if he walked out of here without protection, he would be committing suidice.
Nevertheless, as dangerous as it might be, he had to leave. Henry Galing gave him no choice.
A sharp whistling noise sliced through the garage, and the public address system hissed to life. “Joel… Joel, wherever you are, please stop and listen to me.”
It was Henry Galing.
“Go to hell,” Joel said.
He got into the cab with Allison and pulled the heavy door shut, locked it. Galing's voice was now an indecipherable murmur. Joel got Allison into a sitt
ing position, strapped her in place, then hooked into his own safety harness.
As he studied the complex banks of controls in front of him, he decided she would be better off asleep, and he hoped she remained unconscious longer than Galing had done. He had been driven to the wall and was acting precipitously; he had no way of knowing what he was getting them into. Trouble. Definitely trouble of some sort. But he couldn't say of what sort or how serious. Yes, it was best that she slept.
Galing's voice continued to drone senselessly beyond the walls of the tank.
With surprisingly little trial and error, he started the big tank's engines, which were powered by a miniature fusion plant. The controls were quite familiar. In some other age, back beyond the life support pod, he had operated this machine or one very much like it.
He put it in gear.
The tread clanked on the concrete floor.
“Here we go,” he said aloud, to himself.
The concrete pillars which supported the roof of the garage were marked by phosphorescent red arrows that pointed toward the exit. He drove the tank out of its niche and into the main aisle, turned left and followed the arrows.
At first he handled the tank clumsily. Taking a corner in the aisle, he misjudged his distances and crushed a small fan shuttle parked at the end of one row. The giant tread ground inexorably over the vehicle, tore it to pieces, mashed it flat, and kicked it out behind. After that, he was more careful.
The roar of the huge engines thundered from wall to wall, came back from the concrete ceiling like a wave from the beach.
A the back of the garage he located and boarded a stone ramp that led gradually upwards. Thirty yards along the ramp, the walls closed in and the ceiling lowered. The corners disappeared, and he was in a smooth steel tube, a tunnel.
When he glanced at the view-screen which brought a closed-circuit picture of the road behind, he saw that a sphincter door had cycled out of the walls back there. He was sealed off from the garage.
A trap?
He brought the tank to a full stop and thought about it. In a confined space like this, unable to turn and maneuver, his great big war machine wasn't much good to him. Galing and his crew — if they were the ones who had sealed him off, could enter the tube at their leisure, climb onto the tank, and eventually cut him out of it. If he used his missiles or other artillery at such close range, he would surely kill them — but, bottled in the tunnel as he was, he might also kill himself and Allison. Then he realized that, if he used the tank as a battering ram, he could probably buckle that door enough to get back into the garage. He wasn't imprisoned after all.
The Long Sleep Page 11
