Los Angeles

by Philip Wylie

  “But you are making a terrible mistake!” Glenn said loudly. “Whatever medical—or other—procedure you have in mind—it’s all wrong! Check with the Governor. The Mayor. The President, if necessary. You have the wrong man, the wrong orders, and you will be in a horrible spot if you don’t learn that at once!”

  The head of the team said coldly, “Will you please name these … highly placed … associates?”

  Glenn did so.

  That is, he named the president, governor—and got no further.

  Dr. Forret nodded and strong hands pushed Glenn flat on the table.

  For a moment, both the panic-impulse and reason were one: he’d have to fight.

  There was instant tumult in the room. Glenn made it almost to the door, leaving two clobbered males on the floor behind him and carrying a third on his back. He didn’t quite reach the door. One of the three nurses interposed herself and as he threw down the man he’d carried, she brought a small object near his face. There was a snick and a tiny cloud of aerosol spray emerged. The nurse stepped back and Glenn, after a single and necessary breath, dropped to the smooth surfaced floor, unconscious.

  When he next roused he was in another room and so completely restrained he could not move his limbs or body or even his head.

  As soon as he could evaluate his situation, he had no desire to move. He was taped and wired by dozens of tubes and tiny cables. He could feel the dull pain of various needles in his arms and legs. He could sense the many places where electrodes had been glued to his skin including places on his head, temples, face, chest and neck. The pains were trivial. But any movement, even had it been possible, would surely have caused some probing needle to plunge deeper or rip out.

  He lay still and tried to think.

  He was a very imaginative man. He was erudite—none of his thousands of able and scores of brilliant employees had any comparable range of knowledge. He was, also, sensitive, which was no help, here. There was no cowardice in Glenn, either. But there are times when mere physical courage, however great, is not of value. This was one.

  There seemed to be no act, no word, no idea that he could employ, at whatever unknowable risk, to resolve this situation. It was nightmarish, unreal—yet real to him. It was menacing in so many ways he couldn’t guess at their numbers or sorts. His own good health had left him little experience of such hospital procedures as this appeared to be. A broken bone or two, a shoulder, separated in a football game, checkups, and that was it. But he had visited friends in various dire straits and so he had seen, at least, what a person underwent in rooms for “intensive care,” those special, last-resort chambers where every known life-support facility is at hand.

  Even so, no such place he’d seen was as complex as this and nowhere had he seen a tenth of this number of appliances. He felt as if some tube or some wire was enquiring into every organ and even every cell he was made of. He could hear the pulse of pumps, the humming of electrical motors and, from his fixed position, he could even see the backs of dials and gauges, of meters and luminous oscilloscopes which were in agitation, changed hues and cast into some room beyond all kinds of recorded data.

  So he assumed.

  He thought no one was in the same room and that was true.

  He could hear feet outside the room, moving in a corridor, clearly. And faintly, he could hear the occasional awakening of a P.A. system, voices, remote and hollow, paging with numbers.

  The fact that he was conscious for that actually very short period, must have registered on the instruments for, within a minute of waking, he felt a surge of warm fluid into an arm-vein and lost all sensation, seconds later.

  When next he woke he was lying on a bare bench in a small, square room full of steam. The steam was hot and medicated. Soon, a voice ordered:

  “Breathe deeply!”

  It was so calm and yet commanding, Glenn did as required.

  “Again!”

  “Look here,” Glenn said, in what he tried to make a shout. “This is a mistake! Dangerous for you!”

  “Again, deep breath! You have five more minutes only, in this final proceeding. Breathe deeply!”

  Glenn did. He did because he realized the voice was recorded. Nobody was listening to him. Rather, perhaps, this room was monitored. Further, if he had only five minutes to go, it seemed sensible to follow the automated commands. He knew he was alone in this strange steam-room because what he was breathing seemed not steam, but a compound that people would not safely inhale for long. There, he was correct. But the pungent steam he drew into his lungs had a peculiar effect. Each breath revived him, made his mind clearer, improved his muscle tone and, at the end, he felt restored completely.

  That end was abrupt.

  With a tremendous, sucking whoosh, the chamber was cleared of steam. It was a box, he thought, walled in some plastic material, high, with a recessed light up there in the center. No visible doors.

  Then, a door opened.

  “Proceed into the waiting room.”

  He went through the door and as he did so, encountered a robe that came down on a hanger, from above.

  The room was simply furnished. A sofa, a chair, a table with a pitcher of water and a glass. He was thirsty but he looked about a bit more before moving ahead. One end of the room was open except for vertical strands of faintly glinting material, almost threadlike and set about four inches apart. Beyond that apparently decorative and certainly easily crossed barrier was a dim-lit corridor from which sounds of distant activities came.

  He crossed to the pitcher and poured the glass full. His perspiration had been cleared away by the sudden exit of air from the other room. He felt clean and realized that the evacuation of steam had been, at the end, preceded by warm water droplets—an instant bath, in effect, leaving him as he felt now: clean and dry, too; the last result of that tornado.

  He stuck his tongue in the glass. There was no taste at all save of rather flat water, as if it had been boiled and cooled. If it was drugged, would it matter? His thirst was excessive. And if the mechanical voice could be believed, the ordeal was over. How long had it lasted? Without a watch, without any sense of time relative to his periods of insensibility, he couldn’t guess. If he had been told the procedures lasted only thirty-two minutes, he would not have believed that.

  He drank three glasses of water and nothing ill followed. His thirst was assuaged.

  Next, wearing the brownish, clean robe, he walked to the vertical “threads” that acted as a merely visual barrier between himself and the corridor.

  A figure in white passed by, sex indeterminable.

  “Hello,” he called. “Would you please—”

  No answer, no reaction.

  He was alone again. He decided to step into the corridor.

  The threadlike bars did not yield to his casual touch. He grasped them—and nearly cut his palms in an ensuing attempt to spread them so as to get through. He wrapped his hands in folds of his robe, grasped one of the shiny, sixteenth-inch (or less!) filaments in both hands and exerted his full strength. This was strength enough, in a pinch, to break or bend any material of such thickness he knew of. After repeated efforts, one strand bent a little but not nearly enough to make an opening.

  Panting, he stepped back and stared at the strange stuff.

  At that point, Glenn might, given time, have deduced his situation, or, at least, reached some close approximation of it.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t given time.

  He would have needed it because he had been engaged with his present astonishments and vicissitudes, up to this moment. He’d had no chance to put together the facts he had observed, the outdoor landscape, the state of every man-made thing he’d seen, the dreary sky, the air-filled vehicle, the brief words from the medical man before Glenn had lunged. And, also, this novel, this nonexistent but very palpable material of such fineness yet such incredible strength.

  Two men, uniformed like the two who’d brought him from his car, but not in
breathing gear, now tramped to the open end of the room and stared at him.

  “We’re taking you out,” one said. “Make trouble—and you come out cold.”

  The other man was touching the slightly-bent filament. “Look, Mac. The guy bent this Super-Fab!”

  “Nobody could,” Mac said and then examined the spot. “Be damned! Not ten men in LA could of! Some geezer!”

  If that was the case, Glenn thought, it shouldn’t be hard to take this pair.

  He watched. They touched a button and the threadlike barrier rose in a frame, opening the end of the room. The cops, or soldiers, or whatever they were, came in. Glenn sprang. There was a soft pop and a thousand threads wrapped around him. It was as if he’d been seized by a hundred octopi all with tentacles almost spider-web-fine but, together, completely immobilizing. He thought of Gulliver in Lilliput as he was carried into the hall and dumped on a seat in a vehicle he wasn’t able to see clearly. He couldn’t even turn his head. It zoomed off along the corridor and into another one, much wider, where, he thought, people moved about and where, for certain, other vehicles passed this one and still others overtook it and swept on.

  He could not see out from where he lay, except at an angle too high to observe the people. But he heard their voices. He heard soft music as it came from some places they quickly passed. It seemed to be a sort of arcade. There were streetlike lamps, a fluorescent sort, set overhead out of his view. Colored lights glowed and were passed. Twice, he saw electric signs of a sort, a treble clef in one case, a foaming glass in another, indicating shops, perhaps.

  The vehicle finally stopped.…

  Half an hour had passed.

  Glenn sat, pinioned, in the metal chair. The hot light burned into his eyes. Dimly, behind the table, he could see the two faces.

  Captain Marlon. Sergeant Bate.

  “Repeat, and tell the truth this time!”

  Glenn answered in dread. “My name is Glenn Howard. Glenn Howard. My address, 3636 Corona Canyon, Los Angeles. The date is October 15—or 16—1971.”

  “The day?”

  “If it’s the fifteenth, Friday. The sixteenth, Saturday.”

  A voice cut in from a loud speaker. “That checks, captain.”

  Marlon, heavy, dark, with much shining evidence of rank, replied, apparently by mike. “Okay, Bleeker. So his yarn checks as to day and date. What of it?” He addressed Glenn again.

  “Repeating a question, Mister Liar. Where were you coming from, did you say?”

  “I didn’t. It’s confidential. If you’ll call the White House —please!” The last word was entreating.

  It did no good. The “effect” came again.

  It was stronger, each time. What caused it, he could not imagine. But something seemed to grab his nerves and brain. His body became a blaze as if really in a fire. And worse, with each increment of this torture, his sense of doom became stronger, as if his brain knew that what was happening to his body would be stepped up until, at some unguessable but not too distant moment, the degree of this total torture would destroy his mind, and that, even if his body somehow lived on. It was horrible. It could not be stood much longer, even by Glenn. While the “current” was on, of course, he could not make a sound. Could not breathe. Could only feel the increase of his agony and terror. It stopped.

  Glenn sagged and gasped.

  The two police-inquisitors exchanged a few words.

  Marlon spoke while Glenn was still sucking air and drooling, while sweat still blinded him. “Okay. Now look. We’re in a hurry. You can have your choice. Either come clean about where you were, or else, brother, we’ll start shoving up these treatments till your control goes out and you’ll scream the truth—and probably keep screaming for years, afterward!”

  It seemed possible.

  Glenn knew what he was going to do: tell them where he had been. He knew, however, that would only lead to the question he dared not answer: what was his mission at Boiling Wells? For he thought, now, to the extent he was able to think, that this whole affair was somebody’s infernal attempt to wring from him the fact that he was going to “squeal” about his mission at Boiling Wells, to the President.

  It was not, of course, a rational idea. It did not account for all that had happened. But once he was under torture, he was not capable of rational processes. The plain intent of wringing from him who he was, where he’d been and—surely, in the end—on what errand—left him with the mistaken conviction that, somehow, he had been forced into a series of nightmarish hallucinations that became reality only here and now, as the interrogation began.

  Given time to think, Glenn would soon have realized that solution made no sense. If “they” had done all this to him to make him admit he was going to tell the President about the meeting in the desert, they already must have guessed that. He was, in such a case, completely in their power. They could make him dream as he had been and imagine such bizarre images were real. Why, then, all that, to preface—this?

  But he had no time. The thirty minutes of torture had seemed hours, already. His frantic, fighting mind was unable to find a moment for recovery, analysis, or anything but the heightening dread of the next application of their unbelievable torments. He was beginning to get his breath now, and trying to brace for the next, icy question.

  He saw the Captain lean forward to frame it.

  It wasn’t spoken.

  A voice belted over the loud speaker. “Marlon!”

  The Captain flinched. “Yes, Chief?”

  “Hold everything!”

  “Yes, sir. But—”

  “How is the prisoner?”

  “Tough.”

  “How many jolts?”

  “Eleven!”

  “Jesus Christ Almighty!”

  Marlon spoke defensively. “Orders were to hurry the guy—”

  “All right! All right. They were wrong!”

  “Wrong, Chief?”

  “Yes. And forget that! Is the man in any shape at all?”

  “For what, sir?”

  The high, penetrating voice went even higher. “The Mayor wants to talk to Mr. Howard, right away!”

  Glenn stared at his inquisitors. They were, of course, frightened. But they merely looked blank. As they had looked, the whole time. He caught Marlon’s eye. He grinned faintly. The Captain gaped.

  The Chief of Police, Glenn presumed, yelled again, “Are you on? The Mayor—”

  “Yes, Chief. He’s stood up, so far, pretty well. Seems at least—well—mind’s working. He can probably walk.”

  “Christ, man, he’s got to be in good shape! They didn’t even know we’d started on him! The order to hurry it was from me, damn it to hell! Probably lose the job! I’ll send Doc Weddin in. Do what you can. He’s to get Class A clothes, so help me God! An Alpha-plus, no less! He’s actually some big shot—!”

  This shift did not surprise Glenn. That it shocked the LAPD Chief was deserved and if some of these cold bastards lost rank, fine! Glen smiled now and tried to stand. When he couldn’t, the Captain said, anguishedly, “Oh, God!”

  The sergeant ran around the table and helped Glenn rise. He was pale, sick and fawning. “Come on, my friend. Let’s try to get a little strength in those legs.”

  The Doctor arrived in a short while.

  Glenn was given a quick examination and two hypos. The police physician kept tabs on his pulse while the drugs worked. Glenn felt as if he was recovering from total prostration to find vigorous health—and in ten minutes. When a capsule and a dose of some exotic-tasting liquid were added to his medication, he realized he was becoming a little high, even. As if he were—not two-martini-high but—what?

  As if he’d been given a shot of morphine—as when he’d had that shoulder after the eighty-yard run and the spill in the end zone, the unnecessary and violent butting that put him out of the game for the rest of that year. It was a good feeling, a little too good, and maybe a “good” LSD trip might start that way. Everything so sharp, colors so viv
id, sounds so clear and musical.

  He went through the next interval in that uplifted state, saying little and only when there were questions. They took him to a shop and chose clothing—a sort of lightweight, tight but stretchy garment for his legs and torso, partly transparent. An open, capelike jacket, both garments in shades of orange-brown, one lighter, and the cape, about like his hair, perhaps not quite so dark. Then there was a ride in a series of these arcadelike streets where he saw lots of people, not so brightly or sleekly dressed, a few excepted.

  In this delightful and dreamlike state he noticed a few things but none bothered him. The pedestrians were almost all people from twenty to forty or so. No kids. School, he assumed. And the women were very attractive. The men, fit. Their garments, like his, weren’t designed to hide much. Women’s breasts were not just visible as shapes but often truly visible through transparent bodices—his word. Men’s genitals showed as contour and, often, the pubic hair of both sexes could be seen as a dark or light or inbetween triangle. His own clothes allowed the same visibility but, at the moment, it did not greatly trouble Glenn.

  He observed that these “streets”—they were far longer than any arcade—were mean. Shops were small. The largest of the business places were cafeterias. And there were graffiti on bare walls, on store fronts, which he made not much sense of though he presumed they were obscene in intent and certainly they were in English. The overhead “roof,” too, where the street lights were fixed, seemed to be rock, naked, gouged, scraped and without any effort at rearranging, smoothing. Like mines, he thought.

  But it didn’t matter.

  People, police, very polite, were escorting him with respect, sometimes pointing out an item of interest—a theatre, a fountain, a statue of some President unheard of, a side street that led, as the swift-transit showed, to a distant and open square that was brilliantly lighted and seemed very gaudy compared to the rest of the streets and plazas. “Corporation Offices,” one of his companions said, proudly, it seemed.

  But Glenn merely smiled, nodded, as his blissful state continued. He was aware of the physician, in the same vehicle and watching him attentively, but nothing mattered to Glenn, really.